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Then why aren't they buying?

Because Tesla isn’t(well, wasn’t) making them. They were focused on spooling up for the recent refresh and will continue to spin that up until they get back to full production capacity near end of this quarter.

I never understood why it surprised anyone that sales would drop when they completely stopped selling the Standard Range(after having stopped selling the 75). You aren’t going to sell as many of something when you dramatically raise the price.
 
to be blunt and save time, middle-class drivers offer new data sets.
From my personal data gathering, those are more likely to yield per traffic laws than S/X drivers :)
So indeed good data for FSD to ever pass any regulator's threshold.

Actually, it just came to me today. Regulator may say "sure, fine", but there will be interest groups who don't like drivers to be replaced with software. A lot of people to end up in unemployment just to make taxis cheaper and TSLA more profitable. Unfair competition also.
 
The official reason is to get more FSD learning data, right?
If demand is fine and profits sparse, why even introduce SR(+)?
Zero RHD Model 3's have been built while something like 1/3 of he world drives right. All expect to first see fully optioned cars. And people would happily pay $70-80K before all the price cuts. These cars are of course not about making BEVs affordable to many. SR(+) though seems to be curbing progress now in a climate of self-funded expansion.

No, they get good training data whether you have/use AP or not.
 
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No...no more of THAT being an edge case.

Dan
There will always be more edge cases. The way the car sees the world changes. It's like a whack a mole. And people's behavior change too. It will be a constant struggle. It is extremely hard to anticipate a timeline given how complex the problem is.

Despite of my negative tone, I have changed from a self-driving skeptic to a total believer, in two short days. So I am a flip-flop, think twice before believing anything I say :)

Do I believe what Elon said robo-taxi everywhere in a year? absolutely not. But I think it is a big mistake of most analysts to concentrate on that one statement, and ignore other money making potentials. I think it is extremely likely Semi can do platooning with only one driver control multiple trucks right now. And it is pretty likely that in 2~3 years they can do self-driving in mostly good weather in low risk areas. So UPS, Fedex long haul trucks. And the shuttles in Disney world, airports, foxconn campuses. And maybe not too long after that we can see robotaxi in a quiet town, like Amherst, MA, or Champaign, IL, only when there is no snow, and slowly roll out to more places. (quiz, what these two places have in common?)

So I think as long as Tesla can manage to stay alive for about 5 years, the narrative will change to self-driving as they show more and more capabilities. Seeing with your own eyes a driverless car driving, even only in airports, will have a big impact mentally. This will unlock people's imagination and Tesla once again becomes a story stock.
 
Just want to elaborate on cash position. They ended Q1 with $2.2B. 2weeks earlier, when they had delivered half of the cars for the quarter, ie ~40k cars less delivered cars for an ASP of ~$60k they clearly had even less cash... Do the math... This was cutting it pretty close, not a very comfortable position to be in. I guess they realized this and decided to not do that again. So they will smooth out deliveries to not have as many cars in transit, thus they will not have that bad of a cash position. But if they increase vehicles in transit at end of quarter to smooth out the wave it might get worse at the end of the quarter, but it will not be as bad as it was mid March. However for people only looking at ER it might look bad, as they are not aware of how much worse it was two weeks before ER...
Yes. This is very clearly correct.

Why complicate things by having such an aggressive strategy which risks everything and makes everything so much more complicated and extra mess they don’t need. They could have delivered P3D/LR AWD to Europe/China starting in Q4,
They had to deliver as many cars to the US as possible before the stupid tax credit cliff.

removed referral program earlier,
Dumb oversight there. I agree, they should have removed it a lot earlier.

not cut S/X prices as aggressively in Q1
Ehhhh, this was reactive IMO. They clearly removed the 75 due to the retooling, then found the retooling was taking longer than expected, then... well, I don't blame them.

, done the retooling for S/X new battery pack in Q2 etc
Project Raven has clearly been going for years and the cutover was clearly always scheduled for Q1 during the tax credit hangover; it probably took longer than expected.

