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

[3Victoria]

I like Boring's approach.

• Show the concept (done)
• Build a prototype tunnel to show it's doable, learn the lessons (done)
• Develop a better digging system (done, and continue to improve)
• Build a short distance commercial tunnel that can bring in revenue, understand the economics (almost done)

• Build more short distance projects
• Build longer distance tunnels with multi channels in each direction with dedicated channels for emergency.
• Build low pressure tunnels for faster speed (long term project).

Tunnel is not something new, it has been used for train, subway, water, cars, for more than a hundred yeas. The risk is not as high as people think. Smaller diameter tunnels tend to be much stronger than larger tunnels.

Agree. In the past, using smaller vehicles was limited due to propulsion systems and/or adequate control systems. Trains are mostly point to point with some stops. Each stop inconveniences all through-passengers. Smaller units with allow multiple destinations and more frequent service. It is as also possible that the vehicles can continue the journey to the ultimate destination, rather than requiring a change of vehicle. Eg robotaxis pickup you up at home, use the tunnels and deposit you at work, seamlessly. Other transport can coexist.

 

[lklundin]

In my attempt to better understand options trading, I came across this little gem:

The OptionSellers.com debacle: How to blow up your portfolio in five easy steps

- which in the context of TSLA is interesting, because it basically explains how to utterly bankrupt yourself with options using a trading scheme (I am avoiding the word "strategy" here) that Mark BS(Q) could very well be relying on. I am unsure what I will enjoy the most, changing my financial status from millionaire to multi-millionaire, or seeing Stanphyl Capital implode like OptionSellers.com.

Edit PS. My statement regarding Mark BS(Q) is motivated not by the fact that he is a Tesla anti-investor, but because of his abusive, misogynistic statements on social media directed even against a minor, Greta Thunberg.

 

[hobbes]

He even said 3,000 going to Shanghai per week:
https://ww.electrek.co/2019/11/19/nikola-motor-claims-major-battery-breakthrough/#comment-4696087710

 

[ZeApelido]

A bit OT, but heck it's Sunday...

A couple examples of starting down this path exist, at least with respect to moving goods to decongest surface streets...

The Alameda corridor is a grade separated mostly tunnel that moves containers from the LA Port up to the rail terminal East of downtown Los Angeles. A subsequent extension (Alameda Corridor East) continues this further East by grade separating the railroad tracks from surface streets.

Alameda Corridor - Wikipedia

Most port cargo is bound for the train yard in Victorville. There was once discussion of building a Maglev directly from the ports to Victorville. This would have had multiple benefits, including drastically reducing diesel truck traffic, cleaning up the air in the corridor, and getting the goods to Victorville much faster. A 100 mile network moving shipping containers at 90mph. I always thought that use of Maglev technology really made the most sense versus using it to move people point to point, since there is no other maglev network to connect to on either end. Haven't heard much about this recently, though they are talking about separate truck lanes and using electric trucks.

Ports considering maglev trains to cut smog

Elon's Boring tunnels are essentially mini versions of Maglev, just using battery powered vehicles and skipping the expensive superconducting "rails". And by skipping the rails, it allow for much easier interconnecting of any/all tunnels built, much greater flexibility. I don't know whether a large build out of Boring tunnels will end up reducing surface congestion. It will be interesting to see. And now it seems like UAM will also be in the running for moving people from the suburbs to various city center locations much faster too:

Urban Air Mobility (UAM)

The OP statement of moving goods versus people is well taken, much less safety system required. Not sure if say a shipping container would fit in a Boring tunnel or not. And you would need a pretty large integrated tunnel system to make it economical to start moving goods around, kind of a chicken and egg problem. The Maglev from the Ports to Victorville was a point to point solution that would work, so no additional connections would be required. Now, if Elon can get tunneling cheap and fast enough, a cargo tunnel from the ports to Victorville would generate an insane amount of revenue, if the 90,000 trucks per day estimate is accurate. The fuel savings alone of switching from diesel to electric would obliterate truck traffic on surface streets. The boring company has to have looked at this possibility. If not, I'll happily accept 0.001% of the net profit for coming up with the idea.

