Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Mengy]

People have been talking about stuff like ridesharing eliminating the need for car ownership more broadly and it hasn’t happened, Uber etc were supposed to do that years ago.

Then we can start asking how to squeeze huge profits out of a service that’s supposed to be so much cheaper than car ownership.

This is where I believe Tesla will be very different than Uber. Rather than keep prices high to earn nice profits, I think Elon will slice robotaxi margins to thin levels in order to aggressively push adoption.

I see many TSLA bulls forecasting trillions in revenues from RT's, but my hunch is that's overly bullish. Just look how Elon cut auto margins without worry, no one forecasted that happening. I think RT margins will be similarly low. It would keep TSLA much lower than many bulls expect, but it would also entice tons of people to use the RT service in a major way.

 

[Thekiwi]

Robotaxis likely only make sense in dense urban areas where car ownership is already lower, they make less sense the further you move from dense urban into suburbia much less semi-rural and beyond.

People have been talking about stuff like ridesharing eliminating the need for car ownership more broadly and it hasn’t happened, Uber etc were supposed to do that years ago.

Then we can start asking how to squeeze huge profits out of a service that’s supposed to be so much cheaper than car ownership.

I can see even in high car ownership countries, that robotaxis will significantly reduce total car ownership by the elimination of many households having to own more than one car. Owning a car is expensive, regardless of how often it gets used, considering even if one drives it infrequently one still must account for purchase price and any financing, insurance, maintenance, annual registration fees, parking costs when using etc.

I think it is much more likely to happen with the creation of robotaxis vs what Uber offers, for the simple fact that the economics are so much better which presumably will flow through to robotaxis being under half the price to consumers than Uber is, probably under a quarter of the price eventually.

5 return trips in an Uber per week at $200 total cost vs $50 total with a robotaxi service are two very different propositions.

 

[cliff harris]

Long before any of us have the option of a robotaxi, the effect of really-really-really good FSD, even if technically you have to still be the driver is going to noticeable.
Take a look at the advertising budgets of major car companies, and then look at the ads. Notice anything?
They say NOTHING about the capabilities of the car. Its all style, no substance. Its all trying to associate with certain attitudes, or 'vibes' or styles. Why is this? Because virtually every car is the same, in terms of capabilities. Anti-lock brakes? remote lock/unlock? central locking? power-steering? electric windows? Every car, at every trim, has almost identical capabilities.

And then along comes FSD. The car that can drive itself. It can park itself, it can summon itself out of the garage, or out of that puddle. It makes highway driving relaxing and trivial. It makes commutes super easy. It will save the life of your 18 year old kid who can barely drive and makes dumb mistakes. It saves the life of your young children in the back seat because its better at avoiding accidents than you. Why would you buy any other car? Why would you put your children in any other car?

If FSD gets even *slightly* better, it will already be doing the work of a colossal advertising budget for free, long before every uber and taxi driver on the planet realizes that leasing a tesla with FSD is a no brainer, long before robotaxis are possible.
And this could start happening with FSD 12.4, or 12.5. It looks inconceivable that it doesn't boost sales this year, in a big, big way.

We think its good for the stock if a kardashian poses with a cybertruck. Imagine what happens when a similar megastar literally has their life saved by FSD. And we know it will happen, and it will go viral, and even the mainstream media wont be able to pretend it never happened .

 

[jerry33]

The headline makes it seem like they’re buying Tesla’s sites, which might make one infer that Tesla is getting out of the Supercharging business. But they’re actually just looking to buy the hardware and open their own sites.

Who cares if they’re an oil company, how else are they going to transition? More chargers for drivers, more revenue for Tesla.

Agreed. Buying Supercharger sites by an oil company is scary. Buying the hardware is bullish.

 

[jerry33]

This reminds me of another company that I heard of recently that was overrun with bots and trolls.

I seem to remember them going to a payment system at a very low cost for membership with rights to contribute. This was effective in significantly reducing the bots and trolls from setting up multiple accounts.

What if the Investor's Roundtable were fee-based?

Would $5/yr or so for members to have the right to post and reply offer a deterrent?

For a person, I don't think so. It's just $5 and trolls don't hang around for that long. $5 deters bots from X because there are thousands, but for a single person, it's a nothing-burger.

 

[jerry33]

I'm not sure there is such a thread. I do have one piece of advice though. If you ask the "from" broker (TDA) to transfer your assets to the "to" broker (Schwab in your example) they will almost certainly want to charge you money and delay. So go to the "to" broker, open your account, and ask them to pull all the assets from the other account. It will be free and they'll keep pushing until it happens, because the "from" broker can't stop it.

There's no fee for the forced change.

 

[Thekiwi]

Perhaps this is quite different to the USA, but here in New Zealand, most new EV chargers are being installed at Petrol Stations. Usually any large petrol station here also opt to have other additional high margin revenue streams that require no additional labour (food, automated car washes, trailer rentals etc) so adding EV chargers is an easy decision for these businesses.

 

[jerry33]

This doesn't add up. Why would BP put chargers at their stations then charge more than an EV can get at the charger down the street? They would lose twice (charger and store customer). Any use would be dependent upon unwary customers using the charger only because they were going to the store anyway.

I don't think being overcharged for electrons at the gas station will motivate many to sell their EV and replace it with ICE.

I don't see how this strategy you describe will suffocate the new tech.

That strategy won't work, agreed. But if they purchase a significant amount of the current Supercharger network, then they can either close them all down or raise the prices higher than gas.

