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

[Fobble]

Shareholders seem to forget the mission statement because it conflicts with profitability.
.

I doubt shareholders care about Tesla mission. They mainly care about earnings.

 

[ZachF]

The last 6 years.

Still in it's long-term rising channel. Could even go lower... The upper bound is heading towards $500 though.

 

[anthonyj]

What are the next catalysts? $35k Model 3 wasn’t one apparently. Seriously. Tesla showing profit in Q3 was probably the worst thing to happen to this stock in the medium term

 

[lklundin]

It's already mostly handled for individuals:

View attachment 381752

Note that the standard window is one day, and the 7-day window is valid only if you have never test-driven a Tesla. It's a one-time offer for the lifetime of that person. Also, if you tried getting insurance, then dropping it after a day, repeatedly. Well, your carrier would drop you pretty quick-like.



I would hope not.

The phrasing "a test or demo drive with us" is quite general. I once took a test drive in a Model S (and signed some paperwork in the Tesla store). In principle that counts as "with us".

 

[Open Interest]

I think this is a very exciting quarter in terms of positioning. The fulfilled promise of $35k EVs is huge. Cars shipping to China and Europe is huge!

Tsla is out of production hell and is positioning for the future. To me, the future seems bright. Can’t wait to see how Q2 and Q3 look.

 

[jerry33]

The bottom of the pack is ballistic armor shielding. I've never heard of this being pierced by running over an object.

Always assuming it was a rock, when driving over really uneven surfaces, the suspension can cause the car to bounce really hard if it's not being driven very, very slow. Ideally it should be in very-high mode to minimize the chances. (was it in very-high?) We don't really even know that it was a rock, that's an assumption made by the driver--very likely true assumption, but not something that can be 100% verified.

 

[humbaba]

Actually, the FSD news is a huge positive, see the additional FSD information above from @ReflexFunds.

'Level 4 quality FSD with human supervision by the end of the year" for a significant percentage of routes looks like a high probability outcome now.

I made this argument last year a couple of times: neural networks have non-trivial scaling properties, where 20x performance increase with the Tesla AI chip results in emergent improvements in the quality of FSD. Even software experts are often surprised by this, because there's no equivalent for this in the procedural software space: speedups don't add new features, they only enable the adding of new features. With neural networks it's fundamentally different.

So with HW3 I expect an almost singularity-alike event of FSD quality improvements this year. You like and love TACC and NoA already on your daily commute? Buckle up ...

I remain a full FSD skeptic, but... since I bought EAP they are offering me FSD for $3k -- the same price as at initial purchase. I gotta say, its tempting and extremely fair. Prior word was that the only way to get HW3 was to either buy FSD now or wait until it was bundled with the cars. And I'm all for the improvements HW3 will bring simply from its increased processing ability, even if I don't ever use a full FSD.

Honestly, I expect I'll do it. I'd been leaning to doing so even when it was $5k (after purchase upgrade) so knocking it down to $3k...

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Doctor’s diagnosis: bipolar disorder

 

[printf42]

And that's the smaller neural networks with HW2 and HW2.5 basis. The new first generation Tesla AI chip in HW3 is already 20x faster, allowing the huge 'unified vision' neural networks Andrej Karpathy's team has already trained and qualified but which HW 2.5 can only run at ~1 FPS.

I really mean it: buckle up, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you can buy the FSD option for $3k now then I'd suggest doing it, to guarantee HW3 compatibility. HW2.5 will be in the first round of upgrades, but according to a leak that looks credible I believe Tesla will eventually be able to upgrade HW2 cars too.

Interesting point to think, FSD features needs HW3, now NoA is part of FSD, probably means future release of NoA will leverage/require HW3.

Then, existing EAP user got to keep NoA, this means two possibilities:

• Current EAP users will have the current version of NoA, and will not get future updates. This will make people unhappy since they paid for NoA as part of their EAP, and would expect that to be improving overtime.
• Current EAP users will get HW3 too, even without the FSD package. But if you want traffic light capability later, you need to pay 5k for the originally offered “after delivery FSD addition”. This will have cost implications and might explain the lowered profit guidance.

Thoughts?

 

[Bobfitz1]

Electrek reported yesterday very interesting remarks by VW CEO Herbert Diess.
https://electrek.co/2019/02/28/vw-admits-tesla-advantage-protect-gas-car-business/

Yesterday Elon updated Tesla guidance on 2019 cars produced to 420 - 600K and the changes to choices and pricing I think make it very likely they will have demand for as many cars as they can produce.

The Electrek article mentioned VW's stated long range goal for EV production.
"VW plans to manufacture up to 3 million electric vehicles by 2025."

