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

[ShareLofty]

In this partial recession we are experiencing (cars, housing, ...) car sales are down all over the world. I would think local/regional differences causes some to be hit harder than others. Germany removing government incentives a while back if I remember correctly.

Perfect time to advertise the safety, technology, and performance features of the cars. Instead Tesla is wasting all its time and money advertising the shareholder vote

 

[JusRelax]

For anyone that needs it, less than three minutes till liftoff:

x.com

x.com

 

[Thekiwi]

Summary of the progress:

• 10 Million: 6/16/2023
• 20 Million: 10/11/2023 (Average of 85,469 cells per day)
• 50 Million: 6/5/2024 (Average of 126,050 cells per day)

Above based just on calendar days assuming no downtime.


Based no the average over the last period ~882k per week. But we know current rate is most likely higher than that, so yeah, probably over a million cells a week at this point.

1 million cells a week is only enough for 725 cybertrucks a week.

 

[Fred42]

Is there any update on the Fremont Kato Road plant that was supposedly down last fall for overhaul to make next generation 4680's?

 

[mrmage]

Oh I try to be positive, and I still feel long term TSLA will rise like a phoenix.

That said, I also think it will be VERY long term until this happens, because I feel for the next few years (yeah, years) TSLA will trade mostly sideways and stay well below its ATH of $415. I think Tesla's auto production growth will be mostly stagnant until 2027 (single digit growth), I think Megapack margins will fall as production ramps up (thereby kneecapping profits), I feel FSD will be solved before EoY 2025, BUT I also feel substantial Robotaxi revenues won't be coming until several years AFTER that, and I think Optimus progress is impressive but revenues from Optimus probably won't even begin for many years yet.

I think the future is bright for Tesla and we're looking at a multi-trillion market cap someday, but for the next few years I think TSLA (the stock) will remain not much better than it's doing today. I think we're stuck in the doldrums until its stupidly blindly obvious to Wall Street that Tesla is going to be a revenue monster. I don't think we'll see a new ATH until Robotaxis are on the roads earning fares and Optimus bots are being sold to customers.

That might seem overly pessimistic, but I feel the lack of faith in Tesla from major investors and Elon's unpredictability coupled with the unlimited FUD attacks will keep TSLA down until financial math makes not owning TSLA an impossibility, and not until THEN will we achieve a new ATH.

IMHO, of course.

So why are you holding onto TSLA for the duration, when the assets could be in something else with better returns during the wait? Wouldn't it be better to make 20% to 50% annually for a few years, then invest in TSLA after that?

I see the argument that TSLA will be worth 10x in 5 years. It doesn't change the fact that you can 1) buy TSLA again at anytime, 2) TSLA might not be worth 10x. Better some gains than none.

 

[Drax7]

Thought you guys may appreciate this. I have yet to see a CT in person but my brother just took this photo when picking up his Y in the central NY area. When I asked how it looked in person, he said “incredible”.

View attachment 1053962

Agree incredible, saw one parked on the street just recently and my jaw dropped.

 

[cliff harris]

So why are you holding onto TSLA for the duration, when the assets could be in something else with better returns during the wait? Wouldn't it be better to make 20% to 50% annually for a few years, then invest in TSLA after that?

I see the argument that TSLA will be worth 10x in 5 years. It doesn't change the fact that you can 1) buy TSLA again at anytime, 2) TSLA might not be worth 10x. Better some gains than none.

I understand why people think this way, and I suspect a lot of investors have fled TSLA with the presumption they will spot the right time to rotate back in before it rises again...
But having held the stock for about 8 years now, I have learned that this is very very very difficult to get right. The stock seems to hardly move on stuff which is relevant (cybertruck first deliveries, FSD v12) but goes bananas on the relatively trivial (hertz deal). I think there is a really good 'story' behind the company right now, but so many investors are not listening to it because:

a) Most of them have not tried FSD
b) There is a tsunami of FUD about EV sales
c) There is a lot of culture-wars yelling about Elon
d) People still think Lucid & Rivian & Ford & GM resemble actual EV competition (lolz).

So the next catalyst for the stock might be something relatively minor, but if it gets analysts to actually do a bit of research into the company again, it can quickly reverse into a stock climb.
Buy and Hold may be boring, but in the long run it really does seem to work better than constantly trying to second guess which stock goes where this week, or even month.

 

[y_naught]

Your quoted text has nothing to do with what I am talking about - which is the wording Elon uses is loose.

"We are starting to get to the point where, once known bugs are fixed, it will take over a year of driving to get even one intervention."

"We are starting to get to" - this is entirely vague. How close to the point is "starting to get to"? It's not at the point. He's not saying V12.6 is at 1 disengagement per year, it is somewhere less performant than that. We are left to speculate on how much less.

