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

[Jim Holder]

Canaccord Genuity analyst George Gianarikas raised the PT on $TSLA to $254 (from $222) while maintaining a Buy rating.

 

[GhostSkater]

This is the reason we are up today, haven't found someone doing a proper test yet

https://twitter.com/x/status/1807880328163574004

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Whatever it takes to get your EV numbers up!

Ford urges its managers to buy more EVs with new leasing policy

Ford Motor is trying to get more of its managers to buy electric vehicles, according to an internal email the automaker sent last week that was reviewed by Reuters. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company changed a leasing program it offers to eligible current and former managers, now requiring...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[Robertj]

We also had the 14% cut in headcount. Restructuring charges (severance, etc) will be on a separate line item in the P&L which many analysts will exclude as a one time charge. The reduced headcount will have a positive impact on COGS, R&D and SG&A.

Also, Cash Flow from Operations should be strong as we will see a decrease in auto inventories.

And hopefully an uptake in FSD take rates , both purchase and monthly use (in USA & Canada)

 

[Usain]

Whatever it takes to get your EV numbers up!

Ford urges its managers to buy more EVs with new leasing policy

Ford Motor is trying to get more of its managers to buy electric vehicles, according to an internal email the automaker sent last week that was reviewed by Reuters. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company changed a leasing program it offers to eligible current and former managers, now requiring...

finance.yahoo.com

I like it that Ford is making EVs more enticing than gas car for its managers. The more of them that understand the benefits of EV ownership the better.

When Farley says he wants his company to pivot to EVs I tend to believe him. Barra, not so much.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

I like it that Ford is making EVs more enticing than gas car for its managers. The more of them that understand the benefits of EV ownership the better.

When Farley says he wants his company to pivot to EVs I tend to believe him. Barra, not so much.

While Farley's intentions are good, i don't think 'forcing' an EV on managers in order to lease an ICE vehicle is necessarily a good strategy.

 

[MartinAustin]

As expected, nimble Tesla is weathering the "slowdown in EV sales doom+gloom" better than anyone else. They are shipping tons of battery storage and it will be hard for even the stupidest shorts to claim they're just a car company. As we pass through this environment of high auto loan interest rates, I am reminded of the time during COVID that they were able to rewrite their internal car software to use alternative controller chips that were in low demand, during times when there were chip shortages. Legacy auto aren't able to reconfigure as quickly as Tesla, and the same thing is happening for this overall response to internal battery production variances, external battery supply, changes in customer order rates (a.k.a. demand but not really the same thing as "desire"), industry issues like the CDK, etc.. I also don't discount the real effect Elon Musk has on Tesla demand... I've met many people who [stupidly] think they can't/won't/shouldn't drive a Tesla because of all the crazy stuff Elon gets up to. Tesla the company is succeeding at minimising that negative effect. He is a complex boss that, as long as those complexities can be worked around, I would prefer not to replace.

Random other point, are we all agreed the Robotaxi will have inductive charging? Cybertruck has some hookups near the battery for future hardware, and Tesla made some purchases and moves in that space without a solid, strategic announcement - but I gotta assume that autonomous charging would be a solid feature of an autonomous car. The snake is cool, but probably not as reliable and simple as inductive. I've been leary about the power losses associated with inductive vs. wired, but Tesla is in the best position to consider all the factors - the automotive charging landscape, home & commercial installations, COGS inside cars, efficiencies, alternative tech for charging, and if the pros outweigh the cons for getting to the sustainable energy goal. Expecting to see inductive charging shown on August 8th.

 

[Knightshade]

Random other point, are we all agreed the Robotaxi will have inductive charging? Cybertruck has some hookups near the battery for future hardware, and Tesla made some purchases and moves in that space without a solid, strategic announcements - but I gotta assume that autonomous charging would be a solid feature of an autonomous car. The snake is cool, but probably not as reliable and simple as inductive. I've been leary about the power losses associated with inductive vs. wired, but Tesla is in the best position to consider all the factors re: what to consider - the automotive charging landscape, home & commercial installations, COGS inside cars, efficiencies, alternative tech for charging, and if the pros outweigh the cons for getting to the sustainable energy goal. Expecting to see inductive charging shown on August 8th.

