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

[Usain]

...what if they license it out and burgeon for the development of other competitors in the space like Waymo and Cruise, as an example? Wouldn't they be growing the robotaxi market through pay-for-ride service while, also, doubling up on the revenue from licensing out FSD?

Yes. That could definitely happen. I would still consider Tesla to be dominating.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

That is an excellent point. In my most humble opinion, perhaps that largest single contribution of Tesla to energy efficiency and renewability was Autobidder. The evidence of that is a very common practice now round the world is to use similar technologies to manage grid services integrating multiple sources, including solar and wind, but also all the other sources. The net result, even when using dirty sources such as coal, is it stabilize use fo the least flexible sources and fill with the most flexible sources, thus reducing pollution from the entire system. Without the remarkable almost instantaneous response of Autobidder and its mimics much of the recent success would ahem been impossible. After all, before Autobidder, 15 minute response was considered fast, not nano-seconds as it is now.

That single thing is transforming utility efficiency in many countries.

Well, as far as I am aware, the batteries themselves aren't responding in nanoseconds. The system may bid that fast, but the response times are in the 100s of milliseconds.

 

[elasalle]

Yes. That could definitely happen. I would still consider Tesla to be dominating.

As with EV's.
Tesla will have a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

1st crypto, now AI need lots of energy, not to mention as % of EVs increase, more energy demand as well ...

 

[Usain]

As with EV's.
Tesla will have a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

1st crypto, now AI need lots of energy, not to mention as % of EVs increase, more energy demand as well ...

My point is that it looks like Tesla is poised to get most of the pie for several years.

It also looks like they will have a much bigger competitive advantage than they had in EVs.

 

[EVWatcher]

As with EV's.
Tesla will have a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

1st crypto, now AI need lots of energy, not to mention as % of EVs increase, more energy demand as well ...

EVs are more energy efficient than gas cars. Less energy will be used overall, but a smaller percentage will be from fossil fuel sources meaning there’s more stress on the electrical grid - in theory. The reason so many electricity companies will give free charging at night for EVs is because the grid is underloaded at that time. So assuming the enough of the cars are charged at night it’s not even absolute that switching from ICE to EVs is more stress on the grid. But on absolute terms it’s not an overall increase in energy for the same miles traveled. Even for double the miles traveled. A 2018 long range 3 gets like 150 MPGe. The average American car gets like 25 mpg. Switching all the ICE cars to EVs would literally be a 80%+ decrease in energy use for personalized motorized transport.

 

[cliff harris]

It's not like TSLA was going to have 100% of the EV market. Same with autonomy.

I really dont think these two things are the same. Tesla has actual competition for EVs, mostly from BYD and other Chinese companies, but also MG and Nissan, even VW to some extent. The reason is that people have wildly different tastes and needs for cars, and some people HATE the cybertruck and hate touchscreens, and thus rival companies can make 'good enough' EVs and still sell them despite Tesla existing.

But IF Tesla is right and autonomy can only be solved by huge NN training, then NOBODY on earth has the resources to compete. You need a bare minimum of 2 million internet-connected cars with multiple cameras in customers hands, all over the world, for years, a huge datacenter, world-class AI engineering talent and at a bare minimum 10 billion available to buy nvidia chips, if they will even sell them to you.
No amount of money makes that list of requirements appear overnight. I think even if a nation-state declared it an essential national project and went all-in on trying to generate a competing setup, you are talking 3 years bare minimum, more like five. During that time you would need Tesla to hit pause, have no further improvements, and fail to grab market share.

Elon isn't kidding about the potential for autonomy AND the laughable value proposition for manual cars in a post-autonomy world.

 

[Leftlane22]

Voted No, Hate Elon but still want Factory tour with Elon eh?
What for- to smell Elons stinky socks

Don’t care about the tour, do care about the CEO apparently blackmailing the shareholders by saying he’ll take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get 25% of the voting shares. We already have a part time leader at Tesla - I happen to think the board does not do it’s fiduciary duty by just rubber stamping everything Elon wants.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Entertaining! I asked Chat40 for an illustration showing all the major auto makers and how they fit into the future EV world.

Tesla clearly dominates the future, end of discussion.

Also... subliminal messages I see?
Is that YVW on top?
A Tesla Screw logo?
Does Ford say "fool"?
Who makes the red POS (lower right)?
Semi's are in trouble.

 

[EVMeister]

CEO apparently blackmailing the shareholders by saying he’ll take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get 25% of the voting shares.

He didn't say that.

 

[AndrewZ]

Tesla wouldn’t have a monopoly on autonomy based upon data collected because the data collected from its fleet of 2million+ internet connected vehicles is applicable and usable only in vehicles with the same dimensions, camera geometry, etc as those 2million+ internet connected vehicles.

