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

[M3Rider]

I'm don't understand why Elon is still doing the whole gimmicky, way-out there features like bullet-proof glass. Tesla has clearly shown that they have the best electric drive train (including software) and assisted driving technology - with each improving constantly. Tesla does not need one-off technologies like falcon wing doors, bio-defense mode, or bullet proof glass any more to bring attention to their vehicles. They can make normal vehicles that simply feature exactly what Tesla does best and they will sell all they can make for the next 10, 20 years or more (if the other manufacturers can ever catch up).

Why waste time and resources on bullet proof glass? No one (ok, maybe 5 people) will say, "I don't want one....wait, it has bullet proof glass? I want one."

Tesla could put their drive train and AP in a wooden box square truck and sell them. People love Tesla vehicles because they are AWESOME to drive (and let drive). We don't need all the fancy - we just need to build factories and build as many NORMAL vehicles as possible. Build battery factories, not bullet proof glass.

Honestly, I don't know if to take you seriously anymore or you're just trolling?

Tesla has so many moats by now- software, engineering to the extreme, infrastructure...

Why do this when you can do only one of these things or none and sell the resulting Etrons or Ipaces?

And who is getting excited about those? What moats do they have that prevent anybody else from taking their market?

Tesla's trademark by now is excellence in everything they do and the speed at which they are innovating.

Take the bullet proof glass... Was it Mad Max movie where acid rain was dropping on his futuristic car? Well, acid rain is not yet here, but how about HAIL?

It's a bitch here in CO, one of my cars has hail marks on it and I get stressed sometimes whenever weather looks severe and keep googling if there's a chance of hail and if I should stay indoors and hide my model 3.

What if truck doesn't care about golf ball sized hail due to armored shell and bullet proof glass?
That is a BAD ASS to drive through the hail and not care.

Now, show me the competition at this price point able to not only give me the same range, but also protect my car from hail.

 

[lascavarian]

I would definitely prefer an 8’ bed, but I can just leave the tailgate down for those 2x4s, plywood, etc... No biggie.

At least in my own mind, I have thought a lot about this. The efficient method (short of just paying for delivery) is to use a short (lighter) truck with good towing capacity. Then get a great trailer (for supplies and tools) that is 10' long and enclosed, tow it where you need it and lock it up as best you can. Trailers are utility on steroids. Otherwise there are inefficiencies.

A friend bought a large and long bed truck. Everywhere he went he took everything with him -- the long bed, tools, materials, large fuel tanks etc. It was hard to park and noisy and cost $100 to fill the tanks. One day he went to the box store and forgot to lock something and had every power tool he owned stolen. Agreed, there are various ways to look at this (trailers get stolen too) but there are some compelling reasons that negate the need for a longer truck.

For years I worked in a very large efficient factory that ran 24 hrs and they moved a great deal of 16' foot product around. They always used a small maneuverable "tow motor" (really a very small electric tractor) to tow 4 wheeled trailers of product from place to place. It was the most efficient method.

To me the trailer is the answer that works best providing there is a reasonably secure place to store it or rent when you need it.

 

[kbM3]

I think this statement is incorrect. I had the same perception at first, but of course the cover doesn't close to the bed floor at the back, but to the top of the tail-gate. So in fact the Cybertruck has 50% more covered volume than an equivalent bed-sized ICE pickup with a tonneau.

I said the covered cargo area is less than an SUV. Because it’s on a diagonal, it splits the difference between an SUV and a Pickup.

Actually this “split the difference”, Pickup converting to a quasi SUV at the touch of a button was never possible before because it ruins the rear visibility. It is only the modern advent of cameras with a cheap display substituting for a rearview mirror, that it even becomes practical. Of course, it takes Tesla to realize that this technological advantage, enables a completely new kind of vehicle

 

[ZachF]

Police Cybertruck:

 

[Andy O]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet but I expect the electric outlets will be useful too for small cooking appliances, not just work tools. Fresh coffee, anyone?

 

[printf42]

Police Cybertruck:

Tesla just produced the MEME template of the year, maybe next year too.

 

[Unpilot]

Police Cybertruck:

Any Police department not wanting this is crazy.

 

[mblakele]

The RNs can be sequential, and yet not sequential enough to infer rates from a couple of samples. I'll try to explain.

The reservation numbers may come from a single database sequence, but buffered across something like 100 front-end servers. Each server fetches something like 100 numbers at a time, as needed, and incoming requests are load-balanced. As each frontend server runs low on numbers, it gets another block of 100 or so from the database. That's a common design, because it's easier on the database, and the database is usually the performance bottleneck in these situations. I chose 100 arbitrarily: actual numbers will vary.

