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

[lklundin]

None of the successful founders quit being CEO until their company was firmly #1 in the industry and very profitable - Gates, Ellison et al.

I expect Musk to move to a non-CEO position when Tesla is #1 in the auto industry (2035 ?).

Current top car makers are at about 10M cars annually, so if we say that Tesla sells 0.5M cars this year, they need to grow a factor 20 (this pessimistically assumes no reduction in sales among the current top car makers).

To do so by 2035 (i.e. in 16 years) requires an annual growth of just over 20%.

If Tesla's current annual growth of 50% were to be maintained it would take just 8 years, i.e. 2028...

Gotta ramp up those gigafactory projects...

 

[phnix]

Is there a timestamp visible for the original message?

Assuming that the final 2 weeks of China were much of the Q1 dekiveries, this would support @KarenRei's estimate of ~38k units going overseas: ~15k to China, ~23k to Europe.

Also, if 8 ships went to China with 15k Model 3's, that's ~1,875 Model 3's per ship. Isn't this a bit low?

The time stamp is 3/31 22:46 (UTC+8). Not sure when the original message in the screenshot was posted, but it looks like just a short time ago. Also not sure how much the number is "more than 10,000".

 

[Causalien]

Just watched The Inventor: out for blood about Theranos. A good watch for all.

Which made me appreciate how Elon didn't spend on traditional marketing (less faking). And the fact that autopilot has a high likelyhood to go the way of Theranos. A good thing about Tesla is that its mission is about EV and not autopilot. So the main source of income is not dependent on autopilot success.

How I believed Theranos could've turned out differently is if they didn't sell the promise of the Edison at first. Instead just automate the labwork and focus on providing cost effective bloodworks for everyone. I wonder if they could've undercut their competitors if they managed to automate all the labworks using traditional machines first. This is more akin to what Tesla is doing. Focus on the traditional money maker first and then use the spare money on R&D to fund the AI/Edison research. As I believe both tech can come to fruition if given enough time... just not the typical 3 years to exit timeline that Silicon Valley usually work on.

The "Fake it till you make it" problem might've worked for the purely digital products. But once your tech crosses over to the physical world this model has a higher chance to fail because things happens a lot slower in the real world.

 

[Fact Checking]

More cryptic Elon tweets. This time it's just "Jung", and a link to quotes from Carl Jung:

Elon Musk on Twitter

It's a reply to a tweet reporting about Elon's "Harambe rap" track he released yesterday.

The first quote from Jung explains why he did it.

 

[S3XY]

Current top car makers are at about 10M cars annually, so if we say that Tesla sells 0.5M cars this year, they need to grow a factor 20 (this pessimistically assumes no reduction in sales among the current top car makers).

To do so by 2035 (i.e. in 16 years) requires an annual growth of just over 20%.

If Tesla's current annual growth of 50% were to be maintained it would take just 8 years, i.e. 2028...

Gotta ramp up those gigafactory projects...

This doesn't take into account the top car maker's demise over that span. This will reduce the timing greatly.

 

[mad474]

I expect Musk to move to a non-CEO position when Tesla is #1 in the auto industry (2035 ?).

Obviously the date is 2/24/2036 (2036/24/2=42.42). Q.E.D.

 

[KarenRei]

This doesn't take into account the top car maker's demise over that span. This will reduce the timing greatly.

Exactly.

Also, 20% annualized growth for Tesla is too conservative. The whole world is going electric, and the transition is going to happen much faster than most people think.

 

[Fact Checking]

And the fact that autopilot has a high likelyhood to go the way of Theranos.

I believe you are going to be SO surprised once Tesla's new, large neural networks that can only run on the FSD computer will go into production.

Even people working in the high-tech industry tend to underestimate the astoundingly emergent properties of large neural networks.

So yeah, I'm 100% certain that the AutoPilot and FSD doubters are wrong. Patience - Tesla is very methodical about this, and this is one of the areas where they are proceeding and executing near perfectly, IMO.

 

[Johnny Ma]

More cryptic Elon tweets. This time it's just "Jung", and a link to quotes from Carl Jung:

It's a reply to a tweet reporting about Elon's "Harambe rap" track he released yesterday.

The first quote from Jung explains why he did it.

Assumed it's more absurdism humor, which Elon has said he's a fan of, and Carl Jung sounds like Carl Yung. Yung being commonly used among rappers.

 

[MikkoJ]

Remember that new car tax for EVs was just lowered to 2,7%, so at least government is doing something.. and EV subsidy is 2k€ but only applies to cars costing less than 50k€.

Yes, am aware.. Some years back MS was eligible for tax rebates when leased. That's gone for several years now. So anyways...