RT

I've never read so many positive things about Victorville.

 

[Sean Wagner]

While the Netherlands go nuts for the Model 3 and shorties' shorts become more odoriferous by the day, here's the material for a presentation Herbert Diess held in London during an investor roadshow on the 9th of December.

https://www.volkswagenag.com/presen...19/12_december/2019-12-09_Evercore_RS_Ldn.pdf via Investor Relations

Of note is the renewed acceleration of their EV schedule to roughly one million by 2023, but especially the amount of space their push into electrification takes up in the document. Missing are the massive divestment and consolidation VAG's in-house parts manufacturing businesses are going through.

Certainly worth a peek. Apologies if it's already well known - has only come to my attention today.

Correction: "over one million by 2022" - see page 11.

 

[Tslynk67]

Psychologically you are correct but now you can buy factional shares: Fractional Shares | Robinhood

I you happen to be able to use RHood... AFAIK, I cannot buy factional shares at my broker here in Belgium.

 

[Tslynk67]

My vague recollection is that Fuyao has set up a plant in Shanghai specifically to supply Tesla with glasses.

..
Sounds like a short-sighted strategy to me...

 

[Dutchie]

This is really starting to irritate me. So many people getting told by ‘professionals’ to do this or do that because ‘they’ know better, are supposed to know better, should know better, but don’t. It makes it so hard for people to know which professional to listen to and when.

My tax guy, who’s been incredible over the years, for the first time told me earlier this year to consider selling some TSLA because I’m too heavy in it and taking a huge risk.

Of course this was after it had hit $180s and was hovering in the low $2s. (I was adding a share on every ‘there is a demand problem’ post I read - yes, I really did that).

He was genuinely concerned I was putting myself in a bad spot and he told me straight up the SP was going to continue lower. I smiled and then ignored his advice.

I have recently talked to him and jokingly asked him, ‘Now what?’ His advice was ‘At this point, I can’t advise you. Assess your situation and do what you think is best for you.’ He gets props for trying to look out for me and then quickly realizing he was wrong.

The lesson for people is that professionals are;

a) people just like everyone else and therefore not perfect and make mistakes

b) not all equal; somebody graduated at the top of the class, somebody at the bottom, and everyone else are shades in between - additionally their graduation placing has no baring on their future abilities to be good at their chosen profession, it’s far more complicated than that. Some of the most brilliant (at their chosen profession) people I know never graduated from college/university, some never even finished high school

c) not necessarily impartial and can tend to project their personal beliefs and realities onto others

d) not necessarily honest, good, or on your side - sometimes they are for themselves at your expense

e) people just like everyone else and sometimes they don’t know better than you (and their poo stinks just as much as yours)

Professionals are also risk averse due to liability issues.

Makes me think when I was in a commission sales position and I could write-off car expenses for tax purposes. Colleagues used professionals and they would allow no more than 50% business use of their car, even if it was a two car household. Even though he probably used it more for business. No, still 50%. I did my own taxes and wrote off 79% never had any issue. No review, no audit, nothing

 

[ZeApelido]

Sorry I'm late, just woke up.
But HOW COULD YOU TELL?

No you are Swedish so you were definitely drunk on GLÖGG

 

[skybluecgreen]

It will only grow old after the P&D numbers in about a week. It's helpful that everyone on this forum has not been putting out overly optimistic numbers to create a large "miss". Thanks to you all (almost all) for your restraint.

Our members opinions aside, is anyone seeing any lists or consensus of analyst's P&D estimates? Really wondering what they are expecting.

