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

[ggr]

Mod: I deem discussion of Camp David aeronautical charts to be political. Moved the posts over there. --ggr.

 

[Singer3000]

While there are no 100% guarantees - politically it is untenable for Trump to not get a China deal.

I don't want to get moved to the Politics thread but he's shall we say an unusual politician. He needs to be able to declare a victory in time for the election, which is still some way away. Doesn't mean he won't launch another salvo in Q2/3 if there's no progress on intellectual property.

 

[PhaseWhite]

Good news that 01 March is no longer the cliff-edge date for sales to China but I see no new tariff deadline has yet been announced. What's the best strategy for the next X weeks? I'm hoping Tesla load as many cars into China as they humanly can while the tariff ceasefire persists, even if it takes several months for the sales and logistics network to digest those into deliveries. Essentially push the US queue out by a couple of months and take the hit to Q1 bottom line, for the greater good of Q2/3. If Giga 3 hits the aggressive end of the construction schedule then Q4 we'll start to see local production and sales of the SR, making the tariff climate less relevant.

There's nothing that says the China talks will definitely end positively and the European economy is looking dicey, even without there being new US tariffs. China, notwithstanding the continued trickle of bond defaults, has some macro upside in 2019 in my view. January was the first month since the slowdown started 18-24 months ago that has seen any serious effort by the government to throw credit at the problem. This was evident in a spike new bank lending, no further reduction in shadow banking lending and relatively good growth in new bond issuances. Seems clear that the government has decided that for now the slowdown has run far enough and does not want the end game of these negotiations conducted against a weak macro picture. Tesla should make hay while they can.

Regarding making hay while they can, I agree. And by watching Tesla's actions it's obvious that they are making a huge push in China.
The fact that they have lowered prices and bundled EAP with all cars tells me they want to aggressively take market share in the Chinese market and are willing to sacrifice margin to doit (which is probably smart).

Tesla's guidance provided in Q4 also illustrates this shift. Previously they had projected 10k weekly production of the Model 3 through the installation of a new GA line in Fremont but now they are guiding 7k production which will involve only incremental CapEx and optimization of existing lines in order to prioritize CapEx for bringing Gigafactory 3 online in Shanghai.

I personally think this will become another Gigafactory (1) moment, where all the media analysts keep pointing out the risks and perceived mistakes until all of a sudden it becomes an obvious, brilliant chess move. When GF3 comes online and Tesla has a fully owned foot hold in the biggest EV market in the world the analysts will move on to pointing out the flaws in the next brilliant move they can't understand.

 

[dhrivnak]

Your Roadster 1 was Tesla's first shot at a product, and yours must have been a very early 3, no? And therefore not representative of the ones produced later in production hell, nor of the improved ones shipping today...

The Model 3 is vin 72xx an produced 9 months after the first deliveries. Now all I am saying Tesla can improve and I hope they get to best in class as an EV has many inherent advantages and they SHOULD be lower maintenance. GM even on the early Volts has top quality.

 

[Yuri_G]

Chinese EV sales for January 2019

EV Sales: China January 2019

The Yuan has a 42 kWh battery and is being updated to 58 kWh this year. It sold 35k last year. BYD seems to manufacture cars in spurts, so it'll be interesting to see if the Model 3 can top the Chinese list in 2019.

 

[Singer3000]

Regarding making hay while they can, I agree. And by watching Tesla's actions it's obvious that they are making a huge push in China.
The fact that they have lowered prices and bundled EAP with all cars tells me they want to aggressively take market share in the Chinese market and are willing to sacrifice margin to doit (which is probably smart).

Tesla's guidance provided in Q4 also illustrates this shift. Previously they had projected 10k weekly production of the Model 3 through the installation of a new GA line in Fremont but now they are guiding 7k production which will involve only incremental CapEx and optimization of existing lines in order to prioritize CapEx for bringing Gigafactory 3 online in Shanghai.

I personally think this will become another Gigafactory (1) moment, where all the media analysts keep pointing out the risks and perceived mistakes until all of a sudden it becomes an obvious brilliant chess move. When GF3 comes online and Tesla has a fully owned foot hold in the biggest EV market in the world the analysts will move on to pointing out the flaws in the next brilliant move they can't understand.