That's actually a very interesting question--- we've discussed it in the thread a few times but it's all just speculation...

Inductive has the obvious advantage of not needing anyone to physically do anything with a cord... but the drawbacks of needing to retrofit tens of thousands of supercharger stalls to support it- and the added cost of the HW on both the car and charger end....and significantly more maintenance on charging pads that would be required for the current setup-- and as you note at least some power loss vs wired which multiplied across the entire fleet is significant (potentially slower speeds too, a key issue with RTs, but that's probably engineerable around. This also has the downside of locking out the entire existing fleet of S3XY vehicles from that.

In contrast, having 1 human working at each SC site to do this-- and also do the necessary job of cleaning out taxis between rides as needed-- avoids all the downsides, lets existing S3XY cars be RTs, and with the only downside to itself being having to pay the human (and probably put up a little weather-proof booth for him in most spots).... I know Tesla has a patent on a thing for basically sanitizing the interior without needing a person- but that doesn't do anything for removing trash, vomit, stuff left behind, etc...

And of course the idea eventually (if not initially depending how long actual driverless RTs take) would be to replace that one human per SC location with one Optimus per location.

 

[Robertj]

Great comments here from Larry G on gross margins and performance reserves on battery deployment , teaching Matt Smith basic accounting

24 minutes in ( $ 1b over the next 12 months with no cost ) per March financials

https://twitter.com/x/status/1808229654282883473

 

[Thekiwi]

So maybe CT is currently cannibalising S&X sales to some large degree. If you want the new hottest tesla as a status symbol, I guess you are buying a Cybertruck right now. Presumably they have plenty of S&X inventory - they could probably shut down the line and retool it for the roadster and no one would notice (make it a single line for S/X/R, even if they do batch production and change to a single model each month).

 

[jerry33]

That's actually a very interesting question--- we've discussed it in the thread a few times but it's all just speculation...

Inductive has the obvious advantage of not needing anyone to physically do anything with a cord... but the drawbacks of needing to retrofit tens of thousands of supercharger stalls to support it- and the added cost of the HW on both the car and charger end....and significantly more maintenance on charging pads that would be required for the current setup-- and as you note at least some power loss vs wired which multiplied across the entire fleet is significant (potentially slower speeds too, a key issue with RTs, but that's probably engineerable around. This also has the downside of locking out the entire existing fleet of S3XY vehicles from that.

In contrast, having 1 human working at each SC site to do this-- and also do the necessary job of cleaning out taxis between rides as needed-- avoids all the downsides, lets existing S3XY cars be RTs, and with the only downside to itself being having to pay the human (and probably put up a little weather-proof booth for him in most spots).... I know Tesla has a patent on a thing for basically sanitizing the interior without needing a person- but that doesn't do anything for removing trash, vomit, stuff left behind, etc...

And of course the idea eventually (if not initially depending how long actual driverless RTs take) would be to replace that one human per SC location with one Optimus per location.

Induction is also more tamper resistant (cable theft).

 

[unk45]

While Farley's intentions are good, i don't think 'forcing' an EV on managers in order to lease an ICE vehicle is necessarily a good strategy.

I do not know Ford. The four OEMs with which I have done work all had key executives driving whatever they wanted from their own fleets but had quite extreme incentives whenever they wanted to promote something specific. Ford inducing executives to learn more about EV use is very much within the norm. “Forcing” is not nomenclature I’d use. I think it is simply part of executive duty; to know the products they’re promoting.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

I do not know Ford. The four OEMs with which I have done work all had key executives driving whatever they wanted from their own fleets but had quite extreme incentives whenever they wanted to promote something specific. Ford inducing executives to learn more about EV use is very much within the norm. “Forcing” is not nomenclature I’d use. I think it is simply part of executive duty; to know the products they’re promoting.

