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

[RoadsterPlease]

Pre-market looking good: 234,99 +4,93 (2,14 %)

 

[Cattledog]

Let's wait until the battery event. If Musk is talking about getting into the mining business they must have machines in the works that can produce very high quantities of cells.

Would be awesome for the Boring Company's machines to become highly targeted mineral extractors.

 

[Tslynk67]

GF cell production bottleneck resolution....Secured

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

I'm particularly fond of the word "efficiency" here:

Guillen’s message also said that the company “hit new records in all production lines for output and efficiency” in the most recent quarter, both in Fremont and in Nevada, and that “quality is also reaching record highs.”

 

[UncaNed]

I wish to get ER date tomorrow

Perhaps there's a singles site for Tesla owners you could try?

 

[jerry33]

Dry powder arrived today. Come on you shorts.

 

[Tslynk67]

So to summarise:

• Increasing Fremont production
• GF1 automation = increased cell/pack output
• GF3 coming together, setting records for line installations
• Quality and efficiency at all time highs
• Record production and deliveries 19Q2
• Hiring new production line staff
  
• Q2 Earnings Reporting coming soon

I'm with @anthonyj - prepare to test $200!!!

 

[Tslynk67]

Hey @Wooloomooloo - did you see CHAdeMO adapter is now available in the US?

Warning, Electrek link!! Tesla finally makes CHAdeMO adapter compatible with Model 3, giving access to 3rd party charging networks - Electrek

 

[dc_h]

So... 1000 model 3's / day + 200 S/X a day = 1200 /day run rate.
1200 * 7 * 52 = 437K or 430k counting for holidays.

add 3k/week from Shanghai Giga, and we're already looking at +580k run rate by end of the year.

If they can increase Fremont production rate by another 10-20% in the next 6 months, which is likely now the leaked email was quit positive on this, we'll be entering 2020 with a run rate of 620k-650k. That's huge!

We'll need the M3 SR at 35k to help with those kinds of demand.

 

[JRP3]

Seeking Alpha article saying Tesla "lowered" the lease price, (because they didn't raise the cost to cover the $1,875 rebate reduction), which of course signals dropping demand Not going to link because it's not worth reading.

 

[dc_h]

Beyond the Fremont mystery that most of the comments are focusing on here, the following update about Shanghai is IMO just as important:

According to Guillen’s email, many parts of the assembly line in China are already in place.

“The Stamping, Body, Paint, and General Assembly lines in China are well underway and hitting records in both line design and fabrication,” the memo said.​

Perhaps the thing we should be most excited about is that we seem to have a chief operating officer managing global production. Jerome is stepping up just as Tesla is becoming a global production company and Elon could not have scaled himself up into this role. Production progress has become steadier and Elon is focusing more effort on FSD and apparently supply chain (in Brazil).

 

[NakedLong]

BTW., in reality, should this happen, I expect Tesla to actually license their FSD technology to other EV makers (but not to gascar makers). The licensing conditions will be dictated by Tesla and will mandate those cars to use the Tesla Network for robotaxi quotas, pricing and revenue sharing.

Tesla will become the Intel-Windows chip-maker-OS-maker entity of the car industry, other carmakers will become the PC makers of that era.

A number of reasons why they won't sell their FSD tech.

1) Not technically transferrable. It's designed and trained on specific hardware (cameras/NN chip/Tesla control systems). By the time you add all these systems to another automaker you are well on the way to building a Tesla. If Tesla has not been engineering a transferrable solution (which there is no reason to think they have), then the amount of work to make it transferrable is massive.... like a total redesign. This is because Tesla is following the iPhone vertical integration model, where Apple could make a much smoother UI and a less complex OS without many of the Android features, because they knew exactly the hardware it would be running on. Tesla licensing out its FSD is a bit like Apple licensing out iOS... never going to happen.

2) No economic incentive. I am assuming Tesla is going to reach FSD first and there will be at least 2-3 years before anyone else gets FSD, by which time Tesla will be even further ahead.* This is a winner takes all tech, as ARK keeps saying. If several players have similar offerings at the same time then Tesla might want to have OEMs on their system/platform, but considering the lead Tesla has, there will be no competition in the FSD space for Tesla. When Tesla gets FSD a long time before anyone else this is basically a huge amount of money to fund expansion. Why would they want to give this money to other less efficient OEMs when keeping it themselves will be better for their mission and bottom line?

