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

[UCF3]

Silicon Valley’s engineering talent pool (hardware and software) has provided an enormous moat throughout Tesla’s history and certainly that projects into the future. This is evident in innovation, ingenuity, and invention of Tesla’ vehicles. Jim Keller’s contributions to autonomous driving will ripple across the world for decades to come. The Valley represents a mix of artificial intelligence firms, computer firms, Internet technology firms, and sensor technology firms that do not exist anywhere else in the world.
My hope is that cooler heads prevail on both sides of this confrontation.
Should Tesla expand into other areas and build new factories...absolutely.
Should Tesla leave California...I am convinced that would be a mistake.

Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on great engineers. Tesla will be fine in Texas

 

[wipster]

This is simplistic, but isn’t Tesla HQ’d in California primarily because of the incredible deal struck with NUMMI for the Fremont facility? Surely recent CFO’s have analyzed to death the possibilities of relocating key functions to more business friendly locations as the location footprint expands, and have a strategy to do so over time. Tax and workplace advantages to be weighed against quality of local workforce skills, etc.

Case in Point, Boeing moving it's HQ from Seattle to Chicago. The majority of plane manufacturing is still done north and south of Seattle, but Boeing felt they needed a city with more international connections then Seattle for their HQ. Don't know how successful that has been given their recent history, but it is not an uncommon strategy (although I think it would make more sense for Tesla to leave the HQ in the Bay Area and eventually move manufacturing to Texas or wherever).

 

[ZeApelido]

Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on great engineers. Tesla will be fine in Texas

No but it has a heavy advantage.

If you think Tesla would have such big advantages in

1) Software / UI
2) Software / Hardware integration
3) Machine Learning

In Tejas, you would wrong.

 

[Big Dog]

How will a judge interpret Haggerty saying the following?, “Am I somewhat sympathetic with Tesla? Yes I am. Am I sympathetic to the way Musk is treating people? No.”

In the context of his official capacity to apply law, Haggerty has an obligation to be dispassionate; his personal sympathies are not merely irrelevant, they are critically important if known to be a factor in legal decision making. By stating his sympathies he overtly acknowledges his bias. How can a judge ignore that?

In most jurisdictions, governments automatically fail when they lack legislative confidence when applying money legislation. It will be the judge's job to state his level of confidence in Haggerty's dispassionate application of the law.

It's easy to ignore as Haggerty is just one of 5 Supes in Alameda County; he is NOT the decision-maker, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. He is just one vote to hire the Health Officer.

It is the Health Officer that makes this call (open-no open), and yes, the Board of Supervisors could over-ride her if they so choose. But that requires 3 votes to over-ride.

Dr. Erica Pan, the interim public health officer in Alameda County, said the area still needs to maintain shelter-in-place guidelines, which prevents the Fremont, Calif., Tesla location from resuming vehicle production.

Plus Hagerty will just argue he meant the way Elon was treating him personally.

 

[wtlloyd]

Fremont isn't going anywhere. Tesla headquarters and design group may relocate, but the production line will continue to pump out vehicles as hard as it can. Until new and more advanced production lines are established to meet demand in continental USA and Europe, west coast shipping advantages will keep Fremont very much a prime Tesla asset. No one, not even Musk, would shut down a factory producing 400,000+ vehicles/year over spite.

 

[Tachyon]

It's time for the board to fire Elon Musk.

It will definitely open down as the shorts try to paint this negatively, but it will start to recover later in the day. I think it might still finish down tomorrow, but one thing I’m sure of is that it will be up by Friday.

thanks Adam Jonas! pun intended.

 

[ThisStockGood]

Any guesses as to what the stock will do at open following the latest musk tweets?

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In other words - just as usual

Drink a beer and enjoy. Actually advise for once

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

thanks Adam Jonas! pun intended.

But where is the pun?!?!

 

[Intl Professor]

The big, old press line was bought and brought in in pieces and reassembled, as were the additional new press lines.

I don't know where they bought the press line but I do remember an article saying the German workers who set it up quit their jobs and decided to work for Tesla.

 

[EVMeister]

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Bjørn Nyland takes a look at the Xpeng G3. Now why does the UI seem so familiar? The phrase cheap knock-off comes to mind, or is it just me?

To try to relate this to TSLA... Hmm... I guess it gives an insight into the current state of Chinese competition? I see why they're going crazy for the real thing (i.e. Teslas) over there instead.

 

[Beltsbear]

Most governments are insured for that kind of thing, assuming it was malpractice.

