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

[Prunesquallor]

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Yeah! This is fun. What would the "unexpected technologies" be?

Musk wants to sell EVs. To everyone. He has to get the prices down to where they are economically and technically superior to most ICE vehicles. What's holding him up?

Battery costs/performance - but that’s in the "expected" category.
FSD - same thing.

How about paint? It sound like that is a major pain. How about some kind of metachrosistic material that is applied to the body, and can be subsequently "programmed" for the desired color, maybe even at the gallery or by delivery personnel. (I’m currently taking a scuba vacation in the Caribbean, and the color changes that a flounder can make are truly astounding).

Tires. EVs need low rolling resistance. I don’t know enough to make an educated engineering guess, but new materials, designs and tread patterns combined with steering and braking algorithms?

In-cabin active noise suppression? (Better than anyone else's, of course)

Variable polarizing windows?

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Falcon 9 is an aluminum-lithium alloy and friction stir welded. Starship and Super Heavy are electrically welded (likely MIG) stainless.


I'm going to be negative for a moment. Tugs of war are mostly pointless. If you assume the same grip for both tires, AWD, and available power to spin said tires, then the heaver vehicle should always win. (With some variance for traction control and weight distribution)

So just add a note saying that both vehicles were loaded up with enough ballast to equalize the normal force for all the nit-pickers. The tug-of-war is a simple visualization that demonstrates overwhelming power in a way that is indisputable. It's a 3-second way to say, "STFU, I'm stronger".

 

[AudubonB]

tick Tick TICK

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SEVEN +/- more hours, everyone.... This is not a joke.

 

[BornToFly]

SEVEN +/- more hours, everyone.... This is not a joke.

Can't really talk about investing this week without mentioning Cybertruck....

 

[EVNow]

Can't really talk about investing this week without mentioning Cybertruck....

Yes - I think technical truck talk should be out. Not things related to market - like reservation numbers

 

[Singer3000]

Is there any further info at all on the quad bike? I couldn’t see it mentioned on Tesla dot com anywhere still.

Any rough ideas on retail price and volumes? The only people that buy these things in the UK are farmers.

 

[Foghat]

Look Elon’s tug o war video tweet and Hans’ throwing the steel ball pre presentation video tweet have a combined 8 million views and 450k likes already.

I’m seeing young twitter going crazy over the truck too.

Elon dominates net marketing and its not even close.

 

[Dagger]

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[dqd88]

You're probably right, @dqd88 . But Tesla's would be thrilled to capture 10% of the NA pickup market. That's a reasonable target since there will be nothing else like it. Re my other post about drag night in Alabama, I'm imagining one guy shows up in a Cybertruck, of course everyone comes over to check it out because it's more sensational than all the other pimped-out rides, and then he blows every other truck away at the drag strip. You KNOW that'll convince some of his friends to get one. But we won't know for sure until it goes into production.

I feel that if Elon tweaked the design just a bit, change a couple of the angles (for ex, flatten the top a bit instead of a harsh peak), that it would still have the bold statement but be more accepted by a much bigger audience.

 

[BornToFly]

The "it's not street legal" articles have started on Yahoo finance.... I replied in the comments section:

What? You mean Elon was too busy landing rockets from space onto a tiny boat in the ocean to remember to make crumple zones and put mirrors on! Crap! Somebody send him a reminder! His perfect streak of making cars with perfect 5 star safety ratings has just ended! Thank God the shorts on the internet who don't know a thing about engineering are here to help Elon!

 

[ZsoZso]

Before the weekend Cybertruck comments in this thread is over, I just want to say that I love the truck just as designed, hope they don’t make any major changes to how it looks, and believe demand will be through the roof after the early adopters get out on the road with it.

I love it! Great work by Elon, Franz, and team!

As an investor, I just hope they did the math correctly on pricing so they still make money, but I believe they did.

Finally, somebody gets it! All those haters out there about the "ugly" shape do not understand the math, that the shape is actually derived from the Model S shape:

 

[Yuri_G]

Look Elon’s tug o war video tweet and Hans’ throwing the steel ball pre presentation video tweet have a combined 8 million views and 450k likes already.

I’m seeing young twitter going crazy over the truck too.

Elon dominates net marketing and its not even close.

Is Hans Franz's nickname or something?

 

[EVNow]

Look Elon’s tug o war video tweet and Hans’ throwing the steel ball pre presentation video tweet have a combined 8 million views and 450k likes already.

I’m seeing young twitter going crazy over the truck too.

Elon dominates net marketing and its not even close.

CyberTruck has definitely gone viral. Its being used both a positive and a negative symbol /meme.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Is there any further info at all on the quad bike? I couldn’t see it mentioned on Tesla dot com anywhere still.

Any rough ideas on retail price and volumes? The only people that buy these things in the UK are farmers.

Nothing like price, but it’s going to be an option for the truck. Presumably, also available at some point after release on the “shop” section of the site.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

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Elon Musk on Twitter

Called it.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Is Hans Franz's nickname or something?

Either way, he’s here to pump you up.

 

[mongo]

So just add a note saying that both vehicles were loaded up with enough ballast to equalize the normal force for all the nit-pickers. The tug-of-war is a simple visualization that demonstrates overwhelming power in a way that is indisputable. It's a 3-second way to say, "STFU, I'm stronger".

Even then, what are you showing? Either the powertrain output exceeds tire traction or it doesn't.

For equally matched trucks, the winner is the one with better traction control and first mover advantage. This should is Tesla due to direct electric drive vs ICE +automatic, but it still doesn't show anything power wise.

Example: truck 1's driver stands on the brakes. Braking force is usually greater than tire traction so the only way for truck 2 to move truck 1 is if it has greater traction ( mass or tire imbalance) or it gets a running start so that the snap of the tie line plus conservation of momentum breaks truck 1 free. Once the tires lose traction, or you start moving, it's over.

 

[Singer3000]

Nothing like price, but it’s going to be an option for the truck. Presumably, also available at some point after release on the “shop” section of the site.

I found online there’s 1.5 million ATVs in the US with about circa 150k sold per year. $10k seems a realistic retail price.

At 25% gross margin and 50k sales that’s about $125m of annual profit. Maybe they can up-sell to 100k units if the Cyber Truck slams it on annual demand. So $250m annual profit.

A “why not?” sort of product then. Version 1 is headed to the moon one suspects.

It all feels a lot like cross fertilisation of R&D between Musk Inc companies. Tesla didn’t need to spend R&D on iterating the steel alloy. And SpaceX gets an off the shelf lunar (+ Martian) vehicle. Two of them in fact.

 

[powertoold]

Called it.

Still doesn't make sense why the passenger window also broke

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Even then, what are you showing? Either the powertrain output exceeds tire traction or it doesn't.

For equally matched trucks, the winner is the one with better traction control and first mover advantage. This should is Tesla due to direct electric drive vs ICE +automatic, but it still doesn't show anything power wise.

Example: truck 1's driver stands on the brakes. Braking force is usually greater than tire traction so the only way for truck 2 to move truck 1 is if it has greater traction ( mass or tire imbalance) or it gets a running start so that the snap of the tie line plus conservation of momentum breaks truck 1 free. Once the tires lose traction, or you start moving, it's over.

If you watch carefully, the Cybertruck stops briefly after pulling the rope tight(and the F150 stops at this point as well). After that, they both start going at, as far as I can tell, the same time.