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

[sundaymorning]

I’m not sure if this means anything but my Model 3 VIN is above 400,000, picking up this week I didn’t get top of the line, but did spend around $45k (excluding taxes) for the car.

I just found out my M3 VIN# above 400,000 came off the line in Fremont 3 days ago, seems like they’re pumping these puppies out fast, the good news is that they’re selling every model 3 they can make and that I’m not getting some car off the lot. Virtually almost every M3 Tesla made are being sold to an anxious owner. I guess it’ll be all hands on deck pretty soon. Bloomberg tracker is showing 6,080 M3/week with reported VINs above 400,000 as well.

 

[Curt Renz]

The stupid CNBC is covering Tesla like 5 times every hour. And I may not be exaggerating here.

It certainly seems that way. Undoubtedly analyst Jonas knew his worst case TSLA target of $10 would be click bait for the media, with his mid-case and best case targets of $230 and $391 likely to be largely ignored. And the media dutifully bit, especially CNBC which may be the most upset with Tesla for not providing advertising dollars or interviewees.

CNBC's Melissa Lee just now teased the next segment by saying, "Jonas' worst case scenario sees Tesla plunging to $10." She could just as easily and correctly have said, "Jonas' best case scenario sees Tesla soaring to $391." But that would not have fit into CNBC's agenda. It should be noted that Lee's words were almost certainly read from a teleprompter and written by a producer.

EDIT: Then during the Tesla segment, two of the money manager panelists vociferously trashed Tesla: regular Tim Seymour and temp Mark Tepper. Neither one disclosed his short Tesla position nor were they pressed on that by anchor Lee. The absent regular panelist Guy Adami would have clued viewers about Seymour and Tepper's short Tesla positions as he has in the past.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Oh, hey, Associated Press is now misquoting the prices of the S/X as $71,250 and $71,950. Where the heck are they getting this from?

 

[jerry33]

Whoa there. Citation please? I live in an extremely anti-Tesla state (legislatively speaking) and I am unaware of any law nor news article nor discussion with Tesla, its lobbyist, or the legislators, or even the dealers themselves, regarding laws that have extended the franchise dealer power to now exist over OTA updates as well as physical service centers/stores when it comes to Tesla. That sounds extremely unlikely. Are there other states actually doing this? Seems to me it would be major news, yet this is the first peep I've heard about it. Eager to get any tangible citations for this claim.

The prosed law change in Texas, that Rick Bollar and the North Texas Owners Club managed to get changed to eliminate the anti-Tesla verbiage had all forms of service, including OTA updates, as being only available from a franchised dealer.

 

[Zaxxon]

Whoa there. Citation please? I live in an extremely anti-Tesla state (legislatively speaking) and I am unaware of any law nor news article nor discussion with Tesla, its lobbyist, or the legislators, or even the dealers themselves, regarding laws that have extended the franchise dealer power to now exist over OTA updates as well as physical service centers/stores when it comes to Tesla. That sounds extremely unlikely. Are there other states actually doing this? Seems to me it would be major news, yet this is the first peep I've heard about it. Eager to get any tangible citations for this claim.

I don't think that's what was being stated. Rather, that existing dealership franchise agreements with other OEMs have a contractual requirement that the dealer service network provide software updates to the OEM's vehicles, thus making it very difficult for the OEM to implement OTA updates on their vehicles.

 

[Zaxxon]

Oh, hey, Associated Press is now misquoting the prices of the S/X as $71,250 and $71,950. Where the heck are they getting this from?

Tesla, of course. With their crappy site layout.

 

[dakh]

Jack Ma, founder of Baba, said his success has nothing to do with technical or business skills. “I know nothing about technology, I know nothing about marketing, I know nothing about [the legal] stuff... I only know about people. Everything we do as a founder: Make your customer happy. Get your team. Make your team happy. And you will be happy.”

I hope Elon can learn a bit from this. Should try hard to make the team happy, instead of firing people left and right. High pressure and tight schedule will not work well in the long run.

Hardcore engineers are very happy to work in a company that is not ruled by bean counters and MBAs, but by another hardcore engineer that does "the right thing" for long-term. This is why Tesla is where it's at, Elon does not compromise vision and good design and has enough power in the company not to let MBAs get in the way.

People in general are happy to put their life energy into a worthy cause. That is another reason why Tesla is where it's at. People care.

Sure it's a different way to do it but a valid and working one.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Elon Musk
Yes, the Shanghai Gigafactory progress is going incredibly well. Tesla the execution of our team underground there. …

Boring Company in Shanghai, too!

And then we expect to have multiple sales flyers for Shanghai Giga.

​

10% off all Gigas! This Weekend Only!

I love these transcripts....

 

[EVNow]

I'd like Apple to accumulate on open market, not an equity raise, then they can declare it and get Tim on the board, then they can have a partnership, but Elon retains control.

Would be perfect IMO a win-win, would boost Apple's share price a lot methinks.

Ideally what I'd like to see is equity raise with 20M each by Apple and Google. Both of them get a seat on the board. Tesla gets some $10B to $15B. Shorts get squeezed out.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Have you always been a troll or did you recently have a change of heart?

Good call. I feel there is a troll spectrum, from blatant to subtle.

