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

[mongo]

On this topic, it is known whether the new Model S/X motor is interchangeable with one in the Model 3 - or is it a new variant of the Model 3 design?

Would have to be new variant of the drive unit. Even if the 3 rear and S/X front motors used the same gear ratio and mount points, Tesla biases the motor to the center of the vehicle.
The motor core (rotor and stator) is most likely identical. FWIW, the stator press fits in the drive unit housing.

 

[defc0n]

Sell in May and go away? Maybe not this year.

“An investor putting $10,000 into the S&P 500 between May 1 and Oct. 31, 1950 to the present would have $4,138, an astonishing loss of $5,862.

An investor putting $10,000 into the S&P 500 from Nov. 1 to April 20 over the same time period would have a gain of $2,836,350.

That is not a typo. We are talking about a gain of $2,836,350, versus a loss of $5,862.”

Isn’t that insane??? I find that remarkable. And depressing.

 

[EVMeister]

Got my state car inspection a few days ago. Looked at the windshield yesterday and everything clicked.

I took it as a sign.
View attachment 402846

That's brilliant. I want to give this multiple funnies.

 

[lascavarian]

Got my state car inspection a few days ago. Looked at the windshield yesterday and everything clicked.

I took it as a sign.
View attachment 402846

As a person whose door number is 420 I am constantly experiencing that sign.

 

[lklundin]

According to my drivers' ed course, an orange sign means "warning", so this means "Warning, Next 4 Miles".

I'm not sure how you tell the self-driving car "Yeah, watch for trouble. No, we don't know what sort, just trouble. Watch for it." Pehaps the most sensible thing to do is to use it as an "alert the human driver" indicator.

I think it is helpful to envision the FSD computer as human driver, i.e. being able to react in similar ways as a human (except much faster).

So how would a human would respond to the above?

1) Make sure the speed is not excessive for the current situation (the FSD computer should actually always be doing that),

2) If there seems to be increased risk from a particular direction then the human would focus more on that direction. The FSD computer equivalent would be to increase the frame rate from the cameras facing in that direction, at the cost of a lower frame rate from other cameras.

If there is for example an obstructed view to the right of the road and a clear view to the left, then increasing the frame rate of the right facing camera at the cost of the left facing one could make sense.

At least while the car is moving at speed, I expect the frame rates of the various cameras to be asymmetric per default, since objects appearing in the forward field of view are more likely to require the car to react, than objects in the rear, who would need to be moving at much greater speed.

Unless of course all cameras are always being read out at their maximum frequency, but that seems like it could be wasteful at times.

These are some of the questions that would have been great to ask of Karparthy.

PS. as for 1) I wonder if the Tesla could sample the available friction to the road surface in a manner that would be both safe and not noticeable to the occupants of the car. It could f.ex. momentarily increase torque on one axle and brake (regeneratively) on the other, and check whether any tire would start to slip. I think this should be possible, typically without any net change in the vehicle speed. Then the GUI could display a warning light: "Available road friction is about to be exhausted"....

 

[Alexander Grea]

Who is going to be the strategic investor in TSLA? Considering how much insitutional selling has been happening then it is essential for the medium term prospects to think of the possible strategic investors. The strategic investor should take 5-10% stake

Here are the ones that come to my mind and the probability of each:
AAPL: Would be perfect fit strategically but will never happen as long as Tim Cook is in charge. He is a numbers guy and focusing on the growth of high margin services business.
GOOG: All in with Waymo and Android Auto.
MSFT: Focus on high margin cloud business and providing cross platform services for cars.
GM: Most likely candidate considering they held talks with Rivian very recently that broke down.
F: Tied down with Rivian.
AMZN: Tied down with Rivian.
VW: Likely considering they were rumored to be one of the investors lined up for the 420 buyout.
TM & Daimler: Have already made their profits with TSLA and haven't showed intent to get back there.
FCA: Likely as they already have a partnership with the credits scheme.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

All together it looks like the dream investment by a tech giant into TSLA is not going to happen. This means also that a full buyout of TSLA is unlikely because only Tech companies have the kind of cash that is required to finance those deals.

However a deal similar to Rivian where TSLA will provide the drivetrain and against it will get an investment might be doable. What is worrying is how Rivian got the deal in the first place considering that TSLA's know how and engineering should be clearly way ahead of Rivian's at that stage. Hopefully it is not Elon's ego that prevents the partnerships with F or GM.

 

[Pras]

When it comes to CNBC and Chanos, this article comes to mind..(think the Chapath video).

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

 

[ggies07]

Also Google Drive

1314984327.mp4

Thanks! Downloaded it, now it's mine for forever!!! **** YOU CNBC.

 

[Tslynk67]

Look. I think you guys demonize shorts based on a bunch of very vocal small / retail investors in social media. In the background large hedge funds make bets based on valuation and their own analysis. Not because they are evil and want to see Tesla burn, but because they will short everything that gives their clients some gain. That's their job. They might be bad at it, or good at it. The jury is still out.

