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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
I just know it seems they're only making 5k a week - not pushing for 6k or 7k even - and we were told 10k a week. If Tesla was churning out 10k a week I'd say you were right, I'm not seeing a hard time push to that which gives me concern.
Your business is capital intensive how? Do you manufacturer anything and built a product line?
Uh oh... and now you believe the reports they aren't selling every car they can make, and have them secretly stockpiled somewhere or are dumping them in the ocean...
Not looking good for Gringotuanis Incorporated...
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
And do that while disrupting 100+ years old businesses with trillions of dollars of revenue, hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets and immense political and economic influence?
I do agree that he could use a Shotwell with Tesla.
Green Car Reports - this morning: Tesla Semi opens for $20,000 reservations, no update on arrival date
Tesla Semi Webpage: Tesla Semi
One must wonder if this will also be addressed at the Model Y event on Thursday.
Tesla Semi Webpage: Tesla Semi
One must wonder if this will also be addressed at the Model Y event on Thursday.
Sunlight
Member
The only advertising that I think would be productive for Tesla would be adverts that directly attacked the persistent FUD and/or lies in some clever/comical/informative way (as distinct form conventional advertising)
And, possibly, ads that generally promoted EVs and sustainable energy - even if other manufacturers benefitted as it is clear Tesla has a distinct headstart and those people who won't buy a Tesla, wouldn't anyway so let them buy an alternative car - it is the mission after all!
And, possibly, ads that generally promoted EVs and sustainable energy - even if other manufacturers benefitted as it is clear Tesla has a distinct headstart and those people who won't buy a Tesla, wouldn't anyway so let them buy an alternative car - it is the mission after all!
tinm
2020 Model S LR+ Owner
Prediction: some celebs (I’m looking at you, Arnold) and other wealthy types are gonna buy Semis and bop around town in them like they’re emission-free Hummers.
Only closed reservations I thought. Now much easier/more open.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
I agree with the interpretation by the market.
This very long term investor (me) has a different interpretation. I see a decision making strategy that I think more appropriate to a company in hyper growth mode, where time spent in analysis is time lost for hyper growth. It's a rare condition to exist and be in, and I can't think of another CEO besides Elon that I would want to have in charge of a company in hyper growth mode than Elon - maybe Reed Hastings.
In hyper growth, there is strong value in taking these "small" / short term decisions fast and furious, course correcting as you go, rather than studying them deeply. The value in hyper growth of making the decisions fast exceeds the cost of making decisions using the typical boundary conditions (study them carefully - make decisions that will stand for months or quarters, years are preferable, that sort of thing), and then use the market of reaction and learning to learn from the decisions to make more decisions and course correct fast.
My own reaction when I saw the original decision was somewhat dubious if I took it as stated on its face - it seems hard to sell cars consistently without the ability for people to sit in cars, get test drives, and so forth. And then I saw an initial list of stores closing and it looked immediately like the list of closing was a lot less aggressive than originally stated (I was expecting the Washington Square Mall store in the Portland, OR area to close, as we have 2 stores in the area now - I was wrong; both are staying open, at least for now).
The end result that we've oscillated to makes a LOT of sense to me. One of the bits that I don't know is true, but I've read and makes sense to me, is that the overall sales 'channel' within Tesla has been drifting away from the original view of the stores as the "education channel", and more and more into a traditional car sales channel, complete with spiffs, incentives, and sales quotas. The #1 thing that I hope has been accomplished in all of this is for all of that stuff to be ended, and the whole channel / galleries / stores are reset back to the education channel.
If that means taking the people in the stores out of the sales loop completely, then do it. No commissions, no quotas, no incentives - either individually or stores - do all of the sales online. Then the people in the stores can just be pure ambassadors for the brand and EVs. For many of us, that was a big attraction to the brand in the first place, and it works synergistically with the product, really well.
Anyway, my original reaction when I saw the announcement, and it's been reinforced by the followup announcement and adjustment, is that I wouldn't want to be in direct competition with Tesla. The company does in days what takes other companies quarters or more to do. The pace, not just of technology innovation, is blistering.