Yes I think you're right. Tesla's actions suggest they are deadly serious about having 3k per week of Chinese production within about a year from now. They hence need to get the brand out there now. As many Model 3s on the road as possible in 2019 should help underwrite Chinese demand in 2020, which may well turn out to be a bad year from a macro perspective there. Conversely sales in Q2/3 2019 being slammed by tariffs could have knock on effects for 2020 demand too (or at least make it more expensive to match demand with production). Will keep a close eye on Karen's shipping news (which would benefit from its own thread actually).

 

[lascavarian]

Sunday evening the TV program "60 Minutes" in their 3rd story covered the China based EV manufacturer NIO. The focus was on the Gov't of China making a decision that vehicles should be electric to avoid polluted air. NIO is a favorite to be a big player in China. NIO has a presence on the US markets and also has offices and facilities in CA and hires regularly from Google, Tesla, Apple etc. NIO positions themselves as a strong EV player but noted that there is plenty of room for several large EV players in China.

There was repeated mention of Tesla as the one getting a lot of attention. Most interesting was a wall mounted computer display of the realtime location of every Tesla around the city of Shanghai (sp?) showing info on each car and whether it was charging (I think) or moving. The data did not come from Tesla but the Gov't authorities who are actively promoting, monitoring and ensuring the success of EVs like Tesla. They had a similar display of charging loads.

Toward the end they stated that by about 2025 China will be producing something like 5 million vehicles a year and if the US is not matching that production then China will be very very hard to catch.

There was no mention of autonomous driving but the NIO does have an interesting AI like presence (Nomi) on the dash to take verbal commands etc. There is supposed to be more about this on further tape on the web somewhere.

In China, an electric car lifestyle

My take is that this is good for EVs in the US and likely to garner a little attention from the Gov't in the US in support of EV incentives. Could be viewed as "Better assure Tesla's success or NIO from china will replace them". There was not a single word I caught on any other US automaker except Tesla. The pressure is building in an obvious way on all the automakers that intend to be in business in 2026. If I was a short this must begin to look like a building wave.

 

[scaesare]

This is a bit random, but as it is weekend, I decided to post it.

Does anyone remember that story on Wired, Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk, from a few months back? There was quite a bit of debate on it, as it wasn't the most flattering piece. I just found an interesting comment about one of the stories mentioned in it. It's on youtube, on this video (Elon Musk in Interstellar - it's funny and very well made, I recommend a watch), about 60 comments down, as a reply to someone.

Now, it can of course be made-up, but it seems legit enough that I wanted to post it here. Especially considering it's a reply to a youtube comment on a parody video - if someone wanted to make up fake stories, why do it there of all places.

Anyway, the comment (by one Leto Atreides):

I believe that is from the Vance biography.

 

[scaesare]

Real or fake?

Watch New Tesla Roadster Insanely Accelerate In Imagined Video

Reading is fundamental,

 

[JRP3]

Real or fake?

Watch New Tesla Roadster Insanely Accelerate In Imagined Video

You seem to have escaped from El Bano, you should be sent back, permanently.

 

[Carl Raymond]

I’ll be the stick in the mud. I don’t want cars on the road that can accelerate this quickly. If I die crossing the road I want it to be my fault.

Watch New Tesla Roadster Insanely Accelerate In Imagined Video

 

[neroden]

Wow reading the twitter thread it's the typical dumpster of TSLAQ hate. It's hard to tell sometimes who has the larger troll army, the Chinese 50c army, the Russian Internet Research Agency or the various groups of TSLAQ fudsters.

The Chinese have the largest number, but they are totally unmotivated and can't be bothered to make more than a token effort. The Russian trolls are well-paid and pushed by hardline boiler room managers to do maximum trolling, so they're probably doing the most trolling overall. The TSLAQ guys are, in large part, actual fanatics motivated by goals other than money, so there aren't that many of them, but they work 24/7 so they produce a lot of trolling (not as much as the Russians though).

 

[neroden]

Besides the FUDsters, you're right that it's 2 groups of people but I think the breakdown is more like : ICE Owners vs EV Owners. People just can't stop thinking about things in the terms of the existing systems they know. People who own ICE cars think the solution to EV charging looks like Gas Stations. They don't realize that the equivalent of the ICE Gas station is the charging station in an EV owner's garage/parking stall.