With a design like that, at any given moment you'll have thousands of reservation numbers buffered in those front-end servers. The range of numbers won't necessarily be contiguous: depending on various circumstances, min and max might differ by tens of thousands or more. Also we've been hearing about payment failures: those and other errors might leave holes in the sequence.

TL;DR: two reservations at the same time might get numbers that are within a few thousand, but we probably can't infer rates from any single observation. Instead we'd need many samples to observe a trend — like what we see from Alter Viggo on twitter.

 

[canoemore]

Someone on Reddit posted a photoshop of a Cyber Hot Hatch.
View attachment 480759

Holy crap. That looks so cool.

 

[dgodfrey]

So, I'm going to be discussing the Cybertruck on the radio tomorrow...

I suppose if anyone on this forum would be an ideal candidate as poster child for the Cybertruck, based on the descriptions of your conditions, it would be you. Is there a Cybertruck in the cards down the road to replace your yet to be delivered Model 3?

 

[Intl Professor]

I fully expected a fold-up lip that would be flipped up after you drop the tailgate. Assuming that the tailgate is at least 18" tall, that would equate to an 8' bed. The flipped up portion may only be 16" tall as it nests inside the 18"+ tall tailgate and act like the flip up plastic thingy on printers that keep your paper from falling off. Maybe the telescoping ramp can be multi-purpose.

I'm really dreading tomorrow when we all have to move over to the Cybertruck only thread. It will be crickets here.

Keep it about investing. All will be well, eyes can shift focus, soon it will be automatic. How much in this post is about investing yet even I who normally cares less about such details of design might gander where posts like this will be? Otherwise I would miss the post about magnetic wipers which is a cool innovation and effective (I dunno) only on flat windshields, another sword in Ford's back.

 

[jerry33]

Those pesky licenses plates though.

Put the license plate on the frunk lid and it will not bounce back.

 

[Unpilot]

Keep it about investing. All will be well, eyes can shift focus, soon it will be automatic. How much in this post is about investing yet even I who normally cares less about such details of design might gander where posts like this will be? Otherwise I would miss the post about magnetic wipers which is a cool innovation and effective (I dunno) only on flat windshields, another sword in Ford's back.

Disagree just to say the sword is smack dab in the front.

Much warning was given...they chose to drag their heels.

 

[SO16]

“Hey, Charlie! Where are all the tools?”
“Uh... under the wood...”

i said frunk. Front of vehicle. That is a very large storage space.

 

[Beltsbear]

Police Cybertruck:

Tesla can remake the 'good news, bad news' ad from a decade or so ago. The first page (in a car mag of course) was, 'the good news', showing a hot dodge (I think) with low zero to 60 times. The next page was the same car decked out in police livery titled 'the bad news'.

 

[pnungesser]

i said frunk. Front of vehicle. That is a very large storage space.

Ship left for China yesterday and a new one at Pier 80 already.

 

[SO16]

At least in my own mind, I have thought a lot about this. The efficient method (short of just paying for delivery) is to use a short (lighter) truck with good towing capacity. Then get a great trailer (for supplies and tools) that is 10' long and enclosed, tow it where you need it and lock it up as best you can. Trailers are utility on steroids. Otherwise there are inefficiencies.

A friend bought a large and long bed truck. Everywhere he went he took everything with him -- the long bed, tools, materials, large fuel tanks etc. It was hard to park and noisy and cost $100 to fill the tanks. One day he went to the box store and forgot to lock something and had every power tool he owned stolen. Agreed, there are various ways to look at this (trailers get stolen too) but there are some compelling reasons that negate the need for a longer truck.

For years I worked in a very large efficient factory that ran 24 hrs and they moved a great deal of 16' foot product around. They always used a small maneuverable "tow motor" (really a very small electric tractor) to tow 4 wheeled trailers of product from place to place. It was the most efficient method.

To me the trailer is the answer that works best providing there is a reasonably secure place to store it or rent when you need it.

And if he has the CyberTruck, he’d have built in Sentry mode to catch the jerks stealing his tools.

 

[Lessmog]

<snip>
I watched the video on tesla.com the next morning and it started growing on me.

Then I started thinking about the price. For the same $40k, why would I chose the SR+ model 3 vs. the base model Cybertruck? The truck has more interior room, more functionality (if needed), the only difference is the 3 will be more efficient with energy. Then I started thinking that the Cybertruck could easily replace the needs that our Pilot fulfills as our family car (with 2-3 large dogs) and we could upgrade my wife when the lease expires in 2022.

Heheh. This reminds me of an old skit on Svenska Ord with the late inimitable comedian / actor Gösta Ekman:
"Jag leasar min bil. Jag hyr min Lisa." (I lease my car. I rent my Lisa.) Quite the new thing in those days.

 

[elasalle]

So can Fremont make 105K cars without any production from GF3 ...?

 

[jerry33]

Someone make this please.