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

[growler23]

Just when I think there's no more buying opportunity....

View attachment 1049817

Edit... After taking another look at this thread... DUH. Comments like this one tell me the sale is still on.

"The fact is that Tesla has been performing poorly..." Seriously hpiv?

I mean, Tesla has been performing poorly. They redefined driving the best driving in the USA to be (profitably) electric, and have redefined it AGAIN with FSD, while the legacy guys are still panting chasing after the FIRST redefinition ... surely they should have redefined it a THIRD time by now! Come on guys, get off your duffs! Definitely underperforming

 

[Singuy]

Video game is a $400B industry and NVDA is the godfather of it all. Has been for over 15 years. Every little boy's dream is to get his hand on a RTX 4090.

AMD is not even ranked while it's the heart and soul of Xbox and Playstations for over a decade. In fact the number of gamers who plays on AMD hardware dwarfs Nvidia, however Nvidia has a better name recognition. So I'm not really sure what this ranking is based on...the best marketer?

 

[scaesare]

Actually I know a lot of video games and Nvidia.

What you don't get is most consumers don't care about the video card in their computers, only serious gamers care about this.

Besides, if Nvidia has always been so popular, why didn't Axios include them in past surveys?

I tend to agree. nVidia is certainly well known amongst gamers and folks who know how to build a PC.

That population, however, is a minority of folks in general, I suspect, which is probably a much more representative of investors. While more investors may be aware of NVDA now, that's likely because of the stock performance, not real familiarity with the products.

Interestingly I'd bet many of the gamers that folks here are arguing demonstrate know nVidia, don't really know much about the vector/SIMD instruction applicability to neural net processing, and that's what's been largely responsible for NVDA's performance lately...

 

[scaesare]

Like limit how many times per day each member can post to this thread? Say maybe 5 posts per day to this thread per person?

Yeah, I'd be all in for that change, quality over quantity!

The epic 11 page multi-quote replies would surely ensue...

 

[Usain]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793736537605022046

I'm not sure what it means to say that the China megapack factory will be built 35% quicker than Lathrop?

As I recall, the Lathrop factory was built inside an existing structure.

Maybe he means the ramp will be 35% faster?

 

[sunwarriors]

I'm guessing Musk's resistance to tariffs, (by the way great to have the same opinion as him on something these days) is because it risks triggering Chinese countermeasures which could destroy Tesla's sales in China? For Tesla, not being able to compete in China must be much more concerning than some Chinese car makers selling cars in the US. For other US car makers, the ones that Biden seems to appreciate more, I guess it is the other way around - they don't sell much in China anyway.

This whole new US doctrine of isolation and trade wars is quite sad for someone like me who always thought of US as a free trade champion. Everybody benefits from free trade, at least mid to long term.

Even though true (free trade sounds good in concept), the answer is not that simple nor is free trade actually that free. China subsidizes a lot of their industries and also bans US companies from setting up shop directly in China. Musk is a big supporter of China and when Covid happened, he didn't say a peep about their lockdowns, but was very vocal in the US. He has also stated Taiwan should just go back to China which puts nearly every US industry at risk due to chips alone (memory chips come out of Samsung/SK Hynix/TSMC). As mentioned earlier, Nvidia manufactures everything out of TSMC.

China subsidies (note scmp is owned by Alibaba):

What are China’s industrial subsidies and why are they so controversial?

China’s industrial subsidies have long been a lightning rod for Western criticism of “unfair” trade practises, but Beijing says the issue is being used to block the country’s development.

www.scmp.com

This stretches to oil/gas/food pretty much any industry so it's easy to be against tariffs, but China has tariffs on US imports as well actually (during Trump years so it's not a Dem/Rep thing).

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart

Musk needs China more than China needs Musk IMO so his mouthpiece typically echos what China wants so it's a biased opinion.

Outside of this, I'm not sure it's a good long term thing for US society to flood the markets with cheap imports. There are societal risks with job losses, crime uptick, a lot of undesirable outcomes.

To save multiple posts, looks like MY production is cut in China?

Tesla Cuts Model Y Production in China, Report Says. Competition Is Raging.​

MSN

 

[nativewolf]

Info on construction on Lithium refinery, hadn´t heard about that one for a while... seems to be from the new impact report, too:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793665274056487277

am I wrong that they stopped work on this and fired the team?

