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

[MarcusMaximus]

Huh, the official Tesla twitter is actually entertaining... when did this happen?

 

[PANN]

It better be a lot faster than what the video upstream showed. People are so impatient when behind the wheel.

They showed a faster version for investor rides on Autonomous Day. But safety first always, I'm fine with it being slow and conservative in initial release, and make it faster after people used it millions of times and feel confident with safety. I think Elon said similar approach to NoA lane change.

One thing I really like Elon is as famously impatient as he's with timeline, he seem to be extremely patient with safety related stuff, never rushing to wow people with features that's not very safe.

 

[Krugerrand]

I often have my rear camera view up while driving. I once got caught behind rapidly braking traffic on the interstate in the left lane. I left plenty of space in front of me. And it was a good thing too, since the person behind me wasn’t able to stop in time so I had to accelerate and fill the gap I left to avoid getting rear-ended.

Point is, if he was watching his rear camera view he could have been ready for the maneuver. (Or lucky that his instinct was the right one).

Tesla talks in their release notes about all of their safety features. Collision avoidance, lane departure warning, obstacle-aware acceleration, etc, etc. do you really think this awesome collision avoidance functionality would be completely unmentioned in release notes, on Twitter, etc?

Sorry, not buying it. And I’m a huge Tesla and AP fan. (Yuge.)

Absolutely. They’ve had lots of stuff buried in their software and not told people about it. If it’s a new feature that isn’t developed quite enough/they want to collect more data before telling people it exists and the like...sure, why not?

I’ve not imagined my car doing such a maneuver. Scared the crap out of me for a moment and then had me flummoxed.

 

[Todd Burch]

Absolutely. They’ve had lots of stuff buried in their software and not told people about it. If it’s a new feature that isn’t developed quite enough/they want to collect more data before telling people it exists and the like...sure, why not?

Because if it misses a car in the adjacent lane going 70 mph, it will have just swerved the car moving a few MPH in front of a car going 70 mph, perhaps causing multiple fatalities. Nope. Not buying it.

 

[Unpilot]

Because if it misses a car in the adjacent lane going 70 mph, it will have just swerved the car moving a few MPH in front of a car going 70 mph, perhaps causing multiple fatalities. Nope. Not buying it.

But then it would not be "driveable space"

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

Tesla isn't for sale and Tesla doesn't need Google, Google needs Tesla. For software and hardware and cars and batteries. What does Tesla need from Google? Cash? They can get so much as they want or are willing to go get.

But TSLA is for sale. I picked up some recently for 240. Google should have done the same— and if they haven’t yet, they should start now. I’d be happy if Tesla issued new shares to Google (because, as an investor, I prefer $6.5B in cash instead of $4.5B in cash), but if not, Google should pick some up on the open market.

Tesla doesn’t need Google, and Google doesn’t need Tesla, but they could benefit each other, and help de-risk each other’s futures. And I believe cooperation between the two could speed up the transition to sustainable transport and sustainable energy. So, I’m strongly in favor.

 

[DaveT]

Dave, I’m kinda shocked at your views on this.

If you are a robotaxi customer, and you have the choice between a noisy, vibrating robotaxi versus a quiet, smooth EV at several times cheaper per mile, which would you choose?

I think you're probably misunderstanding some parts of my views here.

Robotaxi customers will be driven by the same things ride hailing customers are driven by right now. Mainly cost and availability. People will choose the cheapest ride available at the time they need it.

 

[PANN]

Latest report on Trade Deal from Reuters: U.S.: China reneged on trade commitments, sparking Trump tariff hike - Reuters

A person familiar with the negotiations said the latest dispute came after the Chinese side sought to deal with policy changes through administrative and regulatory actions, not through changes to Chinese law as previously agreed.

I hope Law vs. Regulation is the only major difference. Anyone living in China know that administritive and regulatory actions, usually in the form of State Council Regulations, is as good and effective as the law, the China parliament is just very slow in modifying the laws. We have many law-equivalent Regulations (mostly economic related) today in China, and we don't differentiate state regulations from the laws, as long as the government is actively enforcing it, as long as it's from the Party (which in absolute control of everything here).

 

[Carl Raymond]

Because if it misses a car in the adjacent lane going 70 mph, it will have just swerved the car moving a few MPH in front of a car going 70 mph, perhaps causing multiple fatalities. Nope. Not buying it.

Do you really think that of the three choices, go left, go right, go straight, it didn’t assess which path was clear? That’s not a corner case decision, it’s driving 101. Absolutely core.

 

[Remus]

If Waymo is like Google, they manage by OKRs, as described in 'Measure what matters' and 'Trillion dollar coach'.
It's easy and encouraged under these programs to admit errors and pivot quickly. Culture you're describing isn't something I would attribute to Google. Don't know about Apple.

Somehow their OKR did not push Nest to produce anything for years after merger. I wonder what KEY result they used to measure there. And their android messaging system had several parallel solutions fighting each other without a clear direction for years, while most people think iMessage is much better. I guess finding KEY results is not that simple. And how exactly they pivoted in Cloud offering to allow them to get ahead again?

Ads is pretty much the single source of income for Google all its life. They have been trying very very hard to diversify their business yet none pan out. I guess OKR is not silver bullet after all.

No man made system is perfect. Any management system is subject to gaming. especially in big companies when you have several layers between you and the final business result, your incentive often does not align with long term well being of the business. In big organizations people form groups to defend their own benefits. Just like you see in Nest and Android systems, the "Key Results" are defined by human and often gamed.

