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

[KarenRei]

Charlie Munger (#2 at Berkshire Hathaway), cited on CNBC: asked about the saying that one should prefer to hire the guy who has a 130 IQ but thinks its 120 than the guy who has a 150 IQ but thinks it's 170: "Oh, you must be thinking of Elon Musk".

The Musk / Buffett wars continue...

 

[Lessmog]

I have known a few pretty smart persons. None of them bragged about their IQ.
Those that do probably compensate in need of some reassurance?
But what do I know.

 

[Fact Checking]

Charlie Munger (#2 at Berkshire Hathaway), cited on CNBC: asked about the saying that one should prefer to hire the guy who has a 130 IQ but thinks its 120 than the guy who has a 150 IQ but thinks it's 170: "Oh, you must be thinking of Elon Musk".

The Musk / Buffett wars continue...

Unbelievable.

I have no idea how these otherwise smart people can misread Elon so badly, and I believe a lot of the "big" shorts of Tesla are actually misreading Elon's insecurity and body language as signs of dishonesty; and are misinterpreting the honest, straight, hard to decipher tech talk of an Aspie as swagger and deceit.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Was this posted already?
https://electrek.co/2019/02/15/tesla-ends-contract-model-3-delivery-europe/

 

[Cosmacelf]

Brexit is quite a fascinating psychological phenomenon in that it is at heart quite an arbitrary and technical package of changes sought for what are perfectly defendable though certainly debatable reasons, executed under a legitimate democratic mandate. And yet it leads otherwise sensible people to lose their ability to calmly assess risk or to empathise with people who share broadly similar social and political attitudes and goals.

Funny, you just described pretty much any US policy debate.

 

[EVNow]

Given the localization of Groman and Tilburg I still believe the three country area around Germany/France/Luxembourg is not a bad place however you need a massive piece of land for industrial usage and Europe is very much regulated therefore its likely that laws needs to be changed to make it happen. No one wants to have such a massive building in their backyard and land is precious here. Not to mention environmental regulations may hinder Tesla go build it how they want it.

Any existing unused or underutilized plants Tesla can take over ? Might be faster than greenfield.

 

[lascavarian]

The GF4 announcement is likely delayed driven by a complex decision and negotiation situation in Europe.

There is something in the MXWL acquisition that might be a factor. Maxwell presented info that their dry electrode technology offered "16x production capacity density". This could mean that in each GF there can be vastly greater production capacity. This means a much smaller footprint - if the promise translates into reality. It seems to me this 16x stat is the real deliverable of the Maxwell purchase.

Were I making such a decision, I would be tempted to wait until I had a pretty strong confirmation of the increased production capacity density increase before I finalized my land purchase.

At even 10x, it would be hard to ignore the possibility of just making all battery packs in Nevada. Maybe even buy/convert a ship to move sustainably battery packs around the world as needed. Maybe just between Eu and US east coast ports for a start.

 

[shlokavica22]

I have no idea how these supposedly smart people can misread Elon so badly, and I believe a lot of the "big" shorts of Tesla are actually misreading Elon's insecurity as signs of dishonesty and are misinterpreting the honest, straight, hard to decypher tech talk of an Aspie as swagger and deceit.

That's not that simple. Elon's actions discredit the whole perception of what successful billionaire looks like.
He behaved like such (easily seen in the video with him receiving his new McLaren F1). However he is too clever not to see beyond that and now he is the inspirational billionaire using his wealth for creating better future.
Elon changed the target. Big money often comes with big ego.

Btw, for the same reason he is hated by "regular" guys- auto professionals, scientists, etc. They have 20+ years experience and good professional record. Here comes Musk and starts thinking out of the box, challenging existing methodologies, etc. The guy that runs r/RealTesla is from that group in my opinion.

Bottom line- some people can recognize smarter person than themselves and can give credit. Others can't.

 

[KarenRei]

There is something in the MXWL acquisition that might be a factor. Maxwell presented info that their dry electrode technology offered "16x production capacity density". This could mean that in each GF there can be vastly greater production capacity. This means a much smaller footprint - if the promise translates into reality. It seems to me this 16x stat is the real deliverable of the Maxwell purchase.

Were I making such a decision, I would be tempted to wait until I had a pretty strong confirmation of the increased production capacity density increase before I finalized my land purchase.

At even 10x, it would be hard to ignore the possibility of just making all battery packs in Nevada. Maybe even buy/convert a ship to move sustainably battery packs around the world as needed. Maybe just between Eu and US east coast ports for a start.

16x greater electrode production density, sure. But that doesn't apply to all parts of the production process.

 

[EnzoXYZ]

In fairness to him, it’s hard to lose billions from buying $100 million in puts.

Sorry been too much Dana Hull discussion here- why let facts get in the way of a big headline?

