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

[Krugerrand]

For a guy who thinks Advertising is just a lie, Elon is brilliant at marketing. The lines at Fremont on 12/31 and the lines we will see at Shanghai when the first customers come to the plant for pick-up are reminiscent of those Apple store lines when a new iPhone version was being released. A no cost marketing event that gains tremendous publicity and generates FOMO.

As I drove to my New Year’s Eve dinner, I drove down the ‘auto strip’; the road that houses lot after lot of every car manufacturer available for purchase. This section of car dealerships covers somewhere between 1-2 miles.

It was before 6pm and not one dealership was open. Not a body in sight, no potential customers strolling the lots, all the vehicles covered in snow.

On the other hand, Tesla has a bloody ‘stand in line for hours to get your car hot of the presses’ event?!

BTW, Tesla recently opened a SC only locale on this road, but way, way at the other end of it, like 10 miles the other way where no car dealerships exist.

 

[humbaba]

Tesla AP or FSD do not do red lights at all, so there should be nothing to investigate. FSD with HW3 in the latest release only has a preview where it only indicates lights, but does nothing with it yet, so there is really nothing to investigate. The driver ran through a red light, this caused the very unfortunate accident, the driver and the driver only screwed up.

The NTSB has made it clear (just read their reports -- it is a stated goal in more than one) that they are searching for something, anything to use as leverage to force autopilot to be disabled in the United States. IIRC, the one you are referencing the stated plan was to go with all they've got so far, which is that drivers place too much trust in AutoPilot causing them to be inattentive. So it isn't that there's a flaw in AP, and AP doesn't even need to be involved. Its that AP could have been involved and Tesla drivers are inattentive as a result.

I'm not saying that I agree with this absurd premise, but it is one they have been building for a while. I think the fact that they can't find any actual flaw in AutoPilot to leverage says a lot about how good AutoPilot really is.

 

[Krugerrand]

@mars_or_bust But NHTSA has already said that they are going to investigate this collision, what do you think they are going to investigate if not AP/NoA? (Remember in the cross traffic death NHTSA investigated and said that AP contributed to the crash even though it is specifically stated that TACC/AP doesn't handle cross traffic,)

Honestly, I wouldn’t trust them to be investigating anything. For all I know, someone with influence told someone in the NHTSA to say they’re investigating.

Conspiracy theorist me if you will, but it makes zero sense to investigate because someone ran a red light. Whether the person had AP/EAP on is irrelevant.

Everybody in the NHTSA should know the current capabilities of Teslas. If they don’t, then somebody needs to be fired. It’s not their first rodeo investigating AP/EAP.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Unfortunately, Au has dealt with devastating fires every decade or so.....some good coverage by BBC: Australia fires - BBC News

This one is different. While lives lost may be lower, the sheer scale has not been seen before.

 

[woodisgood]

Quiet in here...everyone go back to bed after no P/D report?

 

[Krugerrand]

So this basically confirms that Tesla comfortably met guidance for 2019. Why else would they sit on a few thousand cars if they were unsure about at least getting to 360K deliveries?

I believe the Chinese EV incentives didn’t actually kick in until the first of January; that’d be one reason.

 

[winfield100]

As I drove to my New Year’s Eve dinner, I drove down the ‘auto strip’; the road that houses lot after lot of every car manufacturer available for purchase. This section of car dealerships covers somewhere between 1-2 miles.

It was before 6pm and not one dealership was open. Not a body in site, no potential customers strolling the lots, all the vehicles covered in snow.

On the other hand, Tesla has a bloody ‘stand in line for hours to get your car hot of the presses’ event?!

BTW, Tesla recently opened a SC only locale on this road, but way, way at the other end of it, like 10 miles the other way where no car dealerships exist.

@Krugerrand
Perhaps it is better to refer to the dealers lots full of slowly growing numbers of unsold vehicles, some with “incentives “ of over $10,000 as
“Stranded assets”

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

Is it possible that Tesla will give us a number for how many cars they actually have made in 2019 in China? If they don't the number of cars undelivered/in transit that they always give will be useless for comparison.