What do members who have dived deeply into future projections of production (and revenues, profits, valuation) think Tesla may be
producing by 2025? I don't have such a mode,l but did a very rough back of napkin projection using 500K cars in 2019 as the starting point and between 50 and 75% annual growth in production. I'm not suggesting this year/cars projection is going to happen or likely to happen. I just wanted to see what might be a plausible answer plus or minus a million.

2019 500K
2020 800K
2021 1.3 M
2022 2 M
2023 3 M
2024 4.5 M
2025 7.5 M

I find it interesting and exciting to consider that even if VW meets their stated 2025 goal, Tesla by that time could be producing twice as many EVs. It seems plausible to me that Elon, having kicked the ICE world hard where it hurts and woken most of them up, is not yet satisfied enough are moving fast enough, and therefore need to be kicked even harder again.

How lame that analysts and clueless media commentators can't do a simple linear projection of Tesla annual production growth five or six years into the future.

 

[Tenable]

You too? Some other guy asked the same question earlier...

I think it was me asking earlier as well. No answer thus far

 

[ZachF]

What are the next catalysts? $35k Model 3 wasn’t one apparently. Seriously. Tesla showing profit in Q3 was probably the worst thing to happen to this stock in the medium term

Looking at my historic channel chart, probably sometime after the Y reveal and before production starts. Then it will rapidly head up to $500... and probably stay there for 2 years as the circle of FUD starts anew...

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

I bought more at 296.....a bit earlier than I should have because it proceeded to drop to 292 lol. Oh well.

The volume is crazy this morning. I really wish a someone or a company to take a 5-10% share to wipe out the available float.

Trying to wrap my head around the huge S/X Performance price drops. I'm really hoping it's that they're clearing things out for the S/X upgrades. The Performance versions are mostly software related right? Maybe they're just trying to get more people to do the performance versions by sacrificing some margin on each performance version but making it up with more volume of performance versions. Thoughts?

Also, Q1 earnings can't come soon enough

Oh and Bob Lultz……..what an idiot. I feel dumber just listening to him talk about financials. How'd that bankruptcy go Bob???

 

[humbaba]

Interesting point to think, FSD features needs HW3, now NoA is part of FSD, probably means future release of NoA will leverage/require HW3.

Then, existing EAP user got to keep NoA, this means two possibilities:

• Current EAP users will have the current version of NoA, and will not get future updates. This will make people unhappy since they paid for NoA as part of their EAP, and would expect that to be improving overtime.
• Current EAP users will get HW3 too, even without the FSD package. But if you want traffic light capability later, you need to pay 5k for the originally offered “after delivery FSD addition”. This will have cost implications and might explain the lowered profit guidance.

Thoughts?

That had occurred to me as well. However, I don't believe it is consistent with prior guidance that EAP would not receive HW3, only those with FSD. And it isn't $5k for after delivery, they have lowered it to $3k. Hence my quandary about paying for FSD.

 

[KSilver2000]

The last 6 years.

Still in it's long-term rising channel. Could even go lower... The upper bound is heading towards $500 though.

Alternatively, if you look at the bounds of the last two years, they don’t look so rosy.

 

[Mich]

Ok, now let's go green!

 

[jerry33]

As the Mobile Service Technician put on his vestments while standing next to the customer’s car in the driveway, the customer asked the Technician if he was able to perform the sacrament of Alignment on the car’s wheels and he said, nay, that requires a service center. Alas, the land in which this customer dwells hath enacted laws banning such facilities, and upon the customer’s and Technician’s mutual realization of this fact, the Technician returned to his vehicle and with regret, left. And it came to pass, as his Mobile Service Tech vehicle disappeared from view, the customer began to contemplate the long overnight journey to a faraway place where fairer laws permit such facilities to exist.

There is nothing sacred about aligning a Tesla, unless there are damaged parts. Any really good quality alignment place can do it. However, I strongly recommend using either a shop that aligns race cars or a frame shop. The $89 special alignments are generally not worth the paper the receipt is printed on.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

It’s either that or 250ish. Next news-worthy items are SEC nonsense and then model Y reveal I believe. Too much risk for me to own shares at this moment.

Well, and the already announced large autopilot/FSD update on March 15

 

[neroden]

Bounce-backs are faster now for sure. Green by next week IMO. Lots to digest for the market. Upshot is positive as in world dominance of the industry - sooner. Moat city!

I still don't understand why now? Either demand is tapering, or it's steady and capacity is growing. Seems to me they could have just deferred the $35K until China could ship them globally without too much push back. Is there another line in the works we don't know about? And how is a SR available in 2-4 weeks? Where did the 300K demand go? That number better grow soon or I'll get concerned. I keep trying to order a new one and it's been 2-4 weeks all day.

Those numbers (estimated delivery times) have *never, ever* been accurate.

 

[NicoV]

I am actually a little bit surprised that I dont' have a delivery date yet (Tesla owners are supposed to have priority). I take it as a good sign that tons of 3s are delivered before mine!

I am in the same situation.