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

[Chickenlittle]

I think the title you made would be more appropriate. Jan~March is snow/ice season for colder places, this February we got record amount of snow and ice. It seems some cities ran out of salt, many roads were covered with ice for a while. However, accident rate under autopilot remained essentially the same compared with Q4, that's good news.

Accident rate under human driver improved 11.4% compared with Q4 (1.58 million miles ->1.76 million miles per accident). This is great news! I think drivers are the same, the system is improving. Q3'19 we will have the first same quarter comparison, I expect major improvement from Q3'18 to Q3'19. National average is at one accident every 0.436 million miles.

Begs the question. Why do you read him? I gave up on him 4 months ago. But there are a few thoughts why it maybe unchanged
1. AP doing more so unchanged is good
2. As much as Tesla’s are selling there are a lot out there of 1.0 and 2.0 versions so crash rate will be less sensitive to improvements in 2.5 version. Perhaps tesla should break this statistic down to crashes in each version of AP

 

[pnungesser]

Disagree with the bolded section above. 11,400 is not a lot of model 3 inventory. Any other car model being produced and delivered globally at a current rate of 250k (increasing to 300-350k by year end) would have a far larger inventory number.

As to ship headed to Japan.



But they do drive on the other side of the road.
S & X are available but Model 3 is just finishing testing for right side steering.

And of course, a stop in Japan is on the way to China, so there could be a few M3's that missed the boat in Q1.

 

[Chickenlittle]

As to ship headed to Japan.



But they do drive on the other side of the road.
S & X are available but Model 3 is just finishing testing for right side steering.

Model S and model X right hand drive has been out for a long time

 

[humbaba]

You misread me. The person in question DOES have access to power hookup at home. And yet was still concerned about lack of public charging. Despite living in a country with fairly ample suoerchargers.

That sounds like someone I talked to IRL who said that if he ever had a Tesla it would only be for running into town or trips short enough to not require charging on the road. I really don't understand his reluctance -- from talking with me he should know that supercharging is available and fast.

He also said he'd rather have his wife and infant riding in an Honda Pilot than any Tesla (this is where I point at safety being my number one reason for buying a Tesla). Sure, its a little cheaper than an M3, but his reason? The car is easy to work on. SMH

To which point I happened on an acquaintance and when Tesla came up his immediate question was "where could it be serviced?" I tried pointing out that an EV doesn't need service like he is used to, but he wouldn't let up and felt he had made his point about the nearest Tesla service center being ~100 miles away.

I find it a bit frustrating that people insist on ascribing the reliability characteristics of an ICE to an EV. I tried explaining how an ICE is a Rube Goldberg contraption* that only runs as well as it does when it is in a carefully tuned and maintained state with any deviation resulting in poor performance to complete failure and frequent maintenance. His comeback was that capacitors can fail. What? No kidding. That ICE have electric components as well and that the fiddly parts that have frequent failures are not present on an EV was met with a shrug, "but they still fail." Apparently the rate of failure is inconsequential. And all of this from someone with a PhD in Computer Science. (Yeah, I know -- better than most -- about academics, but it still sometimes boggles my mind. And, for the record, he is not one of the idiots.)

* people recoil at this description, but I find it to be quite accurate and helpful in explaining the differences. In addition to the foregoing reliability issues it illustrates the "tuning" and "tweaking" that people associate with the racing of ICE vehicles and how you can't do that with an EV. That is, sure you could hack a Tesla and increase the discharge/draw rate (to the physical limit of what the battery can deliver) to improve power, you can overdrive the electric motor or could replace it with another. But the system is so much simpler and non-Rube Goldberg-like that there are significant differences in the tweaking that can be done.

 

[ntam]

Anyone knows why TSLA just jumped $5 pre-market?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Something just happened in the Pre-Market. SP jumped from 272.34 to 276 in 2 min. Anybody hear anything? Now 278.30 after 3 min, up $6 in 3 min....

EDIT: "The financial firm Nomura has began coverage on Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)‘s stock, rating it a Neutral while giving it the TP at $300."

 

[BornToFly]

Huh, someone is ignoring statistics...
Given that there are more Teslas on the road each quarter, the accident rate would need to decrease by a similar fraction to not have a higher accident count...