None of these are the reason why Q1 was so bad financially -- that was all down to just plain not manufacturing enough Model 3. If they'd been running 2000 cars a week faster, they'd have been up by about $400 million relative to where they were. It's all about economies of scale.

Had they been able to manufacture as many as they were supposed to, had Panasonic ramped up cell supply on demand and had Euro-spec parts showed up when they were supposed to, far more cars would have been shipping to Europe in January and been delivered in Q1. China port hiccups didn't help either, but they should have anticipated and avoided those.
 
They're buying every car that Tesla makes. If you're wondering why Tesla isn't building more, my guess it's because they updated the S/X design (*confirmed) and updated and automated the S/X production lines (**speculation).

* EXCLUSIVE: 2019 Tesla Model S Review: From SF to LA on One Charge? - MotorTrend

** IMO likely given they laid off a big chunk of the S/X production staff in January and appear to have worked through whatever issues were present in the 3 lines, leaving Grohmann/Perbix with more time to work on other things

The latter isn’t really speculation. They said as much on the call. Won’t reach full speed till Juneish.
 
Part of the bond sales was recorded to equity on a speculative basis due to the accounting for conversion features. Paying off the bond was then reduction in equity, and due to the elimination of most forms of "other comprehensive income" in a recent GAAP change, it ended up in operating cash flow. I think that's right! (Sigh. The accounting rules here are ugly and I may be totally wrong)


The revenue from the car was originally reduced by the allowance for the resale value guarantee, i.e. the booked revenue was revenue - (expected value of buyback). The expected buybacks just increased -- they expect more people to take advantage of the resale value guarantee-- so it has to be booked as a retroactive reduction in revenue, which is accumulated and dumped on the balance sheet this quarter.

They expect more people to use the RVG because the market value of their old cars just dropped with the price cuts to the comparable new versions of Model S and X. In fact, I expect to see a second charge like this in Q2 due to the introduction of the "new" Model S and X reducing the value of the old Model S and X again.
The guarantees must have almost run their course by now I would suspect.
 
The official reason is to get more FSD learning data, right?
If demand is fine and profits sparse, why even introduce SR(+)?
Zero RHD Model 3's have been built while something like 1/3 of he world drives right. All expect to first see fully optioned cars. And people would happily pay $70-80K before all the price cuts. These cars are of course not about making BEVs affordable to many. SR(+) though seems to be curbing progress now in a climate of self-funded expansion.

Whatever the populations, the RHD premium market sizes are much smaller, and the two largest RHD markets Tesla is already in are the UK (Brexit turmoil) and Japan (dominated by small domestics).

That the UK is likely to be the largest RHD market for Tesla for the foreseeable future, should make it clear why they aren't rushing.
 
The guarantees must have almost run their course by now I would suspect.
Yeah, there aren't that many of them left. I am pretty sure that the last US ones expire July 1 this year; there have been vague notes about foreign RVGs which were issued later which may hang around longer, but I think there were never that many of them.

They've mostly been exercised on high-optioned cars; the RVG is lower than market price for base cars and higher for high-optioned cars, because the options depreciated faster than Tesla guessed, while the base depreciated slower.
 
Since it has not broken this pattern, it'll probably spend the rest of the month in the 240s....
EhmPQOI.png

It is nearing 52 week low, so interesting to see how it reacts. That may also buck the channel trend.
 
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Whatever the populations, the RHD premium market sizes are much smaller, and the two largest RHD markets Tesla is already in are the UK (Brexit turmoil) and Japan (dominated by small domestics).

That the UK is likely to be the largest RHD market for Tesla for the foreseeable future, should make it clear why they aren't rushing.

Hong Kong and Australia should be a few thousand a quarter? Model 3 would be a great taxi in HK now, robot or not. Would be nice if they can get India to chill out on the tariffs. They sell a lot of BMW 3\ Audi A4's.

On the other side of the road, are they selling the 3 in Poland or Russia yet? Korea?