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

[Tony73]

Just had a thought: It's not TSLA that should be worried about NVDA but NVDA that should be worried about TSLA. Does anyone here understand NVDA's competitive advantages well enough to explain why TSLA can't catch up on chip design and production? More and more it seems to me like both companies are converging on the same spot.

There’s literally zero chance of that happening. Tesla is not even trying to do that. Tesla’s chip only has to better at FSD training to be worth the investment.

 

[Captkerosene]

If only it was that simple:

Musk Says Tesla Would Buy More Nvidia AI Chips, If Only Nvidia Had Enough of Them | The Motley Fool

Elon Musk just surprised shareholders by admitting Nvidia might be better than Tesla in one key area.

www.fool.com

All the traditional chip makers: AMD, Intel's complete existence depends on chips. Is Tesla willing to spend many more billions trying to play catchup with all the other pressing needs? Maybe it can be "good enough" for their own use case, but they seem to still need a ton of Nvidia chips currently so from the reports, D1 is just not as good.

Nvidia’s R&D Expenditure Record a 73% Jump in Just 5 Years

Nvidia, the trailblazing semiconductor company renowned for its graphics processing units (GPUs), has recently marked a significant milestone in its fiscal journey

ai-techpark.com

"The chipmaker spent $8.68 billion on research and development (R&D), showcasing a substantial surge from the $2.38 billion allocated in 2019. "

NVDA had almost 40 billion in FCF trailing 12 months:

https://www.financecharts.com/stocks/NVDA/growth/free-cash-flow

Do you really want to try to compete here with the massive $$/resources NVDA currently has?

(not a TSLA nor NVDA shareholder).

Elon made an interesting point on X that training compute was a significant part of the 10B spend but not the majority. I think he's trying to tell us that inference is the bigger business. Does it seem possible that training might be a 500B business (total revenue) over the next ten years but inference could be 5T? (I'm seriously asking. Trying to understand the threat NVDA represents to us.)

If HW4 is the best out there then we are the leaders in the bigger side of the business. Doesn't software play a huge part in all this too? Aren't we way ahead in data collection and storage?

Tesla's future depends on what happens when we meet NVDA at the real world AI pass a few years from now. I wish I understood it all better.

 

[EQC_]

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.

The world would likely be going much slower...or even backwards!

Would GM have come out with more small-batch electric cars at a high price every few years, and then taken them back to crush them to prove it didn't work? What other manufacturers would have stepped in with EV's, and what would they be doing without the example and motivation provided by Elon via Tesla? I'm pretty sure we'd still be stuck with mostly 100 mile EV's....

I'm happy for Boeing's recent success with Starliner...but they got more government money than SpaceX and were years later to achieve that success. Imagine the state of US human space launch if SpaceX didn't exist! Boeing would probably have been even slower and taken more tax payer dollars to finally succeed...and we wouldn't have had all the SpaceX successful flights in the meantime. Whether it's Elon's own skills and decision making, or just his ability to find the right people, we also know SpaceX has achieved much more than the other Space start-ups; we have zero evidence that any other random billionaire could have stepped in to achieve the same.

 

[EQC_]

...

1. I contend that Elon's FSD projections are aspirational, but not based on anything that can be validated.

2. I'm the world's biggest AI optimist and have invested accordingly. But AI still makes a lot of mistakes, especially when dealing with open ended situations. As we've seen, nothing is as open ended as the real world.

I like your wording .

Fully agree that just about all of Elon's projections are aspirational...and his choice of words usually implies it. Of course, the statements are misinterpretted, and those misinterpretted meanings get stuffed into headlines as absolute statements that didn't actually happen. Then critics start calling them "promises." Ugh.

On AI -- yes indeed, AI makes many mistakes. And so do humans...with humans having flaws in both their actual intelligence and/or neural networks, as well as flaws in terms of distractions, impairments, etc. For AI handling safety-related tasks like driving, we are heading into an interesting time. The AI will make *different* mistakes than the humans, and it will make headlines. At some point, the data will clearly show that the number and impact of AI mistakes will be obviously lower than the number and impact of human errors...but many people will cling to the sensational headlines, or focus on the *type* of mistakes. We see similar phenomenon now with EV fires -- they seem to be more rare than gas vehicle fires, but they are *different*...so they make headlines and cause people to worry.