Case in point, Tesla’s own internal new vehicle, in the Cybertruck, did not automatically get and still does not have FSD. And we see differences in how updates etc roll out to the 3/Y versus the S/X because of the fleet size differences and rate at which data are collected then processed and such.


Mobileye is probably the company with the broadest data set in terms of supporting the widest range of vehicles, which Elon cited as one of the reasons for ending their partnership in the early days — because they were supporting too many different makes/models and that was slowing down development.

It’s not like Tesla can take their 3/Y data and apply it to other brands, the data are unique to the camera placement / geometry / vehicle dimensions and likely even driving characteristics. It seems more likely companies would harvest their own data sets for their own fleets and it will be their property, would be interesting to know how the data are treated in existing arrangements with Mobileye / NVIDIA.

 

[EVWatcher]

Don’t care about the tour, do care about the CEO apparently blackmailing the shareholders by saying he’ll take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get 25% of the voting shares. We already have a part time leader at Tesla - I happen to think the board does not do its fiduciary duty by just rubber stamping everything Elon wants.

If you were someone’s boss and they said they would take their ball and go if you don’t pay them for their time it’s not really blackmail.

Actually you’d be the one commit the crime by not paying them.

In a public company a shareholder is technically the boss. For each share you own you are 1/1,000,000,0000 - or something like that I don’t know how many shares there are out there - his boss.

Technically he is more his own boss than anyone. But he’s not enough his own boss to vote to pay himself.

Seems like a pretty fair request and even if he gets his way he won’t have enough to control how pay himself even after it gets ratified again.

 

[EQC_]

Don’t care about the tour, do care about the CEO apparently blackmailing the shareholders by saying he’ll take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get 25% of the voting shares. We already have a part time leader at Tesla - I happen to think the board does not do it’s fiduciary duty by just rubber stamping everything Elon wants.

While the headlines would love for you to believe that there is some "threat" or "blackmail" and that he's going to "take his ball and go home" (you know, because they also want you to believe he is childish), reading and thinking about Elon's actual words paints a different picture.

• Elon's words, from the tweet where he supposedly made this threat/blackmail were: "I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned. Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla."
  • By my read, "I am uncomfortable" and "I would prefer" are two of the most non-threatening/non-blackmail phrases I can imagine.

• From the most recent conference call, the transcript* shows that one of the analysts asked Elon about the 25% thing, and Elon's answer was pretty calming if you actually read it.
  • The Analyst asked: "Elon, you've spoken about your desire to obtain 25% voting control of the company. And I understand completely why that would be. So, I'm not necessarily asking about that. I'm asking if you've come up with any mechanism by which you can ensure that you'll obtain that level of voting control. Because if not, then the core part of the thesis could potentially be at risk. So, any additional commentary you might have on that topic?"
  • Elon's answer (there may be a few mis-transcriptions here): "Well, I think no matter what Tesla -- even if I get kidnapped by aliens tomorrow, Tesla will solve autonomy, maybe a little slower, but it would solve autonomy for vehicles at least. I don't know if we would win on with respect to Optimus or with respect to future products, but it would that -- that there's enough momentum for Tesla to solve autonomy even if I disappeared for vehicles. Yes, there's a whole range of things we can do in the future beyond that. I'll be more reticent with respect to Optimus, if we have a super-sentient humanoid robot that can follow you indoors and that you can (can't?) escape, we're talking terminator-level risk.
    And yes, I'd be uncomfortable with. If there's not some meaningful level of influence over how that is deployed. And there's shareholders have an opportunity to ratify or reratify the sort of competition [[compensation?]] because I can't say that. That is a fact.
    
    They have an opportunity. And yes, we'll see. If the company generates a lot of positive cash flow, we could obviously buy back shares."
  • Again, by my read/summation I see:
    • Elon is saying that, even if he completely disappeared tomorrow, he believes Tesla would still complete FSD for cars and likely succeed in the needed AI for Optimus. There is exactly zero threat to remove either of those....althought Elon does predict it would go slower without him involved. And then he says that at the level of a super advanced Optimus Terminator, that's where there is simultaneously increased risk for humans, and where he would insist on more thoughtful control (not just maximizing profit...cough...OpenAI...cough...Microsoft) of how it is developed and deployed. I find nothing objectionable in these statements.
    • At the end, Elon also points out that there are other ways (potential share buybacks if Tesla makes tons of money) to get him to 25%. That looks to imply that two things shareholders normally love -- huge positive cash flow, and share buybacks -- might offer a way for him to get near the 25% he desires.
    • Relatedly, I believe in another tweet someplace else, it was hinted that re-incorporating in Texas might also create an avenue to allow some other share or voting class, which could also be used to get Elon to 25%.

* Tesla (TSLA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool

 

[spacerfc]

Humanoid robots, brain implants, energy products, generative AI, vehicle automation, even vehicle manufacturing...competitors are growing rapidly.