There is usually something like 5-10k cars left after every quarter. Not knowing if there are 1k or 5k in China is pretty important for how to judge that number this time.

By the way, since the number is always in the several thousands however many hundreds are left in the Tesla parking lot outside the factory on New Years eve doesn't really tell us anything.

 

[humbaba]

More good work from Keen Labs, finding another security flaw in Tesla vehicles. Tesla has already fixed the problem and Keen will get another bounty payment from Tesla.

Exploiting Wi-Fi Stack on Tesla Model S

Thanks, I really like seeing this sort of article. While it does a technical walk through of what/how they did it, it also gives a nice summary of the exploit. Even better, these are what I consider real security researchers: they disclosed to the manufacturer so that it could be fixed rather than going for their five minutes of fame by running screaming to the press.

As already noted, this is not an exploit of the core systems (meaning, driving, AP, etc.) but it should not be written off as a result. Pretty much all system compromises these days are the result of chaining exploits together. And this particular exploit didn't even require that much work (compare it to a typical exploit path for iOS) which suggests that more exploits exist.

As a Tesla owner I have faith that Tesla takes security seriously, resulting in timely patches for problems (compare to Java after Oracle bought Sun) and they have the infrastructure to make it work. While I don't know if they have a secure distribution system the indicators are that they do. Of course, the devil is always in the details so just because they use signing to doesn't mean it is secure.

As a Tesla investor I don't see these exploits as being stock driving events. While I believe $TSLA will be more affected than others because of the perception of Tesla cars as being tech oriented I am not aware of well publicized exploits affecting the stock of other automotive manufacturers and Tesla's response (which is light years ahead of the others) mitigates the greater risk from how the company is perceived.

Still, I think it is important to keep an eye on these and other aspects. If there were a way to cause public mayhem (just rerouting navigation would suffice) it would have quite the potential to harm Tesla. So while I am optimistic I want to remain aware.

 

[Drumheller]

It sounds like Krugerrand was driving around viewing examples of no demand. Or, at least, demand issues.


(Buy another share, yesssssss)

 

[jbcarioca]

Returning to @FrankSG for a moment.
One topic he covered in some detail was solar roof including mentioning a few companies making some offering in that arena. There have been quite a few attempts, almost all fo which have failed.
IMHO, probably among the best is this one:
eMetal, eRoll, eFlex & Customization | Flisom
They're Swiss and have seemingly strong backing plus a diverse technical base including a former Tata Solar executive. Their approach si totally different than is Tesla in that they do not actually have a roof replacement product.

There are probably some dozens of examples, most fo which will probably fail.

The point of that introduction is that I agree with Frank that Tesla has stuck with the research and iterations and thus now seems to have the only competitive roof replacement in the world, certainly the only one that is system integrated with grid tie capacity through Powerwall. It does not require high technical ability to adopt this solution.

As investors have ignored this development year after year, ourselves included, we appear to have a working solution, albeit arriving in the infamous 'Elon time'. As investors the problem with this one is that it is the Model S of roofs. How can anybody imagine something that has never been done before?

My personal opinion is that any responsible calculation of the potential for this will result in growth that is unimaginable. After all, California now is mandating solar on new construction:
California Gives Final OK To Require Solar Panels On New Houses
Even with new single family homes declining:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article232979792.html
We still have a 100% certain market for ~90,000 houses that WILL have need for a roof and WILL have solar panels.
Since Tesla is the only viable roof-replacement vendor (my bad: that seems just like a monopoly, does it not?) one can safely assume Tesla could supply, say, half fo those were the capacity to exist. Certainly some large portion would also have storage and grid intertie so those would be easy Tesla sales.

Skip the financial implications for a moment. The problem is purely and solely production capacity and delivery ability. Tesla is already proven over and over that they perpetually are capacity constrained.

