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

[HG Wells]

That precisely conforms to the Shanghai Municipal government statements of last month. Since the ground has been purportedly prepared and at least one largish construction contract has been awarded and begun, we only need to see where the terminus of that flight will be.

BTW, despite the name of the owner this aircraft is a US Georgia-built Gulfstream 650ER which replaced his previous Falcon 900B. Logically, at least, the replacement happened in order to gain the extra range since the G650 ER is about 7500nm and the Falcon 900B is a little less than 4000 nm. Thus, China non-stop needs more range!

"nm" Nano meters or nautical miles ?

 

[schonelucht]

Have a look at David Tayar’s tweets. He is a subject matter expert

David Tayar on Twitter

His explanation doesn't make sense at all : the new warehouse has the same maturity date as the old one.

 

[Heimdallr]

"nm" Nano meters or nautical miles ?

7500 nautical miles or 1'389'000'000'000'000 nanometers

 

[Fact Checking]

Direct link to the Youtube video:

There is some doubt that this was actually AP expressed in the comments. I offer no take myself.

The driver of the Tesla said that he kept his hands off the steering wheel, "because it was moving so fast".

So yes, this does look like AP shadow mode traction control taking over and stabilizing the car.

I've only seen professional drivers perform this slide correction correctly, and I've done it once on a professional driving course that involved a special hydraulic plate that "slides" the car intentionally. It's very hard to recover from this.

The usual outcome is that the driver is unable to keep control even on dry surface. A collection of human driver reactions:

Doing this on slush like AP did is a godlike superpower.

 

[jbcarioca]

"nm" Nano meters or nautical miles ?

It is Nautical Miles, still used as aircraft range and low-altitude airspeed calculations in North America. (FWIW high altitude 18,000 feet AGL, changes to Mach and uses standard air pressure setting of 1015mb/29.92 " mercury). Further the G650ER Elon uses has a long range cruise speed of Mach .85 which lets him arrive in Beijing a few hours before a commercial aircraft leaving LAX at the same time he left would arrive.

Sorry for being off-topic.

 

[schonelucht]

If I were to guess, the new terms make it easier to put lots of Model 3s into the agreement, and the nonexistent track record of model 3 leases is probably why the premium over LIBOR was increased by 0.2%. But that is just a wild guess.

It's the best explanation I've heard so far. Just one caveat : when you read the old agreement, it makes no reference specifically to which models are covered just that it has to be a Tesla car. But maybe there is some language buried deep inside. My other guess would be that the unnamed financing entities backing the old warehouse signalled to Tesla that it was not willing to extend the old agreement after August 2019 and that Tesla went looking for partners that would in principle be ready to extend the agreement.

 

[Buckminster]

7500 nautical miles or 1'389'000'000'000'000 nanometers

Beware: Latest Taycan acceleration figures is in 0-60 nanometers/ph. Wicked fast - those German engineers sure learnt how to bend the rules during dieselgate!

 

[lklundin]

New CCS Tesla superchargers being installed in Norway ahead of model 3 sales.
Detailed video with Bjørn Nyland.

First Tesla Supercharging Station With CCS DC Plug In Norway: Video

Wonder if US models 3's will make a similar change at some point. Or at least an adapter.

What's the best place to track the progress of this conversion/extension of European Superchargers?

Friday night I checked the 16 stalls at the Affi, Italy exit on the E-45, none were converted (and two occupied, one fully charged).

 

[KarenRei]

The Falcon is airborne, presumably on the way to Shanghai for the GF3 ground breaking

View attachment 366568

How do you track this? And is it possible to get alerts? If he were to pop by Iceland I'd love to be able to show up at the airport, sitting up against a wall all disheveled, holding a sign that says "Bankwupt" and begging for ETH in a Boring Company hat

 

[lklundin]

"nm" Nano meters or nautical miles ?

The relevant governing body would in this case be ICAO, which recommends NM to denote the nautical mile.
The lower case (which is nanometer in SI) is used by NOAA to mean nautical mile.

Source: Wikipedia.

PS. Happy off-topic Sunday to everyone...

 

[pnungesser]

I think Tom has a good explanation of the changes on the last day. The weekly average dropped the low week 13 from q2 added big week 13 for q4 and Tesla added new VINs after a dry spell. It’s more likely Tesla added the VINs to fix the Bloomberg model, then Bloomberg conspired to rig the count. I doubt Tom Randall is going to commit fraud and manipulation of public data to fix his model.
There are plenty of Luddite Lopez hacks out there, ambulance chasers and TMZ wanna b’s. I feel for the honest brokers who are slammed on both sides for their unscrupulous or even criminal behavior, often for no apparent personal benefit. I don’t think it’s positive or helpful to treat people this way and drives enmity for people who have contributed to honest, if not always favorable dialog.

