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

[perwis]

One touch of the Volvo infotainment system solidifies that opinion. Once someone uses the Tesla system , and remembers how bad the competition is, Another moat is realized.

Actually the new Polestar 2 uses the new Android Automotive OS, which seems really good. I’ve seen reviewers claiming they prefer it to Tesla’s. This is one area where I am most afraid of competition actually...

 

[kengchang]

The lower priced Y being dropped is temporary I think. Good way to bring people off the fence that were debating whether or not to wait for the cheaper Y, but also I think what is currently called the LR RWD will actually become the entry level cheap Y fairly quickly (After battery day reveals tech that enables practical extra long range Y & 3 models.)

Just don't see why the new battery would go into 3/Y before new S/X/CT/Semi and (if) higher tier of 3/Y

 

[kyzhk]

Actually the new Polestar 2 uses the new Android Automotive OS, which seems really good. I’ve seen reviewers claiming they prefer it to Tesla’s. This is one area where I am most afraid of competition actually...

Actually, android fragmentation on phone is a horrible issue.

Even flagship phones people pay premium for ($1000+ samsung flagships) are only supported for 2 major os update.

The major reasons are two-fold:
1) android relies on binary blob supplied by silicon vendor (for example, qualcomm for snapdragon soc), which can introduce compatibility issues with linux kernel update since the drivers are not mainstreamed, and linux kernal space api are not usually stable (compared to userspace api compatibility which linus takes very seriously)
2) Reluctance of soc supplier to provide software update for socs older than 1 or 2 generations. In this case even Samsung is not providing firmware/software update for its own exynos chip for more than 2 years ish.

In automotive the same issue is worse simply due to the number of subsystems and suppliers (read volkswagen id3 issues). I don't think android automotive os has communication link to every single subsystem in the vehicle, let alone ota update).

Tesla infotainment system vs android automative draws heavy parallel to apple ios vs android. apple iphone 6s released back in 2015 is scheduled to have ios 14 update releasing later this year. While 2018 android flagship like samsung note 9 won't be getting major version update anymore.

 

[FrankSG]

Just finished listening to the 3-part elon musk interview podcast from last week. A bit odd.

In first episode when Elon was asked about stock price, he wasn't exactly hiding his disbelief and you could pretty much hear his shrug. Definitely wasn't providing any support for the current stock price.

He seems to not really follow EV competitor output, which I found simultaneously awesome and worrying lol. Said he didn't really follow that sort of thing and was asking the interviewer what was going on in terms of competitor shipments and sales.

I took it more to mean that Elon was surprised how TSLA could be valued at $180 in June of 2019 and $1,800 in July of 2020. From his viewpoint the change in the company was not that large. Sure, progress was made over the past 12 months, but he must've already known Tesla would report a stellar Q3'19, Giga Shanghai ramp would go fast, and Model Y would be in volume production this soon.

From Elon's viewpoint, Tesla's position improved over the past 12 months, but not by 10x like the SP did. I think this is what the "stock price is too high" tweet and comments on the podcast are referring to.

You could interpret it as TSLA being overvalued right now, but I know now and also knew a year ago that TSLA was vastly undervalued then.

 

[Steve m]

Didn't I suggest earlier that if it gets cheaper to ride robo taxis then private cars that people will own fewer cars and parking lots will be emptier leaving room for robo taxis to wait?

I am pretty sure I all ready made this claim.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I think this is what the "stock price is too high" tweet and comments on the podcast are referring to.

That tweet was in the context of Tesla having only one operational factory at the time, GF3/Shanghai. In that context, his statement was literally true. It was meant to create leverage against the County of Alameda and their ill-advised / over-reaching / unjustified shutdown order.

That tweet had nothing to do with the long-term value of Tesla. Elon doubled-down with the "I ask only that I be arrested first" tweet.

And it worked. Fremont opened days later, TSLA's Q2 was rescued, and everything else is history.

 

[MC3OZ]

Actually, android fragmentation on phone is a horrible issue.

Even flagship phones people pay premium for ($1000+ samsung flagships) are only supported for 2 major os update.

