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

[CyberDutchie]

I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned here (or maybe I missed it), but this article showed up on my E*Trade news feed this morning:

Tesla’s Lead in Battery Technology Isn’t So Wide, Analyst Says. Why It Matters.

They didn’t let a day go by to put out the false narrative that Tesla has no lead in battery tech. With Battery Day being postponed till mid September, a full three months before this claim will be disproven by Elon... sigh.

Btw, the article claims Bernstein is a Tesla bull. Really? They’ve been all over the map this year so far with their price target for TSLA. On Feb 18 from $325 to $730, then on April 13 from $730 to $500. (The article “mistakenly” quotes $730 as current target, to support their case that Bernstein is no bear.)

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

View attachment 555009


Trouble in Paradise brewing......

In all fairness they predict Tesla will go to $275 which is loosing more than two thirds.

Actually this might be a sign to buy Nikola ......... well, not really.

 

[lafrisbee]

In classical Marketing 101 there are the Four P's: Product, Place, Promotion and Price. They are useful as a baseline, but antiquated now. Still "promotion' does indeed encompass a broad array. Product Placement, in current context is part of Promotion. That is because Place referred to the distribution system beck in the day. Tesla famously innovated in Place too, with direct distribution.

The problem with using conventional Marketing terms to describe Tesla is identical to trying to compare a Tesla vehicle to an ICE, or a solar roof+Powerwall to a house with a diesel generator. Between Tesla, Google and Amazon we have a world of marketing that does not fit within any traditional definitions. That is mostly why I try to be a trifle pedantic about precision and accuracy with words related to Marketing. Failure to understand the reality produces idiotic shareholder proposals and ignorant suggestions that Tesla should advertise to build awareness.

It is no accident that Tesla is the most efficient marketer in consumer durables.

OK ..
NOT ENOUGH CAN BE SAID ABOUT THE PLACE>>>> This is HUUUUUGE in relation to the place the CYBER has taken.
Read where the CYBER is NOW!
About | Petersen Automotive Museum

 

[Knightshade]

What's the point of a fuel cell?

Ask Toyota- they've been searching for an answer to that question for years now

OK ..
NOT ENOUGH CAN BE SAID ABOUT THE PLACE>>>> This is HUUUUUGE in relation to the place the CYBER has taken.
Read where the CYBER is NOW!
About | Petersen Automotive Museum

FWIW, besides the museum being awesome, the cafe is pretty tasty too... and it's across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits

 

[jerry33]

Electric : Electricity -> battery -> motor -> drive somewhere
Fuel Cell : Electricity -> hydrogen -> transporting hydrogen -> pumping hydrogen into car -> fuel cell -> motor -> drive somewhere

What's the point of a fuel cell? Shorter time to fill up is the only one I can think of. On Battery Day, if they announce some breakthroughs in charge time, or heck, just solid incremental improvement, then that should be the final nail in the fuel cell coffin.

The point of fuel cells are A) keeping fossil fuels in business creating the hydrogen and B) Keeping the profit in dealer service. There's zero benefit to the consumer.

 

[HG Wells]

The point of fuel cells are A) keeping fossil fuels in business creating the hydrogen and B) Keeping the profit in dealer service. There's zero benefit to the consumer.

OH, yes there is.
Add a spigot and you could fill balloons for parties.

 

[Curt Renz]

CNBC - Jay Leno's Garage - June 21:

Another shade of Leno..I never watched the guy when he was hosting The Tonight Show. But who did...a helluva lot of people that are prime adopters of BEV's with plenty of discretionary money. And they watched him year after year after ... Jay Leno was non-threatening, friendly, and a pal to unwind with after the late news and before bed, heck for alot of people he was their companion IN bed.
And he built a reputation for saving his money (remember "he never spent a check he made from hosting The Tonight Show. He had the comedy gigs for that. So he saved. He earned his money in their minds), and his one real love was his cars. We trust him to know his cars.
When a good buddy starts talking about cars, and we know he knows his shitgar about cars, we listen. I imagine that podcast will actually influence anyone that watched it that knows Jay. He is changing the USA's perception on BEV's more than any other one person.
I have not watched what the Aussie said about an American Legend talking about an American Car Company. I know he put it on grandiose Aussie rose-colored glasses and posted that...but he does not know the truth about how much influence Jay has with the Average 40+ yr old American...yeah the Demographic that can buy a new car every four years when he wants to.

