Curious, why do you say that is a problem?
This isn’t news that just came out today. Regarding the close to $2B figure, it’s a few days old if in case you’re wondering whether it would affect the SP.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Curious, why do you say that is a problem?
This isn’t news that just came out today. Regarding the close to $2B figure, it’s a few days old if in case you’re wondering whether it would affect the SP.
Is this simply where the demo units are accounted for... Often these cars are used for test rides and then sold at a discount?
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Maserati is part of FCA.
It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. FCA can support significant losses at Maserati indefinitely as long as they keep selling lots of Jeeps and Rams.
They are just the halo brand for FCA once they spun off Ferrari.
I don’t know about day trading TSLA for the average person. But, swing trading has definitely worked out better than holding this long term (as I only started investing in TSLA since 2015). Looks like someone long since 2014 would’ve done much worse than just forgetting the money in an index. You just have to be patient for dips and objective. Don’t get fueled by bulls or scared by bears on this forum. If you’re only buying common shares, make sure to buy on dips and sell when it makes runs. Too many times people can get caught losing out on gains by hoping for an even higher run up in SP. For example, the Musk $420 tweet incident gave me one of my best transactions in recent years.
This stock has more ups and downs than any other in my portfolio, and so it’s one of the only ones I swing trade with.
humbaba
sleeping until $7000
I'm on 2019.12.1.2 right now and I'm not an early adopter.
It fixed the backup camera (almost completely). Connectivity was also rock solid after update until the last one
Or a Roadster in space?
I'm on 2019.12.1.2 right now and I'm not an early adopter.
It fixed the backup camera (almost completely). Connectivity was also rock solid after update until the last one
Oh crap, I meant 2019.16... and blew the joke.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
That is not the way body repairs work.
Especially after cars have been on the road a few years.
Being in the sun for years cars change color and they need to be matched. Can't have brand new blue panel right next to 5 year faded blue panel. Batches also have slightly different shades. One red Tesla Model 3 is not necessarily the exact same color as another red Tesla Model 3. Repaired Tesla vehicles can't be the "Coat of Many Colors," that would look awful.
Repairs on panels are done at body shops when it is cheaper than replacing, it isn't valueless busy work invented to create jobs.
Mobileye's quarterly earning is around $50m, most of the sales are EyeQ3, which is a solution based on 40nm technology priced around $30. It did a good job on AEB and ACC, etc.. They are hype-envy to TSLA/Waymo as there is not much design wins for their 28nm based solution, aka. EyeQ4 except 2-3 very small scale deployments, they had/having a hard time to sell it at $200 level.
TSLA probably is the biggest NVDA self-driving chip design win/deployment for now, although it is still very small scale if you look at the actual number, they are hungry for TOPS and computing power. If their own chip can improve TOPS/W, that is a big win in itself.
Comparing benchmark without use cases is just pure garbage and trolling, Mobileye needs to find someone to use their TOPS in EyeQ4 first.
There is good chance that Mobileye is/will be dead on the innovation front as they are part of Intel now.
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
It’s going out to early access program members. They already have advanced summon.
EDIT: Speaking of which, I still haven’t received my invitation to early access program for having bought FSD before the discount thingy...
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True, but it also wasn’t reported on when it did come out. It hasn’t been mentioned at any point on the Yahoo Finance page.
Yep but headlines like: "Telsa may never become a profitable car company" and "BMW is charging after Tesla"
Those are front and center.
When they roll out that they would recognize some FSD sales as profits.
They postponed it from Q1 since it’s a kitchen sink quarter, let’s see whether they’re going to push it out to Q3.
What early access program for early FSD owners. I go back to Apr 2018 for FSD, I ain't heard nothin'.
Alphacrux
Member
Blame me for the decline below $250. I bought back a short call with the stock at $250 today (but I did profit from almost the entire premium sold).
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Quite happy for Elon to follow the Ferengi rules of acquisition. Rule number 1:
Once you have their money, you never give it back.
$2Bn is just for starters.
Rule 45:
Expand or die
Rule 95
Expand or die
So good, they said it twice.
When they temporarily lowered the prices for upgrading to AP/FSD(to below what people paid who bought them when they got their cars) earlier this year, they said existing FSD owners would receive invitations to the early access program, and Elon later confirmed those were coming.
jhm
Well-Known Member
A decade ago, I was an employee at GMAC Insurance. All the different GMAC companies were quite distinct though owned by GM. We had our own CEO, for example. GMAC Insurance was arguably the most reliable earnings engine for all of GM and GMAC.