In my home state of MN, the new D governor says he wants to increase the EV surcharge paid at annual registration so he can fund more public charging stations. It's again this mindset that we need to install slow L2 charging stations everywhere, which makes no sense for city use (We already have that driving range covered). If you want to help EV owners, add incentives for them to install their own chargers, or how about just not increasing taxes on EV ownership.

Dear God. Good luck convincing the governor not to do this piece of idiocy!

 

[RobStark]

Here's a way for a Moderator to get around the "Don't fix typos or grammatical errors" dictum, and still make everyone's Sunday night.

In Japanese -

• "Mirai" translates as "Future", but.....
• "Murai" translates as "Never"

Thought y'all would like that. Am not sure Honda would.

Honda makes the Clarity FCEV.

I don't know if Honda would like Toyota's FCEV to be Mirai or Murai.

 

[printf42]

OT,
Just a reminder to the longs here about what really matters, whatever we are discussing here, just know at this exact moment there are a fleet of trucks carrying Model 3s heading to the port or a distribution center, day and night none stop.

Just did a 30 min drive on 101 south bound, and counted 5 truck load of Model 3 heading north(presumably SF pier 80.

Again, 5 trucks in 30 min drive, where I might have missed some more of them in the dark. And this is the same as my commute every day.

 

[JRP3]

I’ll be the stick in the mud. I don’t want cars on the road that can accelerate this quickly. If I die crossing the road I want it to be my fault.

Watch New Tesla Roadster Insanely Accelerate In Imagined Video

You think autopilot would let that happen?

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

On balance, will the postponing of the trade tariff increases cause Tesla's share price to go up, due to more sales into China?

 

[TSLA_Hopeful]

Sunday evening the TV program "60 Minutes" in their 3rd story covered the China based EV manufacturer NIO. The focus was on the Gov't of China making a decision that vehicles should be electric to avoid polluted air. NIO is a favorite to be a big player in China. NIO has a presence on the US markets and also has offices and facilities in CA and hires regularly from Google, Tesla, Apple etc. NIO positions themselves as a strong EV player but noted that there is plenty of room for several large EV players in China.

There was repeated mention of Tesla as the one getting a lot of attention. Most interesting was a wall mounted computer display of the realtime location of every Tesla around the city of Shanghai (sp?) showing info on each car and whether it was charging (I think) or moving. The data did not come from Tesla but the Gov't authorities who are actively promoting, monitoring and ensuring the success of EVs like Tesla. They had a similar display of charging loads.

Toward the end they stated that by about 2025 China will be producing something like 5 million vehicles a year and if the US is not matching that production then China will be very very hard to catch.

There was no mention of autonomous driving but the NIO does have an interesting AI like presence (Nomi) on the dash to take verbal commands etc. There is supposed to be more about this on further tape on the web somewhere.

In China, an electric car lifestyle

My take is that this is good for EVs in the US and likely to garner a little attention from the Gov't in the US in support of EV incentives. Could be viewed as "Better assure Tesla's success or NIO from china will replace them". There was not a single word I caught on any other US automaker except Tesla. The pressure is building in an obvious way on all the automakers that intend to be in business in 2026. If I was a short this must begin to look like a building wave.

I saw it too.. great report. Honestly, I see it being a three horse race in the long term between Tesla, Nio, and VW. I think Nio's greatest gift is they get to see the mistakes Tesla makes, and then not make those same mistakes.

Love Elon, but if he didn't shoot ourselves in the foot in the beginning of last year, and with the X, we'd be in a lot better position. We've clearly rounded a corner though. I have NIO shares, and would recommend that we as a forum buy some shares. It's 8 bucks, 10G worth of stock can be some good fun money.

 

[TSLA_Hopeful]

On balance, will the postponing of the trade tariff increases cause Tesla's share price to go up, due to more sales into China?

It'll be great. China is very very favorable to Tesla (mostly due to Elon's prestige and self interest). Only thing I worry about is if the China GF can come online before Trump starts picking a fight with the Europeans.... we need another place to ship Teslas to Europe if that happens.

 

[Mark's Beagle]

Marcine Joseph on Twitter

Tesla bursts into flames after hitting a tree at high speed. A gas car would never burst in flames in this situation. Nope never nope nope
Let the fudz begin

I don't know why a horrific death is funny to people here. Sad!

Outside of the usual concern of li-ion batteries burning people into a crispy critter, I was curious about the witness response that the airbags remained inflated, trapping the driver in the car.

Do airbags normally deflate after initial impact?