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

[Singuy]

I thought it's another way around. TSLA is priced for the most imperfection. I have reservation on Tesla's strategy on closing display stores and test drive programs, but I am all for the price cuts to undercut competitions and to fuel future growth.

No when a stock is priced for perfection, it means that it commands a premium with perfect execution baked in. That's why any small fumble will cost the stock to drop. This is what TSLA is experiencing...even a freaken printing error that resolved in a hour caused a stock drop.

When a stock is priced for imperfection, then the expectation is failure so any good news end up being a bonus vs the state we are in.

 

[skitown]

Actually, they’d make the problem slightly worse. You’d now have both the traffic going home *plus* the traffic from all the autonomous cars driving to pick people up.

What percentage of surface streets in congested areas (cities) is reserved for street parking - and people trying to park? Put this in the "plus column" for reduced congestion.

 

[Carl Raymond]

I personally think we are most likely to cross the safety threshold for L5 somewhere between 2 and 15 years

Musk is touting a car that finds you in the car park, this year. That’s a level 5 system, albeit at a slower speed. By January next year, it will be time to review estimates.

What I fear is a small child standing or even laying down immediately in front of the car as it departs the car space. A (cautious) human checks for that before getting in the car. Blame lax parenting. Doesn’t fix it.

 

[mongo]

Musk is touting a car that finds you in the car park, this year. That’s a level 5 system, albeit at a slower speed. By January next year, it will be time to review estimates.

"in the car park" makes it level 4 (but still cool).
"in the car park" while you watch it and hold the phone button down would be level 2.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Same here. Ditto for the inferior Nissan Leaf plus. It’s dirt cheap after incentives but the idea of one hour stops (minimum) on trips a 3sr could do with 20 minutes stops is the reason Tesla is the choice. The B1 would rock with Superchargers.

Depends where you are I suppose. In BC a Tesla X or S, Nissan Leaf eplus, Bolt etc are all good touring vehicles as they have access to CCS/Chademo networks which are quite built out and growing REALLY FAST. There are 14 Tesla Supercharger locations covering a narrow route thru the province of BC to Alberta. There are already over 100 CCS/Chademo with more than 49 more under construction and another 60 plus planned in the next two years. Covering the vast majority of the province. A model 3 with its proprietary charging access would only work for you if you intend to travel thru the province on the main highway and not tour the rest of the Province. I love the model 3 and it’s our vehicle of choice for our next vehicle. But we’ll probably have to go with an Eplus SL leaf as we can’t travel anywhere we want to go in a model 3. And a model S is out of our budget. I’m sure Tesla has its reasons for not making a 3 CCS or Chademo compatible like the S and X but whatever it is, it takes us out of Tesla.

 

[Unpilot]

I recommend that the staff of a Tesla Gallery consist of one human and one dog.

The human's job is to feed, clean up after, and generally nurture the dog.
The dog's job is to bite the human if they try to interact with a customer unprompted.

There is an aviation joke in there somewhere

 

[Carl Raymond]

"in the car park" makes it level 4 (but still cool).
"in the car park" while you watch it and hold the phone button down would be level 2.

There could be 30 black model 3s in the car park. (Some) people will just press, especially as comfort level grows.

Car par accidents are a statistical occurrence. The first time it’s a driverless Tesla, it’s a headline like no other.

 

[lascavarian]

I don't know how much money Tesla spends on FSD R&D - but my guess is its very small compared to their annual capex and r&d. It is a much needed investment given more and more automated driving features and scenarios that will hit the market in the next few years. In this case it is all about incremental progress and lots of incremental, very high margin, revenue.

I will take this comment to add something I have been wanting to highlight. FSD is a lot more than just driving. EM has repeatedly phrased the challenge as "solving vision".

Solving vision is a big, broad, far-reaching accomplishment. It will quickly have applications in factory automation and amplify progress toward the alien dreadnaught. AI that can meaningfully "see" the world changes the economic equations of AI applications.

It seems to me that solving vision is a something akin to the reusable rocket booster. It will act as an amplifier of possibilities.
-------
And new avatar in the spirit of FSD and AI - "Lawnmover Man"

 

[winfield100]

Yeah, but if you'd bothered to do your research (or use your common sense) you'd realize that that's impossible, because almost everyone goes to work and comes home at the same time. The self-driving cars are gonna do the same damn thing..)

A _partial_ solution has been done in Washington DC for a number of years
The reversible express lanes so you can go a lot faster commuting _require_ a minimum of 3 passengers (HOV3)
“Slug” lines spontaneously formed of essentially hitchhikers going to various exits 20-30+ miles south (north in the morning) and they “self sort” as an emergent phenomenon as necessary.
So random strangers filled vehicles daily increasing the density of passengers
Same could happen with AV’s, queue up, hop in, go.
Little electric taxis, eh.

 

[AndyH]

It's like wave power. It's a great idea, but it is simply not going to be commercially ready soon enough to make a difference to the Great Energy Transition. We're going to use wind and solar and hydro, which are commercially ready.

OT

Ocean currents will be commercially viable this year. Tiny Swedish firm Minesto are making it so. They were after all invited to Wales by Prince Charles when he celebrated his 50 years as monarch this weekend. A royal invitation is bullish af.

 

[dc_h]

I thought it's another way around. TSLA is priced for the most imperfection. I have reservation on Tesla's strategy on closing display stores and test drive programs, but I am all for the price cuts to undercut competitions and to fuel future growth.

