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

[jhm]

Nah, I’m ok with Amazon like domination until ICE is dead. You really want to trust a future with VW and Exxon in charge?

Um, just how would you envision VW or Exxon being in charge when you've got 25 million new robotaxis per year kicking the junk out of ICE makers and integrated oil companies? No, my point is that a dynamic ecosystem around robotaxi will destroy companies like that before 2030.

 

[lklundin]

Teslarati explains: Tesla rolls out driving visualizations, Sentry Mode updates, and new safety features. They're in 2019.16, "rolled out" only to early access people. Along with a bunch of other interesting stuff.

To get early access should I submit the software testing parts from my CV or how does that work?

 

[adiggs]

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.

Link, or you're just making it up (or I'm just too lazy to go find the Ferengi rules of acquisition for myself )

 

[lklundin]

Fair question from an infamous TSLA short:
What was the $70M for “Marketing, Promotional and Advertising Costs” in 2018 spent on?

https://ir.tesla.com/node/19496/html

Since it was not spent on traditional advertising, can we come up with a comparison of such “not really advertising” expenditures with that of traditional OEM vehicle manufacturers?

From Q2 I foresee that this cost will include (a fraction of) a Tesla employee's time to create content for Tesla's Twitter account...

-- but if that would amount to nothing if that employee is Elon Musk...

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Neither have I. Nov '16 order, Dec '16 build, including FSD. Even e-mailed them about why no invite yet and no reply.

OT:
Ditto on the timing of mine. This reminded me of it so I went on the support site and asked. They just said it’s by invitation only and we’ll be contacted when the FSD early access program invites go out. So no help there... guess we either have to wait or try to get Elon’s attention.

 

[anthonyj]

Needs to hit $245 to trigger stop losses so MM can harvest stupid retail shares

 

[Buckminster]

Link, or you're just making it up (or I'm just too lazy to go find the Ferengi rules of acquisition for myself )

If you spent less time on the forum you would have longer to spend memorising the essentials of sci fi trivia...
Rules of Acquisition

 

[keydiver]

Elon Musk‏ @elonmusk 6 minutes ago

"New setting to receive Tesla software updates immediately"​

Yes, I saw that new option after my Model 3 got a software update over the weekend.

 

[neroden]

OT

wonder how he feels about the recent onslaught of hurricanes.

Good question!

Buffett talked about it a few years back, specifically talked about how they were having to redo all their actuarial models due to global warming climate change, and apparently massively raised premiums for all the catastrophe reinsurance because catastrophes are more likely now due to global warming.

 

[dww12]

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.

If you are RTing your car or a fleet of cars you may not care if the color is off a shade, just fix it and let’s get going, save me the 3+ days of downtime for paint. The body shop that was fixing The Fast Lane’s M3 said the body panels were inexpensive from Tesla.

 

[neroden]

Semi-OT

Didn't Elon just recently make FSD/robotaxis the main and most important part of the TSLA investment thesis? And wasn't the cap raise investor call largely about this as well? It seems like a relevant and timely topic for this thread as it has huge implications for TSLA both present and future.

It does have the implication that Elon is still prone to delusional levels of optimism, and that probably is relevant, yes.

I agree. Like it or not, Musk has now positioned TSLA as a robotaxi play.

Fair enough. I don't like it. It means the stock price will be suppressed for years because people are evaluating it as a robotaxi play, and they're going to be very very far from robotaxis for a long time.

So few will pay attention and most will be very surprised when they make billions of dollars from non-autonomous electric vehicles, or from stationary batteries.

But then I suppose this would be like Amazon, where everyone thought it was an online retailer. The online retail business still doesn't make any money (!!!!) and it turned out that their profitable business was renting scaleable platforms to other retailers and companies -- "Amazon Web Services" -- and using the online retail business as one large test case.

Or Berkshire Hathaway, where everyone thinks it's all about Buffett's stock-picking or business-buying ability, but at its heart it's just the insurance company with the most profitable underwriting in the world.

So :shrug: ?

 

[neroden]

I’ve been watching Musk in just about everything since the late 2000s.

I have never seen him more assertive and confident (and more frustrated that others don’t see it) than at the autonomy event.

Remember, that's a bearish signal. When he's at his most ultra-confident, HE IS WRONG. Alien Dreadnought, 10,000 cars/week by the end of 2018 no doubt at all, LA-NY automated drive in 2017, short burn of the century, etc.