In most of these areas probably Tesla and other Musk companies will lead the US.
Only with SpaceX are competitors far behind.

Apple has far more competent competitors than Tesla or other Musk companies, and just as a personal opinion they haven't been very innovative lately (see for example the demise of Project Titan or having to buy LLM from Google/OpenAI), yet Apple is worth $3T right now.

 

[XPEL FTW]

Currently available WW data (rather than say, a single week in china) suggests Q2 will also be down, significantly YoY from previous Q2... just not AS down as Q1 was because Fremont appears to have resolved the barely-making-any-3s issues they had in Q1 and the financing incentives are helping some. I suppose one can contextualize that as "smashing" in an overall tough time for EVs, but it's still not a narrative WS is likely to enjoy.

WS is very efficient at sniffing out numbers, and has already incorporated negative Q2 results into the current stock price IMO. This was proven when Q1 results came in even below the lowest estimates and the stock dropped only 5% (and basically held on to a high P/E multiple anyway). Like it or not, Troy's numbers are pretty influential now.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Max pain is broken again. Bullish.

 

[lafrisbee]

My impression is Xai is mainly developing Grok and similar LLM products similar to the AI Microsoft, Google, Apple and others are developing. Mainly to do with words, text and speech.

Tesla AI is mainly in the vision space FSD, occupancy networks, object recognition for Optimus.

It would be handy if we could have an intelligent dialogue with Optimus and the cars, Tesla might be able to license the tech from Xai.

It is hard to know where to draw the boundaries, if Tesla paid for the development of Grok but the first roll out was on X, shareholders might not be happy about that.

Exactly. I don't see Elon having a history of aiX outside of FSD and Dojo kind of stuff (that is the technical "stuff" not the common definition). So how can he take the marbles and go home?

 

[sunwarriors]

I really dont think these two things are the same. Tesla has actual competition for EVs, mostly from BYD and other Chinese companies, but also MG and Nissan, even VW to some extent. The reason is that people have wildly different tastes and needs for cars, and some people HATE the cybertruck and hate touchscreens, and thus rival companies can make 'good enough' EVs and still sell them despite Tesla existing.

But IF Tesla is right and autonomy can only be solved by huge NN training, then NOBODY on earth has the resources to compete. You need a bare minimum of 2 million internet-connected cars with multiple cameras in customers hands, all over the world, for years, a huge datacenter, world-class AI engineering talent and at a bare minimum 10 billion available to buy nvidia chips, if they will even sell them to you.
No amount of money makes that list of requirements appear overnight. I think even if a nation-state declared it an essential national project and went all-in on trying to generate a competing setup, you are talking 3 years bare minimum, more like five. During that time you would need Tesla to hit pause, have no further improvements, and fail to grab market share.

Elon isn't kidding about the potential for autonomy AND the laughable value proposition for manual cars in a post-autonomy world.

I must be on your ignore list and you may never see this, but have you even looked at Wayve? They just drive with humanlike AI and don't use millions of video. If they can do it, but in a different way without all the videos you claim, then no, Tesla does have competition. Add in Nvidia/MSFT/Softbank just invested a 1 bil+ with Wayve, and they already use OEM cars now, I see them as a viable hot/"startup" threat to Tesla who can actually just leapfrog pure vision self driving.

Sorta like if a smarter AI/human drives you around.

Watch some of their videos already in testing and ask yourself it they have 0 competition. There's also MobileEye driving around I see.

 

[GhostSkater]

Worth the watch

TLDW: Kyle loves it, it's much better than the regular Model 3 LR/SR in daily driving while also being much better on Sport driving

 

[Knightshade]

Exactly. I don't see Elon having a history of aiX outside of FSD and Dojo kind of stuff (that is the technical "stuff" not the common definition). So how can he take the marbles and go home?

He could certainly take a lot of the employees currently doing AI work... (some have already moved from Tesla to x.AI, though Elon told us that was a defensive move where they would have instead moved to OpenAI if he hadn't made them an x.AI offer. And he can of course take any NEW ideas with him rather than developing them at Tesla.

But the FSD and Optimus work product, and all the existing code and HW, belongs to Tesla so can't go anywhere.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Chat40 update... (on topic here unless you believe "news" is real).

Chat cognitive dissonance - showing the conflict in plain sight. The Chat images are like a dream analysis or hypnosis. Got it.

I believe the image was the best answer, while below is an attempt to square the round using words. I'm gonna use this technique BTW - for alternate views. Seems it hasn't learned to BS in drawing, or at least separates words from images is my best guess as to why the difference here.

GM per Chat:

Ford Logo:

Edit: The upcoming US elections are being depicted in a similar way but I won't share here obviously (try it, draw a pic of...). When asked what's in the image, the Dalle image generator modifies it to be less controversial or will downplay it like the above responses. Fascinating!