 

[juanmedina]

It seems that someone in a model 3 hit a fire truck and the passenger died

TESLA STRIKES FIRE APPARATUS AT CRASH SCENE – 2 CIVILIANS CRITICALLY INJURED, FIREFIGHTERS OK

 

[capster]

You won’t think it’s old if it keeps WS expectations in check and then Tesla beats it to a pulp.

We’ve already got a few people floating around some pretty bloated numbers. I’m not interested in a repeat performance and reading post after post about unfair and criminal so and so is.

Garbage in, garbage out. Let’s feed garbage in that’s to our advantage.

Personally, I’m in the fight darkness with light camp. Right speech, etc.

 

[Navin]

Did some prior research on Adam Jonas and his prior estimates and his influence over stock price. Looks like he is a repeat offender. Check out some of this thread for approx 5 years ago

Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2014

 

[JRP3]

Elon gets in trouble when he responds to trolls on twitter or has the recent run up in TSLA made people forget this? There are millions and will continue to be millions of tweets with misinformation regardless of what Elon does. This is not a battle he should be fighting.

I can't imagine being upset when someone speaks the truth.

Once Elon makes another mistake, shorts will turn in against Tesla/Elon and us, the investors.

Wait, so the shorts aren't already against Tesla/Elon, and us? I guess with friends like that...

 

[Carl Raymond]

Very well said. Twitter is not a place for anybody with self-respect, especially that runs multi-billion dollar companies. Scum and shorts only bait him with crap and wait for 1 - ONE weird reply.

Once Elon makes another mistake, shorts will turn in against Tesla/Elon and us, the investors.

He should not fight Twitter scum as it will never succeed. Waste of time and big danger this is.

Huh? Every short is already against us. Big danger? What are they going to do, poke their tongues out and post pics on Twitter? They have no effective ammo left.

Let Elon enjoy his victory. I think he will eventually get bored with Twitter - a few gems of content in a sea of mindless drivel.

 

[jerry33]

Huh? Every short is already against us. Big danger? What are they going to do, poke their tongues out and post pics on Twitter? They have no effective ammo left.

Let Elon enjoy his victory. I think he will eventually get bored with Twitter - a few gems of content in a sea of mindless drivel.

Twitter is still a good way to get messages out to the younger crowd. There's really no other way to do it.

 

[Rarity]

The lesson for people is that professionals are;

a) people just like everyone else and therefore not perfect and make mistakes

b) not all equal; somebody graduated at the top of the class, somebody at the bottom, and everyone else are shades in between - additionally their graduation placing has no baring on their future abilities to be good at their chosen profession, it’s far more complicated than that. Some of the most brilliant (at their chosen profession) people I know never graduated from college/university, some never even finished high school

c) not necessarily impartial and can tend to project their personal beliefs and realities onto others

d) not necessarily honest, good, or on your side - sometimes they are for themselves at your expense

e) people just like everyone else and sometimes they don’t know better than you (and their poo stinks just as much as yours)

f) do not tailor their advice to your investment goals (somewhat philanthropic, may not be geared 100% toward retirement, and may be somewhat inexact and therefore risk tolerant)

 

[lklundin]

While the Netherlands go nuts for the Model 3 and shorties' shorts become more odoriferous by the day, here's the material for a presentation Herbert Diess held in London during an investor roadshow on the 9th of December.

https://www.volkswagenag.com/presen...19/12_december/2019-12-09_Evercore_RS_Ldn.pdf via Investor Relations

Of note is the renewed acceleration of their EV schedule to roughly one million by 2023, but especially the amount of space their push into electrification takes up in the document. Missing are the massive divestment and consolidation VAG's in-house parts manufacturing businesses are going through.

Certainly worth a peek. Apologies if it's already well known - has only come to my attention today.

Correction: "over one million by 2022" - see page 11.

I thought to check for VW's plans for the batteries needed for 1 million cars and sure enough:

Slide 9, "Battery supply secured": I wonder if Diess will be sued when this turns out to not work like he had envisioned?

