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

[Carl Raymond]

My question is where Tesla got those plates? And how many they have?

Wouldn’t plate acquisition be the buyer’s responsibility? The plates are never owned by Tesla. Tesla sell cars. Owners register cars to allow their purchase legal access to roads.

 

[MP3Mike]

Wouldn’t plate acquisition be the buyer’s responsibility? The plates are never owned by Tesla. Tesla sell cars. Owners register cars to allow their purchase legal access to roads.

But who registers a leased vehicle? (The owner is the lessor, which could be Tesla.)

 

[mrdoubleb]

If Canada is 10,000 in Q2 N America (cause it’s not just USA) would Only need 19,000 in the middle country in N America.

Canada had 10k electric vehicle sales in Q1. Not Tesla sales, total EV sales. Tesla's share was ~1600.

 

[Carl Raymond]

But who registers a leased vehicle? (The owner is the lessor, which could be Tesla.)

In Australia, pretty sure the lessees name is on the rego papers.

 

[Remus]

Wouldn’t plate acquisition be the buyer’s responsibility? The plates are never owned by Tesla. Tesla sell cars. Owners register cars to allow their purchase legal access to roads.

The government is using the plates quota to control the number of cars in the city, which is super stupid but anyway.

It seems to me that people are getting excited as Tesla can get around the restrictions and help the new owners getting the plates. I want to know how. And how many

 

[Tslynk67]

I honestly think $tsla will never touch 180 ever again.

$1180, $1800, $2180, $3180, $4180...

 

[Fact Checking]

Somebody needs to spell this out explicitly here, so here's a helpful tweet:

Ming Zhao‏ @mingcalls 4h4 hours ago

Follow-up: EVs to get a plate in Beijing is not done by lottery drawing. It is by queueing as each yr has quota (60k). Right now 420k applicants in queue, meaning already 2026 for new applicant. $tsla lease with a free plate is magical. @ValueAnalyst1 @vincent13031925
Here's the situaltion for EVs in Beijing right now:

• max. 60K new licence plates issued per year
• current backlog (queue) is 420K applications
• that means a 7 yr wait for a new plate

Here's the deal new Tesla drivers get in Beijing right now:

• 0% interest on a 3-yr lease
• free EV plate with every lease (skip the queue)
  
• ICE cars can only drive on alternate days

Now I ask you, how is this not front page news on WSJ/Bloomberg/NYTimes/CNBC? Oh yeah, it doesn't fit their *sugar* story...

So, I wonder how many plate max that Tesla can get for Beijing? It sounds like they could have like 50% market share easily. That'd be a whole month of SR+ production at Fremont just for Beijing. Of course the demand will only increase in 2020 when GF3/Shanghai starts producing SR+ vehicles.

Some additional numbers to estimate addressable market:

• 2019 Beijing population is estimated to be 21.7m or about ~7.2m households.
  
• Beijing population growth is about 1.5% per year, or +300k people, +100k households.
  
• There are around 5 million passenger cars registered in Beijing, one per roughly 70% of households, but natural growth was about +10% more cars every year until very recently when the Chinese government started cracking down on gascar pollution
  
• This means every year about ~100k new households are formed from population growth which need new cars, plus there's also the desire of about 500k people in Beijing to buy a new car, who didn't own a car and a license plate before.
• This estimate seems to be broadly consistent with the information that there's a quota of only 60k license plates for new vehicles and a 6-year waiting list of around 420k license plate registrations. (And probably a lot more demand of people who didn't bother to get on a 6 years long waiting list.)

I.e. I think it's fair to say that currently there's an addressable market of 500k-600k Beijing residents who'd like to buy a new car and don't have a license plate right now, every single year for the next few years.

Note that many won't be able to afford to buy or lease a Tesla: per capita GDP in Beijing is around $20k and leasing the least expensive LR Tesla is certainly outside the budget of many Beijing residents - but there's also a large upper middle class who can afford it.

So if these rumors are all true and there's no surprise in the small-print then I'd say sustained Tesla LR demand of 50k-100k units per year from Beijing alone is a reasonable estimate - and other big Chinese cities might follow suit, as Beijing tends to be a domestic policy trend-setter.

 

[Singuy]

The government is using the plates quota to control the number of cars in the city, which is super stupid but anyway.

It seems to me that people are getting excited as Tesla can get around the restrictions and help the new owners getting the plates. I want to know how. And how many

Has to be done. People in the Chinese culture buy cars for the wrong reasons. It's actually cultural for a guy to have a house and a car just to be an eligible bachelor in the big city, regardless if said car will be driven or not. My cousin has a car collecting dust but he has a car which passed the min requirement to get married.

 

[Artful Dodger]

There's no way FSD will be feasible in Beijing. The road is a cluster F with no one following any traffic laws. Lane markers are terrible and everyone is trying to cut each other off. Driving in Beijing is a dog eat dog world. 95% of you guys will not dare to drive in China, let alone let FSD do all the work. I only attempted to drive there once at night. No way I would touch those roads during the day.