3) Other OEMs are Tesla's enemy. Other OEMs are trying to hold Tesla back with their dealer networks, bashing of Tesla, lobbying of governments against EVs, etc. Even if other OEMs do eventually come around to building only EVs then they will still be competition to Tesla in that they are competing for customers. And if for some reason licensing FSD was better for Tesla's mission of sustainable energy but worse for the bottom line, then I would harbour some scepticism about Tesla's actions (especially after Elon eventually leaves). In reality though I just expect keeping the FSD in house at Tesla to be better for the mission and the bottom line.**

* When I say 2-3 years ahead as many people do with FSD/batteries/OTA updates etc, I think it is important to note that they are saying, if a really motivated company wanted to catch up and had the direction, coordination, money and execution, that in 2-3 years they could potentially be where Tesla is today. But everyone in the market seems to be floundering besides Tesla, so it looks like the gap will only grow more and more. I seriously doubt the tech is reverse engineer-able even, given the dynamic nature of the tech and the amount of software which goes into training but not into the car itself. This is different to the phone market. Mobile phones have a value to consumers regardless of the number of phones produced by an OEM. With FSD, the number of cars is directly related to the ability to train the FSD network, which sets a very high bar for entering the FSD space.

** Because Tesla and SpaceX are examples of mostly free market capitalism with associated competition and innovation being better for society, as opposed to pork-barrel capitalism which mostly drives the auto market. In fact, Tesla has been about to make progress in the face of headwinds in the form of oil subsidies, dealership network laws and unpriced CO2, with comparably minor tailwinds of EV subsidies and an auto loan.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Excellent, time to buy more stocks. xD

It seems fated that every time I get a little more dry powder, the stocks go up, and immediately after purchasing, they go down.

So, forecasting for the superstitious among you, I'll have purchased likely tomorrow morning, so plan for that afternoon. xD

 

[powertoold]

Increased production, new secret production, new records, more hiring, increased demand --> smoked shorts --> 420 by Christmas

 

[Xenius]

Come on you shorts.

If they get burned, I might.

 

[dhrivnak]

I have not been to any campground in my travels anywhere in the USA and not been able to charge at a campground that has power for RVs and campers. NONE. I talk to the host and there is always a handicap spot or several not in use which is very rare to have to use but when they let me use it I have to move in the rare chance all the handy cap spots fill up. Oh and I don’t expect to charge for free. If you offer money they don’t see you as such a dick and have lots of spots.

Yes KOA and other commercial parks can work well. But if you want to stay in National Parks. (So far only one has had power) or state parks (Normally just 120v) then you have major challenges. The National Parks are the most scenic with state parks a close second. So we tend to stay away from the much more crowded commercial camp grounds.

 

[Krugerrand]

Let's wait until the battery event. If Musk is talking about getting into the mining business they must have machines in the works that can produce very high quantities of cells.

That part about ‘let’s wait’ is about as aspirational as it gets around here. I was hoping for at least a 24 hour period of fiction free posts, bit alas epic failure.

 

[Mike Smith]

Ihor says 41.88M shares shorted, down 288k over last week

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

 

[Pezpunk]

BTW., in reality, should this happen, I expect Tesla to actually license their FSD technology to other EV makers (but not to gascar makers). The licensing conditions will be dictated by Tesla and will mandate those cars to use the Tesla Network for robotaxi quotas, pricing and revenue sharing.

that would be great, and it makes sense to me. but then, i thought it was a no-brainer that Tesla would eventually be leveraging their massive supercharger network for other EVs as well, but that hasn't materialized at all. In fact, the last time Elon was asked about it, he said only one company (a small shipping firm in NY iirc) had ever contacted them about using it. I think there's resistance on both sides -- Tesla is not sure whether they want to risk their competitive advantage, and traditional automakers are too proud and too bitter to give Tesla the legitimacy of licensing their tech.

 

[Pezpunk]

1) Not technically transferrable. It's designed and trained on specific hardware (cameras/NN chip/Tesla control systems). By the time you add all these systems to another automaker you are well on the way to building a Tesla.

yeah, that's going to be the thing preventing Tesla from licensing its neural net -- it's probably going to require practically identical hardware, from cameras to processors. other companies would basically have to be building Teslas.

And Tesla surely wouldn't want the headache of wrestling with other automakers about fault and blame and liability when another automaker's car outfitted with Tesla's system malfunctions, leading to an accident. ugh.

 

[FrankSG]

Ihor says 41.88M shares shorted, down 288k over last week

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

Interactive Brokers tells me the borrow rate is .81%, not .90%...

Even at the start of the day I believe it was at .84%, so it's not due to being up a couple percent today.