Even more interesting is this little unexpected tidbit:
Slide 10, "Level 5 autonomous driving will take up to 1 billion lines of code": Trying to get to L5 by writing that much code - and doing it with sufficiently few detects - will not be possible on any relevant time scale.

For comparison, the Linux Kernel that runs (on) every Tesla is only on the order of 10^7 lines, with 99% of that being drivers and portability(*). So between the actual Linux kernel and Diess L5 strategy you have 4 orders of magnitude in lines of code that have to be correct - and the complexity of the software to be validated does not just grow linearly with the number of lines of code.

Clearly, VW's lack of understanding of software goes way beyond being unable to write what they need for their ID.3 .

Contrast that with Tesla's FSD approach, which now is a matter of tagging relevant training data and applying that to their Neural Network.

For Tesla, this is awesome news.

PS. (*) Linux runs on an astounding number of platforms - and includes the source code for drivers for all supported peripherals. Naturally, any actual system (like a Tesla) will need only a minute subset of this vast majority of the code.

 

[NakedLong]

While the Netherlands go nuts for the Model 3 and shorties' shorts become more odoriferous by the day, here's the material for a presentation Herbert Diess held in London during an investor roadshow on the 9th of December.

https://www.volkswagenag.com/presen...19/12_december/2019-12-09_Evercore_RS_Ldn.pdf via Investor Relations

Of note is the renewed acceleration of their EV schedule to roughly one million by 2023, but especially the amount of space their push into electrification takes up in the document. Missing are the massive divestment and consolidation VAG's in-house parts manufacturing businesses are going through.

Certainly worth a peek. Apologies if it's already well known - has only come to my attention today.

Correction: "over one million by 2022" - see page 11.

VW is investing in EVs which is good. They understand roughly speaking all the ideas of cheaper batteries, economies of scale, autonomous driving, software centric, mobility service etc.

But they are still going to struggle to make the transition because software is hard and they don't know *sugar* about software.

From the slides:

• > 200 - 300 million lines of code are expected
• Level 5 autonomous driving will take up to 1 billion lines of code

Autonomous Driving - Microsoft/ARGO

Measuring software in LOC is what people did in 1970.... this shows the state of management in VW and how out of touch with software they are. And why would they partner with Microsoft or ARGO. Clearly they should partner with Waymo or Intel, or even better Tesla.

A big part of the software required for EVs in the next few years is an operating system. Not many companies have done this, and even the successful ones such as Microsoft have done it pretty badly. Even companies like Apple and Google have struggled with several aspects of operating system design. I can guarantee you that VW will not be able to write a good OS in house.

These are the requirements for writing a passable OS:

1) Must be a software/tech company as part of core business, not a manufacturing company like legacy auto
2) Not German - preferably US company from Silicon Valley, but the likes of Huawei or Samsung could do it too.
3) Company needs a certain amount of experience in software - I'm sure a company like Netflix or Square could write a good OS for example.
4) Company executives must not talk about LOC requirements.
5) Has to have ability to recognise and attract top talent. If there are no top devs at VW currently, it makes it pretty hard to recruit them. Mediocracy just hires more mediocracy.
6) OS division needs to be isolated from company politics - think Google X. Most companies the size of VW/Google/Microsoft self sabotage everything they touch thanks to dysfunctional corporate culture. I hear so many stories of people I know working in Google and Microsoft... much retardation. I don't know anyone in VW but I have worked in corporate Germany for several years and feel like they have it even worse over there. I would tell stories but don't want to give away where I worked. There is a fundamental disconnect between truly agile, innovative, software development, and rule based German bureaucracy.

Anyway, thinking of all the technically illiterate people I have had to work with is bringing back flashbacks of frustration.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

The crash of a Model 3 into a fire truck activated a lot of new posters into discussing the way TACC, Autopilot and FSD work. In case they were not aware yet: that's not what the investor thread is for. All posts were moved here, where discussion can continue: Fixed object detection in Autopilot/FSD (out of main)