The one you refer to is on the blatant end of the spectrum, easy to spot, and thus rather harmless. In a way, they even help the cause, because it suggests this thought train...
Somebody is paying this person. Somebody fears Tesla. If somebody fears Tesla, then Tesla must be about to disrupt a status quo that benefits that somebody. If Tesla were really a train wreck as the blatant trolls tell us, there would be no such trolls on the payroll. Their existence proves their words false.

The harder to call out trolls are the subtle variety. The giveaway phrase is “I really hope it doesn’t happen, but I fear the stock will see {current price less $10} today. Endless varieties of this style of comment.

A good troll spot tool is to check who rates the more obvious troll comments with ‘like’.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Tesla, of course. With their crappy site layout.

View attachment 410322

Weird... for the same page, I see $69,450 for Model X after savings. Anyway, AP(and now CBS) is directly saying those prices are before any incentives:

"The Model S now starts at $71,250 while the X starts at $71,950. The prices don't include federal and state tax credits for electric-vehicle purchases."

 

[MartinAustin]

Am curious

The early version of Freds article had the word 'slashes'. Commenters were all over that clickbaity title, and now he changed it to 'cuts'. Fred admitting a mistake, wow, that's a first.

EDIT: Ofcourse he deleted all those comments, including mine. It would make him look bad and he is such a narcicist.

Fred is well-known for deleting comments. This is why the site is not a professional, accountable news site.

Did he ever apologize for promoting the recent Audi presentation that turned out to be fabricated lies?

TSLA held up pretty well today. CNBC even stopped covering it after it went positive... since that doesn't match with their campaign.

 

[hcdavis3]

I didn’t know this. There’s still hope. It could happen.

Apple made informal bid to buy Tesla at $240 per share in 2013

For all the disagreers. This guy says Project Titan is absolutely not dead. Take this with a grain of salt.

https://electrek.co/2019/05/21/apple-buy-tesla-2013-report/

 

[TradingInvest]

Hardcore engineers are very happy to work in a company that is not ruled by bean counters and MBAs, but by another hardcore engineer that does "the right thing" for long-term. This is why Tesla is where it's at, Elon does not compromise vision and good design and has enough power in the company not to let MBAs get in the way.

People in general are happy to put their life energy into a worthy cause. That is another reason why Tesla is where it's at. People care.

Sure it's a different way to do it but a valid and working one.

Working 80 hours a week because you love it or working 80 hours because there is a tough deadline is very different. In the end, it's the former that is much more productive. It's especially tough if there is a deadline and you have no clue how to resolve it. Stress can kill people.

 

[Remus]

Appreciate your thoughtful reply.

I'll disagree about AWS. Microsoft's Azure and Google's Cloud Computing Platform are direct competitors to AWS. AWS is the best of the three, but the gap between them is much smaller than the gap between Tesla and other automakers.

One of the development teams reporting to me looked into using the various platforms and decided on Azure, back in 2015. It was good enough then to pick it over AWS for the cost difference, which was substantial.

I have no experience with shipping to comment.

I think the Tesla demand question is a fair one to be asking in this thread. I don't see that anyone has enough visibility to state, either way, where demand lies right now. However, the external signals indicate that Tesla has pulled some demand levers.

You misunderstood, AWS has been cutting prices and/or providing extra service with no extra charge well before Azure become serious business

 

[Zaxxon]

Weird... for the same page, I see $69,450 for Model X after savings. Anyway, AP(and now CBS) is directly saying those prices are before any incentives:

"The Model S now starts at $71,250 while the X starts at $71,950. The prices don't include federal and state tax credits for electric-vehicle purchases."

Oh, absolutely agreed that the AP is mis-quoting. I'm just pointing out that Tesla unnecessarily makes it easy to do that, by making the actual price of the car less prominent than the 'after savings' price. As for the diff between what you and I see, the Tesla site varies the incentives based on the location it thinks you're viewing from.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

not many as of oct 2018...and falling
Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo Lead Fox Business To Big Ratings Win

I did a bit more research and found an average viewership of 154,000 for CNBC in 2018. That is appaling, in a country of 330 million people. Why are we even talking about what that channel says? Is it because many here are investors and some have that channel on 24/7, that are we giving CNBC so much weight? Much more than it deserves? What is the influence on TSLA, let alone on Tesla (potential customers)?

 

[DaveT]

I remember hearing that statement, and to the best of what I can remember it must have in that groundbreaking ceremony. But my memory may be wrong, it may also have been in a press conference or so about GF3. I listen to a lot of those videos and calls. It doesn’t really matter, it is just to confirm that @neroden isn’t making this up, other people like me also heard that.
With the latest Q1 statement of 1000/2000 per week around end of year, what’s so difficult to believe that you have to do initial;production in september?

Talking to the person in charge... it's evident to me production ramp in Shanghai is going to be much more difficult than people here think.

 

[jerry33]

Working 80 hours a week because you love it or working 80 hours because there is a tough deadline is very different. In the end, it's the former that is much more productive. It's especially tough if there is a deadline and you have no clue how to resolve it. Stress can kill people.

Doesn't matter to me unless the 80 hours is non-stop (my current high record is 72).

 

[DaveT]

Talking to the person in charge... it's evident to me production ramp in Shanghai is going to be much more difficult than people here think.

Also, people here in general are way too optimistic on production timelines. There's a huge gap between what Elon "expects" and what happens in reality.