If people think a company is fatally flawed, then just don't invest in it, stay away. Aside the vocal haters on the Internet, shorting a stock artificially lower the SP, causing weak longs to capitulate and sell. Often out about by shorts is that they're there to "regulate fraudulent companies", but this is totally BS, they're there to cause companies to fail in order to make profits.

I find it repulsive and I can't understand why it's allowed at all.

 

[kbM3]

Pulled the trigger and ordered Model X Performance w/ free Ludicrous and FSD before the price is going up. Trade in of 3+ years old Model X 90D at a very good price, given 68k miles already.

At the store, the Tesla authorization system was a bit slow to respond. According to an apologetic customer advocate, this had to do with unusual high number of orders being entered due to end of the month expiration of some of the special offers. I told him that was music to my ears (the high number of orders).

He had me enter the order on my iPhone which took all of 15 seconds, amazing! In and out of the store in 15 min, that’s unheard of when buying a new car.

Going from 90D to P100DL with $2,500 down and only $100 higher monthly payment is a fantastic deal in my opinion. I’m hopeful more owners think like me and are doing the same.

Did my part also.

I did get a surprise that they’re charging $3k for Autopilot on a LR RWD, so I’m looking into that.

 

[Boomer19]

Ok that video clip is one of those “Wow. Just Wow.” moments.

Chamath nailed it.

he always nails it. much more effective and efficient explanation of all that’s wrong with anti-tesla than any other pro tesla spokesman. i wish there was more if it.

and cnbc trying to hold that bit back instead of the full interview is proof of what we’re up against. wapner reacted like a child, as if he was scared that ol jim would be mad at him for getting him embarrassed like that. he has the balls to sit there and say that people are betting against fundamentals and that’s why the “holy war” against tesla...he’s either incredibly dumb or incredibly full of sh!t

they all deserve dante’s inferno as far as i’m concerned

 

[Boomer19]

Look. I think you guys demonize shorts based on a bunch of very vocal small / retail investors in social media. In the background large hedge funds make bets based on valuation and their own analysis. Not because they are evil and want to see Tesla burn, but because they will short everything that gives their clients some gain. That's their job. They might be bad at it, or good at it. The jury is still out.

John Hempton (tesla bear) said in a recent interview (real vision, paid only):

actually, yeah, they do want tesla to burn. for their own greed. that’s what short is. they want the company they’re shorting to implode to maximize their gains for themselves and their clients.

they hide behind financial language to make it appear that they’re doing something noble.

and that’s all fine. short is legal. there’s def some legit shorts out there.

then there’s the trolls, saboteurs, and other illegal stuff - to that extent which they’re doing it with tsla is anti-american, anti-climate, anti-earth, anti-human

so spare us the bullshit. there’s a difference between what you’re talking about, which one may argued increases market efficiency, and the amplified version with what’s mostly going on with tesla

 

[HG Wells]

To Boss Short:

I think we can really knock the stock price down some more. This Canada thing is just ridiculous. It gives us so many ways of making Tesla look bad.
Can you believe it? There is now a Tesla with only 93 miles on it and they don't really intend to sell any of them. They're just doing it to get that measly $5000 for each customer.
Here are some of my headlines for the coming week.


Tesla introduces new low range model 3, fails to sell any!

No interest in new low range version of model three!

Nissan Leaf soundly beats new model 3's range.




Your partner in Crime
Chief Editor
Shortsville Times

 

[Cobbler]

Battery material prices are dropping fast
(Dutch article)
Raw material supply increased too much while global EV growth was less than anticipated.
Meaning Tesla could produce lower priced battery packs?

 

[Etna]

Someone uploaded the Chamath interview to Youtube

 

[heltok]

AAPL: Would be perfect fit strategically but will never happen as long as Tim Cook is in charge. He is a numbers guy and focusing on the growth of high margin services business.

Have you read the biography of Tim Cook. He seems to care more about the environment and workers right rather than making profit for the shareholders.
https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Cook-Genius-Apple-Level/dp/0525537600

 

[Webeevdrivers]

I may be doing it wrong but from what I can tell there is still no inventory in Canada. Is there a trick to this? Hmmm

 

[EVMeister]

I may be doing it wrong but from what I can tell there is still no inventory in Canada. Is there a trick to this? Hmmm

Did you ring them up or just check online? They don't list all inventory online from what I understand so it's often worth ringing.

 

[SO16]

This copy has good audio quality (Palihapitiya's speech on CNBC)
Gofile - File sharing platform, anonymous and free

If the shorts didn’t have Elon’s tweets, they’d find something else to complain about.

 

[Johnny Ma]

Walter Huang's wife suing Tesla for wrongful death. Shorts have seized upon the opportunity to suddenly care so much again, posting pictures of his family all over Twitter and tagging whomever they think will help damage the stock price most. Very sad situation all around. Not going to link any of the tweets, article is easy enough to find with a quick search.