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

[Krugerrand]

Elon could definitely improve as a CEO. Can't they all? He has surely been careless with his communications in the past.

Yep, everyone can improve. Here’s the thing, it’s not anybody’s place to announce it publicly about anyone. That’s called overstepping. Mind your own backyard.

 

[bdy0627]

I think they will be in superchargers. future super charger sites would be a controlled environment where no human allowed, you drop off your car at the gate, it self drive to the stall and the snake charge your car. they can even do that right now.

Do we really think they will develop, produce, and supply these snake charger things all over the world soon? I kind of doubt it. I'm envisioning low wage supercharger attendants handling the cables for now. Let's say FSD initially occurs in population dense areas. Currently there are 1,400 supercharger sites. Let's say 500 are involved in the FSD network, at least early on. Each one could be staffed for about $200 per day. This would add up to about $35M per year, but what's the revenue from the network? That would be covered quickly I'm sure.

 

[Remus]

IF Tesla can achieve their network before everyone else, each car would become very valuable. I would assume this would cause upwards pricing pressure on all of their vehicles. If someone can buy a $45k car that can generate that much per year, I would guess demand would go through the roof and thus lead to price increases or super long waitlists.

In that case the car would be valuable for Tesla too, why sell it?

 

[bdy0627]

I think they will be in superchargers. future super charger sites would be a controlled environment where no human allowed, you drop off your car at the gate, it self drive to the stall and the snake charge your car. they can even do that right now.

They can surely develop robots to do the charging, but it can't cost much more than employing humans or it won't make sense.

 

[Prunesquallor]

I am still bummed about the magnitude of EU incentives available in 2020 and beyond assuming there are no last minute change to rules. Here is the quick table I was able to pull together. I keep telling myself, when something is too good to be true it normally is. I see @Prunesquallor has a lower estimate. Not sure why. I think its reasonable to assume that tesla will get at least 2/3 of the benefit.

View attachment 396221

I used the rules listed here. It’s dated January 2019, so I assume this is the latest and greatest:
https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EU-LCV-CO2-2030_ICCTupdate_201901.pdf

They show the 2021 FCA CO2 target as 91 and 2017 CO2 emissions as 120.
I don’t see any mention of the "EV Multiplier" you have listed. Where did you find that? There have been several revisions to the target rules over the years.

There are additional low and zero emission vehicle targets starting in 2025 that provide up to 5% relief in the CO2 targets if they are met, so Tesla could provide additional benefit in the out-years. I do not know for sure if this applies to pools though.

 

[scaesare]

The sales guidance is for all vehicles. GF batteries are for model 3 only.

Ah right. My inclusion of the 100KW packs isn't correct for GF1 output.

Mea culpa.

 

[bdy0627]

I don't disagree. But I'd argue that in the tech world, Microsoft is the "Walmart version" and Microsoft is currently the world's most valuable company. History shows that they are notorious fast followers. They will find a way to *try* to compete in autonomy. They may fail miserably like they did with smartphones. I expect they'll fail. But I think in time, given the sheer size of the world vehicle market and the opportunity to be a player in it, lots of companies will try to do what Tesla is doing and some of these companies will find some degree of success in the long run. It's inevitable. I'm not yet sold on a "winner take all" outcome for vehicle autonomy. Few things ever work out that way in tech.

Given enough time, I don't see how there is any way one company will own the winner take all position. For a decade maybe, but once others catch up, the pie will get split up no doubt. Tesla will certainly not be the only company with self driving tech. I'm good with Tesla owning that position for a decade.

 

[omarsultan]

some things I pay commodity prices for. Like I dont give a damn who makes my socks. But if I'm paying for an AI to drive me around and stop me dying, you bet your ass I want the best. I'll have the tesla autonomy service thanks, not the walmart version.

But "best" is a meaningless term. As part of the evolution of public policy of AV, safety standards will be created that everyone will need to meet to be certified to operate, much like other vehicle safety standards are today. This will automatically level the playing field ("we meet standard XYZ just like Tesla"). I think a few savvy companies will be able to show they meaningfully exceed the standards and parlay that into a competitive advantage much the way Volvo and Mercedes have done in that past. It remains to seen if Tesla is one of those companies.

