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

[StealthP3D]

Maybe the messaging should be ”the NHTSA and automakers don't want you to know that Tesla scored the highest in the composite safety rating because that is just unfair advertising.“

"NHTSA doesn't want us to tell you that the Model 3 was the least likely to cause injury in a crash so we're not going to say that but here is a link to the actual detailed test results. We think we know which car you would want your family in if a drunk driver was going to ram you at 60 mph."

Problem solved!

 

[Singuy]

Just stunning how far Tesla Customer Service has fallen; I am in shock that they are becoming penny-wise and pound-foolish in an effort to save cash, when Elon SURELY must know better.

This is jaw-droppingly stupid.

ELON: FIX CUSTOMER SERVICE, which increases sales, which allows for a strong balance sheet!

Geesh, such idiocy.

It's such a hit or miss. That company that rents Teslas on youtube had their batteries good willed to him even though it was way beyond the warranty period, and here they give this guy such a hard time on a tire.

 

[Antares Nebula]

Only someone who thinks the rules don't apply to them.

It's not about the rules. It's about simple business and economics. Forget trying to reward the person for past deeds. The question is: is the potential lost future business from this person and any further referrals really worth the cost of a tire? Of course not. It wasn't a flagrant violation. Tesla (or the customer service person) should take it on good faith that the person, with his given history, was being genuine in his claim about the tire.

I'm really surprised that escalation to the store mgr level did not fix this. Either this store mgr is really incompetent or senior Tesla mgmt must really be putting their foot down. But even in the latter case, surely any competent mgr can see that the cost of a tire is not worth lost business from this loyal and highly profitable customer.

 

[Antares Nebula]

My suggestion regarding the tire: tweet Elon. If that doesn't work, tweet God himself:

God (@TheTweetOfGod) | Twitter

But, I don't know, God may not five a f*** about some tire...

Face it, the universe is unfair and hopeless.

 

[StealthP3D]

It's not about the rules. It's about simple business and economics. Forget trying to reward the person for past deeds. The question is: is the potential lost future business from this person and any further referrals really worth the cost of a tire? Of course not. It wasn't a flagrant violation. Tesla (or the customer service person) should take it on good faith that the person, with his given history, was being genuine in his claim about the tire.

I'm really surprised that escalation to the store mgr level did not fix this. Either this store mgr is really incompetent or senior Tesla mgmt must really be putting their foot down. But even in the latter case, surely any competent mgr can see that the cost of a tire is not worth lost business from this loyal and highly profitable customer.

If someone is going to buy a competitors car because Tesla enforced their rule that scratches, dents, scuffs and tears or flats must be noted within a set number of days after delivery, then maybe Tesla doesn't need them as a customer. Personally, I wouldn't complain about damage that I didn't discover until a whole week after delivery. By the time a whole week has passed, it's MY car and I'm responsible for it. Likewise, I wouldn't bring a car in a week later for a scratch that I was sure didn't happen after delivery. A reasonable person will not be upset about a fair rule being followed.

If they are so upset they will never buy another again, maybe it's their loss more than Tesla's problem. The world is a big place. When you make the best cars in the world, you don't need to play games with your customers. Just have fair policies and follow them. People will come. You will never have 100% market share anyway.

 

[Antares Nebula]

If someone is going to buy a competitors car because Tesla enforced their rule that scratches, dents, scuffs and tears or flats must be noted within a set number of days after delivery, then maybe Tesla doesn't need them as a customer. Personally, I wouldn't complain about damage that I didn't discover until a whole week after delivery. By the time a whole week has passed, it's MY car and I'm responsible for it. Likewise, I wouldn't bring a car in a week later for a scratch that I was sure didn't happen after delivery. A reasonable person will not be upset about a fair rule being followed.

If they are so upset they will never buy another again, maybe it's their loss more than Tesla's problem. The world is a big place. When you make the best cars in the world, you don't need to play games with your customers. Just have fair policies and follow them. People will come. You will never have 100% market share anyway.

You're focusing on principles, which is missing the point. Is all about business. It's a very simple business decision. A tire is not worth 100k + lost future revenue. No logical business person would ever make that choice.