 

[Causalien]

I believe you are SO going to be surprised once Tesla's new, large neural networks that can only run on the FSD computer will go into production.

Even people working in the high-tech industry tend to underestimate the astoundingly emergent properties of large neural networks.

So yeah, I'm 100% certain that the AutoPilot and FSD doubters are wrong. Patience - Tesla is very methodical about this, and this is one of the areas where they are proceeding near perfectly, IMO.

I am neutral. There's a reason why I read both bull and bear forums. Keeps me planted.

But if Tesla's sole business is based on Autopilot (with the car as the bolt on fix to reputation problems) and based on the release timeline originally promised, it'd have burnt out all investor money like Theranos did. That was what I meant. I am glad Tesla is a EV car company first and autopilot 4th.

 

[lklundin]

Just watched The Inventor: out for blood about Theranos. A good watch for all.

Which made me appreciate how Elon didn't spend on traditional marketing (less faking). And the fact that autopilot has a high likelyhood to go the way of Theranos. A good thing about Tesla is that its mission is about EV and not autopilot. So the main source of income is not dependent on autopilot success.

How I believed Theranos could've turned out differently is if they didn't sell the promise of the Edison at first. Instead just automate the labwork and focus on providing cost effective bloodworks for everyone. I wonder if they could've undercut their competitors if they managed to automate all the labworks using traditional machines first. This is more akin to what Tesla is doing. Focus on the traditional money maker first and then use the spare money on R&D to fund the AI/Edison research. As I believe both tech can come to fruition if given enough time... just not the typical 3 years to exit timeline that Silicon Valley usually work on.

The "Fake it till you make it" problem might've worked for the purely digital products. But once your tech crosses over to the physical world this model has a higher chance to fail because things happens a lot slower in the real world.

It is not clear to me that Theranos' original idea could be realized within a foreseeable future. I can imagine that the original founder(s) secured the original investors' support by describing their probably sincere belief that they could realize their plans. Things went downhill quickly when this turned out not to be immediately possible and management then decided to deceive both customers and investors about their inability to progress towards their promised goal. (I use mild language here, because the case is still under investigation).

Tesla's FSD technology is similar in the sense that management basically says it is a solved problem, while there is widespread skepticism elsewhere - especially with respect to the timeline for actual FSD.

But that is where the similarity stops. With the current approach and current advances there is objective and substantial improvement to Tesla's FSD technology.

And notably, also if only able to cope with a given fraction (e.g. 65%) of traffic situations, it can still be marketed and sold as such. This is fundametally different from e.g. Theranos' syphilis tests (that was bought by real people and) which would only detect 65 out of 100 actual cases of syphilis.

Secondly, a Tesla with FSD enabled does not have a Mechanical Turk hidden inside, its FSD is actually doing what it appears to be doing. This is the crucial difference between Tesla and Theranos, which has been found to deliberately defraud investors and put people's health and lives at risk.

The Turk - Wikipedia

 

[Beltsbear]

Current top car makers are at about 10M cars annually, so if we say that Tesla sells 0.5M cars this year, they need to grow a factor 20 (this pessimistically assumes no reduction in sales among the current top car makers).

To do so by 2035 (i.e. in 16 years) requires an annual growth of just over 20%.

If Tesla's current annual growth of 50% were to be maintained it would take just 8 years, i.e. 2028...

Gotta ramp up those gigafactory projects...

I expect Tesla to announce the next factory before the end of the year. The question is where it will be. The USA for trucks? Or a model Y factory in Europe?

 

[Fact Checking]

I am neutral. There's a reason why I read both bull and bear forums. Keeps me planted.

But if Tesla's sole business is based on Autopilot (with the car as the bolt on fix to reputation problems) and based on the release timeline originally promised, it'd have burnt out all investor money like Theranos did. That was what I meant. I am glad Tesla is a EV car company first and autopilot 4th.

I can accept that - but Theranos is a really, really bad example IMO, as it centered around (alleged) fraud around ultimately nonexistent technology, while AutoPilot and FSD is existing technology that is simply late, because it's a hard problem - like landing orbital rockets or building Falcon Heavy is a hard problem.

So I'd compare AutoPilot and FSD to SpaceX promises, not to Theranos promises.

Elon kept all his major technological promises so far, while he kept very few of his deadlines for delivering them.

To quote the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...as-been-missing-deadlines-since-he-was-a-kid/

"As a kid Elon Musk had so much trouble being on time, his younger brother developed a trick to make sure Musk didn’t miss the bus to school."