It's actually when he's diffident that he's probably right. Super confident means he's on the peak of Mt. Stupid. Diffident means he knows so much that he's hedging his statements, and that means he knows enough to be right.

He hedged his statements about reusable rockets and landing them so massively that... well, I believed he knew what he was doing, which he did in that case.

 

[Todd Burch]

Remember, that's a bearish signal. When he's that confident, HE IS WRONG.

He is likely overoptimistic...however I don't view that as bearish. Aim for the stars and hit the Moon and all that...

 

[M3Rider]

I'm very much out of my depth here, but wouldn't it be easier to modify a Model 3 body to make it off road worthy? Sounds like a fun, if expensive, project either way.

Direct drive makes sense to me. Why add complexity and something else to break while off-roading? I think the barrier with off road EVs is charging infrastructure. Placing Superchargers at the start of major trail heads would get us there, but who knows when that could happen. I'd rather see SCs at tracks first.

I also don't quite get why would you want to beat up an expensive vehicle around rocks and branches.

Also, that X, which burned on the lake... the driver thought that maybe he hit his car bottom on the rocks. That's a sensitive piece of equipment on the bottom(battery) that you probably don't want to hit or puncture and risk burning the vehicle.

Supposedly, Teslas have some titanium plate there, but X burned regardless. Didn't see a definitive proof though of what caused it.

 

[neroden]

Semi-OT

I did not get the extended warranty on my S. I spent a total of $700 on out-of-warranty repairs (failed door handle) between 50,000 and 100,000 miles.

In my case at least, Tesla would have come out well ahead had I bought the extended warranty.

How early was your car? Mine was in month four of production, which is why the warranty was well worth it. I came out ahead thanks to the suspension failures. (If what I've heard was correct, the suspension arms were redesigned within a year of production start.)

Probably wouldn't have bought the extended warranty if I'd gotten a 2014.

 

[humbaba]

Fair enough. I don't like it. It means the stock price will be suppressed for years because people are evaluating it as a robotaxi play, and they're going to be very very far from robotaxis for a long time.

So few will pay attention and most will be very surprised when they make billions of dollars from non-autonomous electric vehicles, or from stationary batteries.

What frustrates me is that Waymo is just robotaxi company that will either sell FSD to someone else, or have to pay money for a fleet and yet... I wish $TSLA were valued like a robotaxi company

$TSLA market cap ~$44B
Waymo worth $175B

Waymo is worth $100 billion more than previous estimates, Morgan Stanley says (GOOGL) | Markets Insider

 

[Nocturnal]

I also don't quite get why would you want to beat up an expensive vehicle around rocks and branches.

Also, that X, which burned on the lake... the driver thought that maybe he hit his bottom on the rocks. That's a sensitive piece of equipment on the bottom(battery) that you probably don't want to hit or puncture and risk burning the vehicle.

Supposedly, Teslas have some titanium plate there, but X burned regardless. Didn't see a definitive proof though of what caused it.

Well, it would be a salvaged 3 at that point. Gutting it results in the same thing.

 

[TheMrX]

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.

On TSLA yahoo finance page news feed, no <----- That is the problem <--- Not referencing to any specific time...

Disclaimer : Wife, 3 kids, full time job, self managing portfolio, starting a company, managing the property AND trying to keep up with TMC ; I might have missed it when it came out, but checked since the news came out, did not saw it.

Why do I find concerning that on a finance website, one of the most consulted, under the news feed of a particular ticker, there is no mention that this company will receive almost 2 billions from a ''competitor'' which is more than 4 % of it's today's 43.29 billions market cap?

hmmm I don't know

 

[neroden]

It’s interesting that there has been zero coverage in the US media of FCA giving € 1.8 billion to Tesla over a period of 3 years.

Is this priced in or not?

Very clearly not priced in. Despite a few articles, absolutely no traders or analysts are actually acting like (1) Tesla has an extra + $167 million/quarter in pure profit on average until the end of 2021 and (2) Tesla has $2 billion more in free cash to work with over those years.

And yet Tesla does. Definitely not priced in.

 

[Todd Burch]

Semi-OT



How early was your car? Mine was in month four of production, which is why the warranty was well worth it. I came out ahead thanks to the suspension failures. (If what I've heard was correct, the suspension arms were redesigned within a year of production start.)

Oct 2014. My Dec 2012 car had a few very early in-warranty issues but I upgraded to the October car before encountering any other issues with it.