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

[Matias]

This post has 10 disagrees and 3 ironic funnies. The arrogance of this forum is astounding. You are losing against a 5 year market index. I didn't make the mistake neroden did thinking SolarCity was a good idea or what FC did thinking a hardware chip is an important advantage or what almost everybody did not doing the simple math about the implications of a model 3 that cost 38k to build after the dreadnought idea was proven bullshit.

After 15 years of investing in the market the truth remains that all online message boards have negative value.

It is unfortunate, that all online message boards are polarised to one direction or another. This board doesn’t want to hear or ask tough questions about Tesla.

This is safe space for believers. 10% of my portfolio is in Tesla, I’m not selling, but i’m also not buying more.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Note that the 'campaign' approach that @verygreen reported about a couple of months ago and which @KarenRei mentioned too, to automatically collect imagery from certain types of filtered-for circumstances, has the big advantage that it will collect a statistically valid sample of both negatives and positives - which data is going to train the networks that have both a low false positives and a low false negatives detection rate.

I.e. the end effect is the same: Tesla uses their fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles to train their neural networks, it's just that the 'campaign' method makes it smarter than just blindly collecting everything, or only collecting disengagement events.

For example the 'tunnel' problem the auto-wipers had is I believe a classic example of where the 'campaign' method helped: the auto-wiper NN attribute used to like tunnels and interpret them as "it's raining" for some reason (I speculate it's because of the "overcast sky" and the tunnel lighting also illuminates dirt on the windscreen that might be interpreted as raindrops) - so they probably sent out several rounds of "campaigns" to refine the NN's understanding that "entering tunnels does not mean it's raining".

I.e. Tesla's relationship to their NN is not a 100% data mining feedback mechanism like Google where all user data is recorded and sucked up, it's more like a teacher-pupil interaction, where the teacher is actively adapting to misunderstandings and is shaping the next lesson to help with those topics. The "lessons" are the @verygreen "campaigns".

I see this at one of the key advantages of Tesla's strategy. People often say data is king in deep learning. But really, high quality highly varied data is king. A smaller more varied dataset can produce a much better neural net than a 10x larger data set which is less well filtered. A more varied dataset is much better at generalising and hence better at dealing with more difficult situations and ones it has never seen before.

The key advantage of Tesla's fleet size is the number of rare events it encounters. Right now, Tesla's full 0.5 million car fleet is rarely needed for the problems it is currently solving, so fleet data utilisation rates are normally 0.1-1% even for Tesla's carefully selected campaigns. But as Tesla continues on the March of 9s, every new 9 will require Tesla asking 10x more cars to report data for each campaign (because the problems they are looking for are 10x more rare and Tesla wants the same size data set for every problem). But most of the data filtering and processing is done by the car, leaving much less work to do back at HQ. This is another issue with Waymo and the rest of the industry's approach - they collect all data from all cars and then filter back at HQ. This is not scaleable - with a much larger fleet the amount of data storage and processing power needed at HQ becomes unworkable.

This is the beauty of Tesla's system. Its fleet data filtering, collection and processing system is set up to solve the next decimal place of FSD reliability simply by scaling up fleet data and fleet computer utilisation rates without necessarily significantly increasing computing or staff costs back at HQ.

 

[Tslynk67]

Assuming all deliveries in USA 30k. Assuming 1/3 distribution between China Europe and USA: 10k.

That's whole quarter, not April. For April I'm guessing 12k for USA based on the fact that they appear to put much on boats earlier in the quarter. This is a total WAG of course and InsideEV's doesn't know either, so no idea where they get their numbers form.

 

[Tslynk67]

I’m more disappointed with the Saudis state-backed killing of a journalist.

Not to mention the murders they dress-up as public executions Iran flogged two 17-year-old boys before executing them in secret

Obviously one can't condemn all citizens of SA, but the regime are a bunch of fundamentalist, barbarian animals. The sooner we stop buying their oil the better and I'm behind delighted that Elon ensured they didn't get hold of Tesla.

 

[uselesslogin]

**** entertaining. I lost like a million dollars back this winter in one of the management panic scrambles. And that's what it was. Panic. End of February they probably had sold 20k cars total. What did you hear from the thought leaders here... crickets.. but you did get funny votes from the more devoted clergy. St. Bartholemew is that you?! Peter? Karen the nonchalant? Neroden the recidivist?

So it took 15 years to learn how to lose a million dollars in week? You could've just given that to me. I don't have a million dollars to lose. Maybe that is the true secret.

 

[Tslynk67]

Streisand effect

FMHR-chamath palihapitiya - Streamable

You, sir, are an absolute unit!

Can this be posted on Twitter, or is that too risky?

 

[Tslynk67]

Also Google Drive

1314984327.mp4

Thanks, have downloaded too, so I can keep sharing...

 

[RobStark]

Sparks fly: Inside the strained Tesla-Panasonic relationship

Operating losses in Panasonic's Tesla battery segment are estimated to have widened sharply in the year ended March 31, to 20 billion yen. (~$180M)

Long article with lots of interesting information.

 

[Artful Dodger]

You, sir, are an absolute unit!

Can this be posted on Twitter, or is that too risky?

Uh, don't know if you noticed, but that .mp4 file is 496 MB.