So you need:

• eyes in the back of your head, and all over your head
• learn how traffic works by experience; not from a rule book
• forget everything you learned driving anywhere else
• oh, and never get:
  • tired
  • frustrated
  • angry

Sounds like an ideal environment for NN learning. Wanna bet Tesla creates a data center in Beijng just to train its NNs? Not low hanging fruit; plump fruit ripe for the picking.

Cheers!

 

[Singuy]

So you need:

• eyes in the back of your head, and all over your head
• learn how traffic works by experience; not from a rule book
• forget everything you learned driving anywhere else
• oh, and never get:
  • tired
  • frustrated
  • angry

Sounds like an ideal environment for NN learning. Wanna bet Tesla creates a data center in Beijng just to train its NNs? Not low hanging fruit; plump fruit ripe for the picking.

Cheers!

If a Tesla is set to never break the law(which is currently the case..considering it refuses to turn into a lane with line markers being solid despite the fact that there's a road construction ahead and it's mandatory for a car to make said turn), then it'll never succeed. In order to be a successful driver in China, every law must be broken at all times.

The only saving grace is to program the car to drive in "drivable spaces". This is how the Chinese do it, they look for drivable space and go there regardless if it's a lane, the right way, or the wrong way. If the car can fit, then it's drivable. Everyday I sat in a car that broke laws..including driving in the wrong direction in the bicycle lane! That's like breaking 2 laws at once and extremely dangerous.

 

[Fact Checking]

Has to be done. People in the Chinese culture buy cars for the wrong reasons. It's actually cultural for a guy to have a house and a car just to be an eligible bachelor in the big city, regardless if said car will be driven or not. My cousin has a car collecting dust but he has a car which passed the min requirement to get married.

Reminds me of this ad about bachelor eligibility status symbols in Chinese culture:

 

[Remus]

Some additional numbers to estimate addressable market:

• 2019 Beijing population is estimated to be 21.7m or about ~7.2m households.
  
• Beijing population growth is about 1.5% per year, or +300k people, +100k households.
  
• There are around 5 million passenger cars registered in Beijing, one per roughly 70% of households, but natural growth was about +10% more cars every year until very recently when the Chinese government started cracking down on gascar pollution
  
• This means every year about ~100k new households are formed from population growth which need new cars, plus there's also the desire of about 500k people in Beijing to buy a new car, who didn't own a car and a license plate before.
• This estimate seems to be broadly consistent with the information that there's a quota of only 60k license plates for new vehicles and a 6-year waiting list of around 420k license plate registrations. (And probably a lot more demand of people who didn't bother to get on a 6 years long waiting list.)

I.e. I think it's fair to say that currently there's an addressable market of 500k-600k Beijing residents who'd like to buy a new car and don't have a license plate right now, every single year for the next few years.

Note that many won't be able to afford to buy or lease a Tesla: per capita GDP in Beijing is around $20k and leasing the least expensive LR Tesla is certainly outside the budget of many Beijing residents - but there's also a large upper middle class who can afford it.

So if these rumors are all true and there's no surprise in the small-print then I'd say sustained Tesla LR demand of 50k-100k units per year from Beijing alone is a reasonable estimate - and other big Chinese cities might follow suit, as Beijing tends to be a domestic policy trend-setter.

All those fancy numbers are meaningless unless we know how the hell Tesla got those plates and how many they got. You can't sell a car in Beijing if the customer can't drive it. This sounds like a shady back door deal with no specific details. It smells fishy

 

[Singuy]

All those fancy numbers are meaningless unless we know how the hell Tesla got those plates and how many they got. You can't sell a car in Beijing if the customer can't drive it. This sounds like a shady back door deal with no specific details. It smells fishy

Is that a Tesla advert or a government sponsored incentive? I can't really tell.

 

[Artful Dodger]

If a Tesla is set to never break the law(which is currently the case..considering it refuses to turn into a lane with line markers being solid despite the fact that there's a road construction ahead and it's mandatory for a car to make said turn), then it'll never succeed. In order to be a successful driver in China, every law must be broken at all times.

The only saving grace is to program the car to drive in "drivable spaces". This is how the Chinese do it, they look for drivable space and go there regardless if it's a lane, the right way, or the wrong way. If the car can fit, then it's drivable. Everyday I sat in a car that broke laws..including driving in the wrong direction in the bicycle lane! That's like breaking 2 laws at once and extremely dangerous.

So, do you follow the (extensive) discussion on training Neural Networks here on this forum? The NN isn't "set to never break the law". It's presented 100s of 1000s of cases where situations were successfully resolved. The process of training creates a unique set of internal rules which best solve those cases presented to it.

The situations you've described are exactly what NN training is good at solving. You need to forget what you've learned elsewhere.

I'm no expert, but those are the basics as I understand them. It's always helpful when @Fact Checking chimes in, plus we have quite a few others knowledgable on the topic.

Cheers!

 

[dqd88]

Some additional numbers to estimate addressable market:

• 2019 Beijing population is estimated to be 21.7m or about ~7.2m households.
  