Indeed, well put. This half-hour unpaid endorsement from Jay Leno, could well be worth more than the price of a year of conventional advertising produced by Madison Avenue for an automaker. The YouTube video has been out less than a day, and is already approaching a half-million views. There will be more watching, when it actually becomes incorporated into a segment of Jay's TV show.

Those who are convinced by it, will advise their friends to watch it. Demand could explode exponentially. I'm not kidding. Let's hope production can keep up.

 

[tinm]

Embedded Marketing/Product Placement is NOT advertising. Elon has never AFAIK, said he does not believe in brand marketing. He most definitely does not wish to conduct advertising. He is far too well informed to confuse Brand Management with Advertising. Tesla Product Placement is, I agree, the stuff others can only dream of. From Stephen Colbert and Jay Leno to Aviation Week, the NFL and the Peterson Museum Tesla gets widespread poplar promotion and near-adulation. Note that almost all of that is actually Tesla owner word of mouth. SpaceX. of course, is different, but incredibly powerful with a huge technological achievement as a backstop.

We all need to be very careful with words. This is NOT advertising. Advertising is, by definition, paid promotion of a product. It can be highly targeted and very direct or as diffuse as a generic country-wide television advertisement. There is absolutely zero that is generic about Tesla marketing. As close as they come is the odd announcement via email or Twitter. 21st century Marketing simply is not advertising. Advertising revenues are dropping for that reason. Only the ancient ICE-age types are still doing advertising. Many are doing the online version, such as banner ads and preferential search placement. Those produce more profits fo Google, Facebook et al, but very few know how to use them.

FYI Tesla does occasionally pay to promote its brand and vehicles. For instance, Telluride Film Festival, that people pay thousands to attend, offers a fleet of vehicles as free transport vehicles to get you around town to the various theatres. Land Rover was the official sponsor the last time I attended. Tesla has brought a small fleet to Telluride for several years, even offering test rides. Tesla does pay for sponsorships or other promotions when there’s a target-rich environment of potential buyers. It’s for sure not advertising: but it is definitely marketing.

 

[Nocturnal]

I have to say, for a board where we are all on the same "team" sometimes we get really prickly and persnickety when it comes to details. (consonance!) Do we really need to argue about whether or not a car in a museum is "advertising" or not? Back in B-school I had done a case study about something and spent more than a sentence arguing the validity of something that got thousands or hundreds of thousands of free eyeballs on a product my professor would have failed me.

When was the last time people lined up to take pictures of the new F150 and shared them all over the internet? To borrow some similar phrasing from our YouTube friend Steven, that is what matters.

If that's how Tesla wanted the frunk to look, on a showpiece model, somebody missed the mark, IMHO.



No, I am thinking that with none of the other panels displaying swirls, at least in the pictures we've seen here, there is no logical reason to intentionally create the hot mess I see on a portion of the frunk. Changing times? Please. This may make sense and resonate with you, but I feel you'd find yourself in the minority.

View attachment 554960

Those are definitely the result of a poor repair job on the stainless. It was probably damaged at some point and they had somebody without the right tools or skills polish it out.

In some polished surfaces swirl marks are intended to be left but in those cases they are made to be uniform and symmetrical, typical lots of circles (easy with the shape of the polishing tool). My CT had better not come like that, but I doubt that would happen. And no, I'm hardly a perfectionist. My car's paint wasn't perfect on close inspection by my detailer but fine at a glance. I'm sure I have panel gaps too but whatevs.

 

[FrankSG]

Are you a Youtube supporter of Steven from "Solving the Money Problem"? If you are, Steven has just released a video that exclusively covers Jay Leno's recent video (Leno's new video already has over a 1/4 million views). That's how important Steven thinks this video is. Because he knows how influential a man like Jay Leno is when speaking his mind about Tesla's newest product. His final conclusion was "Overall, I think it (Leno's video) is a massive boost for selling the Model Y".

And I agree with his analysis.

I really don't like his videos actually. I watched a few of his early videos, but I found that some (Q4'19 ER) had a ton of misinformation and inaccuracies, and others I just didn't like very much. For example, I believe there was an early video on why he is invested in Amazon, and me not knowing that much about Amazon, had hoped he'd explain why it's worth its very high valuation, but he only talked about some hype things that taught me nothing about why Amazon is/isn't a good investment.