Bear in mind that I'm not saying that Tesla (or any other business) should do this for every customer. Though many other cases may also be genuine, they may not be big spenders (but sure on *principle*, one may argue that Tesla should replace all such genuine cases). But this guy clearly is a big spender, while also making numerous referrals. Forget principles. It's just plain dumb business to make him upset over the cost of a tire. Business, business, business. That's all I'm saying.

 

[StealthP3D]

You're focusing on principles, which is missing the point. Is all about business. It's a very simple business decision. A tire is not worth 100k + lost future revenue. No logical business person would ever make that choice.

I suggest this topic has played itself out and we should drop it because you are not going to get me to agree that repeat customers shouldn't have to follow the same clear and fair rules that apply to first-time customers.

 

[EVNow]

That's not how our brain works and once you come to this conclusion, your entire view of how FSD will come to pass will be turned on it's head. And it will seem obvious.

Our brain also doesn’t work like the NN. Listen to thousand brains theory.

I think the jury is still out as to whether a different NN needs to be created to reach L5.

 

[Singuy]

With all due respect, if someone risked six-figures to purchase their first Tesla back in the EARLY days, and then has butt-load of referrals and repeat buys himself, I don't care if he drove his car over a curb "just because" and bent a wheel into a pretzel--he'll get a friggin' new tire and wheel for free as a courtesy/goodwill because that's what a smart person running Tesla (say, Elon Musk?) would want me to do, REGARDLESS OF SOME STUPID RULE . . . .

I cannot believe this is a topic of discussion.

ELON: The employees at the SLC Service Center need a "come to Jesus" meeting where a 2x4 to the forehead will be used on those to stupid to think on their own.

Geesh.

Fix Tesla Customer Service.

YESTERDAY!

I don't know about that. The fact that Tesla is willing to give people a grace period is well beyond other car manufactures that doesn't cover anything cosmetic once you drive it off the lot. To be fair you also have ample time to examine the car vs being rushed out the door at the Tesla center.

So yes you can literally puncture the tired within the 24 hrs and they will fix it because apparently they don't care as long as it's in the grace period even if you caused the damage.

You just have to TELL them within the 24hr and they will put it on their worklist. I told them about my paint chip and got a bunch more before going in and they fixed it all because I informed them about paint chips as a generalized thing during the first 24.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Now that everyone has gotten their (rightful) complants about service off their chest, and some even start SHOUTING, time to take it to the proper thread.

Service and communication (out of main)

 

[Fact Checking]

Our brain also doesn’t work like the NN. Listen to thousand brains theory.

I looked into the "thousand brains" theory you referenced a couple of months ago and despite the bombastic claims, I found no peer reviewed article anywhere that would actually numerically examine how good this is at doing anything...

So there's very little data supporting this theory, and it's all pushed by "Numenta"'s commercial interest (a private company selling this technology), so I'd take this with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it cannot be true, but I found no scientifically valid publications so far to evaluate it.

 

[mrmage]

I believe this mischaracterizes Tesla approach. Indeed, Tesla DID experiment with high-resolution mapping and abandoned the idea. Every time the road changes, (or somebody discards and aluminum soda can on the side of the road where the radar will see it), the map needs to change.

That means the database changes need to be propagated to an every growing fleet. And it also means that 'noise' enters the system. Who monitors for the 'Wiley Coyote' effect? (ie: when sightings report things that are unphysical, or worse deliberate deceptions).

View attachment 439012

This is a nightmare of bad data, with no straightforward way to 'winnow out the chaff', except perhaps by building the very computer vision neural net that Tesla is creating now to look at those exceptions.

So why not just move the NN to function at the car in realtime? That is exactly what Elon has decided to do. More and more leading industry experts are beginning to see the wisdom of that approach.

Tesla is not collecting billions of miles. It is collecting layers of edge cases, and sorting them by frequency of occurence. Once enough examples of a particular type of pattern have been collected to train the neural net, the fleet moves to actively selecting and reporting events that match a new set of criteria via instructions from the AI team.

