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

[mongo]

Bloomberg article states half of Taycan customers are new to the brand. Thats pretty good in corporate speak.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Is it? That is only about 65 conquest sales.

So far, early Taycan sales are yielding indeterminate results. While Porsche representatives have consistently said they’ve taken deposits on close to 30,000 of them worldwide, Zellmer notes during the interview that 130 were delivered in the U.S. in 2019.

 

[davecolene0606]

I think it's fairly safe to say that the worst case per customer FSD retrofit cost is below $1,000:

• Elon said 20 minutes work time, anecdotes said 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on the VIN and model. A conservative assumption would be 2 hours work with $200 cost (labor+overhead).
• Cost of the board is lower than the nVidia board - which I'd estimate at $500 max.

This makes for about $700, which we can conservatively round up to $1,000.

Number of U.S. customers with HW2 FSD is estimated at around 50,000 - so the total worst-case FCF impact should be $50m - potentially much lower, because the service technicians are already employed and can do upgrades from Q1 "idle time", and the board cost might be lower than $500.

FCF should be stronger than this - maybe significantly stronger, so I don't think FSD retrofits will impact Q1 positive cash flow one way or another, unless Tesla decides to smooth the wave and fill inventory in this exact quarter, or there's force majeure.

(@EVNow and @FrankSG might disagree with these very coarse guesses. )

Additionally, I would point out that the earlier FSD purchases were @$6,000 plus the old price vehicle so reserves for the earlier cars might have been a bit higher?

Fire Away!
(It’s the batteries, Stupid,)

 

[copyhacker]

I agree, and hereby nominate the word "Falcon", even better, "Falcking", as the new "Fuc*ing"; as a loophole to get it by the modern day censorships that still exist. I mean, come on, is this 2020 or what?

The Talking Tesla podcast beat you to it. They’ve been using the term “Falcking Wing Doors” to describe one of the hosts’ Model X gripes.

 

[printf42]

As I mentioned earlier, wuhan virus will send China Tesla demand through roof.

• 2003 April at peak of SARS, personal car sales in China increased 12%-20%(depends on where you look). It’s mainly driven by people who were buying their first car to avoid taking public transportation. This could be a bit counter-intuitive to people who lives in countries where everyone have a car.
• Many 2003 April car sales were done by calling the dealers and wiring money instead of visiting show room. Guess which brand of car you can buy online now with your phone without worrying about dealers ripping you off?
• Also, many Beijing(and some other big city) families now have a good reason to buy a second car, so everyday they would have a car they can drive.
• This is before we consider shorter wait times for EV plates quota, and Tesla’s superior air filtration systems.
• No wonder Chinese imported Model 3 order delivery date is at Q3 now.(MIC at Q2)
• China in the following months will soak up any amount of Model 3 Tesla want to send. If not for Europe sales being more profitable because of credits, Tesla could send all Model 3 they have in Q1 to China, people would just buy them up.

In all, I suspect we will not see any seasonality this Q1(unless Tesla scheduled production downtime for M Y ramp), China demand alone would be sufficient to soak all cars Tesla can produce.

 

[Fact Checking]

This is before we consider shorter wait times for EV plates quota, and Tesla’s superior air filtration systems.

Indeed, Model S/X "Biodefense Mode" is a very high grade filter system:

Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test
​

This could indeed help Model S/X demand in China.

 

[winfield100]

BTW, regardless of a title, reading a whole article left a very bad aftertaste. The author is a professional troll, used to troll Musk\Tesla and supporters, currently trolls shorts (who would be never heard outside of their cult without MSM and herself), will switch back given the first opportunity.

@Sanny
However, the article has a “full frontal clothed” of Lawrence Fossi, aka, Montana Skeptic, in all his ?glory?

 

[Fact Checking]

No wonder Chinese imported Model 3 order delivery date is at Q3 now.(MIC at Q2)

First time I've seen this - is this visible in the Chinese configurator already?

 

[printf42]

First time I've seen this - is this visible in the Chinese configurator already?

Yes, you can go to the order page, change county and see it.

 

[lklundin]

Bloomberg article states half of Taycan customers are new to the brand. Thats pretty good in corporate speak.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Maybe someone with a better knowledge of how dealers work can confirm (or the opposite),
but someone on Twitter says that of 130 Taycan's delivered in the USA, a 124 are sitting at dealers:
Dealer of Happiness on Twitter

 

[ZsoZso]

The corona virus has some relevance to this thread, as it may affect macros and thus TSLA. With an emphasis on may. But things tend to go over the top in this thread and that’s what’s happening now. So turn it down a few notches (no more medical or history lessons, or reports from the field) or it will suffer the same fate as the Brexit discussion.