That is incorrect. To make the math simple, let's assume an accident rate of 1 every 2 Million miles driven. It there were X number of cars on the road, which collectively drove 10 million miles, then you would expect 5 accidents. If you double the number of cars, and therefore double the number of miles driven, you expect twice as many accidents (10, because there are twice as many cars using autopilot), but the ratio of accidents to miles driven stays the same if the accident rate is unchanged.

 

[nursebee]

Something just happened in the Pre-Market. SP jumped from 272.34 to 276 in 2 min. Anybody hear anything? Now 278.30 after 3 min, up $6 in 3 min....

E car bill introduced to extend credits

 

[HG Wells]

That sounds like someone I talked to IRL who said that if he ever had a Tesla it would only be for running into town or trips short enough to not require charging on the road. I really don't understand his reluctance -- from talking with me he should know that supercharging is available and fast.

He also said he'd rather have his wife and infant riding in an Honda Pilot than any Tesla (this is where I point at safety being my number one reason for buying a Tesla). Sure, its a little cheaper than an M3, but his reason? The car is easy to work on. SMH

To which point I happened on an acquaintance and when Tesla came up his immediate question was "where could it be serviced?" I tried pointing out that an EV doesn't need service like he is used to, but he wouldn't let up and felt he had made his point about the nearest Tesla service center being ~100 miles away.

I find it a bit frustrating that people insist on ascribing the reliability characteristics of an ICE to an EV. I tried explaining how an ICE is a Rube Goldberg contraption* that only runs as well as it does when it is in a carefully tuned and maintained state with any deviation resulting in poor performance to complete failure and frequent maintenance. His comeback was that capacitors can fail. What? No kidding. That ICE have electric components as well and that the fiddly parts that have frequent failures are not present on an EV was met with a shrug, "but they still fail." Apparently the rate of failure is inconsequential. And all of this from someone with a PhD in Computer Science. (Yeah, I know -- better than most -- about academics, but it still sometimes boggles my mind. And, for the record, he is not one of the idiots.)

* people recoil at this description, but I find it to be quite accurate and helpful in explaining the differences. In addition to the foregoing reliability issues it illustrates the "tuning" and "tweaking" that people associate with the racing of ICE vehicles and how you can't do that with an EV. That is, sure you could hack a Tesla and increase the discharge/draw rate (to the physical limit of what the battery can deliver) to improve power, you can overdrive the electric motor or could replace it with another. But the system is so much simpler and non-Rube Goldberg-like that there are significant differences in the tweaking that can be done.

Tell him my 6 year old LEAF with 50,000 miles has had 2 tires and 2 wiper blades. EV's just require SO much maintenance.

Yes it does need two more tires. Might actually get 4.

 

[nursebee]

 

[Antares Nebula]

What did I just say people?

If you want to talk about all the stars aligning in Tesla's favor in 2019-2020:

>> And then the kickers:
- Hundreds of millions this year from EU emission req pools; signif increase next year (per @generalenthu and @SebastianR above), AND
- USA EV vehicle tax credit re-instated (bills have been introduced in Congress, but have to see given Trump)

How high do you think the stock will go in 2020? (Talk about a complete 180!)

 

[skybluecgreen]

Anyone knows why TSLA just jumped $5 pre-market?

Exclusive: U.S. lawmakers introduce bill to boost electric car tax credits - Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers will introduce legislation on Wednesday to expand the electric vehicle tax credit by 400,000 vehicles per manufacturer, a provision that would give a boost to General Motors Co and Tesla Inc before the existing credit comes to an end for them.
The bill is sponsored by Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins and Democratic Representative Dan Kildee, the sponsors told Reuters ahead of its official introduction.

The bill could lift electric vehicle sales in a boost for automakers that have committed tens of billions of dollars to meet rising global emissions requirements.

The existing $7,500 EV tax credit, which allows tax payers to deduct part of the cost of buying an electric car, phases out over 15 months once an automaker hits 200,000 cumulative EV sales. GM saw its tax credit cut to $3,750 on April 1. Tesla’s tax credit fell to $3,750 on Jan. 1 and will end entirely at year’s end.

The bill dubbed the “Driving America Forward Act” would grant each automaker a $7,000 tax credit for an additional 400,000 vehicles on top of the existing 200,000 vehicles eligible for $7,500 tax credits. It would shorten the phase-out schedule to nine months.

