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

[VValleyEV]

"So, let’s celebrate what Elon Musk and thousands of Tesla employees are accomplishing against all odds. They are trying to reach absurdly challenging goals. And, by the way, it is done at American factories with American workers on a car that uses 100% local energy, not Middle Eastern oil."

This got me thinking about fuel sources for USA electrical power plants, and whether any of that comes from imported Oil. GOOD NEWS I think: only a tiny amount. After a small bit of digging, it looks like petroleum is the source of less than 1% of US electricity generation (most is from coal and natural gas). We still import Oil, mostly crude, so some portion of that 1% of electricity coming from pertrolium could be argued as coming from imported oil. Still very small, so the “a car that uses 100% local energy, not Middle Eastern oil” part of the quote seems absolutely credible.

See:
Electricity in the United States - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration

 

[Cherry Wine]

Digging that increase over Q4.

 

[KarenRei]

It's a bit more complicated than that, because there's some argument that they can't reuse their excess 2018 VINs. But production is certainly running apace.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

First pictures of a few dozen Model 3's in a dusty 'truck cleaning' lot parked on packed earth have already hit the internet. We'll see an exact replay of the US delivery hell in Europe.

It beats thousands of cars getting clogged up at the port of Zeebrugge.

 

[VValleyEV]

Aww, beat me to it by a minute because I was taking screenshots

Seems very good news, in that the stage may be set to slay two doomeday narratives:

1. The demand for M3 in the USA has fallen off a cliff, and that is why they are shipping overseas in a desperate move to survive.
2. There is no real demand overseas, those shipments are gonna flop bcuz well, Europeans have their own BEVs that may start shipping someday, and customers in China can’t afford the M3 until they start building it locally.

If above narratives are as much nonsense as they appear, it would be good to get past all that, and talk more about the likely explosive and disruptive growth of BEVs everywhere. And where Tesla sits in that wave, instead of “who is gonna be king this week and next week of this tiny BEV market thing that doesn’t matter”.

FYI I like the Dancing Bear avatar. They indeed seem to be dancing a lot lately.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

I wonder if other automakers decide the best way to compete with Tesla is to essentially decide to build a better Tesla by licensing the "skateboard" and supercharger access, then doing their own body, interior, and other changes on top of that. Basically the Tesla skateboard becomes the equivalent of an Intel CPU in the PC industry - a platform on which all EVs are made. Sure, some other car companies may try to do their own from scratch, just like in the early days of computers there were lots of different processor designs. But eventually the computer industry realized creating their own computer from scratch was far too costly and complex, and decided to differentiate in other ways than the core chipset. Could history repeat itself in the EV industry with Tesla becoming the Intel (and Microsoft) of EVs? Or will it be more like Apple and remain a fully vertically integrated company? Or a combo of both?

This may be stupid, but it is something I have been pondering as I think about the future of Tesla

 

[gora321]

Model 3 VINs on Twitter
View attachment 377882

View attachment 377883

How about that! No demand in NA?
And almost 100.000 VIN registration/Q!!!

 

[JRP3]

Data point, 800,000 km, nearly 500,000 mi, the way he drives probably over that already

Hansjörg Gemmingen on Twitter

 

[CorneliusXX]

Aww, beat me to it by a minute because I was taking screenshots

I'm orange, you're blue.

 

[dc_h]

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.

The bear PR machine is very active. By bears, I would include several camps:

• The energy industry and image management consultants that have turned global warming science debate, into global warming political science debate. The energy people are many, oil, gas, coal and utilities who may be destroyed by cheap solar that will cost less then transmission in a decade. I see cheap solar fabric you can buy at Costco in 10 years you can roll out on your roof, run a wire down the side of your house and plug into a cheap transformer that plugs into your fuse box for a couple thousand dollars.
• Mainstream auto, who fear having to write off their legacy IP and refresh their engineering for a new kind of vehicle. If they can delay this a decade, they can bring in new talent and slowly downgrade old assets. If they can delay 20 years, so much the better. For some reason they keep forgetting the benefits of innovation related to environmentalism, which has improved cars and created demand for cleaner and more comfortable cars. It has also made large SUV's more possible, by keeping overall oil demand steady, in spite of cars becoming much more powerful, comfortable and huge.
• Bear bears, like Chanos, who may really believe in the bear case, or may be pot committed and just want to find a way to get out of their position without going all in. If he's not looking for an exit at this point, I have to think he's got a client investing in shorting Tesla on behalf of someone being disrupted by Tesla.
• Circus bears like Tesla charts. He may be working for VW, but may also be a double agent of sorts, selling puts to chumps he draws in with Tesla certain doom. These people may be hired by the image and media consultants of the disrupted clients above, or may be wing nuts like Tweetermeyer.
• Labor unions who want to organize the plants.
• All other, includes people Elon may have ticked off on twitter, hate billionaires or have some jealousy or hate of anything that smacks of environmental as a liberal conspiracy to control the means of production.