• Beijing population growth is about 1.5% per year, or +300k people, +100k households.
  
• There are around 5 million passenger cars registered in Beijing, one per roughly 70% of households, but natural growth was about +10% more cars every year until very recently when the Chinese government started cracking down on gascar pollution
  
• This means every year about ~100k new households are formed from population growth which need new cars, plus there's also the desire of about 500k people in Beijing to buy a new car, who didn't own a car and a license plate before.
• This estimate seems to be broadly consistent with the information that there's a quota of only 60k license plates for new vehicles and a 6-year waiting list of around 420k license plate registrations. (And probably a lot more demand of people who didn't bother to get on a 6 years long waiting list.)

I.e. I think it's fair to say that currently there's an addressable market of 500k-600k Beijing residents who'd like to buy a new car and don't have a license plate right now, every single year for the next few years.

Note that many won't be able to afford to buy or lease a Tesla: per capita GDP in Beijing is around $20k and leasing the least expensive LR Tesla is certainly outside the budget of many Beijing residents - but there's also a large upper middle class who can afford it.

So if these rumors are all true and there's no surprise in the small-print then I'd say sustained Tesla LR demand of 50k-100k units per year from Beijing alone is a reasonable estimate - and other big Chinese cities might follow suit, as Beijing tends to be a domestic policy trend-setter.

Do you think they will have sufficient demand in current markets or will they need to expand into say Russia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt? Which country or city do you think is next for entry?

 

[Artful Dodger]

It smells fishy

Oy! You should try Bangkok.

 

[Remus]

Has to be done. People in the Chinese culture buy cars for the wrong reasons. It's actually cultural for a guy to have a house and a car just to be an eligible bachelor in the big city, regardless if said car will be driven or not. My cousin has a car collecting dust but he has a car which passed the min requirement to get married.

Stupid people always make loudest sounds. I met my wife in Beijing and married her with only two suit cases. We brought those suit cases to the states with 400 bucks in our pockets and we are doing fine.

Consider a girl's choice, a new college grad with a job offer from Alibaba with no car, v.s. a taxi driver who owns his car, which one has a better financial future?! Don't tell me all girls in Beijing are stupid

 

[Singuy]

So, do you follow the (extensive) discussion on training Neural Networks here on this forum? The NN isn't "set to never break the law". It's presented 100s of 1000s of cases where situations were successfully resolved, then trained to create its own rules which best solve all those cases presented too it.

The situations you've described are exactly what NN training is good at solving. You need to forget what you've learned elsewhere.

I'm no expert, but those are the basics as I understand them. It's always helpful when @Fact Checking chimes in, plus we have quite a few others knowledgable on the topic.

Cheers!

Unless Tesla is okay with people getting hurt from running over bicyclists or getting into fender benders all the time..I seriously doubt a Tesla car will even move in the middle of Beijing traffic. Bicyclists are everywhere, weaving in between cars. We had people who hit our car with their bikes while we try to navigate the cluster F of whatever that was at 2 miles/hr. And the kicker is, they start yelling at you when they hit your car..blaming you for not honking...so that's what you hear in traffic btw..honking after honking after honking.

You really have to witness how everything works before making the call that NN will one day get it. It's not going to unless every car is on the same NN obeying some kind of coherent driving plan.

Ever been to magic kingdom? Imagine a Tesla driving down main street at the Magic Kingdom right after a parade. That's Beijing traffic.

 

[Singuy]

Stupid people always make loudest sounds. I met my wife in Beijing and married her with only two suit cases. We brought those suit cases to the states with 400 bucks in our pockets and we are doing fine.

Consider a girl's choice, a new college grad with a job offer from Alibaba with no car, v.s. a taxi driver who owns his car, which one has a better financial future?! Don't tell me all girls in Beijing are stupid

Culturally, the parents dictates the eligibility standards. The parents ALSO provide their only child to the best of their abilities to qualify. It's very common to see parents selling their more expensive prime located real estate and downsize, giving a portion of the sold price to their son's condo+car.

Girls know better who to bring home and get consent. Are you Chinese? Your ethnicity and location of living changes the eligibility standard. A Chinese who are going to stay in China is different than a white person who will take the girl over to the states.

 

[dqd88]

Unless Tesla is okay with people getting hurt from running over bicyclists or getting into fender benders all the time..I seriously doubt a Tesla car will even move in the middle of Beijing traffic. Bicyclists are everywhere, weaving in between cars. We had people who hit our car with their bikes while we try to navigate the cluster F of whatever that was at 2 miles/hr. And the kicker is, they start yelling at you when they hit your car..blaming you for not honking...so that's what you hear in traffic btw..honking after honking after honking.

You really have to witness how everything works before making the call that NN will one day get it. It's not going to unless every car is on the same NN obeying some kind of coherent driving plan.

Ever been to magic kingdom? Imagine a Tesla driving down main street at the Magic Kingdom right after a parade. That's Beijing traffic.

Sounds like they need some help from The Boring Co.