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

[Bobfitz1]

advertising is not about raising demand. it's about deterring FUD.

There are different purposes for advertising campaigns. Tesla should begin doing some soon, not to increase demand this or next quarter but to start building positive mind share among the non EV enthusiast vehicle demographic and make them aware of all the ways Tesla EVs are superior to ones by old ICE companies coming late to the party. This would be a multi year advertising strategy that then leverages any EV advertising done by the competitors. Let them spend large sums making the point that EVs are desirable, while Tesla spends modest sums showing all the ways Tesla's EVs are better to own.

 

[Hock1]

Guys, stop asking "what's going on with TSLA?"

This is not TSLA. The entire market is tanking due to Trump's tariffs. It unfortunately came at a really bad time right after TSLA's cap raise and it was starting to recover. AAPL is down 5.5% right now too.

As far as the past ,present and future share price of TSLA, it will follow Amara's Law:

"We tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Tesla never reaches it's targets. Best case will be 80 000 cars, but probably around 70 000.

Maybe one day they will learn to give realistic guidance.

Guidance given for Q3 and Q4 were actually pretty dead on. Q1 guidance was where it went off the rails. Before that, Tesla was actually always pretty spot on with their guidance for S/X. Yes Tesla's long term production goals/guidance has been iffy at best, but their quarterly guidance has actually be pretty close, if not exceeded. We'll have to wait until Q2 numbers to see if Q1 was just a anomaly thanks to cell restrictions and the S/X motor refresh.

 

[jhm]

From what I understand, retaliatory tariffs are designed to inflict maximum political pain and pressure on POTUS, so they will be aimed at industries/states that support him.

Which industries would you have in mind? Asking for a friend in China.

 

[mad474]

Scraped together ~ 1000 EUR and ordered [email protected]:

But haven't got them yet.

 

[AudubonB]

MOD NOTE & REMINDER -

The ban on discussion within this thread and the Investors' Forum regarding an upcoming trial involving the personal affairs of Mr Musk remains in effect.

Zero tolerance.

 

[neroden]

That would be Joe Nuxoll.

Read about him and how the team went about designing the UI here: How Tesla revolutionized automotive user interface design

Thanks very much for the info. Poached by "Polaris Industries". Catastrophic loss to Tesla.

 

[Big Blue 1011]

The night is darkest just before the dawn...

Or as John McCain is reported to have said during the 2008 campaign:

"It is always darkest before it becomes pitch black." *


* McCain attributed the saying to Mao, but that was never verified, AFAIK,

 

[myt-e-s-l-a]

SOLD 300 shrs TSLA @255.25
Profit 6600$. Added 25.88 free tsla shrs @255 to Long acct

and

SOLD TSLA 190524 250 PUT option 3x @ 9.50/contract.

BUY to close TSLA 190524 250 PUT option 3x @ 24.5
Loss 4500$ factored in buy below
and

BOUGHT 300 shrs TSLA @225.25

no guts, no glory

 

[neroden]

This is exactly right. The COGS for model 3 and the trajectory of it has been easily estimated since Q3 last year when they hit reasonable volume and it was clear that the cost for the base model was coming in around 37k$ to 38k$ (Elon then literally confirmed it in a Q4 employee email, and then again recently in regard to the cost of a robotaxi). Given the wide ranging implications of this fact, it should have been the key point of discussion the last 9 months but was largely ignored. I'd be wary of those showing up on your disagree list.

I don't think that's a true marginal cost though. I'm pretty sure that version of COGS has some fixed costs and time-based depreciation tucked into it. (Gotta read those statements carefully.) Tesla isn't going to sell a car for literally less than the cost of materials + wear on equipment + labor hours. All the other evidence says that the true marginal cost is more in the $32-$33K range.

Not to really disagree with you, just to clarify that they make more money the more cars they produce (off the same production line). Higher volume --> more profit.

 

[capster]

Elon Musk's Hefty Anti-LIDAR Gamble Undermines Tesla Chances Of Survival

Forbes FUD based on the premise that the contrarian is generally wrong. Everybody else is using lidar, therefore Tesla not using it is probably wrong.

Fails to discuss the issue that to solve self driving you must solve vision, and if you have solved vision, lidar is a useless appendage.

Further, even if Tesla lose the FSD race, survival is not at stake. The winner, should it not be Tesla, will pay handsomely for a million mile lowest cost per mile vehicle.

I’ve noticed many of the research cars running around Palo Alto and the surrounding area now sport binoculars on the rims of their lidar hats. Coulda sworn they weren’t there before, at least in some cases.

BTW, all Model 3’s have roof rack mounting points. Though I doubt they’d be needed, the revenue from a robotaxi would cover a lot of accessories.

 

[tivoboy]

These forums are in maximum panic.