 

[elasalle]

Any existing unused or underutilized plants Tesla can take over ? Might be faster than greenfield.

There is no capital for EU GF4 till at least mid 2021?
The expansion near Tillsburg reported a few months back might have to do, till then (assemble, and avoid some EU taxes) ... ~ cheers

 

[kyne]

Looks like Model 3's are finally arriving in Norway.

Teslastats Norway

 

[ZsoZso]

I'm much more worried about Reuters:
this is the biggest news agency in the world and famed for their neutrality and journalism prices, and their headlines are pure garbage. I'd love to understand why they are so mean about Tesla.

They have literally millions of reasons! As in $$$ millions. Just follow the money.
Their livelihood depends on advertisers money, they get 0 from Tesla and $$$ millions from competitors of Tesla
and further $$$ millions from industries threatened by Tesla, such as Oil, energy generation, dealerships etc.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Charlie Munger (#2 at Berkshire Hathaway), cited on CNBC: asked about the saying that one should prefer to hire the guy who has a 130 IQ but thinks its 120 than the guy who has a 150 IQ but thinks it's 170: "Oh, you must be thinking of Elon Musk".

The Musk / Buffett wars continue...

Charlie is his own man, and what he says doesn’t necessarily jive with Berkshire’s actions. So I wouldn’t read tons into that quip. I do like Charlie’s quips though, they are true zingers, age hasn’t seemed to dull his mind at all. Wish I could say the same for me!

 

[SebastianR]

Unbelievable.

I have no idea how these otherwise smart people can misread Elon so badly, and I believe a lot of the "big" shorts of Tesla are actually misreading Elon's insecurity and body language as signs of dishonesty; and are misinterpreting the honest, straight, hard to decipher tech talk of an Aspie as swagger and deceit.

I have yet another analysis lense to this: journalists, Wall St. analysts, rating agencies etc. at times seem to behave similar to disappointed spouses after a breakup. Don't you think? I mean if you need the media to hype your company and the analysts to tell the world how great that next round of investments is going to do over the coming year - it is one thing. But if you essentially tell everyone you don't need them any longer, they will ignore you (best case, won't happen here, Tesla generates too much attention) or say mean things about you (what we can observe - often the stories are similar to what you expect to hear from a friend who sees the ex on Facebook with new love).

 

[avoigt]

16x greater electrode production density, sure. But that doesn't apply to all parts of the production process.

I was about to write the same.

Also the Battery production is linked to the MXWL acquisition but we all do not know yet what impact this will have on batteries and packs. In terms of required volume production per car it may mean nothing while the new MXWL innovation could result in longer range beside other interested specs like faster loading and unloading.

At this stage with mass production of the 3 and ramping delivery in EU I doubt that the MXWL business has an impact on GF4 for now.

 

[mrdoubleb]

Another hit-piece on Yahoo - they also marked it "Editor`s pick" so it is at the top of the page.
Timeline: The mass exodus of Tesla execs in the last 12 months

It is a little weird to me how obsessed the media is with Tesla`s exec turnover. I don`t see them track any other company like this.

While more stability is definitely better, they do not tell us what was the service time or average service time of these folks and how it compares to other Silicon Valley companies. Your general auto OEM is not necessarily a good comparison as those are 100 year old companies where you have generations of people going up the ladder and more conventional / calmer business models vs a scrambling start-up.

Also some of these departures have quite simple explanations: e.g. Jim Keller was hired for a project - he never stays at any company for too long, he designs a new chip and goes on to the next big thing (see his AMD and Apple history); Deepak retired - wanted to do so earlier but came back for a few extra years already; the Recruitment lady had real personal reasons, like travelling around the world with the husband. So it`s not all the same.

 

[K_Dizzle]

Charlie Munger (#2 at Berkshire Hathaway), cited on CNBC: asked about the saying that one should prefer to hire the guy who has a 130 IQ but thinks its 120 than the guy who has a 150 IQ but thinks it's 170: "Oh, you must be thinking of Elon Musk".

The Musk / Buffett wars continue...

My takeaway from the clip was that Munger says that people like Elon occasionally knock it out of the park and that it’s one of the biggest sadness in life for him that he won’t be take along for the ride.

 

[elasalle]

Electric truck start-up Rivian announces $700 million investment round led by Amazon

told ya what MS-AJ was up to ....

 

[mongo]

16x greater electrode production density, sure. But that doesn't apply to all parts of the production process.

I was about to write the same.

Sure, it only improves part of the process, but let's look at the steps:

Mixing electrode material: dense.
Coating electrodes and waiting for solvent to evaporate: not dense. (at least GF1 uses a closed loop solvent recovery/ reuse system)
Roll to roll slitting: dense
Winding and inserting in cans: dense
Formation charge/ testing: dense
From https://electrek.co/2017/03/16/tesla-gigafactory-picture-inside-production/