The major reasons are two-fold:
1) android relies on binary blob supplied by silicon vendor (for example, qualcomm for snapdragon soc), which can introduce compatibility issues with linux kernel update since the drivers are not mainstreamed, and linux kernal space api are not usually stable (compared to userspace api compatibility which linus takes very seriously)
2) Reluctance of soc supplier to provide software update for socs older than 1 or 2 generations. In this case even Samsung is not providing firmware/software update for its own exynos chip for more than 2 years ish.

In automotive the same issue is worse simply due to the number of subsystems and suppliers (read volkswagen id3 issues). I don't think android automotive os has communication link to every single subsystem in the vehicle, let alone ota update).

Tesla infotainment system vs android automative draws heavy parallel to apple ios vs android. apple iphone 6s released back in 2015 is scheduled to have ios 14 update releasing later this year. While 2018 android flagship like samsung note 9 won't be getting major version update anymore.

Vertical integration really shines when you want to make rapid progress with an issue requiring networked communication.

I remember one of my old bosses telling me once, "Generic Solutions don't work", he was from an era when designing hardware and soldering wires was part of a typical software project.

Generic Solutions only work when mature layered standards are developed, the Automotive Software Industry seems to be a bunch of stand-alone systems that are hard to integrate....

So getting a car OS system to work well on one car is challenging, making it work on multiple cars with parts from different vendors is more challenging, supporting backwards comparability to ill considered legacy solutions even more challenging..

I don't think infotainment or even maps and navigation is the hard bit, the hard part is secure software control of the cars subsystems and software updates...

EDIT: This video seems relevant to the debate:-

Around 14;00 Sandy shows a single Model 3 high voltage cable compared to a bunch of GM Bolt high voltage cables.

The ;legacy car industry is only going to make EVs work by putting car bodies on top of standardized skateboards, while that saves money and does standardize a lot of the design, it means short term compromises.... particularly if a car company is mostly just using imported skateboards...

So what it all boils down to is no easy solutions and they can't leave everything to a last minute rush.

Again the video elegantly describes the dilemma, everything a company outsources, they no longer design or fully understand..

 

[CyberDutchie]

I took it more to mean that Elon was surprised how TSLA could be valued at $180 in June of 2019 and $1,800 in July of 2020. From his viewpoint the change in the company was not that large. Sure, progress was made over the past 12 months, but he must've already known Tesla would report a stellar Q3'19, Giga Shanghai ramp would go fast, and Model Y would be in volume production this soon.

From Elon's viewpoint, Tesla's position improved over the past 12 months, but not by 10x like the SP did. I think this is what the "stock price is too high" tweet and comments on the podcast are referring to.

You could interpret it as TSLA being overvalued right now, but I know now and also knew a year ago that TSLA was vastly undervalued then.

Also don’t forget, his pay is tied to Tesla’s market cap so he has every reason to want to see TSLA go up

 

[Tslynk67]

WSB has the goods again! I can't figure out how to embed this, but it's very much worth a click on a boring sunday.

The comments are even better than the video

 

[LN1_Casey]

Whilst I was stalking some car rentals for my upcoming trip to see my boy in Liverpool, I found that Turo.com is using a Tesla on their welcome page.

Who needs paid advertising?

 

[heltok]

Tesla paid almost $100 million for Gigafactory Texas land in Austin - Electrek

TXI Operations LP, a subsidiary of Martin Marietta Inc, owned the land.

Due to the latter being a publicly-traded company, we are able to learn more about the deal with Tesla, who bought the property through its own subsidiary: Colorado River Project LLC,.

During the release of their last financial results, they disclosed that they sold the land for $97 million (via Austin Business Journal):

“In Martin Marietta’s (NYSE: MLM) second-quarter earnings call on July 28, President and CEO Howard Nye said the company sold an excess property in Austin that was a “depleted standing gravel location” for nearly $100 million. Martin Marietta disclosed the actual sale price in a securities filing the same day.”

The CEO didn’t name Tesla, but it wasn’t difficult to connect the dots.

I copied the size of the Y/3 production lines to see how many would fit. Most likley they will add some more support buildings and leave some space, but there is a lot of possibilities of adding production lines if needed! Maybe semi and cybertruck will have different footprints suitable for some of the gaps.

 

[Tslynk67]

An hour into early pre-market and no $TSLA trading... pfff!

For those who don't know about WSB, here's some background: Reddit’s Profane, Greedy Traders Are Shaking Up the Stock Market

 

[heltok]

Tesla charging is about to explode with the new announcement. : teslainvestorsclub



My understanding is that previously Tesla used to install destination chargers and the business used to pay for electricity.

