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

[StealthP3D]

What % of float must Activist Investor obtain, to force an outcome give EM's/Kimbals ownership ?

A buyer would be foolish if they didn't INSIST Musk stay on for at least a few years. The story that he is a drag on the potential of the company is a complete fantasy only supported by people who have no clue why Tesla has been as successful as they are (or who want to lie about it). That's why there will never be an unfriendly buyout of TSLA as long as Musk is there.

 

[GBleck]

I agree. I know so many poor drivers who would really love to have a "backup driver", even if occasionally it told them "wake up!". Hopefully mostly in slow-speed situations. If the autopilot could handle all the high-speed driving which required fast reaction times, so that they were only handling the low-speed parking lot / cops-directing-traffic stuff, they'd be *very* happy.

I have been somewhat deficient in my slowing down when the car in front is turning lately and the car has been reminding me to be a better driver. Also the occasional drift right out of my lane next to the airport on the way to work. It’s a good training aid with the new all time lane assist option.

 

[LN1_Casey]

LVC on Twitter

Beautiful one minute Tesla ad. Watch it as hopefully the share price keeps rising

A few of these on social media could do wonders, even without big Superbowl type investment.

It was a lovely clip, but it felt more like a music video than a car commercial. For instance, it never really showed the vehicle's features, even after it did the slow outside crawl. No launch, no silence of the music to emphasize the silence of the car's motors, no view of the screen as it awakens to active, or switch to drive.

 

[sparcs]

All the third party articles on energy storage etc. are extremely bullish for this industry. It's been a trickle so far but I can see it ramping very quickly. Climate/pollution issues aside, the ROI is very good in many cases right now.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the two battery cell lines at GF1 that were returned to storage cell production.

Are those two cell lines being updated for higher cell production like the automotive cell lines? Seems like they would be considering they don't have enough battery cells available for storage. Might have more impact in the second half of the year.

 

[urarthur]

Porsche Taycan to sell less than 10k in 2019. Another Teslakiller too little too late.

Porsche über Elektroauto Taycan: "Wir halten den Termin" - ecomento.de

 

[Singuy]

Supposed to be a record for 1st month of a quarter.

Ah not a record month in general.

 

[EVNow]

Ah not a record month in general.

No way - Last December must have been the record at over 45k.

 

[StealthP3D]

I know people in general aren't very good at changing their opinions based on new information, but if you start seeing Model 3s everywhere only the really dumb people will still insist that they aren't realistic vehicles.

Only really dumb people currently insist they aren't realistic vehicles. So I don't see that changing things much. On the other hand, most people are like lemmings, not everyone is an early adopter. And, yes, people buying EV's today are still "early adopters". As they continue to become more visible, the "lemming people" which comprise 70% of the population will take notice and start to act like lemmings. This will be a rare example of "lemming behavior" being a good thing.

You can't get away with insisting EV's are not realistic vehicles on a Tesla forum so some people use a modifier to make it sound almost reasonable. People here insist EV's are not realistic for every "use case" which is technically true but only describes an extremely small percentage of all new car buyers.

 

[Fact Checking]

I live in FL and already feel it. I don't remember the last time I have seen a hurricane that's not at least a cat 3. Back in the days we used to have tropical storms or cat 1s. Now we are just seeing multiple cat 4-5s in a given year and it's freaking me out.

Note that even today climatologists are still torn about the effects of global warming on the frequency of majors hitting Florida: as powerful and unstoppable as hurricanes are once they have formed, cyclogenesis in the Atlantic basin and them being steered to Florida is actually a surprisingly fragile process requiring 4-5 rare atmospheric elements, which process can be disrupted by global warming. This is somewhat counterintuitive but true.

The intensity of landfalling major hurricanes will no doubt grow due to global warming, this has been predicted for years (decades) and has been robustly demonstrated by Hurricane Maria who formed over record warm SSTs and set several new records.

There's also entirely new atmospheric phenomena: Hurricane Harvey's stalling near land and the record rainfalls and floods were previously thought to be a once in 10,000 years freak storm events, instead they could now become once in 10 years common occurrences. (Related phenomena of atmospheric rivers reaching California with much higher probability are in the cards as well.)

The effects and damages of global warming are going to get uglier every year in our lifetimes - with no end in sight at the moment.

 

[ZachF]

No way - Last December must have been the record at over 45k.

It's probably going to take a while to beat those end-of-quarter months now that "the wave" is being phased out.

 

[JRP3]

I"m having a hard time with this Netflix comparison for 2 major reasons. The first is that Netflix was disrupting an industry that was entrenched and people hated...

Like car dealers, gas stations, and oil companies? Plus, as others have mentioned, utilities.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

That's not true at all: Tesla has demonstrated significant willingness of customers who previously bought only $15k-$30 cars tops to shell out $40k+ for their dream Tesla car which car they love, love and love.

I.e. EVs as made by Tesla are expanding the revenue stream of the car market in similar ways smartphones were expanding the dumbphone market significantly.