I haven't seen any good explanations from Tom as to why his tracker was so inaccurate. At least Troy accepted responsibility for his miss. I've complained about the Bloomberg tracker several times on this page and usually the response has been that Tom is one of the good guys. My usual complaint was that his data was at least 10 day behind and that it should be updated more often. How can he update after the production data has been released and then claim an accuracy of 99.5%. It's just plain dishonest, and he should be called out for it.

 

[EinSV]

Bloomberg did not change their estimates *after* the P&D report. I noticed the change on the afternoon of Dec. 30th

Ditto, although IMO this last minute change meant the tracker was very inaccurate for most of the quarter and only useful the last ~2.5 days before the P/D report.

And it is completely useless for estimating the current run rate since they use a 13-week average that — by design — doesn’t even try to estimate current production. So as long as Tesla is in growth mode the tracker will tend to underestimate current production rates.

Bottom line for me is the Bloomberg tracker was just as bad as Troy’s estimates except for the last couple days of the quarter. I was surprised Bloomberg did not make a stronger mea culpa for such lousy overall results and instead says the tracker "has been accurate" and posting its quarter-end results, which IMO is misleading since it was very inaccurate at estimating quarterly production except ~2 days out of 92 in the quarter.

 

[Sancho]

Tracking production so obsessively might have made sense during production hell, but now its a distraction from the only thing that matters: margin.

If Tesla is able to maintain its margins, we will all be swimming in caviar. If it doesn’t, I will meet you all at White Castle.

 

[Heimdallr]

Tracking production so obsessively might have made sense during production hell, but now its a distraction from the only thing that matters: margin.

If Tesla is able to maintain its margins, we will all be swimming in caviar. If it doesn’t, I will meet you all at White Castle.

I have to absolutely agree here. Where's the point of obsessively track production now that production has stabilized? During the Q3 earnings call, management indicated that production will grow more slowly and gradually, which gives them the opportunity to focus on cost efficiencies. I wouldn't be surprised to see that some of these efficiencies have been found in Q4, even though the number of Model 3 vehicles produced "only" went up to 61,394 from 53,239 last quarter (or roughly 4700 per week vs. 4100 per week).

 

[CorneliusXX]

It's the best explanation I've heard so far. Just one caveat : when you read the old agreement, it makes no reference specifically to which models are covered just that it has to be a Tesla car. But maybe there is some language buried deep inside. My other guess would be that the unnamed financing entities backing the old warehouse signalled to Tesla that it was not willing to extend the old agreement after August 2019 and that Tesla went looking for partners that would in principle be ready to extend the agreement.

Where are you getting your source details for the old warehouse? The 8K for the new warehouse is quite light on detail.

 

[EinSV]

Tracking production so obsessively might have made sense during production hell, but now its a distraction from the only thing that matters: margin.

If Tesla is able to maintain its margins, we will all be swimming in caviar. If it doesn’t, I will meet you all at White Castle.

I much prefer focusing on long-term developments instead of obsessing over the short-term but having credible info that Model 3 production is above 6000 cars per week -- versus the 4582 per week Bloomberg estimates -- is still useful information and dramatically affects the bottom line, including margins.

 

[Yamantasdivar]

we will all be swimming in caviar

Swimming among unfertilized eggs? What are you, sperm?

 

[jbcarioca]

How do you track this? And is it possible to get alerts? If he were to pop by Iceland I'd love to be able to show up at the airport, sitting up against a wall all disheveled, holding a sign that says "Bankwupt" and begging for ETH in a Boring Company hat

https://www.flightradar24.com/data
That is one such site; there are several. In order to track a private aircraft you need to have the aircraft registration number, for US registry they are called "N" numbers because the prefix to all US registered aircraft is N. For Iceland it is TF. Elon's G650ER is N628ES. Owner is Falcon Landing LLC, alleged to be after the Falcon rockets, but his previous airplane was a Falcon 900B, so who knows, he could have bought taht oen because of the name, more likely because Falcons are the sweetest handling civil aircraft. I freely admit I am biased because I am typed in a Falcon and absolutely adored flying them, or anything else for that matter. Sadly, I am superannuated from piloting myself.

 

[loco]

It is Nautical Miles, still used as aircraft range and low-altitude airspeed calculations in North America. (FWIW high altitude 18,000 feet AGL, changes to Mach and uses standard air pressure setting of 1015mb/29.92 " mercury).

Standard pressure is 1013, not 1015 hPa.
Nautical Miles are used to express distance both below and above the transition layer.

Further the G650ER Elon uses has a long range cruise speed of Mach .85 which lets him arrive in Beijing a few hours before a commercial aircraft leaving LAX at the same time he left would arrive.

How does cruising at Mach .85 make him arrive a few hours earlier than an A380 cruising at .85 or a 777 cruising at .84?

Sorry for being off-topic.

I'm also sorry for being off-topic, but someone was WRONG on the Internet

 

[lklundin]

Sadly, I am superannuated from piloting myself.

Let it be a consolation that you just taught a sophisticated word to someone, who will have increasingly use for it.