The disrupted are organized and they have people who know how to pick up a phone and share a hot scoop. They can DM a reporter and provide a story from the front line, hire a PI or find one of the random haters to do their bidding and find disaffected employees or owners with a bad experience and embellish. A dozen good media people working for a few clients would be enough to keep interviews of toilet mark and latrine life going on a daily basis and out there. They would also be able to keep a few good stories going that are consistent with the subsidy, fraud, celebrity CEO crap to try to "Hillary" Elon's reputation. Elon seems to have gotten over letting these people "own" him and has moved on to focusing on doing what he likes and tweeting about what he likes, not what he hates. I imagine, or would hope, he has hired his own media consultants to try to share what his companies are doing. He should have someone calling Dana to tell her about port 80, links to the list of ships and doing the same with Wall Street. On the other hand, maybe he would prefer to let this work itself out and crowdsource the job to bozos like us who follow Tesla and SpaceX as a hobby or perhaps slightly unhealthy obsession.
At the end of the day, the press will not follow it's own personal beliefs, but it will follow its own personal interest. Most of the press hated Trump, but covered his every move and probably did more to elect him than Putin and the Proud Boys. Most of the press is probably pro-environmental and progressive. They will follow the clicks and the easy story. Tom Randall followed us and Troy and found a good way to follow a positive and somewhat empirical Tesla story. I'm sure if other reporters had a good and consistent meme to follow, they would jump on board. I'd say the people here could help that process.

 

[AudubonB]

"Imported Oil"....

Frustratingly more serious is that a significant fraction of the country's inhabitants still believe....as they have for my entire lifetime!...that the United States is energy independent. This - yet another gasp of a gap in our nation's lack of understanding of the crudest fundamentals of our economy - now is exacerbated by the fact that some of "them" have heard that the US now exports crude (and some refined products). It's easy to guess what reaction that creates: What Happens in the Mideast Stays in the {whatever part of the word that isn't the USofA}.

For them, it is useless to try to discuss "a car that uses 100% American energy".

 

[gene]

I'd imagine the service centres would hire extra staff to cope with Model3 preparations?

Here in the USA many of us owners volunteered to help with delivery. I bet there would be some USA owners willing to do a shift in Europe. Nice idea but I hate flying these days and CO2 created by flying is off the charts!

 

[Lucky_Man]

I'd imagine the service centres would hire extra staff to cope with Model3 preparations?

Is it possible the local Tesla owners will visit the Service Centers to assist in the delivery processes again? This might free up a few resources that are in high demand during the temporary efforts.

 

[Unpilot]

"Imported Oil"....

Frustratingly more serious is that a significant fraction of the country's inhabitants still believe....as they have for my entire lifetime!...that the United States is energy independent. This - yet another gasp of a gap in our nation's lack of understanding of the crudest fundamentals of our economy - now is exacerbated by the fact that some of "them" have heard that the US now exports crude (and some refined products). It's easy to guess what reaction that creates: What Happens in the Mideast Stays in the {whatever part of the word that isn't the USofA}.

For them, it is useless to try to discuss "a car that uses 100% American energy".

Made in the USA of course has a lot of ...um...nuance? It almost always means assembled in the US. Any complex machine will have parts made or assembled elsewhere.

A good read on why this is not a bad thing is Rational Optimist Book | Matt Ridley

But at any rate IF I have the conversation about Tesla with folks with merica first ...um...thoughts...then I pull that arrow from me quiver.

 

[VValleyEV]

"Imported Oil"....

Frustratingly more serious is that a significant fraction of the country's inhabitants still believe....as they have for my entire lifetime!...that the United States is energy independent. This - yet another gasp of a gap in our nation's lack of understanding of the crudest fundamentals of our economy - now is exacerbated by the fact that some of "them" have heard that the US now exports crude (and some refined products). It's easy to guess what reaction that creates: What Happens in the Mideast Stays in the {whatever part of the word that isn't the USofA}.

For them, it is useless to try to discuss "a car that uses 100% American energy".

Good point.

Numbers I find say the US still imports 25% of the Oil that we use. So ICE cars are still burning 25% foreign oil, whereas BEVs are using almost 100% domestically-produced energy. About 1% of domestic electricity production comes from petroleum, so you could argue that 25% of that is from imported oil. So a BEV uses 99.75% domestically produced energy, vs 75% for an ICE car. (Ignoring differences in efficiency of energy use between BEV and ICE for now)

Here is my source for oil usage and imports, has a nice pie chart:
Oil Imports and Exports - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration

And here is a page providing electricity generation source breakdown, ie the 1% from petroleum number:
Electricity in the United States - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration

 

[Cobbler]

Digging that increase over Q4.

View attachment 377884

More AWD models than RWD, means margin on produced M3 is stable (and increasing, since production speed is getting better and better)!

 

[Lucky_Man]

Man red looks good on a Tesla...makes me want to sell my boring black one and get RED!

It'd be cheaper to get the black one wrapped in red ;^)

 

[Unpilot]

It'd be cheaper to get the black one wrapped in red ;^)

Hmmm that thought has crossed my mind

 

[gora321]

Sonic warns of weaker Q4 profits related to BMW, Honda challenges

 

[gora321]

️ Ellec ️‏ @ellec_uk
$TSLA have registered 98,562 Model 3 VINS in Q1 already and we are half way through. $tslaq are not available to comment

8:51 AM - 16 Feb 2019
️ Ellec ️ on Twitter