As an investor, if you care about the short term stock price (short term being "the next 3-6 months"), then this probably isn't the company for you.
But if you've got a long term view (for me, that's 5+ years), who doesn't want to be invested in the company that is routinely doing in days what others do in quarters? If the translation is 1 week Tesla time = 1 quarter Everybody else time, then Tesla is going to live and do roughly 13 years of Everybody else time in 2019. While the rest of the industry is laboriously doing 5 years of R&D and bringing products to market over the next 5 years, Tesla is going to be doing 65 years of equivalent work (on my completely made up scale).
I'd MUCH rather own a chunk of the entity moving at that pace, even if we're in a window where the impact of the blur of speed isn't yet completely 100% clear just yet. (It seems obvious to me, but I grant that it's not obvious to everybody)
A Tesla "advertisement" would be a completely different animal than what we see from the major automakers at this point. Most car commercials are short on facts as automakers are pushing a "lifestyle". For instance, watching the happy family take their SUV into the woods to go camping or driving your sporty new car up a road along the Pacific Coast. They do this because there is very little that actually differentiates their cars from the competition, it's a big fashion show. Tesla does not need to play in this arena because their cars are nothing like the competition and offer things other car manufactures can not match such as over the air updates.
What Tesla needs, IMHO, is to EDUCATE the public about their vehicles and in that sense I do feel some sort of outreach is necessary. I don't think it's a stretch to say that Tesla's target market is younger and very internet savvy so once again traditional advertising is simply not going to be very effective. The best commercial for Tesla would be the owners of the car, I'm sure they get a million questions from family members about the experience and considering Tesla has such a high customer satisfaction rate I would bet their responses are overwhelmingly positive. BUT how does Tesla explain to the average person what their cars can do? If you take a few minutes and have a conversation with someone who is not a Tesla fanatic (board member) you might be surprised how little they actually know about EV's in general. Going further with that point they usually know even less about Tesla specific things.
This will fix itself in a few years when there is little left of the ICE market and people are forced into learning about EV's and comparing the offerings.
BTW, normally I'm pretty pessimistic about market reactions but this unveiling is a big deal and you now have Tesla going after the SUV market, which is substantially larger than the market for sedans in the US. Make no mistake about this, the competition is going to be very shaken in a few months when the Y starts rolling off the line. Trucks and SUV's are the battleground and it's high time Tesla entered the arena.
Cheers to the longs
I agree that the advertising is probably imminent, worst case 6 months best case not until the super bowl. I think at some point they will have to do it just to educate people on EV’s. Someone had a good suggestion regarding videos on YouTube explaining/showing people how they’d go about typical tasks like charging at a supercharger. There’s too many people on here that live in an echo chamber and think everyone gets it. They don’t, especially baby boomers, and people who live outside of a handful of states like CA NY and CO. This was fine when they delivered 100,000 S&X worldwide but the 3 will need some education to the masses.
1) SUGGESTED letter to send?
2) Suggested letter to Consumer Reports magazine?
Much thanks.
1. No.
2. Musk will be dancing on Rodeo Drive wearing a "Buy A Tesla!" sandwich board before he drops a single cent on traditional radio, TV, or print advertising.
I presume the difference is that previously trucking companies were negotiating semi-truck reservation details individually with Tesla, but now that process has become standardized and can be more easily accomplished online.
This may be especially good news for those independent truckers who drive their own trucks.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
I don't own or run a business, so I don't have the visceral relationship that you have. But this dynamic - I have a hard time understanding how others don't see this.
Can anybody identify any other product, in any other market, at any price point, of any kind or quality (there's literally no restriction in this question) that has the kind of demand for it that Tesla has for its cars?
The only whimsical idea that occurs to me is cocaine, but that's due to it's chemical addictive properties, and the inability to advertise due to widespread illegality. If it were legal, there would be enough different suppliers, I expect there would be advertising.
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