If charging Tesla drivers a fair price for electricity includes recovering the installation cost over say 5-7 years, there is no net cost to the installing business.

I think it is mainly aimed at apartments blocks where a bank of chargers can be shared with each driver paying for the electricity they use.

But this may lead to more L2 chargers at airports and motels.

Some quick math

Charging 22kW
Spot price in Sweden $0.02/kWh
Price at most public chargers $0.25/kWh
Let’s say I as an owner want to be reinbursed $0.12/kWh

Profit = $2.2/h

Cost to install, $500 for box, $500 for installtion
Chargeing customers 4h/day

Break even in ~110 days.

 

[WarpedOne]

Let’s say I as an owner want to be reinbursed $0.12/kWh

Is this real?
You as the owner gets to set the price of charging and how much you want from Tesla?
As far as I can tell Tesla will only reimburse your running cost of energy i.e. making you even, not paying you more than you payed for those kWh.

 

[serverguy247]

So I just saw the picture of the casting machine in China. Do we know if this is just for the rear sub-frame (more likely, as they talked about it) or can it do more (unlikely, but mind blowing if so)? I am wondering if we can work it out from the picture by looking at the length of the casting die / throw. What if this machine could potentially cast the entire car frame as in the patent? Are we talking 5ftx5ftx1ft parts or are we talking 14ft x 5ft x 5ft parts? That's a big difference and someone with experience may be able to tell from this pic.

Edit: I got the picture from the comments in this thread: Tesla Model Y Giant Casting Machine [Already Assembled] in Fremont : teslamotors

 

[Stretch2727]

So I just saw the picture of the casting machine in China. Do we know if this is just for the rear sub-frame (more likely, as they talked about it) or can it do more (unlikely, but mind blowing if so)? I am wondering if we can work it out from the picture by looking at the length of the casting die / throw. What if this machine could potentially cast the entire car frame as in the patent? Are we talking 5ftx5ftx1ft parts or are we talking 14ft x 5ft x 5ft parts? That's a big difference and someone with experience may be able to tell from this pic.

View attachment 574458

Edit: I got the picture from the comments in this thread: Tesla Model Y Giant Casting Machine [Already Assembled] in Fremont : teslamotors

Are we sure this is a recent picture? No one wearing masks.

 

[Baumisch]

Actually the new Polestar 2 uses the new Android Automotive OS, which seems really good. I’ve seen reviewers claiming they prefer it to Tesla’s. This is one area where I am most afraid of competition actually...

me too! AndroidOS has all my Google data - it will ask me to drive to my next appointment, it know my last POI, and it has app support already.

 

[SpaceCash]

That tweet was in the context of Tesla having only one operational factory at the time, GF3/Shanghai. In that context, his statement was literally true. It was meant to create leverage against the County of Alameda and their ill-advised / over-reaching / unjustified shutdown order.

That tweet had nothing to do with the long-term value of Tesla. Elon doubled-down with the "I ask only that I be arrested first" tweet.

And it worked. Fremont opened days later, TSLA's Q2 was rescued, and everything else is history.

Correct. That "stock price is too high imo" tweet was a protest tweet. Not a statement to be taken literally in normal times (whatever normal is)

 

[serverguy247]

Are we sure this is a recent picture? No one wearing masks.

Good spot. So I did some digging and a reverse image searches. Looks like this was taken in Nov 2019 and was not at the shanghai giga. This could be a machine for Tesla (before it was delivered?)... or it could not be related (who knows the what the sources were for the person on Reddit).

LK Group

Interesting though:

"During the factory open house, LK Group debuted the world’s first 6000T die casting cell, named as IMPRESS-PLUS DCC6000. The highly integrated, intelligent and energy-efficient die casting cell combined features such as smart injection, quality control and LK-NET to form the most powerful die casting unit in the world."

More pictures there too. To the uneducated.... too small for the whole car (the red piece must be the die).

 

[Artful Dodger]

Good spot. So I did some digging and a reverse image searches. Looks like this was taken in Nov 2019 and was not at the shanghai giga.

Agreed. The ceiling/roof configuration, wall color, and the shape of the interior space does not match any of the new buildings in Phase 2 at GF3/Shanghai.