For now, not much else for most of us to do than sit back and watch. Lucky for many of us, some of that "watching" also includes supervising FSD and getting first hand knowledge of how it is improving .

 

[UkNorthampton]

Tesla can grow hugely from several of the "startups" it has or will develop. Share price could go hugely up and that's been my working assumption.

Last few days, I've come to a realisation that an additional possibility for Tesla exists.

Elon loves his military history and I wonder about some of Tesla's products being Fleet in being - Wikipedia

Without Tesla - these things might not exist, would be much delayed or would be overpriced. Simply having a reasonable product led to others having to put real effort in to real products. Elon doesn't see the need to dominate, arguable others are competing well in solar, storage etc - but Tesla may dominate just through the inability of others to compete effectively in some niches

• Compelling electric cars
• Home energy storage
• "Beautiful" solar
• Insurance
• Megapacks - grid level
• Superchargers
• Humanoids
• Self Driving

Conclusion:- much as another poster mentioned - Tesla/Elon/SpaceX ensure products exists when they would not otherwise (in same timeframes). As an investor, Tesla may not be the source of short-medium term riches. I still think some of these products will lead to high returns.

I've derisked a little, ready to buy back in for a sale or just spend/enjoy if share price goes up. I don't feel the need to scrimp or save as I did during accumulation phase.

 

[GOVA]

FYI. Rumor: MY refresh in July. Not bad if true.

 

[uscbucsfan]

FYI. Rumor: MY refresh in July. Not bad if true.

I'd say the chances are between 0-0.1%. None being tested on the road, no supplier or employee leaks, nothing of substance on the internet.

It would be cool, but Tesla has never been able to dodge leaks. I'd love to be incorrect here.

Maybe a reveal or road test in July. I could see that.

 

[MP3Mike]

It would be cool, but Tesla has never been able to dodge leaks.

Maybe they are getting better at it? I still think the rumors about the S&X getting a front bumper camera and ambient lighting were the result of false information being passed down the chain to find the leaks and plug them. (So maybe they have scared employees into actually honoring the NDA they signed.)

 

[Usain]

Aforementioned interview with Robyn Denholm, Tesla board chair:

 

[uscbucsfan]

Maybe they are getting better at it? I still think the rumors about the S&X getting a front bumper camera and ambient lighting were the result of false information being passed down the chain to find the leaks and plug them. (So maybe they have scared employees into actually honoring the NDA they signed.)

It doesn't appear that way with FSD V12.4 leaks.

Tesla is too big to keep things under wrap, but no new car is launched without road testing. We always see that from every manufacturer.

edit: Regarding Teslascope, I'm pretty sure the sources are constantly trolling him. He's been wrong on so many "leaks" that they deserve the ridicule for ever spreading them. FSD, Updates, etc. they aren't reliable. Teslascope posting here the message from his "source" only furthers my thoughts that they are continuously trolling him.

 

[SO16]

I guess agreed upon and fulfilled (by Elon) contracts mean nothing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1798743426831364572

 

[EQC_]

What type of accidents do you think fsd prevents compared to existing systems from other OEMs?

Pre-emptive note: I'm not trying to debate, but just to provide some food for thought. Also, I don't know the full spectrum of what is available for other OEMs.