Someone with more perspective might actually judge how quickly Tesla can expand solar roof/ Powerwall integration.
South Australia has already proven that residential grid tie with distributed storage can yield substantial benefits to grid stability.
https://virtualpowerplant.sa.gov.au

Grown up this product line would dwarf automobiles. Further it is quite plausible that serving only locations which have solar power conducive climactic conditions would have an addressable market of 500,000 per annum worldwide. At $10,000 per roof that would be $US five billion (e.g. five thousand million US dollars). In any realistic view those are ridiculously low numbers. California alone WILL have roughly 20% of those units with considerably higher average cost.

My point is that we need to take Tesla Energy seriously this year! Remember that the peaker replacement market is already proven as is the solar/wind power stabilization market and there are more than 1200 peakers in operation in the US alone. Tesla will not even have the largest share of those markets but they will have very lucrative ones precisely because of the Tesla software advantage in grid services.

Next we have hundreds of thousands of islands, and untold thousands off locations for whom desalination plants have already proven to be practical with solar plus storage.
water-desalination-plant-africa-uses-tesla-batteries-solar-power

So, @FrankSG or others with time, inclination and skills, here's the pitch.

TE is devoted to Elon's mission and is executing already but is invisible to the investment community including us. We are, after all, The Tesla Motors Club. So, what will be do about that in 2020?

Remember, these opportunities dwarf cars. That is what JB told us all in 2010 and we all ignored him. Elon has repeated much of this and we all ignore him too.

Next thing we know he'll say something impossible and ridiculous like recovering first stage rockets. If nobody stops him he'll try to recapture fairings too.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Note that audits aren't perfect. I'd know; I'm a former winner of the Underhanded C Contest.

I really wish they hadn't discontinued the contest... I'd already written the framework for the sneakest, most deliciously evil entry ever to grace that contest, but never got a chance to use it Without any obvious sign in the code**, it seemingly inexplicably downloads and runs what looks like a banner ad, except it's a steganographically encoded attack vector with a decryption routine disguised as a comment in the PNG supposedly describing how the PNG was generated. Now I have an effectively unlimited amount of code on my hands rather than having to sneak every devious thing I want to do subtly in the original program. The code hidden in the PNG is decrypted to memory (never touches the disk), the PNG is wipe deleted, and the original program is subtly altered to eliminate the bug that allowed the attack to take place. A debugger then connects to the running process, which can allow it to do whatever underhanded behavior the contest specifically requests. I was then going to have the program dig through your computer idly in the background, looking for amazon / ebay accounts from which to buy bomb-making supplies and social media accounts on which to write posts that make it sound like the user has become radicalized and joined ISIS

** - Will describe in a PM to anyone who's curious as to how it works I've never seen anything like this approach before. You have to promise that you won't use it if the contest restarts and you take part in the contest, okay?

 

[Nocturnal]

I added a buy order at $418 just in case the MMD had some weight but apparently it will go unfilled. Oh well.

 

[winfield100]

There is article in Washington Post dealing with grid outages and micro grids with batteries and how they are growing rapidly, under the radar, some in response to disasters over last decade.
I suspect “Battery Investor Day” will be a bigger deal than many outside TMC realize, and positively influence the stock price
(meetup in Reykjavik @$700+)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...amid-shut-off-woes-beacon-energy/?arc404=true
A snippet
“....BLUE LAKE, Calif. — After months of wildfires, an essential question in a warming, windy California is this: How does the state keep the lights on? A tiny Native American tribe, settled here in the Mad River Valley, has an answer.

Build your own utility.

The Blue Lake Rancheria tribe has constructed a microgrid on its 100-acre reservation, a complex of solar panels, storage batteries and distribution lines that operates as part of the broader utility network or completely independent of it. It is a state-of-the-art system — and an indicator of what might be in California’s future.

In early October, Pacific Gas & Electric cut power to more than 2 million people across Northern California, including all those who live here in rural Humboldt County,....”