There is another angle of the virus scare that directly impacts Tesla. I have heard rumors that traveling to/from Shanghai has been halted to prevent spreading of the virus. If those rumors are true, that can prevent/delay shipments of parts and raw materials to reach GF3 and also disrupt deliveries of completed vehicles from the factory.

 

[StealthP3D]

Number of U.S. customers with HW2 FSD is estimated at around 50,000 - so the total worst-case FCF impact should be $50m - potentially much lower, because the service technicians are already employed and can do upgrades from Q1 "idle time", and the board cost might be lower than $500.

I think in the volumes that Tesla orders these computer boards the cost/board is likely closer to $250-$300 than $500. You will notice a lot of these boards will get installed when customers are in for unrelated service which increases efficiencies to pop it in while the car is already sitting there. I'm thinking the average TOTAL cost per car might be around $500-$600 (unless the upgrade involves more than a computer board).

 

[StealthP3D]

Maybe someone with a better knowledge of how dealers work can confirm (or the opposite),
but someone on Twitter says that of 130 Taycan's delivered in the USA, a 124 are sitting at dealers:
Dealer of Happiness on Twitter

Maybe if they have sold 6 of them, and they can sell 12 in February, that sets up a story by Anton Wahlman about how Porche Taycan sales are growing at the phenomenal rate of 200% month over month compared to Tesla's falling sales.

 

[StealthP3D]

There is another angle of the virus scare that directly impacts Tesla. I have heard rumors that traveling to/from Shanghai has been halted to prevent spreading of the virus. If those rumors are true, that can prevent/delay shipments of parts and raw materials to reach GF3 and also disrupt deliveries of completed vehicles from the factory.

I didn't think much of anything happened over Chinese New Year anyway.

 

[Fact Checking]

There is another angle of the virus scare that directly impacts Tesla. I have heard rumors that traveling to/from Shanghai has been halted to prevent spreading of the virus. If those rumors are true, that can prevent/delay shipments of parts and raw materials to reach GF3 and also disrupt deliveries of completed vehicles from the factory.

According to a CCP owned news outlet Bejing will be under a "soft lockdown" as of tomorrow:

Beijing to Suspend Inter-provincial Passenger Transport - Beijing News, Radio Television HK, & others : China_Flu​

This will impact travel of GF3 employees, at minimum - but might impact suppliers as well.

​

 

[Words of HABIT]

193mi / 310km for the Turbo S. And regardless, you don't get EPA ranges when racing

Racing? Really? It didn't look to me like those Porsches were racing. Not compared to Teslas.

 

[Tslynk67]

I agree. That would trouble me too. When people act like peacocks, well, let's just leave it at that!

Ugh, typo - meant "wouldn't mind owning" - now edited, thanks to the super-power that is RED membership

 

[Tslynk67]

@Sanny
However, the article has a “full frontal clothed” of Lawrence Fossi, aka, Montana Skeptic, in all his ?glory?

Please scan and PM me so I can print out and put on my dart-board

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

regarding board-swap FSD upgrade costs to Tesla...
I imagine these can vary massively depending how skilled they get/how easy they make it.

Years ago I was a PC/Apple Mac hardware engineer. Back then, changing a typical PC motherboard would takes hours. literally hours of unplugging connectors, undoing screws, labeling stuff, disassembling bits, and then reversing it all.
At the same time SOME (by no means all) apple computers (the ones we called pizza-box-style, cant remember the model), could get a motherboard update in about 20-30 seconds top. You could train a small child to do it.

Hopefully Tesla were sensible when designing the hardware, and its an easy swap. The costs of this sort of thing really can have an order-of-magnitude variance.

 

[StealthP3D]

Maybe someone with a better knowledge of how dealers work can confirm (or the opposite),
but someone on Twitter says that of 130 Taycan's delivered in the USA, a 124 are sitting at dealers:
Dealer of Happiness on Twitter

On December 3, 2019 Porche N.A. announced Taycan deliveries would start that month. However, I don't believe anyone in N. America took delivery last year.

Where are all the outraged journalists? Is it OK for a German company to miss its target deadlines but not a California company?

 

[dw4ngg]

Buy up the float Monday & Tuesday, gentlemen. Let’s have earnings be the catalyst for a short squeeze against these oil-backed short mf’s