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

[Fact Checking]

Sadly, they laid off a bunch of U.S. Delivery employees in January, due to the sales focus on Europe, but despite the recent email to out focus on deliveries, I doubt they have been able to re-hire those folks (and perhaps they didn't try)

No, that's just the negative spin the shortz had on the real story, which is:

If you’re referring to the rumored cut of Las Vegas team, I think they are delivery coordinators/firefighters, which probably means Tesla automated/simplified part of communication process and things are going smoother now.

Correct, Tesla eliminated the Las Vegas logistics hub and implemented direct deliveries from California to the East Coast and elsewhere. Delivery delays to the East Coast dropped dramatically over the past 6-9 months.

The Las Vegas hub was thus shrunk a lot - but I bet quite a few of the employees there were offered jobs at the Gigafactory, where there's a chronic workforce shortage.

 

[Fact Checking]

Per this article, announcement is 10AM local time (30 mins after market open).

Reuters is quoting two sources "familiar with the plan":

GM to announce $300 million investment in Orion EV/AV plant | Reuters

"(Reuters) - General Motors Co will announce on Friday plans to invest $300 million in a suburban Detroit plant that builds electric and self-driving vehicles for Chevrolet and the automaker’s self-driving Cruise unit, two people familiar with the plans said on Thursday."​

$300m is "meh": it's less than two months of Tesla capex.

Also:

"The largest U.S. automaker is expected to announce it plans to build a new electric compact vehicle for Chevy, said the people, who asked not to be identified."

"GM executives also will formally endorse a revised North American free trade deal known as USMCA, the sources said."

"GM declined to comment."​

Chevy Bolt attempt #2 ?

So I don't see any reason for Elon to be involved in that, except if those 'sources' only leaked part of GM's plans.

 

[Thekiwi]

Reuters is quoting two sources "familiar with the plan":

GM to announce $300 million investment in Orion EV/AV plant | Reuters

"(Reuters) - General Motors Co will announce on Friday plans to invest $300 million in a suburban Detroit plant that builds electric and self-driving vehicles for Chevrolet and the automaker’s self-driving Cruise unit, two people familiar with the plans said on Thursday."​

$300m is "meh": it's less than two months of Tesla capex.

Also:

"The largest U.S. automaker is expected to announce it plans to build a new electric compact vehicle for Chevy, said the people, who asked not to be identified."

"GM executives also will formally endorse a revised North American free trade deal known as USMCA, the sources said."

"GM declined to comment."​

Chevy Bolt attempt #2 ?

So I don't see any reason for Elon to be involved in that, except if those 'sources' only leaked part of GM's plans.

If Tesla hypothetically supplied batteries & motors, perhaps $300 million would be ample to retool existing assembly lines for EVs?

 

[glen thomson]

Watch this video it is like dejavu

 

[replicant]

Maybe the reasons for the recent temporary price decrease were to evaluate the price elasticity of demand (how much demand increases when lowering prices) so they actually know how the markets expand/saturate, but also test the company's ability to scale up in such a tense period (esp. after the recent lay-off).

They must have collected some crucial data about elasticity already (and compared them with prior sales), and they must be trying to process the orders before the end of the quarters. It's a good way to assess the company's ability to grow 50% YoY under all kind of conditions, or they will have to revise their plans if the market isn't there (no need to cut costs so much is it isn't the biggest factor to increase demand) or if the company can't do without a large sales force.

Edit: They might also watching how this blitzkrieg affects the industry: are the Germans urging the transition to EV or threw in the towel and squeeze as much profits from ICEs as possible when facing a fall in demand? does Toyota continue kicking the can down the road? will Ford/GM asking Tesla for help in speeding up their electrification? how much will cell manufacturers invest in plants and supply chain to support Tesla's growth? etc.

They might prefer to forgo some profits and take the industry by surprise, while the markets expect Tesla to raise capital or at least be obsessed with profitability.