I think we’re suffering from Schroedinger valuation. Both over and undervalued until it’s confirmed we’re one or the other. Tesla has to be a zero to be undervalued, with brand leadership, technology leadership and producing leadership they need to be destroyed to fail.
The problem for at least some of Wall Street and the general investment community is that stability is seen as a strength. Tesla has made too many unforced errors and should have failed by now. If you are a bull you see this willingness to fail as the key to Tesla’s innovation gap. No other brand will throw out a new strategy and walk away from it with Tesla’s speed and complete commitment. The machine that built the machine replaced the the Sprung tent and humans that assembled the cars. Most anyone else would have failed with that mistake. I’d guess Tesla will continue to make more mistakes than any other 20, 30 or 50 billion dollar company. Maybe as a 200 billion dollar company they’ll pull in their horns a bit, start paying dividends and become more process oriented. In the meantime the risk premium will remain, and the street will mis price Tesla. The mis-pricing should be from a higher base next year. They’ll exit 2019 at a 500,000 production rate and likely close to 1 million end of 2020 and that is plus some expensive trucks and Roadsters.
Anyhow, there will be a trigger. The sun will come back out and the shorts will scurry to the darkness. Could be the 15th, or December 2020, but it will happen.

 

[RobStark]

Weekend OT

Thinking of model letters for the next Tesla vehicles...

Model S > Model X > Model 3 > Model Y

S - 3 - X - Y .... A - F

Resonates somehow, doesn't it?

Very funny.....But Ford would sue over Model A.

Maybe Model Az for the $25k vehicle?

 

[RobStark]

I know you can't really compare Tesla to traditional carmakers since there's energy products and other differences. But if you were to do a comparison then Tesla is about to pass Volvo.

Volvo Cars Q4 2018

• Cars sold: 170k
• Revenue: 7.7 billion
• Operating income: 477 million

Tesla Q4 2018

• Cars sold: 86k
• Revenue: 7.2 billion
• Operating income: 419 million

And Volvo Cars is a subsidiary of Geely.

So Volvo Cars really has more scale than those numbers imply.

 

[NicoV]

What I fear is a small child standing or even laying down immediately in front of the car as it departs the car space. A (cautious) human checks for that before getting in the car. Blame lax parenting. Doesn’t fix it.

The same thing happens to humans too. A (far) relative drove her car over her 1 year old in her driveway, killing her child accidentally. Hopefully this happens less with robocars. It should, as they have superhuman sensors, vision, concentration, and don’t get drunk.

 

[Pezpunk]

The U.S. subways and the subway stations, at least in the pictures I've seen, are dirty and full of trash. It's no wonder people don't feel that safe. This could be solved, but no one wants to actually pay for the janitorial work. Dirty subways, bus, or train stations just seem unsafe because they are dirty and trashy.

And you're right. When I lived in Vancouver, I often left the car at work (company car) and bicycled from work to home. No way will I bicycle where I live now.

DC’s subways are clean and trash-free. Safe and well-lit, as well.

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

There are battery chainsaws. I had to go to the gas station for the first time in a while to get gas for my snowblower last week. The guy gassing his car on the other side of the pump did a double take and said "I thought those were no gas", then I lifted up the gas can. Forgot how much I hated that smell.

There are also electric snow blowers. I love mine. In fact, I can gladly say I’ll never buy gas ever again

Check out Power Beyond Belief, #1 Rated Cordless Platform | EGO I have their entire lineup and highly recommend it!

 

[ZachF]

Actually, I think energy has never been S3XYR.

Make the truck the model U, and the compact the model 2.

UR2S3XY

 

[Carl Raymond]

The same thing happens to humans too. A (far) relative drove her car over her 1 year old in her driveway, killing her child accidentally. Hopefully this happens less with robocars. It should, as they have superhuman sensors, vision, concentration, and don’t get drunk.

No sensor in the current suite can detect a child laying immediately in front of the car (playing hide n seek, presumably). Going from zero to one mile/hr is the danger period.

 

[printf42]

Tinfoil hat time:

I am reading the SuperCharger V3 blog again:
Introducing V3 Supercharging
And I am still a bit shocked by this sentence:

the Supercharger network will be able to serve more than 2x more vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today – easily keeping pace with our 2019 fleet growth.

• "keeping pace", means just about the same rate of increase as fleet growth, they didn't say "out pace", or "well prepared for"... but still "keeping pace" is vague enough that this is nowhere near a guidance.
• Then "2x more vehicles", means triple of current fleet size, I just went through all quarterly delivery reports and they adds up to 535k of current fleet(2018 Q4), 2x more means, wait... ~1M more cars in 2019?!? This could be a wording error, where they meant to say "2x" vehicles, not "2x more", but, I have tinfoil hat remember?

This is a month after the Q4 earnings call, where 2019 global recession risk outlook is significantly lower, could it be that they had this target but don't want to write it in ink, just in case a recession hit us this year?

I guess we will see when Q1 delivery numbers come out.

 

[Sudre]

People have tried to push staggered shifts since the 1950s; it's never caught on.

I have to agree with this partially. I've been working in construction since the 90s. We used to start at 8am to avoid the 9AM office rush hour crowd. That did not work so we switched to a 7am start time. I mean that should work right? NO. It did not. SOOO we are now in the beginnings of moving to a 6am start time! and guess what. It's not working either. The rush hour the construction workers are trying to avoid is the construction worker rush hour. It moves when they move. Imagine that.

With that bit of information I wanted to point out that there are staggered start times. Construction typically starts around 7am, ends at 3:30. Office workers 9-5. There is some potential to use vehicle sharing just not as massive as believed.... as long as the office worker doesn't mind muddy boot imprints on the floor mats