No, both are/were new markets, and you've decided to disagree with my Netflix comparison by comparing Tesla to smartphones. I'm not going to argue about Smartphones because it's incredibly complicated, with two players with different approaches, not to mention the fact that almost all profits in the phone industry are taken by only two manufacturers.

The zero-sum comment was specifically that as a car buyer, you're either a GM customer, or a Tesla customer, or a VW customer. Most people are not going to be all 3. In the streaming world, most people have several sources of streaming, not just one.

Netflix on the other hand didn't expand the overall revenue stream but converted expensive, monopolized, obnoxiously tone deaf hard to use cable subscriptions infested with force pushed advertisements into a less expensive yet more convenient streaming service with no forced ads.

Amen to that.

Netflix is in fact a net negative for content creators (they earn less), Netflix managed to attract top content creators by granting them unprecedented artistic freedom.

I agree on the artistic freedom, but I am not sure it is always true on the revenue side. For original content it definitely isn't true, because unlike in the music industry, the revenue is direct as are the payments - budgets for streaming content is generally higher than original programming on broadcast TV. For licensed content, it's true that a creator makes less from streaming than broadcast.

So your comparison couldn't be more inaccurate: Tesla expanding the EV market is an additional advantage over the Netflix story.

I am not disputing the fact that Tesla is expanding the market (or more accurately creating a new one) my point is that the EV market specifically may not be growing fast enough to support all of the new entrants. Tesla has all the advantages, especially in batteries and motor technology. Netflix actually gained customers when there were new entrants to the streaming market, because people were more willing to dump cable as more of the content because available, and Netflix benefited from this.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

Like car dealers, gas stations, and oil companies? Plus, as others have mentioned, utilities.

Agreed, people hate those things. I don't think Tesla Service Centers (post purchase, not during purchase) are winning a lot of love either.

 

[EVNow]

Netflix on the other hand didn't expand the overall revenue stream but converted expensive, monopolized, obnoxiously tone deaf hard to use cable subscriptions infested with force pushed advertisements into a less expensive yet more convenient streaming service with no forced ads.

Netflix reduced the money studios were making. For the price of buying one DVD, I could watch dozens of movies, whenever I wanted.

The comparison would be if Tesla were selling cars for $5k.

Netflix started as an online dvd rental business. Blockbuster after a while started competing in that market. That is the stage we are in right now. People are still mostly renting from Blockbuster.

Streaming would be equivalent to robotaxis. A complete shift in technology / paradigm.

 

[Sudre]

Does anyone know how many shifts are working the S & X lines?
If they are able to produce these numbers and the number of people working the line has gone down, that could be a good thing for future profits.

 

[Fact Checking]

It's probably going to take a while to beat those end-of-quarter months now that "the wave" is being phased out.

Note that fluctuations due to changing patterns of demand will still happen as @schonelucht expected: if there's enough demand in the U.S. to absorb most of the total supply of cars then Tesla will not resist the temptation to serve the domestic market and starve other markets.

The intentionally engineered global waves like the one in Q1 will possibly be phased out, and will hopefully get reduced to the ~25% end of quarter month deliveries fluctuations that other carmakers are experiencing.

 

[-=buzz=-]

Depreciation for 3 was calculated by @Doggydogworld roughly as 500 (variable) + 1500 (fixed, allocated @ 90k/quarter). It is not that big an amount.

If some robots are not being used - they should actually be taken out of 3 depreciation, though. And as a poster suggested above, could be used for Y (or even Shanghai).

The tear-down estimates of $18k material + $10k labor were given for a production rate of 10k per week.

If the head count to produce 10k once everything is running smooth is the same as currently required for 5k then every model 3 is carrying $10k of labour overhead.
This gets us nicely into the margin calculation based $38k range

Now if they increase production to 7k/wk this drops down to ~4'300 dollars! That's a 10% margin plus!

Of course that's the best case scenario, worst case being linear increase in workforce for linear production increase. The truth will be somewhere in between.

 

[JRP3]

Agreed, people hate those things. I don't think Tesla Service Centers (post purchase, not during purchase) are winning a lot of love either.

It seems highly dependent on individual cases. Many report a great service experience, but of course negative experiences get more amplification.

 

[shrspeedblade]

Agreed, people hate those things. I don't think Tesla Service Centers (post purchase, not during purchase) are winning a lot of love either.

At least based on my experience and that of many others the Mobile Service Technicians are doing pretty well!

Note that fluctuations due to changing patterns of demand will still happen as @schonelucht expected: if there's enough demand in the U.S. to absorb most of the total supply of cars then Tesla will not resist the temptation to serve the domestic market and starve other markets.

The intentionally engineered global waves like the one in Q1 will possibly be phased out, and will hopefully get reduced to the ~25% end of quarter month deliveries fluctuations that other carmakers are experiencing.

If Tesla continues to act as they have, based on the upcoming U.S. tax credit halving again at the end of June, I fully expect them to prioritize U.S. deliveries.

 

[Tslynk67]

Is this a joke?

Nope - there's nobody alive smart enough to make up stuff as stupid as this (as in the flip-flopping, not the "latest" note content)