"once known bugs are fixed" - this is not C code. You can't just go in edit some lines of code and remove this. He is making it seem like these are "easy" to fix, which is speculative. They haven't actually fixed them yet. And "fixing" them means retraining with an updated data set that hopefully removes these errors.

So these errors are still real driving errors, but I imagine ones they are more confident can be fixed by updated the curated data fed in for training.

So Musk sees some report from Ashok that miles per intervention on V12.6 is at say 1,000 MPI. Ashok shows him that 80% of the interventions are ones that they hope they can fixed with better training data. Musk calculates that means they are at 5,000 MPI without these "easy" issues, then estimates they are "close to" the 10,000 MPI mark barrier that is close to the one a year rate for most drivers.

Note, mean and median are different from miles driven per year because of skewed distribution. Musk knows this and I doubt uses the mean when he estimates. Median is closer to 10,000 miles per year.

My point isn't these exact numbers are correct, but we have to put this sort of thought into it because the statements given are purposefully vague.

First step is to admit they are vague.

Not sure where you got your data, but even assuming it’s correct from a per vehicle perspective, that metric will increasingly become irrelevant in a robotaxi world. What matters is daily person travel miles, including all uses (like deliveries, etc.).

 

[elasalle]

So why are you holding onto TSLA for the duration, when the assets could be in something else with better returns during the wait? Wouldn't it be better to make 20% to 50% annually for a few years, then invest in TSLA after that?

I see the argument that TSLA will be worth 10x in 5 years. It doesn't change the fact that you can 1) buy TSLA again at anytime, 2) TSLA might not be worth 10x. Better some gains than none.

Because you cannot time the market, and you cannot time Tesla.

there are quite a few bulls who sold and waiting to load up in < 120$ scenarios ...

 

[Mengy]

So why are you holding onto TSLA for the duration, when the assets could be in something else with better returns during the wait? Wouldn't it be better to make 20% to 50% annually for a few years, then invest in TSLA after that?

I see the argument that TSLA will be worth 10x in 5 years. It doesn't change the fact that you can 1) buy TSLA again at anytime, 2) TSLA might not be worth 10x. Better some gains than none.

Simple: I could be very wrong, and TSLA could moon much sooner than I expect it too.

TSLA is too volatile and unpredictable for me to try and "time the market" with it, so I'm doing the simple investing strategy of just....HOLDING.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Shouldn't this guy be worried about bankruptcy instead?

https://www.thestreet.com/personalities/lucid-ceo-harsh-words-teslas-distracted-leadership

 

[Doggydogworld]

Elon has a bachelor in Economics. I would like to think he has thought about the maths and circumstances behind both these statements.

He also has "more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever". That's how he perfectly predicted the "severe recession" that started in early 2023
/s

In 2022, the average American drove 14,263 miles per year, according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

I've seen this number, too. But FWHA reports 3.196 trillion VMT in 2022. Statista shows 233m licensed drivers in 2021 (source behind paywall). 233m is 70% of the population, so reasonable. That's 13.7k miles per year per driver. But VMT includes semi trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc. "Light Duty Vehicles" (basically vehicles with 4 tires and <10,000 gross vehicle weight) drove 2.823T miles in 2022. That's 12.1k miles per driver.

Even light duty includes millions of commercial vehicles, e.g. plumbers vans, fleet pickups, police cars, etc. So average miles per driver in their personal vehicle is less.

If you forget about drivers and just look at vehicles, the 197 million "Light Duty Vehicles Short Wheelbase" averaged just under 11k miles each and "Light Duty Vehicles Long Wheelbase" just over 11k.

The intervention rate for cruise/waymo type services is currently hugely higher. Even if there was some weird reason FSD never got any better, ever past the 1 intervention a year point, you could still run a waymo/cruise style service with remote operators at a very, very low cost.

Waymo remote operators don't "intervene", i.e. turn the wheel or slam the brakes in real time to prevent an accident. You are comparing two completely different things.

The reason Waymo is not yet scaling is the intervention rate is still too high, the geo fence and service limit because of these issues.

That's a better theory than most. It's certainly not "maps" or lidar cost, lol. But it could be they just really, really suck at business. A couple years after they started service in 50 square miles of Phoenix suburbs they were providing ~50 rides a day. Essentially an entire fleet and support infrastructure to replace a couple of very active Uber drivers.

Some news show asked 25 random people on the street in Chandler about Waymo. Every person had seen the vehicles, not one knew they could download the app and hail a ride! This is where Elon will run ciricles around Waymo. If Tesla achieves driverless, that is. Big if.

 

[Thekiwi]

What an amazing show! landing the booster, ship surviving re-ently, Sticking the landing - despite one of the flaps being mutilated.

 

[jeewee3000]

What an amazing show! landing the booster, ship surviving re-ently, Sticking the landing - despite one of the flaps being mutilated.

Was one of the most exciting launches since the first belly-flop manoeuvre IMO!

If this was a composite rocket instead of stainless steel, that flap couldn't have held on like it did. What a show.