This last bit is important. This way, the FSD team at Tesla can actively select for, sample, and collect the data they require to solve the next self-driving challenge. In this way, they turn what would otherwise be an unmanagable, exponential deluge of data into a usable, linear progression of real-world examples which they can selectively incorporate into training the NN.

This is why Tesla's approach will succeed in delivering FSD, and why the 'Hi-Rez' mapping approach will fail.

Cheers!

We can debate whether Tesla *may* do better someday. I certainly hope so. But it certainly does not today.

We can debate whether Waymo’s market is more limited. That may be true. But all driving services are regional, so that may not matter. Waymo will serve areas where it can.

But I fail to see how anyone can say that Waymo’s approach won’t work when it is already running a driverless taxi service in a portion of Phoenix today. How can it be a nightmare of any kind when it’s already working? That’s like seeing a bumblebee fly and declaring it’s not possible.

 

[Chenkers]

Back on topic: does anyone know the size of the AU and NZ markets for Tesla vs. other premium vehicles? Will a lot of sales in that market move the TSLA stock price needle?

I ask as it is EXTREMELY rare that a reviewer, who has access to dozens of brand new cars a year (all paid for and insured by others), drops six-figures to buy his own personal Tesla Model 3, BUT IT SPEAKS VOLUMES as to just how good the car really is:

The press cars are doing the rounds here with some generally positive reviews. First customer deliveries are expected in the next few weeks. But it's highly unlikely the AU/NZ will impact the stock price. Initial orders are expected to be in the low thousands, easily swallowed by a week of production. Plus our exchange rate to the $US just hit a 10 year low, which won't help if Tesla has to raise local pricing.

 

[dc_h]

Sorry OT, but the stock seems to be up 2.67 premarket. Normal random pricing, or news?

Correction it’s up .35. Looking at bad source.

 

[ev-enthusiast]

Amazing to see TSLA trading level these days knowing where SP was only half a year ago.

 

[jerry33]

For your viewing consideration, ugly and not so ugly airfoils:

The 13 all-time ugliest airplanes

Top 25 Most Beautiful Airplanes

Some of the ugly ones looked pretty cool, and some of the beautiful ones, not so much.

 

[jerry33]

I think it just has to do with the employee. Not all employees are created equally. Not all know how to make the ‘right’ decision based on a full understanding of all information.

You need an employee that proactively looks up a customer’s history and makes logical, reasonable and discerning decisions. And has the authority to follow through.

It's the "authority to follow through" that's the tricky part. Many service issues (of the type being discussed) are due to inexperience or because the employee has been told to follow the rules or else (don't know how Tesla trains their employees in this regard). I've personally had no issues of this type. The only issue has been the horrid new phone tree, which was actually a bit better the last time I called (last week).

 

[Navin]

Vladimir Grinshpun on Twitter

Sigh.

 

[jerry33]

My wifes LR RWD Model 3 lost one pound of air per week from the right front tire. I added a couple pounds every two weeks and kept looking for a small puncture but none could be found. Eventually, I rotated it to the back and it only lost one pound every month. Now it doesn't lose any.

This most likely occurred because the tire wasn't seated properly. Rotating the tire changed the forces in the bead area stopping the air loss. It will be interesting to see if a later rotation allows the air loss to happen or if the tire became properly seated (or at least properly enough so that the air loss stopped). Also check for odd wear as an improperly seated tire often causes balance and wear problems.

 

[dc_h]

Amazing to see TSLA trading level these days knowing where SP was only half a year ago.

And with much better news, production and upcoming announcements.
And thoughts on margins this quarter? Q2 margins improved, organically, by about 200 basis points. If they repeat that, they save 100 to 150 million. If pollution credits return to normal that’s another 200 million. They are not likely to further reduce inventory, so free cash flow would be q2 plus 100 million + 200 million -300 million or again about 600 million. Any expected other offsets? I would think 5.5 billion in the bank would be seen as positive by Wall Street.
Assumptions deliveries ~100,000 to 105,000. Energy about the same maybe up 100 million, hope to be wrong and see energy pass 500 million.