 

[Artful Dodger]

After-action Report: Mon, Jun 22, 2020: (Full-Day's Trading)

Headline: "Lowest TSLA volume since Nov 21, 2019 (215 days)"

Traded: $6,324,875,601.37 ($6.32 B)
Volume: 6,367,695
VWAP: $993.28

Closing SP / VWAP: 100.11%
(TSLA closed ABOVE today's Avg SP)
Mkt Cap: TSLA / TM = 184.422B / 177.55B = 103.87%​

'Short' Report:

FINRA Short/Total Volume = 53.7% (51st Percentile rank Shorting)
FINRA Volume / Total NASDAQ Vol = 53.9% (54th Percentile rank FINRA Reporting)
FINRA Short Exempt Volume was 0.84% of Short Volume (48th Percentile rank)​

View all Lodger's After-Action Reports

Cheers!

 

[JusRelax]

As has been mentioned before, Tesla is not the only one that has had to deal with initial production quality issues with the introduction of new models. Here's an article on the production quality issues that Porsche has had with the Taycan:

Looks Like Porsche Taycans Have Huge Quality Issues | MotorBiscuit

 

[Prunesquallor]

The point of fuel cells are A) keeping fossil fuels in business creating the hydrogen and B) Keeping the profit in dealer service. There's zero benefit to the consumer.

Since Trevor is so into the fueling stations, he should outright pledge that the H2 will be produced via water electrolysis using clean energy.

He could then at least claim that the well-to-wheels is cleaner with H2FC since “our fuel is water, our exhaust is water”. No mining or battery recycling required.

Just to be clear, I think - economically and practically - his concepts are full of it, but one could make the end-to-end argument.

 

[Artful Dodger]

View attachment 554945

Firmware spelunking by ( twitter: @greentheonly) seems to indicate that Model S/X Bty Pack Rev. F *may* be able to supercharge at a peak rate of 225KW.

Nice.

 

[MP3Mike]

Firmware spelunking by ( twitter: @greentheonly) seems to indicate that Model S/X Bty Pack Rev. F *may* be able to supercharge at a peak rate of 225KW.

Nice.

Actually he is thinking it is not rev F. (He is looking for what the new part number is.)

 

[Artful Dodger]

Leno's new video already has over a 1/4 million views

453K views as we speak. In fact, the only other recent video with more views on "Jay Leno's Garage" is about an unusual 60-year old Corvair pickup truck.

That'll change next year when Cybertruck goes plaid...

Cheers!

 

[Beltsbear]

Electric : Electricity -> battery -> motor -> drive somewhere
Fuel Cell : Electricity -> hydrogen -> transporting hydrogen -> pumping hydrogen into car -> fuel cell -> motor -> drive somewhere

What's the point of a fuel cell? Shorter time to fill up is the only one I can think of. On Battery Day, if they announce some breakthroughs in charge time, or heck, just solid incremental improvement, then that should be the final nail in the fuel cell coffin.

There is a use case. Long distance trucking. No consumer use I know of. Nikola could be useful here, only if they make hydrogen via solar powered electrolysis. That eliminates the transport and makes it sort of green as it displaces diesel. With that use case, I think Nikola is worth about 1/10 of its current market cap.

 

[Prunesquallor]

453K views as we speak. In fact, the only other recent video with more views on "Jay Leno's Garage" is about an unusual 60-year old Corvair pickup truck.

That'll change next year when Cybertruck goes plaid...

Cheers!

OT
My favorite “Garage” episode is the “Turbine Car”. I (barely) remember seeing that thing at the 1964 Worlds Fair.

 

[TrendTrader007]

007
@TrendTrader007

$TSLA this is what winning daily chart looks like before the stock explodes to the upside and goes super parabolic minimum price target of $1500 maximum price target of $3000 over the next three months Shorts are history

 

[TrendTrader007]

$TSLA Methinks time to exit Tesla calls would be around end of September 2020 and @elonmusk just announced it yesterday so time to load up on calls right now and ride it until the battery day/ annual meet and then unload everything before Q4 starts
That’s the way I see it right now but I might change my mind at any time