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

[bpjod]

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?

IIRC the founder of Turo is a Tesla owner. This isn’t the first time they’ve prominently featured a Tesla, and I applaud them for that. Their site/app has always made it easy to filter for EVs. I’ve only used Turo twice, once to test a Model S for a week in Florida and once to test a Model 3 for a four day weekend in Chicago. I bet I’m not the only one who has done that.

 

[Rarity]

There is no $3000/acre land anywhere near Austin/San Antonio/Houston. You have to go way west. And any “vacant” land would run into environmental.

This parcel appears to have been zoned and had environmental permission for open pit mining. This probably had the positive consequence that permission for leveling the place in preparation for a factory was streamlined. I have been surprised that we have not seen a lengthy environmental submission on the factory, which is subject to public comment and the whole works. I have been taught to fear NEPA reviews, so I wonder why this isn't a thing here.

The parcel is also contiguous, except for the area West of the toll road.

 

[Zero CO2]

LOL...so they are going to make an autonomous car that makes the distance from the airport almost a non-issue, and they buy right on top of Austin?
Everyone has a blindspot... Elon's appears to be real estate.
California? when all the other car companies pulled out for obvious reasons
Nevada? poor choice in every way except tax incentives
And now Austin for $37,000/acre...like they couldn't have gotten land for $3000/acre 30 miles from Austin, and with FSD that is like next door.
I'll say it.... Elon needs to hire Trevor to pick his sites.

Cost of the land is trivial in relation to delaying site construction and vehicle revenue .. they will recover the cost in short order once vehicles are coming off the line at up to 1000% improvement in manufacturing process

 

[Prunesquallor]

West is the Hill Country where any large parcel is way over 10K per acre. You would have to go out past Junction to get land for $3K per acre, and the environmental, transportation and housing costs would be beyond reason.

And if you go too much farther west, you run into Bezos' ranch

 

[oldTAVguy]

Brady, McCulloch County, TX Farms and Ranches for sale Property ID: 335251160 | LandWatch
A very quick search
13x the acreage at half the price.

Nice country but 110 miles from Austin, 127 from San Antonio and 186 from Dallas. No housing but lots of open land. Getting a large high tech work force out there would cost way more that $100 million.

 

[oldTAVguy]

And if you go too much farther west, you run into Bezos' ranch

Now that is way west, it is closer to Phoenix than Dallas. Few live there and few want to live there. Beautiful area though.

 

[Todd Burch]

Brady, McCulloch County, TX Farms and Ranches for sale Property ID: 335251160 | LandWatch
A very quick search
13x the acreage at half the price.

A > 2 hour drive from Austin. Giga Texas will require thousands of skilled tech workers. Are you going to find them at the nearby farms and ranches? You can ask workers to commute 2 hours each way from Austin to work, or you can get real and pay a little extra for the land.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Brady, McCulloch County, TX Farms and Ranches for sale Property ID: 335251160 | LandWatch
A very quick search
13x the acreage at half the price.

LOL. In the middle of nowhere.

 

[lafrisbee]

Do you recall that Elon rode the train from Berlin to Brandenburg to get a feel for what the commute would be like for workers? Did you listen to recruiting advertisement disguised as an earnings call only interrupted for a plea for more (responsibly mined) nickle?

When you are talent constrained (Nikola motors isn't, you can hire photoshoppers to work remote for cheap) you have to provide work where they are willing to be. The fact that Trevor isn't concerned with this should be a red flag to investors. The fact that Musk is concerned with attracting good talent is a good sign for investors.

YOU have made a very good point..the frailty of the human mind..even of a pool of "good talent." I still can't come to terms with it mattering that the land be 30-50 miles outside of Austin for the initial purchase and tax benefits. FSD should make the short (by time) drive almost negligible.
But then perhaps he paid 10x as much for the land because he recognized the talent pool.
With my now understanding of the HUGE price he paid for the property I am led to believe this will become the site of the "Global Hub" of Tesla.

 

[lafrisbee]

LOL. In the middle of nowhere.

Yeah? A lot better than the Nevada site.

 

[Todd Burch]

Yeah? A lot better than the Nevada site.

Giga Nevada is 25 minutes from Reno, a city of a quarter million people.

 

[Lessmog]

Yeah? A lot better than the Nevada site.

Will we see you there?

 

[lafrisbee]

And before attacking the "site" i found as the final choice please consider that I found that in a five minute search of which most of the time was trying to figure out what was around Austin. If I could quickly find that I imagine he could send me to Austin with a budget and I could find something much closer with transportation avenues available, AND a lower tax base, Which employees could FSD to with little issue.
Elon can't be a genius at everything.

 

[CyberDutchie]

This is bad, soon MM will trigger massive stop limits at 1400

 

[dww12]

West is the Hill Country where any large parcel is way over 10K per acre. You would have to go out past Junction to get land for $3K per acre, and the environmental, transportation and housing costs would be beyond reason.

Yeah, I meant WAY west. There is no Hill Country land for under $20k/acre.

 

[Todd Burch]

This is bad, soon MM will trigger massive stop limits at 1400

Record Q3 cometh.
Battery Day cometh.

And that right soon.

 

[YAWD]

On both sides. Which is kinda my point

Thus why I don't think it's reasonable to price in L5 or robotaxis to any short/mid term valuation on SP.... If they get there- awesome. Even if it NEVER goes further than RTs in dense urban areas plus autonomy for personal cars that's essentially a blank check for the company, insane upside- and if it goes further even moreso. But it's unlikely they're gonna do so in that timeframe (and even less likely they'd do so AND have wide commercial approval in such a timeframe).

I agree with OP here. RT is a singularity like event. No one knows when it happens and what happens after that. We can all make financial model using "discounted cash flow analysis" but they all will be wrong. I think it is important to temper expectations here little bit instead of running away with crazy SPs in 2030. Either way, Tesla does not need RT to become a multi trillion $ company.

 

[UncaNed]

This is bad, soon MM will trigger massive stop limits at 1400

Why?? Because we're down almost 3%???

 

[lafrisbee]

Giga Nevada is 25 minutes from Reno, a city of a quarter million people.

Not much in the way of any resources for a manufacturing company like Tesla.

 

[Lessmog]

Why?? Because we're down almost 3%???

No, because magic number.