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

[ClimateOptimst]

I used to read in newspapers, magazines and blogs about the great stock buying opportunities many of us missed in the past. What if you had bought Dell when it was very low in the nineties? Or Amazon when Bezos was still struggling? Or Netflix when hardly anyone had heard about it just ten years ago.

The journalists were always writing how wealthy you would have been now if you had bought $1000 worth of stock, or a multimillionaire if you had bet $10,000 on the stock at that time.

Like many readers I fantasized about going back in time and making the right investment decisions, and to hold for at least ten years. Although without today’s knowledge we probably still wouldn’t have made those investment decisions.

But it is no longer necessary to go back in time. We in this thread are in a unique position to look into the future and see what is going to happen, to see what many others are not yet seeing. We see a man who will be the first to have started two trillion dollar companies, who will become the richest and most succesful man on earth, and to whom the history books of the future will dedicate whole chapters because of his vision and achievements.

And one of those companies is publicly traded, giving each of us a unique opportunity to be part of something historical, but at the same time make us very well off.

We are in a unique position to see through the haze of the FUD and to see that a company which has already become 10 times more valuable since it went public, is still an undiscovered gem. And that it will become the leading car, self driving, battery and energy company in the world, with a value at least 20 times higher than it is now, and likely even more.

We are the ones who this time are not too late to make the right investment decision.

Disclosure: long TSLA.

Amen

 

[brian45011]

Jack joins the fight against FUD (at 1.5 speed)

Those fond of watching paint dry are sure to savor a nearly 2-hour repetitive, ponderous infomercial promoting EVTV's re-purposed batteries from wrecked Teslas (why are so many Teslas involved in accidents totaled by insurers rather than repaired?).

Jack rails against big utilities using grid-tied residential solar as peakers while advocating using the grid connection as a battery. Just cut the cord! Then both problems go away.

There are no free lunches in the production nor consumption of energy, regardless of the technology deployed. As Jack preaches near the end, the "manipulation" of energy over the last century and a half has greatly improved the quality of life and resulted in a population explosion. It's now all about exploiting regulatory lag and the incompetence of big governments' central planning.

 

[Congo Line]

Just canceled my NY Times subscription. Told the customer agent that if this is representative of their journalistic quality, I can't trust what I read on the site. Which is true.

 

[Intl Professor]

Who repairs the repair bots?

The same guardian who maintains the guardians.

 

[1101011]

Average is a poor statistic.

In the small daycare my kid goes to, there are 12 kids. 2 of them have Model X, 4 Model 3, 1 Leaf, 1 i3 - so 8/12 have EVs

Lucky kids! (Thoughtful parents.)

 

[MP3Mike]

Jack rails against big utilities using grid-tied residential solar as peakers while advocating using the grid connection as a battery. Just cut the cord! Then both problems go away.

No he didn't advocate for using the grid as a battery, he says not to. He advocates to keep your grid connection for two reasons: 1) You will likely need it occasionally and 2) It is required by law in most places.

 

[Driver Dave]

Update on NYT article. I've been in touch with the reporter and he's agreed to chat with me on the phone. It's a constructive opportunity to discuss what I view are the shortcomings in the article and that it does not do a good job of informing the public of the current situation with EVs. We'll see how it goes.

My mom just said “NY Times said electric cars aren’t good”

Then me having to explain that reporter ignored Teslas and Teslas are good and I never spend that much time at superchargers because there are so many of them now and then explaining how I never even public charge because you just charge at home and you have more than enough miles for daily use and you don’t have any oil changes or mufflers and you don’t have to deal with a dealer.

Now she wants a model 3.

NY Times needs to up their EV reporting game.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Wasn't the whole point of Tesloop in 2015 shuttling people between LA and Vegas in Teslas?

They started out LA to Vegas but I think that was a money loser, even with free charging. They switched to a shuttle-like service in the LA-Orange-Palm Springs region until shutting that down last fall. They blamed some CA regulation that only let them carry 3 passengers instead of 4, but it doesn't seem they carried four often enough to make that much of a difference. They've sense tried to launch a car management app or something.

 

[jerry33]

Those fond of watching paint dry are sure to savor a nearly 2-hour repetitive, ponderous infomercial promoting EVTV's re-purposed batteries from wrecked Teslas (why are so many Teslas involved in accidents totaled by insurers rather than repaired?).

I believe this to be true for all high end cars. Insurance companies don't repair if the repair cost is more than a certain percentage of the value. So when you have the 40% depreciation after delivery, plus whatever extra depreciation from how long it's been in service, and then the repair cost. It's much easier to totally a Tesla, Mercedes, or BMW than it is a Toyota.

 

[traxila]

NY Times needs to up their EV reporting game.

The yellow rag known as The NY Times knows exactly what it is doing with its EV reporting game.

It is sad that progressives everywhere continue to hang their hat on this duplicitous publication. Don’t forget to thank them for the Iraq war.

 

[Fact Checking]

There are no free lunches in the production nor consumption of energy, regardless of the technology deployed.

With the notable exception of the thermonuclear reactor 150 million km away, which is sending us 4-5 kWh of energy per square meter every day, on average, at U.S. latitudes, free of charge?

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

They started out LA to Vegas but I think that was a money loser, even with free charging. They switched to a shuttle-like service in the LA-Orange-Palm Springs region until shutting that down last fall. They blamed some CA regulation that only let them carry 3 passengers instead of 4, but it doesn't seem they carried four often enough to make that much of a difference. They've sense tried to launch a car management app or something.