{and on a side note, I’m open for a limit stop limit price as another “fractal strange attractor” somewhere in the $500’s+ with a dash of humor for my GTC order for 1 share to early February 2020}{too many at 420 so far}

 

[copyhacker]

I just took 96 months loan, to cover which I only need to sell 2-3 shares each month and keep the rest for next 8 years.

Here’s another way if you make regular charitable donations: make your donation in TSLA shares instead of cash. Then use the saved cash to make your loan payment. Done and done.

[disclaimer: IANA tax professional]

 

[WarpedOne]

Note that audits aren't perfect. I'd know; I'm a former winner of the Underhanded C Contest.

I really wish they hadn't discontinued the contest... I'd already written the framework for the sneakest, most deliciously evil entry ever to grace that contest, but never got a chance to use it Without any obvious sign in the code**, it seemingly inexplicably downloads and runs what looks like a banner ad, except it's a steganographically encoded attack vector with a decryption routine disguised as a comment in the PNG supposedly describing how the PNG was generated. Now I have an effectively unlimited amount of code on my hands rather than having to sneak every devious thing I want to do subtly in the original program. The code hidden in the PNG is decrypted to memory (never touches the disk), the PNG is wipe deleted, and the original program is subtly altered to eliminate the bug that allowed the attack to take place. A debugger then connects to the running process, which can allow it to do whatever underhanded behavior the contest specifically requests. I was then going to have the program dig through your computer idly in the background, looking for amazon / ebay accounts from which to buy bomb-making supplies and social media accounts on which to write posts that make it sound like the user has become radicalized and joined ISIS

** - Will describe in a PM to anyone who's curious as to how it works I've never seen anything like this approach before. You have to promise that you won't use it if the contest restarts and you take part in the contest, okay?

I love you!

 

[Krugerrand]

It sounds like Krugerrand was driving around viewing examples of no demand. Or, at least, demand issues.


(Buy another share, yesssssss)

You want me to go buy a share of Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Ford, GM, Kia, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Volvo, Porsche, Ferrari, Jeep, Nissan, Aston Martin, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and a slew of others that are on that strip!?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Quiet in here...everyone go back to bed after no P/D report?

Alright, I'll play your tune...

SP: $423.59 ...zZz...

 

[heltok]

Elon has repeatedly expressed his lack of interest for eVTOLs, expecting those to be urban nuisances at best.

 

[Nocturnal]

There is article in Washington Post dealing with grid outages and micro grids with batteries and how they are growing rapidly, under the radar, some in response to disasters over last decade.
I suspect “Battery Investor Day” will be a bigger deal than many outside TMC realize, and positively influence the stock price
(meetup in Reykjavik @$700+)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...amid-shut-off-woes-beacon-energy/?arc404=true
A snippet
“....BLUE LAKE, Calif. — After months of wildfires, an essential question in a warming, windy California is this: How does the state keep the lights on? A tiny Native American tribe, settled here in the Mad River Valley, has an answer.

Build your own utility.

The Blue Lake Rancheria tribe has constructed a microgrid on its 100-acre reservation, a complex of solar panels, storage batteries and distribution lines that operates as part of the broader utility network or completely independent of it. It is a state-of-the-art system — and an indicator of what might be in California’s future.

In early October, Pacific Gas & Electric cut power to more than 2 million people across Northern California, including all those who live here in rural Humboldt County,....”

{and on a side note, I’m open for a limit stop limit price as another “fractal strange attractor” somewhere in the $500’s+ with a dash of humor for my GTC order for 1 share to early February 2020}{too many at 420 so far}

There are a lot of cultural and tech trends that are converging in that direction IMO.

More and more people are understanding the need to halt climate change (or at least general air pollution), infrastructure is aging/unreliable and at least in the US there is no longer any interest in building big public works, more people are worried (right or wrong, I won't get into that here) about societal chaos/government collapse, EV adoption and home batteries/solar go hand in hand, utilities are moving to take advantage of the massive rollout of smart grid tech that occurred in the Obama years and time of use rates are becoming more common (incentivizing storing energy to use during peak demand), and people in places like Hawaii with very expensive electricity are seeing the obvious savings.