 

[RobbyK]

Elon liked this post last night

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788450371335061826

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Elon liked this post last night

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788450371335061826

View attachment 1045705

Tony Seba's breakdown of robots taking over human tasks is also relevant to Elon's plan:

 

[Robertj]

Earlier Tesla models to get FSD !@ update

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788692773656227857

 

[AndrewZ]

I can see even in high car ownership countries, that robotaxis will significantly reduce total car ownership by the elimination of many households having to own more than one car. Owning a car is expensive, regardless of how often it gets used, considering even if one drives it infrequently one still must account for purchase price and any financing, insurance, maintenance, annual registration fees, parking costs when using etc.

I think it is much more likely to happen with the creation of robotaxis vs what Uber offers, for the simple fact that the economics are so much better which presumably will flow through to robotaxis being under half the price to consumers than Uber is, probably under a quarter of the price eventually.

5 return trips in an Uber per week at $200 total cost vs $50 total with a robotaxi service are two very different propositions.

This makes me think of the costs that will remain and increase with higher utilization, of course the electricity and then things like tires and wear and tear.

The other aspect of this as a Tesla-owned fleet is the cost of producing the cars in the first place and having no big surge of revenue up front because the cars go into an operating fleet rather than being sold to customers.

Like Mengy I think this feels more like an area of excess optimism and the reality will probably be more muted, but I guess we’ll see.


Also enjoy how this thread has become much more FSD-centric when the topic was basically off limits for a long time even as Elon was telling everyone that autonomy was key to Tesla’s value and it was falling on deaf ears. Oh how things change!

 

[MC3OZ]

This is where I believe Tesla will be very different than Uber. Rather than keep prices high to earn nice profits, I think Elon will slice robotaxi margins to thin levels in order to aggressively push adoption.

I see many TSLA bulls forecasting trillions in revenues from RT's, but my hunch is that's overly bullish. Just look how Elon cut auto margins without worry, no one forecasted that happening. I think RT margins will be similarly low. It would keep TSLA much lower than many bulls expect, but it would also entice tons of people to use the RT service in a major way.

I think many bulls may have overestimated the ride share fare, but underestimated the fleet size. IMO the model is a very large low cost fleet, and paring the fleet cost per mile back the the absolute minimum is an important objective.

The margin is the difference between the Tesla cost per mile, and any competitors cost per mile. So the ideal game plan is to sell fares for around the competitors estimated cost per mile.

When Tesla is charging a fare that no others can match without losing money, they might not need to go lower.

Yes, the cost of building a very large fleet is a challenge, it has to be done progressively, IMO probably city-by-city.

And allowing others to operate Robotaxis in the fleet helps reduce the fleet cost.

 

[Spacep0d]

If it were any entity other than an oil company...

Talk about a fast way to poison the well of Supercharging if their intentions weren't sincere?

Elon - "Sorry, I don't have time to take that call right now."


I think BP may have misinterpreted what the "recent announcement" meant, as some here seem to have as well.

This reminds me of tire companies buying and dismantling companies which were poised to reduced tire sales. Could be a block move by BP.

 

[Stretch2727]

Pretty good read on auto in China and how competitive the Chinese EV's have become.

One mention of Tesla stating the Model Y needs an update.

https://insideevs.com/features/719015/china-is-ahead-of-west/

 

[MC3OZ]

Model Y production seems to be back up and running at Austin, always seemed to me like it may have just been a slow start to the week.

I hope someone like Limiting Factor does a deep drive on some of the new CATL battery tech.

I tried watching an official CATL presentation, and the battery specs were drowned in a sea of marketing hype.

There was a vast array of different types of batteries for different uses cases hot climate batteries and cold climate batteries, etc.

A large number of different battery types in a short time also added to my inability to fully comprehend.

Overall I think they may have some exciting and interesting tech, but I would like to see a trusted source do a deep dive on that.

 

[MP3Mike]

Bears are being stuffed into the trunk:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788703259818856691

 

[heltok]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1788606241927032987

Another hint at v12.4+

 

[ggies07]

Model Y production seems to be back up and running at Austin, always seemed to me like it may have just been a slow start to the week.

I hope someone like Limiting Factor does a deep drive on some of the new CATL battery tech.

I tried watching an official CATL presentation, and the battery specs were drowned in a sea of marketing hype.

There was a vast array of different types of batteries for different uses cases hot climate batteries and cold climate batteries, etc.

A large number of different battery types in a short time also added to my inability to fully comprehend.

Overall I think they may have some exciting and interesting tech, but I would like to see a trusted source do a deep dive on that.

I watched Viking King's video on the new CATL battery today and it made me think about all the research Jeff Dahn and his team have done for Tesla and what happened to it...where are the results? Everything these new CATL batteries do, Jeff gave presentations on the same findings like a year or more ago....

 

[nativewolf]

Robotaxis likely only make sense in dense urban areas where car ownership is already lower, they make less sense the further you move from dense urban into suburbia much less semi-rural and beyond.

People have been talking about stuff like ridesharing eliminating the need for car ownership more broadly and it hasn’t happened, Uber etc were supposed to do that years ago.

Then we can start asking how to squeeze huge profits out of a service that’s supposed to be so much cheaper than car ownership.

Exactly, Uber didn't alter car ownership. It altered the convenience and safety of traveling and entertaining. Both for the better. We've hashed it all out before but TaaS numbers just don't work at the scale people think in the time they think. Driving a bmw is or M3P is not a logical choice, people want a fast nice car. It is not economically rational. Those people will use uber to avoid a $50 parking fee or driving drunk.