Time to buy. People are fearful

As always, not an advice, don't touch options unless you are prepared for heavy loss, cost average buys steadily, etc etc.

People are not truly fearful till they are indiscriminately selling. We’re not there yet.

 

[neroden]

Yeah, I agree 400k/year Model 3 would be awesome.

I'm personally expecting actually Model Y will hit Model 3 demand after it comes out, so that combined Model 3 and Model Y demand will be about 650-700k cars/year.

*Where*?

Tesla took Model 3 reservations in a number of countries where they still aren't shipping anything at all. They're going to have to eventually ship to those countries, at least (which increases fixed costs, of course, but once you've taken reservations, you pretty much have to do it).

I do think getting to combined Model 3/Y sales of 1 million/year will require actually delivering to those countries.

So are you saying "US/Canada/Western Europe/China" demand would stop at 700K cars/year? Because if so, OK, you might be right.
But if you're saying "worldwide total demand", I certainly disagree.

Considering ASP will be a combined $50k probably, this is actually phenomenal and will put Tesla in a great financial place of profitability.

 

[neroden]

The first time when Elon mentioned this number he said "the all-in cost is $38k".

OK, this confirms my belief that that cost has fixed costs buried in it.

Which means producing the cars faster matters a lot.

 

[capster]

I have been thinking how the day regulators, developers, and the public unanimously decide "FSD has been achieved". How is this suppose to work?

I am wondering how any company besides Tesla having any authority on the matter? When you only have 10 million or 15 million miles to show for, how can this data be used to determine safety and completion when Tesla can just give regulators 10-20 billion miles to look at?

I mean in the grand scheme of things, having 10 million miles of safety record compared to 20-30 billion is like me in my car with my hands off the wheel for 10 seconds and claim I have achieved autonomous driving because during those 10 seconds I had zero crashes.

And if regulators tell Waymo "I need at least 1-5 billion real world miles in order to tell us how safe your FSD really is"...how will they achieve that if it took them 10 years to hit 10 million miles?

I think they’ll call in the actuaries to get a real sense of things, but how each jurisdiction manages the surrounding circus will be, ah, interesting to watch.

 

[davecolene0606]

Well if they did that, the owners of EVs will still have much higher bills for electricity then ICE drivers. And that electricity is taxed. The problem is that electric taxes are not designated for road repair, while gasoline taxes are. Of course that could be changed.

Meanwhile retirees and other low mileage drivers would be unfairly penalized by a flat fee. They may stop buying cars, and just use taxis and their equivalents.

Lurking behind all of this is the fact that road damage is almost entirely due to large trucks. And that industry contributes to election campaigns and lobbies governments to spread a disproportionate share of taxes and fees to the drivers of cars.

So they blew off the mileage charge solution?

Seems like mileage plus vehicle weight is the only truly equitable answer that covers everything.

Perhaps a wholesale change to our road fees system is in order here?

Fire Away!

 

[TSLA_Hopeful]

Tesla won’t be impacted by tariffs. As per Bloomberg, the Auto parts tariffs is still EXEMPTED!

Also... companies can apply for a one year waiver and get the rebate back! If any company is likely to get it, it is Tesla. After a year, giga3 will be fully up and running.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[AMN]

In for more @226.00
Also, sold June $300 covered calls. Super bullish long-term but since Tesla isn't producing/shipping the updated S/X yet (half way through Q2), I think we are missing the guidance. Would gladly like to be proven wrong.

 

[neroden]

Do you know for a fact that the original plan was 5k / week / GA line and not 2.5k / week / GA line?

From all the random information I've been able to gather, and I am not sure about this because I've heard so much contradictory stuff, they built 2 GA lines originally (confusingly both numbered as "line 2" -- two lines to line 2?!? -- with the S/X line being "line 1"). These were the ones which were overly automated and packed too tight, and the tent line was the remaining line.

Anyone with more accurate inside information is welcome to share.

If it was 5k/week/line then they really, really missed needing 3 lines just to hit 5k /week. They would have missed by more than a factor of 2!

Yeeeeah. I think they missed very, very hard. By a huge factor. There's a reason Musk was staying up all night and screaming at people; it really was an existential crisis for the company.

 

[Maitri982]

Bob Lutz on CNBC this morning continued his diss of Tesla, saying that Tesla is not a tech company. Rather Tesla is a car company that uses batteries. It took a little while for the dinosaurs to disappear may take a bit longer for the Lutz dinosaur to disappear.

He was on Bill Maher recently...I just watched about 2 minutes of it which is all I could take...but he said the earth is not warming at all. That that's a fabrication. Unbelievable

So now the "science" of reading thermometers and comparing the readings to prior years is fake news. Not much you can do with a guy like that.