Seems like California’s regulatory regime made things difficult on multiple fronts. Said they’ll re-start the service when/if those hurdles are cleared.

Tesloop Rethinks Shuttle Service, Goes For Carmiq And Blockchain Instead

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Jack rails against big utilities using grid-tied residential solar as peakers while advocating using the grid connection as a battery. Just cut the cord! Then both problems go away.

Cut what cord? Jack owns that grid, he can do with it what he pleases.

What's so comforting about utilities that makes a certain segment of the population cling to them like a warm blanket?

Utilities were given a job a d guaranteed profit. They pushed it waaaaay too far and will all now go bankrupt. Who cares? They did it to themselves.

We'll get someone else to run line and balance load.

 

[Causalien]

Not sure if I am the only one, but I am more excited about fallout shelter coming to my model3 than any new feature.

Love the idea of little persistent elves living in my car. It'd be great if they can interact with the car somehow. Say if you get dogmeat in the shelter, it can interact with your dogs in dog mode.

 

[Mike Smith]

I wanted to test whether Seeking Alpha will actually remove one of their many false Tesla articles if I point out the inaccuracies to them, so I picked one and emailed them the following. Let's see if they remove it.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4271538-tesla-may-need-heavy-fleet-sales-meet-q2-guidance

The author states:

"Recently, Business Insider published leaked Tesla's production numbers. Business Insider says that weeks after CEO Elon Musk communicated in his internal email that the Company needs to produce 1,000 Model 3s per day, the Company has reached that milestone only once so far and has been averaging about 700 Model 3 cars per day."

There are two false claims here.

1) Business insider didn't publish the leaked information. They only reported that they saw it.

2) The leaked information didn't give Model 3 production numbers - it only showed the production rate of one part of production - they don't say which, but it may have been battery production for instance. They may have simply had batteries stockpiled and didn't need to make as many during this period. Business Insider explains this themselves, and clearly states that they don't actually know the production rate:

"Daily output rates for one part of the production process do not necessarily correspond with final production numbers on a given day because vehicles must go through other steps that may operate at different speeds."
Here is the article the author refers and links to :

Leaked documents suggest Tesla has not met a Model 3 production goal set by Elon Musk in recent weeks

Update:

I sent them the email at 2:00 pm yesterday. They replied at 2:06 pm saying they would look into it.

I've heard nothing since then and the article is still up and unchanged. It's been a full day, so most people who were going to read the article have read it by now. These were serious, proven false claims made by the author about Tesla's production rate.

 

[Alphacrux]

Seems like California’s regulatory regime made things difficult on multiple fronts. Said they’ll re-start the service when/if those hurdles are cleared.

Tesloop Rethinks Shuttle Service, Goes For Carmiq And Blockchain Instead

They were certainly adding to the congestion at the San Diego Supercharger.

 

[neroden]

Won’t save many of them, in the long run. With EVs, going to a fueling stop changes from a ~twice-a-month thing to a ~twice-a-year thing. Even with the same number of cars on the road, it’ll be hard to survive the ~92% drop in utilization, not including drop in demand due to fixed dedicated charging spots like Superchargers.

Well, it depends on what sort of gas station it is -- where it's located.

Already, the profit margin on gas averages under 2% -- many gas stations actually lose money on gasoline. It just brings people into the convenience stores. Now, convenience stores aren't going anywhere -- they remain popular. The people who rush in, pay for gas, and leave are an annoyance to convenience store owners. They want people who will plug in, and come buy a hamburger or a sandwich, and eat it. On my trip back from Toledo with my new used Tesla, I stopped at a Sheetz and they got business from me -- good business. (And at a Cracker Barrel, and at a Meijer's, both of which ended up with me walking off with purchases.)

The key thing is location. Along a road trip route like an expressway, the chargers are an attractant which will bring business into their convenience store rather than someone else's who doesn't have chargers. Their business was already coming from road-trippers, and it still will.

However, gas stations which aren't located at expressway exits or on other road trip routes have a bigger problem. Many of these urban or suburban stations depended on the "commuter" traffic buying a coffee or a banana. The commuter traffic has no reason to stop to charge -- they charged at home, or at work. Other convenience stores or coffee shops without gas pumps or chargers may become more attractive. The urban ones are already closing and the suburban ones will follow.

 

[neroden]

Don’t forget the region by region delays. Stand in one place and the drop off will be dramatic. But globally it won’t seem that sudden, because a place like Australia is half a decade behind Norway on this S curve.

Absolutely. Because the oil market is global, the effect on the oil price will be based on the global numbers. Individual car manufacturers who are geographically concentrated in their sales may get hit extra-hard extra-early.

I also anticipate ride hailing apps that ONLY summon electrics. We know that people hate going back to ICE once they have experienced electric drive. Given a choice of apps, I can’t see other apps getting a look in. How embarrassing, to hail a car and put your uptown date into a car with a tailpipe... like serving meat to a vegan.

I already want this.

Believe it or not, part of the reason I just bought a second Tesla is that when I have friends visit, typically they have to rent a car, and I don't want them renting an ICE car, so I now have a real car I can lend them...

 

[Prunesquallor]

The same guardian who maintains the guardians.

...and watches the Watchmen.

 

[neroden]

Proof that renewables are really starting to put the squeeze on conventional electricity generation. Here's a modern CCGT plant that was built just 10 years ago that's slated to shut down.

https://finance-yahoo-com.cdn.amppr...ral-electric-scrap-california-power-204042080

Better link:

General Electric to scrap California power plant 20 years early - Reuters