No , they are not. Mostly because outside of personal injury due to police misconduct, governments in the USA almost never pay damages. You can get a wrong addressed, like being able to open, but you don’t get damages. You might get lawyers fees in some cases.

 

[mars_or_bust]

This move to Texas, after a very public fu*k you to big government, will make the Cybertruck THE truck to have for the American heartland- everything else would be for wooses. Demand more than secured, all the Ford and GM trucks are after this completely dead.

 

[StealthP3D]

Case in Point, Boeing moving it's HQ from Seattle to Chicago. The majority of plane manufacturing is still done north and south of Seattle, but Boeing felt they needed a city with more international connections then Seattle for their HQ. Don't know how successful that has been given their recent history, but it is not an uncommon strategy (although I think it would make more sense for Tesla to leave the HQ in the Bay Area and eventually move manufacturing to Texas or wherever).

I read an article that was well-sourced from Boeing insiders (engineers, etc) that attributed the ongoing 737 "Dreamliner" disaster primarily to moving management away from engineering. The gist of it was that Boeing engineers used to be able to walk into the offices of high-level management and alert to problems or offer solutions they saw. The new corporate structure put the bean-counters and management together in a distant state and left the production and engineers alone. Apparently, this was done on purpose so management and the bean counters could cut costs without having to listen to protests from senior level engineers running design and production about how this would affect the safety of the products.

 

[Mo City]

I read an article that was well-sourced from Boeing insiders (engineers, etc) that attributed the ongoing 737 "Dreamliner" disaster primarily to moving management away from engineering. The gist of it was that Boing engineers used to be able to walk into the offices of high-level management and alert to problems or offer solutions they saw. The new corporate structure put the bean-counters and management together in a distant state and left the production and engineers alone. Apparently, this was done on purpose so management and the bean counters could cut costs without having to listen to protests from senior level engineers running design and production about how this would affect the safety of the products.

I read this too. I believe it also mentioned most of Boeing's management were trained engineers while MD's were bean-counters and MD's philosophy controlled the top levels of the combined company.

One big difference is Elon is an engineer and the engineering-driven culture at Tesla will prevail as long as he's in charge. So will the mission oriented culture.

 

[Steve m]

Silicon Valley’s engineering talent pool (hardware and software) has provided an enormous moat throughout Tesla’s history and certainly that projects into the future. This is evident in innovation, ingenuity, and invention of Tesla’ vehicles. Jim Keller’s contributions to autonomous driving will ripple across the world for decades to come. The Valley represents a mix of artificial intelligence firms, computer firms, Internet technology firms, and sensor technology firms that do not exist anywhere else in the world.
My hope is that cooler heads prevail on both sides of this confrontation.
Should Tesla expand into other areas and build new factories...absolutely.
Should Tesla leave California...I am convinced that would be a mistake.

If Tesla moves its HQ that doesn't mean tesla moves its design center.

 

[feigen66]

If Tesla moves its HQ that doesn't mean tesla moves its design center.

Many tech companies their "HQ" is actually in Delaware.

Google's Alphabet restructure could get boost from Delaware tax loophole

 

[Prunesquallor]

Silicon Valley does not have a monopoly on great engineers. Tesla will be fine in Texas

Agreed. And the I'm bemused by the apparent assumption that California engineering talent wouldn’t deign to move out of state for the opportunity to work at a company like Tesla.

 

[jerry33]

Agreed. And the I'm bemused by the apparent assumption that California engineering talent wouldn’t deign to move out of state for the opportunity to work at a company like Tesla.

As far as I know, there is no problem with engineering talent in Texas SpaceX.

 

[ammulder]

Agreed. And the I'm bemused by the apparent assumption that California engineering talent wouldn’t deign to move out of state for the opportunity to work at a company like Tesla.

It's not clear they'd even need to. Tesla could move their HQ and leave the Autopilot team, or all of engineering, or whatever. (Moving the HQ doesn't require moving every employee.) They could potentially draw on the talent pools in both the bay area and Austin.

Between that, and how physically non-optimal the Fremont layout is compared to GF 3 & 4, I'm wondering if these moves weren't long planned, and Elon's just being opportunistic in announcing them. I bet they'd love to have offices in more talent-rich locations, love to lower their corporate tax burden, love to have more production in modern factories and rely less on Fremont. (I recall Sandy Munro commenting that part of the problem with Tesla paint is probably just old dust left in Fremont from decades ago, and a newer cleaner paint shop shouldn't suffer the same.)

 

[Cosmacelf]

Any guesses as to what the stock will do at open following the latest musk tweets?

An actual investment question??? I'd heard rumors that such questions existed, but never expected to actually see one...