 

[Pezpunk]

Well, they ain't doing any such thing. I doubt that they even have a database, but if they do, it's "write only memory"



Indeed that is how well-run software teams operate. Tesla should consider trying it sometime.

making the logical leap from "i don't like which bugs get prioritized, and how many defects i notice" to "they don't have a bug database at all" is completely absurd and irresponsible.

speaking as a software developer, the software team not having a bug database is about as likely as the software team not having keyboards.

 

[RobStark]

Maybe GM should bring to market a BEV that is NOT a front wheel drive compact car.

BTW Finally time to read other threads on TMC.

 

[Zaxxon]

Elon expects a record quarter (!!).

Be careful. That's not what he said, if I'm parsing it correctly. He said a record end-of-quarter delivery wave, which is not the same as a record full quarter:

The net result is a massive wave of deliveries needed throughout Europe, China and North America. This is the biggest wave in Tesla's history.

This is not to say that I don't believe the quarter will be a record--just that a record end-of-Q wave != record quarter.

That said, on a related anecdotal note I've seen six car carriers full of 3s heading East on I-80 in my road trip toward Fremont over the past two days, through Nevada/Utah/Wyoming. Those are just the ones I actually caught with my own eyes. I haven't seen a total of six carriers of all other brands combined, and I and my trip partner have been looking.

 

[Tslynk67]

Holy carp - I'm nearly 25 pages behind after a couple of evening out...

So apologies if this has already been posted, but Tesla are scrapping service intervals and moving to as-needed.

Obviously this is very bullish and anathema for stealerships! I have a pre-paid 4-year plan, so not sure how this will work out.

Tesla eliminates service schedules, moves to an 'as-needed' model - Roadshow

 

[Pezpunk]

I do like the idea being floated to outsource the bug fix prioritisation list to users.

oh my god. this would SEVERELY hamper the software and QA teams' ability to do their jobs.

this is like saying "i think Tesla should invite customers into the factory to tell the workers what order they should assemble the parts of the car in." the hard part about determining ticket prioritization (be it a User Story or Defect) on a complex systems is not understanding what the customer wants. it's understanding the interwoven dependencies, underlying technical reasons for the bug in the first place, internal systems (current and future) affected by or affecting that functionality, and so on and so forth. Items often move up or down the list due to events in the pipeline soon rendering that issue obsolete, or it being blocked for some backend technical reason, or because the level of effort (for reasons hidden to the end user) is out of proportion with the impact, or a gaggle of other reasons that an end user simply could not know about.

furthermore, i doubt what customer-facing bugs the customers most want to see fixed is something they have trouble identifying, anyway.

 

[Fact Checking]

Be careful. That's not what he said, if I'm parsing it correctly. He said a record end-of-quarter delivery wave, which is not the same as a record full quarter:

Yeah, you are right - and it might also be a hyperbole - but fact is that by historic precedent most of Tesla's Q1 deliveries are in March - around 60% of all deliveries?

What makes it interesting is that his 'record push' claim also included North America. Here's the Q4 U.S. weekly delivery numbers from Alpha Hat:

For Q4 the numbers are, approximately:

10/01:  2,600
10/08:  4,600
10/15:  4,900
10/22:  4,900
10/29:  4,800
11/05:  4,900
11/12:  4,600
11/19:  5,200
11/26:  6,100
12/03:  5,800
12/10:  7,500
12/17:  9,900
12/24: 12,000
12/31:  2,500

I.e. 80,300 U.S. deliveries of S/3/X vehicles.

From this data we can estimate the magnitude of the approximate 'final 10 days' Q4 push in the U.S.: 9,900/7*2+12,000+2,500 = **~15,900 units**.

This means that in the current Q1 push they are planning to push at least ~16k units, probably more, in the U.S. alone.

We also know it from Alpha Hat that January they delivered 11.5k units - if we estimate February with 10k deliveries then we get a sum of about 37k units already - well above Alpha Hat's last public Q1 estimate of "30k+".