What I am interpreting here is that you are 'required' to order a Mach-E or Lightning if you want to lease another vehicle. Maybe the verbiage is not correct considering it is Roto-Reuters after all.

 

[Fred42]

This is the reason we are up today, haven't found someone doing a proper test yet

https://twitter.com/x/status/1807880328163574004

Is this specific to vehicles with 4680's?

 

[EQC_]

Is this specific to vehicles with 4680's?

I believe this likely relates only to Cybertrucks... we heard a few weeks ago that an improvement to Cybertruck charging was coming soon.

And of course, all the Cybertrucks utilize 4680's, as far as we know.

I believe those are the only vehicles in current production that use 4680's; I think we heard that current Texas Model Y production is using battery packs shipped from Nevada, and therefore 2170's, but I could be wrong.

 

[GOVA]

So maybe CT is currently cannibalising S&X sales to some large degree. If you want the new hottest tesla as a status symbol, I guess you are buying a Cybertruck right now. Presumably they have plenty of S&X inventory - they could probably shut down the line and retool it for the roadster and no one would notice (make it a single line for S/X/R, even if they do batch production and change to a single model each month).

Just thought of this situation today. Many X and CT users reported better ride in CT even in terms of comfort. I'd chose CT anytime even versus the X for similar price. This might be even worse for MS as this is a sedan I have always found to get hard into due to its low entry point.

 

[GatorMeat]

Did you miss the part about quasi-infinite demand and falling cell costs?

When demand is a lot higher than supply, it doesn't matter if it's a commodity or not.

There will be no pressure on Megapack margins for a very long time.

But are you calculating that the megapack price has gone from $482/kWh last April to $266/kWh today? I'd have to assume that profit $ /kWh has to come down somewhat also.

 

[Skipdd]

I feel like I'm purposely putting my foot in a bear trap here, but:

One of the major points of going to NN-everywhere and the elimination of those "300 k lines of C/C++ code" was to make the entire CPU more efficient, in the sense of, "You've got a task. How much compute time does it take?"

It's well known in CS/EE that certain algorithms are far more efficient than other algorithms in order to do a given task. As a random example, take sorting: A bubble sort with a particular type of random data takes on the order of N^2, for N items in a list; while a tree sort takes order N*log(N). For a sufficiently large value of N, the tree sort is far, far faster. (And, having actually had to do this back in the deeps of time on a thoroughly inadequate Original IBM PC, this isn't a hypothetical. The difference between an hour and less than three seconds is amazing.)

With the Tesla driving computer, it's pretty clear that the original division of tasks had the NN doing mostly image recognition games, that being something that NNs are known to be far more efficient than a step-at-a-time computer. While the main CPU was tasked with taking all that nifty image data and, from that, doing the actual driving. That was then: The breakthrough was the idea that the NN could take on the driving part as well. Well, lack-a-day: We wetware types use NN to do driving (Yeah, I know, wetware != hardware, etc., etc.), so I suppose that's not a complete surprise. But Tesla's thought that this would lead to increased frame rate and, incidentally, better training.

So, from my perspective over here, this isn't a matter as to whether the GPU/NN/A12 processing units are on the same die or not (yes, yes, they are on the same die, welcome to SOC land), it's whether using different algorithms on different hardware GPU/NN/A12's results in faster, "better", processing.

Ducks and covers.

Special callout - thank you for this excellent explanation for those of us, who, while they may have a technical inclination, lack the CS/EE knowledge to appreciate the puts and takes of the discussion. I don’t know who is right or wrong, but I can now follow along in a more intelligent fashion.

 

[WattsHappening]

And hopefully an uptake in FSD take rates , both purchase and monthly use (in USA & Canada)

You rang? Here is my contribution to Q2.

 

[Stretch2727]

Breakdown of the 48v system on Cybertruck. Good A-B comparison of wire sizes to the Model Y. Also some slides on the components that were left at 12v (window motors, interior lighting, exterior mirror, etc.)