 

[traxila]

It’s interesting that there has been zero coverage in the US media of FCA giving € 1.8 billion to Tesla over a period of 3 years.

Is this priced in or not?

Not.

 

[mblakele]

As Elon tweeted on Feb 25th, the day the FCA deal was signed - “Fate loves irony” - very apt

Was "fate loves irony" an anagram? It's easy to get "fiat" out of that, and "elon" could be in there too.

looney fiats rev
fiat levy sooner
very elon so fiat

These don't make as much sense as I'd like, though. Maybe there's a better joke in there, or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Related: FCA's Maserati brand announced that it will never go all-electric. “This is a brand that needs combustion engines," said Al Gardner, head of Maserati North America. Sales were down 28% in 2018 and down about 40% in 2019Q1 — I'm not sure if that's for USA or global.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Based on that I'd guess there's a significant chance that this was a variant of the "Emergency Lane Keep Assist" FSD feature, which was activated last week IIRC.

Lane Departure Avoidance and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance. I've seen no release note about them. The control for Lane Departure Avoidance doesn't appear on my Model 3 with 2019.12.1.2 (that I can find anyway). The Tesla blog post "unveiled" the features. Tesla tweeted (Tesla on Twitter) on May 2 that these new features were "rolling out today". So what evidence is there that they are out?

 

[azaz]

Didn't Elon just recently make FSD/robotaxis the main and most important part of the TSLA investment thesis? And wasn't the cap raise investor call largely about this as well? It seems like a relevant and timely topic for this thread as it has huge implications for TSLA both present and future.

I agree. Like it or not, Musk has now positioned TSLA as a robotaxi play. In an accelerating manner here on out, every new self-driving development by Tesla and their competitors are going to be relevant to our investment. Anyone who doesn't want endless discussion of autonomous driving should now find somewhere else to spend their time.

But, please, folks, take back-and-forth discussions over technical points to a separate thread. Hopefully the moderators can help enforce this.

I don't think this is entirely true. I think Elon is a great salesman and was hyping it up for the cap raise. Elon also gets stuck on fads like alien dreadnought at times then then when he realizes the problem is much harder than he estimated he takes a more measured tone.

 

[oneday]

Since someone here mentioned the Autonomous forum as a place for today’s discussion, I thought I’d head over and check it out.

It is infested by the hired guns of the Tesla smear campaign. Almost every thread I’ve seen there is dominated by them.

Imagine someone inspired by the autonomy day heading to TMC forums and literally being bombarded by bad news coming from supposed owners and Tesla fans. I would imagine it would turn them off and completely dim their excitement.

It just makes me so sick, I can’t even stand to go there.

I know someone earlier today said good product will win in the end, but has any product ever been the subject of this intense of a smear campaign?

This thread is a relative safe haven.

I agree. That’s why I recommended a current thread in the Investor sub forum and/or creating a new thread just for FSD/Robotaxi and it’s implications on SP. You could even petition a mod to make it a sticky, if people used it.

 

[Todd Burch]

I think you're probably misunderstanding some parts of my views here.

Robotaxi customers will be driven by the same things ride hailing customers are driven by right now. Mainly cost and availability. People will choose the cheapest ride available at the time they need it.

Agree.

Suppose Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all have the same FSD capability. Don't you believe that even with that competition, Tesla would be able to undercut the prices of both Uber and Waymo?

-Teslas are the most efficient EVs by far.
-EVs are several times cheaper per mile than ICEs.
-Tesla FSD does not require more expensive LIDAR.
-Tesla has its own in-house chip optimized for its own software.
-Tesla manufactures almost everything in-house: the vehicles and chip, mainly. Competitors would have to pay others to supply vehicles/chips unless they in-house it themselves.

Very hard to beat a vertically-integrated company with superior technology on cost...

 

[Todd Burch]

Do you really think that of the three choices, go left, go right, go straight, it didn’t assess which path was clear? That’s not a corner case decision, it’s driving 101. Absolutely core.

I'm not saying it couldn't do that. I am disputing that such functionality is active in the current codebase.

 

[madodel]

Related: FCA's Maserati brand announced that it will never go all-electric. “This is a brand that needs combustion engines," said
Al Gardner, head of Maserati North America. Sales were down 28% in 2018 and down about 40% in 2019Q1 — I'm not sure if that's for USA or global.

They'll never go all-electric, they'll just go out of business.

 

[Tim S]

Lane Departure Avoidance and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance. I've seen no release note about them. The control for Lane Departure Avoidance doesn't appear on my Model 3 with 2019.12.1.2 (that I can find anyway). The Tesla blog post "unveiled" the features. Tesla tweeted (Tesla on Twitter) on May 2 that these new features were "rolling out today". So what evidence is there that they are out?

I have 2019.12.1.2 also. I assume those features will be in the next update arriving any day now... 12.1.3 or 12.2.

 

[EVNow]

You misread:

One first answer is that most teams do not feel this is the time to lower costs. This is the time to have maximum safety, and get it as soon as possible and be first to market.​

He's giving the view of "most teams". He does not say they are correct. Much like when he says:

...computer vision has to be so good that it does everything LIDAR can do for you. ...If it can do all that, then you don't need LIDAR.​

he's giving Musk's view. The whole point of the article is to present each side's view. He later adds some of his thoughts.

It's difficult to make out what the author is saying and what he says others are saying.

Given the choice of LIDAR+Camera vs. Camera, the former is the faster, safer path.