 

[sunwarriors]

I tend to agree. nVidia is certainly well known amongst gamers and folks who know how to build a PC.

That population, however, is a minority of folks in general, I suspect, which is probably a much more representative of investors. While more investors may be aware of NVDA now, that's likely because of the stock performance, not real familiarity with the products.

Interestingly I'd bet many of the gamers that folks here are arguing demonstrate know nVidia, don't really know much about the vector/SIMD instruction applicability to neural net processing, and that's what's been largely responsible for NVDA's performance lately...

Folks also know nVidia from crypto. Their GPUs were heavily purchased during those bitcoin years jacking up prices for a long time.

Nvidia is scrambling to get graphics cards to gamers amid crypto boom

Nvidia's graphics cards are in short supply and it might hurt its relationship with its most loyal customers: gamers.

finance.yahoo.com

AI is a recent thing for them.

 

[mongo]

I'm not sure what it means to say that the China megapack factory will be built 35% quicker than Lathrop?

As I recall, the Lathrop factory was built inside an existing structure.

Maybe he means the ramp will be 35% faster?

It could be 35% faster. Demo of existing internals and buildout of new equipment of the first iteration could be slower than all new construction with higher copy/paste. Especially given potential increase in build/ labor hours per day.

 

[mongo]

am I wrong that they stopped work on this and fired the team?

Pretty sure you are wrong. Where did you hear that?

 

[Fred42]

am I wrong that they stopped work on this and fired the team?

Someone said that a few weeks ago in this thread, but when I googled I found nothing to support it.

 

[CitizenKane]

Even though true (free trade sounds good in concept), the answer is not that simple nor is free trade actually that free. China subsidizes a lot of their industries and also bans US companies from setting up shop directly in China. Musk is a big supporter of China and when Covid happened, he didn't say a peep about their lockdowns, but was very vocal in the US. He has also stated Taiwan should just go back to China which puts nearly every US industry at risk due to chips alone (memory chips come out of Samsung/SK Hynix/TSMC). As mentioned earlier, Nvidia manufactures everything out of TSMC.

China subsidies (note scmp is owned by Alibaba):

What are China’s industrial subsidies and why are they so controversial?

China’s industrial subsidies have long been a lightning rod for Western criticism of “unfair” trade practises, but Beijing says the issue is being used to block the country’s development.

www.scmp.com

This stretches to oil/gas/food pretty much any industry so it's easy to be against tariffs, but China has tariffs on US imports as well actually (during Trump years so it's not a Dem/Rep thing).

https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart

Musk needs China more than China needs Musk IMO so his mouthpiece typically echos what China wants so it's a biased opinion.

Outside of this, I'm not sure it's a good long term thing for US society to flood the markets with cheap imports. There are societal risks with job losses, crime uptick, a lot of undesirable outcomes.

To save multiple posts, looks like MY production is cut in China?

Tesla Cuts Model Y Production in China, Report Says. Competition Is Raging.​

MSN

Obviously, my view on this is very different and I believe there are lessons to be learned from the US - Japan trade in the 60:s -90:s. But this is very off topic so I leave it with that. What can we learn from the history of trade wars?

 

[mongo]

Still there for me, not much change in stock price to be expected for today judging from max pain:

View attachment 1050039

Updated, and stayed at 177.50 with a shift toward more calls

 

[JusRelax]

I've done a fair amount of reading on XPeng's system. It's hard to get good English language reporting out of China so what I will say might not be perfectly accurate. But here is what I have gathered:

The important thing to understand is that XPeng's system is really two systems in one.

XPeng has a geofenced system that relies on HD Maps and Lidar. It takes an approach that is much like Waymo. This has rolled out in many cities.

XPeng has a second, "go anywhere" system that has just started rolling out, which uses a combination of neural nets and heuristics. It takes an approach that is much like Tesla's FSD V10 or V11.

What XPeng apparently does not have is an end-to-end system like Tesla's FSD V12.

Xpeng's system IMO looks like FSD v9-v10 level with significantly less guardrails. The Xpeng system seems to be nowhere close to as smooth as FSD v12, but it is allowed to get much closer to other vehicles, and if anyone in the US that thought that FSD v10/11/12 drives like a jerk, slowing others behind it down, the Xpeng system is much much worse. It doesn't seem to matter as much in China though... almost like it's kind of expected for drivers to do whatever they want, and many drivers just drive around the Xpeng vehicle.