I'm getting optimistic about Q1 deliveries.

 

[shlokavica22]

GERMANY MARCH MANUFACTURING PMI 44.7 (47.6 In Feb); FORECAST 48

 

[STARR X]

I can explain that one!

It's owned by a Vietnamese who is particularly fond of TET, the lunar HoLidAy

On edit: Oops. Got a disagree, and rightly so: Others also like the holiday. But I KNOW this guy!

I thought he just had a lisp.

 

[Tslynk67]

Just leaving this here...

 

[Fact Checking]

For Q4 the numbers are, approximately:

I fat-fingered a portion of it.

Here's a much more accurate capture of Q4 U.S. S/3/X deliveries data from Alpha Hat:

10/01:   3,096
10/08:   4,157
10/15:   4,921
10/22:   4,793
10/29:   4,666
11/05:   4,793
11/12:   4,412
11/19:   5,430
11/26:   5,727
12/03:   5,599
12/10:   7,084
12/17:   8,909
12/24:  10,690
12/31:   2,333

The sum is 76,610 total units delivered in Q4 in the U.S.

This number does not include Canadian and rest of the world S and X deliveries, which were probably 14,090 units. Total Q4 deliveries reported by Tesla were 90,700 units world-wide.

The 'final 10 days' push in Q4 in the U.S., re-calculated:

8,909/7*2+10,690+2,333 = 15,567 units
​

Which is very close to the first 15.9k quick estimate I gave. Error bar of this second data set should be less than 50 units. (!)

Conclusion of ~37k total U.S. deliveries in Q1 remains the same. (Shout-out to @KarenRei and @neroden and @ReflexFunds who were trying to estimate Q1 deliveries as well.)

Edit:

I also noticed the following ship estimates by Alpha Hat:

Alpha Hat ship estimates:

Glovis Captain:    EU 1,500
Glovis Cosmos:     EU 2,500
Glovis Symphony:   CN 1,500
Grand Aurora:      EU 2,500
CSCC Europe:       EU 2,500
Morning Cindy:     CN 2,500
Emerald Ace:       CN 2,500
Glovis Courage:    EU 2,500
Golden Ray:        CN 2,500
Grand Venus:       EU 2,500

January estimate:     8,000

 

[AudubonB]

I thought he just had a lisp.

and i just thought i had a sense of humor...

 

[Johnny Ma]

Correct, Tesla eliminated the Las Vegas logistics hub and implemented direct deliveries from California to the East Coast and elsewhere. Delivery delays to the East Coast dropped dramatically over the past 6-9 months.

The Las Vegas hub was thus shrunk a lot - but I bet quite a few of the employees there were offered jobs at the Gigafactory, where there's a chronic workforce shortage.

I might be misunderstanding you, but I don't think the LV logistics hub was eliminated. My delivery is being coordinated out of LV and I will be getting a direct delivery.

 

[Fact Checking]

I might be misunderstanding you, but I don't think the LV logistics hub was eliminated. My delivery is being coordinated out of LV and I will be getting a direct delivery.

I believe all (or most) East Coast deliveries were going through the LV delivery hub, so the size of the LV delivery hub was reduced significantly, but not completely eliminated.

Are you on the East Coast, or perhaps one of the southern states which would still be serviced from the LV delivery hub?

 

[Johnny Ma]

Are you on the East Coast, or perhaps one of the southern states which would still be serviced from the LV delivery hub?

Yes, Southern state

 

[NicoV]

Switched my proposed delivery to earlier on the day on 30/3 so that I can still take delivery in Q1.
Also my delivery is at the SEC the furthest from my home in Belgium, as the 2 closer SECs are also booked full for Model 3 deliveries.
I also cancelled my tradein of my Corolla, which should lessen the load on the delivery team. Will try to get rid of it locally. I guess nobody here is interested in buying a 19 year old Toyota Corolla diesel? Very cheap!