In fact, underwriting profit is rather predictable and stable. What was significantly harder was to actually grow the business. Pricing is highly regulated and very slow to change. What matters more is the flow of new accounts and attrition. If you price some segment too high, for example, you have more difficulty attracting and retaining overpriced customers. So via adverse selection the composition of the book tends to shift where those that were overpriced get replace by those that are relatively underpriced. So loss rates increase to the level you priced at even as the book shrinks as a whole.
The advantage at the time that a carrier like Progressive had was that they had highly segmented and accurately priced rates. This was more robust against adverse selection than what most carriers could pull off. The strategy of showing prospects the rates of competitors was in fact very smart competitively. For example, if a competitor was offering a driver a substantially lower premium, chances were very good that that carrier was underpriced for that risk. By showing this to potential customers one of two things would happen: the driver would go to the competitor which was underpricing the risk and make that competitor less profitable, or the driver would trust Progressive enough to pay a higher premium than they could get elsewhere. In that case, Progressive would be better assured that they had not underpriced the risk and would lock in a more profitable and likely retainable customer. As an insurer you want to avoid rate chasers and attract stable customer willing to pay a fair price. So my view of auto insurance is that it is primarily marketing business. Attract and retain the best customer, and you can do very well financially.
So I think Tesla has several advantages it can exploit to build up a nice little insurance book.
1. Tesla has a very attractive customer base to market insurance to. Very high income and creditworthiness. This is a high mix of preferred.
2. Tesla customer base is also strongly engaged with the Tesla brand, mission, and is very loyal. This is an auto insurance marketers dream prospect base.
3. Tesla owners drive vehicles that are easily mispriced and likely over priced by the competition. Especially the passive safety of AP/FSD is likely to be mispriced by most of the industry.
4. Insurance sales can be integrated seamlessly into Tesla online sales channel. As customer builds car online, Tesla can capture sufficient information to provide insurance quote. This quote gives a shopper confidence that they can find affordable insurance. But then there is the convenience of buying that insurance at the time the order is placed for the car.
5. Tesla NN likely has advanced driver analytics already and can be used to modify and augment driver behavior where it is substandard.
It is probably hard for most people to appreciate just how important item 4 is. Consider that most insurance carriers spend $600 to $1200 in marketing and sales cost to acquire 1 new customer. It is the holy grail of auto insurance marketers to be able to touch prospects when they are actually in the market for buying new insurance. When someone is buying a car, they are definitely in market for insurance. And in fact, insurability questions can make it harder to decide to buy a given car. If you've already got the prospect online and can quote them, this is the absolute cheapest sales channel. Tesla can likely get info on the other vehicles in the household and quote all of them. And it is super convenient for the customer. Remember that you don't care to insure aggressive price sensitive rate shoppers. What you want are the laziest car insurance premium payers out there. This is virtually a "and would you like fries with that" sort of upsell. The most lazy auto insurance customers will simply click the box to add insurance to their order for a new car and click to insure their other car too, all without even calling their current insurance carrier or looking at their deck page. OMG, this is exactly who you want on your insurance book of business. So putting the pieces together, I would suspect an insurance acquisition cost well below $100, and this is huge considering how desirable this customer base is.
I'd also point out to people that the actual underwriting losses in auto insurance is only about 65% of the premium paid. Most of the other expenses beyond the priced actuarial risk is marketing, sale and administrative expenses. It's that other 35% of premium where insurance companies make their profit or loss. (Plus the premiums get invested too for a profit, but that is a separate post.)
Absolutely, Tesla does not need to compete on price for this business. It needs fair pricing, but not price competitive pricing. That is not what this play is about. Rather it about customer relationship marketing, low acquisition cost, and really high value prospects.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
1) Elon says he doesn't necessarily want a wheelless pedalless car future but he thinks it is inevitable. And it is better for Tesla and its shareholders to get there first.
2) Elon also said you can drive your current Tesla any way you wish while having Tesla insurance. But if you drive in a riskier manner you rates will be affected.
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Joe F
Disruption is hard.
Neither have I. Nov '16 order, Dec '16 build, including FSD. Even e-mailed them about why no invite yet and no reply.
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