To be fair, the less guardrails part seems absolutely necessary to be able to make progress in downtown China traffic.

I don't understand the mandarin, but I thought this was a good video showing examples of XPeng's latest software.

 

[hobbes]

I'm not sure what it means to say that the China megapack factory will be built 35% quicker than Lathrop?

As I recall, the Lathrop factory was built inside an existing structure.

Maybe he means the ramp will be 35% faster?

Source article linked by Sawyer doesn´t mention the 35%, so likely his quick-and dirty back of he envelope math not having in mind the building for lathrop was already there.

 

[hobbes]

Someone said that a few weeks ago in this thread, but when I googled I found nothing to support it.

It was @unk45 in this post. Do you have a source for that info?

 

[Singuy]

Xpeng's system IMO looks like FSD v9-v10 level with significantly less guardrails. The Xpeng system seems to be nowhere close to as smooth as FSD v12, but it is allowed to get much closer to other vehicles, and if anyone in the US that thought that FSD v10/11/12 drives like a jerk, slowing others behind it down, the Xpeng system is much much worse. It doesn't seem to matter as much in China though... almost like it's kind of expected for drivers to do whatever they want, and many drivers just drive around the Xpeng vehicle.

To be fair, the less guardrails part seems absolutely necessary to be able to make progress in downtown China traffic.

I don't understand the mandarin, but I thought this was a good video showing examples of XPeng's latest software.

Yeah, doing fsd in China has two commands. "Go straight and keep going". The only way to get others to yield to you is by you trying to run into them. Fsd in China is actually not that difficult. My aunt and uncles drive like this and honk everytime they are about to run into someone. That's their "courtesy warning". We register at least 5 honks per drive, usually more. The first thing you notice in China is all the honking.

 

[Knightshade]

AMD is not even ranked while it's the heart and soul of Xbox and Playstations for over a decade. In fact the number of gamers who plays on AMD hardware dwarfs Nvidia,

I don't think that's true though.


For one- the Switch uses Nvidia chips and outsells the Xbox and Playstation-

PS5 vs Xbox Series X|S vs Switch Launch Sales Comparison Through Month 37

This monthly series compares the aligned launch sales of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.It [...]

www.vgchartz.com

The Switch has a 42.3 percent marketshare, the PS5 sits at 38.0 percent, and the Xbox Series X|S at 19.7 percent.

So over 40% of console gamers are on Nvidia- not AMD.

Beyond that, PC gaming is significantly larger than console gaming-- and Nvidia dominates that market (~75% of discrete GPUs per the latest steam survey)

Console gaming compared to the PC market: which one is better?

In this article, we'll talk about console gaming compared to the PC market, explaining why the former is doing better in 2023.

mainleaf.com

Console gaming is estimated to reach around 629 million players worldwide, while PC gaming is part of the lives of almost 900 million players

 

[Singuy]

I don't think that's true though.


For one- the Switch uses Nvidia chips and outsells the Xbox and Playstation-

PS5 vs Xbox Series X|S vs Switch Launch Sales Comparison Through Month 37

This monthly series compares the aligned launch sales of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.It [...]

www.vgchartz.com

So over 40% of console gamers are on Nvidia- not AMD.

Beyond that, PC gaming is significantly larger than console gaming-- and Nvidia dominates that market (~75% of discrete GPUs per the latest steam survey)

Console gaming compared to the PC market: which one is better?

In this article, we'll talk about console gaming compared to the PC market, explaining why the former is doing better in 2023.

mainleaf.com

Check unit sales of ps4, xbox one, ps5, and series x man. Switch is a second console usually. The numbers are combined to be 2x of Switch sales.

Also AMD is in cloud gaming, and their cpus for gamers are everywhere.

 

[dl003]

Check unit sales of ps4, xbox one, ps5, and series x man. Switch is a second console usually. The numbers are combined to be 2x of Switch sales.

Also AMD is in cloud gaming, and their cpus for gamers are everywhere.

gaming GPU is just one part of NVDA's business. We only brought that up to argue against the notion that consumers don't know who or what NVDA is.

NVDA is also what powering the AI revolution. They have a good of good press. Their GPUs are the benchmarks for everyone else. AMD, on the other hand, is seen as the little brother and the average investor don't make the connection between AMD and AI.