Or you can just watch the 8:11 min TSLA segment here on Youtube:

 

[STARR X]

Yes, production is hard, you are preaching to the choir. I agree wholeheartedly. Go tour Marysville and see how Honda puts together the Accord (even not taking account the ICE motor), its impressive.

Not going to beat a dead horse, IMO, the changes announced to S/X should not be a reason for a long delay in manufacturing. There were more substantial reasons than a line changeover for the S/X dropoff in sales. Was the cutoff to the change done prematurely? Who knows.

I personally think how Tesla dealt with the changeover to the upgraded S and X is fine. Everyone is bitching about lower sales, etc but I am not seeing anyone bitching about ordering a new S or X and not getting the upgraded version. And this is something that has happened in the past. Deciding to do the upgrades in the 1st quarter after the tax credit had been halved is just smart too.

 

[lklundin]

Pulled the trigger and ordered Model X Performance w/ free Ludicrous and FSD before the price is going up. Trade in of 3+ years old Model X 90D at a very good price, given 68k miles already.

At the store, the Tesla authorization system was a bit slow to respond. According to an apologetic customer advocate, this had to do with unusual high number of orders being entered due to end of the month expiration of some of the special offers. I told him that was music to my ears (the high number of orders).

He had me enter the order on my iPhone which took all of 15 seconds, amazing! In and out of the store in 15 min, that’s unheard of when buying a new car.

Going from 90D to P100DL with $2,500 down and only $100 higher monthly payment is a fantastic deal in my opinion. I’m hopeful more owners think like me and are doing the same.

Congratulations - especially since some days ago you seemed worried about the prospect of a margin call, if memory serves.

Personally, I currently have two Model 3 order payments done. I placed the second order yesterday to get the 7500 km free supercharging, the first one I will cancel (which in the EU I am allowed to do within 14 days, since the purchase was done via the internet).

 

[SPadival]

Look. I think you guys demonize shorts based on a bunch of very vocal small / retail investors in social media. In the background large hedge funds make bets based on valuation and their own analysis. Not because they are evil and want to see Tesla burn, but because they will short everything that gives their clients some gain. That's their job. They might be bad at it, or good at it. The jury is still out.

John Hempton (tesla bear) said in a recent interview (real vision, paid only):

John Hempton is polite on camera and social media. But he was all in with Chanos in harassing and hounding the CEO of Fairfax

Couple of samples of what goes on behind the scene - back & forth with the analysts, trolling mails to the SEC and other regulators taunting them to take action and then some good old harassment of the company execs:



More of it here:

John Hempton Fairfax Financial V SAC Unsealed Emails & Communications

 

[bhtooefr]

According to my drivers' ed course, an orange sign means "warning", so this means "Warning, Next 4 Miles".

I'm not sure how you tell the self-driving car "Yeah, watch for trouble. No, we don't know what sort, just trouble. Watch for it." Pehaps the most sensible thing to do is to use it as an "alert the human driver" indicator.

Could reduce allowable maximum speed to closer to the speed limit, and disable Mad Max and LA Traffic modes?

 

[SPadival]

You, sir, are an absolute unit!

Can this be posted on Twitter, or is that too risky?

Sorry.. forgot to credit. credit goes to Groggy T Bear on Twitter .. You may remember his masterpiece

Edit: Also my 19 years investing in the market trumps your 15.. I guess. Or maybe I'm just older than you.

Location checks out

 

[EVMeister]

Uh, don't know if you noticed, but that .mp4 file is 496 MB.

Or you can just watch the 8:11 min TSLA segment here on Youtube:

Don't watch it in your Blackberry with data then. Wait until you get home and can use your 56K modem!

 

[lklundin]

I reluctantly have to agree. What Elon has achieved is amazing, but he's cried wolf too many times. The only way forward from here is actual results, as someone stated a few days "show me don't tell me" or even better, "Show Don't Tell", which happens to be a Rush song

After the Investor Autonomy Day someone at TMC (maybe @neroden) said that Elon Musk should completely stop making any kind of temporal prediction.

Just present the (amazing) things when they are ready for that.

So this is not my idea, but I think it would help Tesla.

Also, Elon Musk should accept that he is maybe not the world's best presenter and use every opportunity to let his exceedingly skilled people explain things, just like Bannon and especially Karparthy.

 

[lklundin]

Not to mention the murders they dress-up as public executions Iran flogged two 17-year-old boys before executing them in secret

Obviously one can't condemn all citizens of SA, but the regime are a bunch of fundamentalist, barbarian animals. The sooner we stop buying their oil the better and I'm behind delighted that Elon ensured they didn't get hold of Tesla.

I think of how important it is to get away from the Saudi fossils every time I pump gas (four times ytd).

So with apologies to those who think one should not advertise the referral code, here is my tweet announcing my Model 3 order (with a photo of my current means of transportation):
Lars Kr. Lundin on Twitter

Regarding the cesspool that is Twitter I went (in the words of Elon Musk) "in the Arena", so let's see how battered I come out:

Lars Kr. Lundin on Twitter

 

[Boomer19]

Wow, truly anti-Tesla through their quick action.

yeah, what was the link? didn’t work for me...

don’t need a synopsis. what was the gist of it

 

[Artful Dodger]

Rob Maurer is back with his latest "Tesla Daily Podcast":

Checking In (04.30.19) - TechCast Daily​

 

[Todd Burch]

Got my state car inspection a few days ago. Looked at the windshield yesterday and everything clicked.

I took it as a sign.