That being said, FSD has a few obvious advantages:

1. Tesla puts the hardware, with at least the specific safety features, on all of their cars. Do any other manufacturers do that? Or do they all have various trim packages or options, with the lowest end prividing zero or minimal driver-assist features beyond whatever is government mandated?
2. That also means, even if you don't pay for FSD up front, you at least have the option of adding capabilities in the future....obviously, you can't add any active safety features to a car from another OEM if you didn't get the hardware in the first place.
3. Tesla has committed to regular OTA software updates on the existing fleet to significantly enhance capabilities. Many other manufacturers just don't upgrade the software much at all, and it often still requires a trip to the dealer in the rare cases that they do. They want to sell you next year's model...so if the 2025 model has the exact same hardware but better software than the 2024 model, they don't usually provide much in the way of an upgrade path for the 2024's. There have even been examples where the previous year's software was equally functional but just annoyed the driver more -- so, many drivers would disable certain features and warnings and just not use them, and as a result, certain safety and accident-avoidance capabilities might not even be active by the time the driver gets into a situation where an accident might have been prevented. Those annoyances might be removed on the next year's model...but not fixed on the existing cars.

Beyond that, there's also something to be said for FSD just as a system that handles so much of the driving task in so many areas. Because of this, people can actually use it (while supervising) for most of their drive on a variety of roads, and there are small, simple things that FSD does to very slightly enhance road safety for everybody around versus a "typical" human driver. In this sense, FSD can be used more, and is therefore more likely to improve road safety than some other OEM's system simply because that system might not be used as often. For example, whatever speed settings the driver gives to FSD, it will generally follow them, without having to re-adjust for chaning speed limits or different road types. When manually driving, whether on the highway or in the suburbs, many people end up going significantly faster than they intend just because they're slightly distracted and the next visible car is far ahead. Many distracted people will just accelerate gradually faster and faster until there's a reason to slow down. FSD won't do that when activated...and it can be usefully activated in many more areas than most other OEM's systems. Similarly, when activated, FSD will activate the turn signals to alert other drivers before turning or changing lanes; FSD doesn't run red lights or stop signs, etc. It's not a huge difference...but if FSD is activated more often than other systems, and FSD prevents a few more cases of speeding, and prevents a few red lights from being run, there will be a general enhancement of road safety and some accidents will be prevented.

 

[MartinAustin]

TSLA rising and not tracking with NVDA or the rest of the Nasdaq. Perhaps some early rumoring about the vote is spreading around

 

[M|S|M MYP]

TSLA rising and not tracking with NVDA or the rest of the Nasdaq. Perhaps some early rumoring about the vote is spreading around

Or shorties closing out their weekly positions.

 

[GOVA]

With today's stellar performance of SpaceX launch and landing, SpaceX is clearly on their path to interplanetary travel.

Point:
Elon will own and cover - Multiplanetary travel (SpaceX), multiplanetary communication (Starlink), robotics (Optimus) and ground transport (Tesla).

Boring Co and Neuralink will help too.

Elon and his companies will handle the rest of the New World.

"Take that East Saint Louis.”

 

[EVMeister]

Bullish?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1798777863082266833

 

[Chunky Jr.]

TSLA rising and not tracking with NVDA or the rest of the Nasdaq. Perhaps some early rumoring about the vote is spreading around

no, I'm pretty sure it's because I had to sell a few shares earlier to pay some bills. Seems like every time I do that the stock takes a jump an hour or so after I hit "sell".

 

[Linkmeup]

Back from vacation anddd this is new - picked up in a Gold Model S from Uber!

 

[Musskiah]

FYI. Rumor: MY refresh in July. Not bad if true.

This is not low probability. We were made aware Model Y refresh Juniper was not coming to N America in 2024 - which does not preclude the arrival of Juniper in China in 2024. In fact, there has been ample talk since 2023 that China would get Juniper mid-2024.

Example from Dec 2023: Tesla Prepares Revamped Model Y in China for 2024: Report - TeslaNorth.com

 

[CitizenKane]

No, you don't wait 51 years until you'll have your investment back. You wait 51 years to double your money. Your investment is returned back to you the minute you sell.

Makes a bad investment, hence it's why the value of this company that can earn such earnings should be compared to 10 year treasures.

I see what you mean but payback time is a rather firmly established concept when discussing investments and it assumes you keep being invested. If you buy something and immediately sell it back at the same price, it will not yield anything and it's not a good investment.