Related reading: GM, Ford, Toyota, SAE to set autonomous vehicle testing and standards

 

[bdy0627]

Uber said if Tesla makes a FSD car they would buy 500k/year of them. If we assume that Tesla is able to provide FSD this year and they get legal approval in some states there will be a very high initial demand for them as they will be worth 0-100%(lets say 50%) of like 2 full time human drivers = $50k/year. If you could buy a car that you knew would make you ~$50k/year how much would you be willing to pay for it?

Maybe after 22April we will see some companies stockpiling black Model 3 LR as a speculative investment.

Once Tesla achieves FSD, there is no way they will be able to supply the demand for their vehicles for many years no matter how fast they build factories.

 

[elasalle]

Pier 80 needs a ship:

View attachment 396265

Morning Cornelia was supposed to arrive yesterday.

on twitter, said it would arrive tomorrow.

But is Pier 80 loaded with cars?

 

[K3jSe7Llp7]

Given enough time, I don't see how there is any way one company will own the winner take all position. For a decade maybe, but once others catch up, the pie will get split up no doubt. Tesla will certainly not be the only company with self driving tech. I'm good with Tesla owning that position for a decade.

A decade is good! Of being the only car anyone wants? valued 5-10 times any other? Oooooh yeah.

 

[mongo]

Take for example the identification of the traffic cone. Human will write a code that scans for a triangle shape to identify something as a traffic cone, a NN might evolve some sort of FFT algorithm to analyze the visible red specturm with a low pass filter to get rid of noise response that somehow only uses 2 gates by taking advantage of gated clock propagation delays between two xor gates. Algorithms that humans cannot make sense of but works. These type of special NN evolutions that relies on hardware tends to break as hardware changes. Evident in how autopilot seems to regress a bit with each upgrade before getting smooth again.

Are you thinking of that FPGA research paper from a while back?

NNs like Tesla is using would not be able to develop an FFT routine due to topology. However a SW2.0NN developing the NN could, in theory d something like that if provided enough levels.

On the proximal gate effects, the training occurs on different hardware than the NN is operated on (and with different code) so there will not be any target hardware side effects exploited. That is a good thing since deterministic operation is required across the fleet for reliability.

 

[Remus]

They can surely develop robots to do the charging, but it can't cost much more than employing humans or it won't make sense.

It's not like they could, but they already had it.

 

[jepicken]

Reading this thread today I'm reminded of Warren Buffet's advice: "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful".

 

[KarenRei]

on twitter, said it would arrive tomorrow.

But is Pier 80 loaded with cars?

Vesselfinder says due on the 11th.

Yes, it's pretty full.

 

[printf42]

Reading this thread today I'm reminded of Warren Buffet's advice: "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful".

Are you reading greedy or fearful from this forum today?
Asking because I myself can not decide.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Right, with unknown accuracy, and no word on correctly making turns at intersections, being able to find parking spots, etc. Improvements, even just to accuracy, may/likely will require architectural changes to increase network capacity. That’ll take more compute power.

Super late response to your post but I'm pretty sure Elon said(can't remember if it was in a tweet or in a interview) that his dev build navigates intersections including turning left or right.

 

[jepicken]

Are you reading greedy or fearful from this forum today?
Asking because I myself can not decide.

I'm detecting fear from bulls (Tenable, plus less positivity in general from other frequent posters) and greed from bears (Einhorn specifically).

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Given enough time, I don't see how there is any way one company will own the winner take all position. For a decade maybe, but once others catch up, the pie will get split up no doubt. Tesla will certainly not be the only company with self driving tech. I'm good with Tesla owning that position for a decade.

The thing is, practically everyone else out there doing Autonomy is doing it through Lidar.....not Vision/NN. As Elon has said, everyone trying to get to FSD through Lidar is going to hit a wall at a certain point and it's not scalable.....at all. You can't geofence the entire world. The longer everyone else keeps trying the Lidar route, they fall farther behind....exponentially.

 

[Unpilot]

Are you thinking of that FPGA research paper from a while back?

NNs like Tesla is using would not be able to develop an FFT routine due to topology. However a SW2.0NN developing the NN could, in theory d something like that if provided enough levels.

On the proximal gate effects, the training occurs on different hardware than the NN is operated on (and with different code) so there will not be any target hardware side effects exploited. That is a good thing since deterministic operation is required across the fleet for reliability.

Sounds good...of course I have no idea what you said....but yeah sounds good.