The bill would also extend the hydrogen fuel cell credit through 2028. The bill is estimated to cost $11.4 billion, with all but $91 million of that tally to extend the EV tax credit.

 

[andrewt3000]

My thoughts on bias in recent LA Times article about Tesla short sellers.

LA Times vs Tesla

 

[humbaba]

Tell him my 6 year old LEAF with 50,000 miles has had 2 tires and 2 wiper blades. EV's just require SO much maintenance.

Yes it does need two more tires. Might actually get 4.

I'll remember that for the next time I see him. The ironic thing is he had just been to a dealership. Sure, that might be why his mind was dwelling on the need for maintenance, but it also is a good time to have the "ah-ha" moment when you realize that you can be freed from (most of) those concerns.

Most people aren't concerned about where the service center for their phone is and, while a Tesla has a lot more mechanical parts than a phone, it is very robust compared to an ICE vehicle. Everything from the many parts it simply doesn't have (because they lack relevance) to the vastly more robust parts (like the transmission due to simplicity). Even the brakes -- which are standard -- need less service thanks to regenerative braking.

This is what Tesla tries to communicate through their "cost of ownership" but, at least here, all most people care about is the sticker price and not rocking the boat. Which is why they will pay "less" for an inferior car -- but have the same monthly payment before even getting into energy or maintenance costs.

Sorry, just the blindness of people gets to me at times.

 

[RiverBrick]

The chances are low that Trump will sign such a bill, but why keep any individual manufacturer cap at all? There's an argument for an overall, manufacturer-blind cap, but why punish the companies that took the biggest risks and are driving electrification?

 

[BornToFly]

Why is the new EV bill focusing on number of vehicles per manufacturer? Tesla will hit the new target in no time. They need to extend the credit until a future date, like 2022 or 2025, and then reduce it for everyone at the same time!

 

[brian45011]

It is absolutely ridiculous how they now parrot "where is the 8k?". LOL.

When did Tesla enter this agreement? February 25. Geez I wonder why Tesla filed 3 CT orders with the SEC that day granting confidentiality to some material information...

Those were orders issued by the SEC (not filings by Tesla). The orders granted/extended Confidentiality treatment requested by Tesla for exhibits to previously filed financial statements. None of the Exhibits had anything to do with FCA.

Do you not consider a ~$0.5 billion agreement a Material Definitive Contract? (Many would like more details about the FCA transaction.)

 

[humbaba]

Why is the new EV bill focusing on number of vehicles per manufacturer? Tesla will hit the new target in no time. They need to extend the credit until a future date, like 2022 or 2025, and then reduce it for everyone at the same time!

I think you answered your own question.

[edited to add: this most likely is to address the slump in Bolt sales so that they can keep generating enough ZEV to keep the company in compliance.]

 

[mongo]

That is incorrect. To make the math simple, let's assume an accident rate of 1 every 2 Million miles driven. It there were X number of cars on the road, which collectively drove 10 million miles, then you would expect 5 accidents. If you double the number of cars, and therefore double the number of miles driven, you expect twice as many accidents (10, because there are twice as many cars using autopilot), but the ratio of accidents to miles driven stays the same if the accident rate is unchanged.

In case there was a misunderstanding, I was referring to Fred not knowing statistics, not to you.

Yes, the ratio stays the same. However, the title of the article (and what was stated) was that accidents, not accident rate, increased.

Hardly worth the Headline that there were more Autopilot crashes in the last quarter.

Headline:

Tesla releases new Autopilot safety report: more crashes but still fewer than when humans drive

To have the number of accidents go down with a doubling of miles driven would require a >50% reduction in accident rate.
In order words, number of accidents is practically guaranteed to go up as the fleet expands.
(also, I'd expect a higher accident rate where the majority of the fleet is in winter anyway)

 

[Krugerrand]

That is why SECs case is weak. While the tweet did mention GF3 plans, the stock didn’t react. So they can’t consider any or all communication as material. The same point EMs lawyers have made. I think SEC has to be very prescriptive.

There’s pics and video and media reports all over the Internet showing the progress of GF3. The Chinese said it’ll be done May long before this tweet.

Not a secret.
Not new.
Not material.
None of SEC’s business.