"Kimbal Musk — who currently sits on Tesla’s board — would lie to his older brother about the time, telling the future billionaire that the bus would be arriving, several minutes ahead of schedule. The slight manipulation ensured Musk wouldn’t be left behind."
​

 

[CorneliusXX]

Current top car makers are at about 10M cars annually, so if we say that Tesla sells 0.5M cars this year, they need to grow a factor 20 (this pessimistically assumes no reduction in sales among the current top car makers).

To do so by 2035 (i.e. in 16 years) requires an annual growth of just over 20%.

If Tesla's current annual growth of 50% were to be maintained it would take just 8 years, i.e. 2028...

Gotta ramp up those gigafactory projects...

If we take the assumption that 50% growth rate were to be maintained, there would be a year where they grow from 6.7m production to 10m. At current factory production levels Tesla would have to bring the equivalent of around 7 factories online and up to full speed. I hope alien dreadnought kicks in before that.

 

[Kevin_Freeman]

My paint on my 3 is not as bad as other earlier cars I have seen. Mine was recently tested when I was partly in a friends garage installing a 14-50 for their new 3. They went to retrieve lunch and when approaching the garage the auto open feature closed the door on my hood making a small dent in the fender and a very small chip. I expected full destruction and of course no good deed goes undone. The 3 was to blame for this incident as well as the garage door installer who placed the eye in a poor position. One reason I gravitate to white on some cars.

The eyes are to protect infants, not cars. Add a parallel set of eyes at bumper height to protect your car.

 

[Lessmog]

Two cents from the perimeter of Europe, Finland: so far the most bizarre tidbit, considering meta:
FUDsters have translated a couple of hit lines, like "Elon Musk leaving Tesla", into Finnish (out of all the crazy difficult languages of the whole wide world). I have seen those commercials even on TMC, unfortunately.

Finland... so insignificant especially regarding EVs (only 2404 EV passenger cars on Finnish roads at 20181231). Still media FUDding here too. This country is already quite hostile against Tesla. At some point I followed a bit of EV forums from Finland, Sweden and Spain. Finnish comments were most violent: Some persons threatening to harm EVs when they see them. So who needs machined FUD when we have the natives.

Expecting that to change.. giving it 7-10-15 years.

Despite the slight concerns am now after 107 km cautiously falling in love with M3, my 'brand new baby'..

Interesting. At least while the markets are closed, feel free to speculate why the EV sentiment in Finland is so different from e.g. Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

No built-in sauna?

But I remember one of Tesla-Björns earlier videos where he and his pal Jörgen turned the Millennium Falcon into a sauna using the cabin heater and posing more or less undressed. So a lack of sauna can't be the reason, unless Finns find it lacking. Which is of course a distinct possibility. Anyway, one contrary factual argument.

 

[EVNow]

Current top car makers are at about 10M cars annually, so if we say that Tesla sells 0.5M cars this year, they need to grow a factor 20 (this pessimistically assumes no reduction in sales among the current top car makers).

To do so by 2035 (i.e. in 16 years) requires an annual growth of just over 20%.

If Tesla's current annual growth of 50% were to be maintained it would take just 8 years, i.e. 2028...

Gotta ramp up those gigafactory projects...

The main problem is capacity. Till now Tesla had a somewhat easy way to grow because the Fremont factory was not used up. So, the past 50% growth is not relevent for the future.

How many giga factories can Tesla finance & build per year ? How fast will the legacy OEM volumes come down ? These will determine when Tesla can overtake Toyota/VW.

If the current volumes hold - and Tesla has to reach 10M / year - we are looking at 20x the current Tesla capacity. So, Tesla has to build about one giga-factory per year to get to that volume in 15 years.

 

[wipster]

I love a small detail in the background: what appears to be Elon's secret lair in an extinct volcano. This might be reference to:

Twitter

"If this works, I'm treating myself to a volcano lair. It's time."​

This very realistic picture has a big flaw though: in reality a Falcon Heavy launching at such distance would require significant ground infrastructure, or if it's launching from an underground cavern then at minimum the ~3 km/sec rocket exhaust would have to create a sizable cloud on the ground...

Btw., original picture:

That's the year Elon founded SpaceX, when all employees would easily fit on a single photo.

Personally, I think he has already reconfigured a missile silo and has an operating Stargate in it... big enough to drive a model 3 through.

 

[KarenRei]

That is possible if the ICE industry collapses because of a recession. Tesla just can't scale up that fast, otherwise.

Not due to a recession; due to the sales suppression effect of people deciding that their next vehicle will be an EV.

Also, I'd never underestimate Tesla's scaleup potential. Remember, for example, the reason for the Maxwell deal - to shrink electrode material lines from ~20m long vacuum ovens with solvent recovery systems, to ~2m long hot presses