 

[mrmage]

I understand why people think this way, and I suspect a lot of investors have fled TSLA with the presumption they will spot the right time to rotate back in before it rises again...
But having held the stock for about 8 years now, I have learned that this is very very very difficult to get right. The stock seems to hardly move on stuff which is relevant (cybertruck first deliveries, FSD v12) but goes bananas on the relatively trivial (hertz deal). I think there is a really good 'story' behind the company right now, but so many investors are not listening to it because:

a) Most of them have not tried FSD
b) There is a tsunami of FUD about EV sales
c) There is a lot of culture-wars yelling about Elon
d) People still think Lucid & Rivian & Ford & GM resemble actual EV competition (lolz).

So the next catalyst for the stock might be something relatively minor, but if it gets analysts to actually do a bit of research into the company again, it can quickly reverse into a stock climb.
Buy and Hold may be boring, but in the long run it really does seem to work better than constantly trying to second guess which stock goes where this week, or even month.

I think more non investors and potential investors have tried the latest FSD than people here expect. I certainly have and use it every week.

Imo, Elon's antics, ER and P&D, not FUD, have driven away many investors. What keeps them away, besides that, are better returns in their new investments. Pretty sure they're not in LCID or RIVN.

Simple: I could be very wrong, and TSLA could moon much sooner than I expect it too.

TSLA is too volatile and unpredictable for me to try and "time the market" with it, so I'm doing the simple investing strategy of just....HOLDING.

The reason why I asked you is because I had similar thoughts about the timeline last year. I acted on it, because I felt there were better opportunities.

 

[Mengy]

Imo, Elon's antics, ER and P&D, not FUD, have driven away many investors. What keeps them away, besides that, are better returns in their new investments.

The reason why I asked you is because I had similar thoughts about the timeline last year. I acted on it, because I felt there were better opportunities.

You are probably correct, I'm certain there are better and more profitable investments than TSLA for the next few years performance wise. I'm fine missing out on them because I'm very confident my TSLA will one day be worth a LOT more than it is today, and I can comfortably wait for that day.

I don't need to make the most money I possibly can, a 5X or 10X from here over a 5-10 year period is fine with me.


That said, watching TSLA wallow in the gutter for so long is disappointing.

 

[cliff harris]

Having just watched a rocket the size of a skyscraper complete an amazing trip into space and back, I look upon the phrase 'elon's antics' with a heavy sigh. Without elon's 'antics' mankind is stuck in world run by boeing and general motors. Achieving very little, and going at one hundredth the speed we can.
More antics please.

 

[Zero CO2]

Many posts on this page refer to FSD and Nvdia/AI.

For what it's worth, I'm using the contact link at the bottom of the page requesting the TMC developers/ site editors provide us with selectable options to:

A- hide/unhide replies to our Ignored posters
B- show ignored posts only for easier editing of our ignore list
C- hide posts containing any specific text/phrases we want to add to our personal library of things we aren't interested in seeing posts about (like the never-ending "FSD revenue" discussions before each earnings report, or certain political phrases)

And perhaps even provide us with a way to select specific posts that we want to see even if they are otherwise being ignored or hidden for whatever reason.


-And I'm hoping that other supporting forum members do likewise, for what it's worth. Please DM me any other ideas like this, also if anyone knows how much the programming time to do what I'm suggesting likely costs, because I don't know how much I'm asking and I'm curious about that.

Edit- I'm suggesting added things we can opt-into, yet I see I've already gotten a Disagree; why not add optional tools to streamline this forum?

i concur with you i likely will no longer support this site with $ ... as it has fallen into seriously broken state ... i never had put anyone on ignore until the last month or so and now all i see is responses to ignored posters which is actually worse than seeing the ignored post

 

[mrmage]

You are probably correct, I'm certain there are better and more profitable investments than TSLA for the next few years performance wise. I'm fine missing out on them because I'm very confident my TSLA will one day be worth a LOT more than it is today, and I can comfortably wait for that day.

I don't need to make the most money I possibly can, a 5X or 10X from here over a 5-10 year period is fine with me.


That said, watching TSLA wallow in the gutter for so long is disappointing.

I'm probably older than you. With less runway left, making 5x or 10x in less time is somewhat of a priority!

 

[MartinAustin]

Having just watched a rocket the size of a skyscraper complete an amazing trip into space and back, I look upon the phrase 'elon's antics' with a heavy sigh. Without elon's 'antics' mankind is stuck in world run by boeing and general motors. Achieving very little, and going at one hundredth the speed we can.
More antics please.

Without elon's 'antics' mankind is stuck in world Americans are stuck in a country run by boeing and general motors.

Back to TSLA... I think TSLA is flat because some are selling it to buy NVDA. (and probably happy about it right now) Also, would-be large buyers of TSLA are probably holding off until after the votes to see what happens.