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

[DaveT]

Well duh. Anything less than a full white paper would be oversimplified.

Why do you think that more people will be flying in 10 years? US population is growing at a rate of less than 1% and that is likely to decrease. For your argument to work then autonomous vehicles will need to steal fewer customers than the airlines can gain. That does not seem likely. Domestic demand growth is somewhere in the 3-5% area now. I'm sure that FSD can steal more than a few percent of customers.

Stats: Air Travel Demand Growth Slows to 5.5%

This is purely a thought exercise and I'm hardly offended by people seeing it differently. Consider this, when the internet was in it's infancy, how many saw it and thought "this is going to put retail stores out of business" or "this is going to kill broadcast TV"? Very few (zero?). It's extremely likely that we are missing similar huge disruptions that are destined to occur.

Mobility will continue to increase over time. People will have more choices. But this doesn't mean domestic air travel will decrease.

Autonomous cars will be more convenient for shorter travel distances (ie., under 6 or 7 hours of driving). But plane travel will still be attractive for a lot of people when travel distance is longer than 6-7 hours of driving.

For example, if I had a choice:
1. I could take an autonomous car from San Diego to San Jose and it would take 8-9 hours
or
2. I could drive 15 minutes to SD airport, wait 45 minutes for my flight, take 1 hour flight to SJ airport and arrive.

I would choose #2 all day, every day.

Also, think about in 10 years, will more people or less people in the U.S. be flying into southern california to tour the sites?

 

[Tslynk67]

So any positive catalysts coming up? Insane that we are down $150 from all time highs.

Other than shitty Q1 deliveries it has all been good news and catalysts all year, and yet here we are - macros aren't helping of course.

There's actually a long list of events coming up over the year, but as many have said, in order to get the SP back up to where it was, we need deliveries, deliveries deliveries. That's all.

 

[TradingInvest]

I get your sentiment, but think Elon Musk is looking much further down board to the day at a flip of switch any FSD Tesla has the potential to join the robo taxi fleet. I believe the business model really changes at that point whenever it occurs. Although, he has been more quiet about this since the investor autonomy day, I remember hearing him say he wanted to maximize the number of Teslas on the road while essentially holding the company as close to cash flow neutral as possible. I am surprised how few picked up on this; it is a dramatic shift from capital and manufacturing efficiency to create positive cash flow every possible future quarter because that is what mature companies do. If I had to guess, Elon now thinks of that plan as more of a hedge and what he has to pitch until FSD is realized.

I understand the business model Elon described in the autonomy day presentation. Actually this is not new, the plan was described in the Master Plan Part Deux published a few years ago. I love the plan.

If "flip of switch" robotaxi for sure is coming next year, or even the year after, the sensible thing to do now is to borrow 20 billion dollars, buy back half the shares and cancel them. Because the company would be making boat load of money. Everyone has to estimate how likely this "flip of switch" is going to happen in the next 2~3 years.

Think about the following two scenarios:
A, Tesla shoot for maximum number of robot cars on the road, by the end of 2020, they reach 1.25 million cars and "flip the switch";
B, Tesla shoot for margin, by the end of 2020, they only reach 0.9 million cars and "flip the switch".

Does it make a difference from robotaxi operation point of view? I think the difference is very small.

For robotaxi plan to work, the availability of true FSD carries 99% of the weight, the number of robot cars only has 1% importance, because a lot more cars can be added quickly, no technical issues.

Elon and his teams have solved some extremely difficult tech issues. I hope he is right on vision based FSD and the timing. I think this is at least 10 times more difficult than landing rockets. I definitely hope he is right.

 

[Alphacrux]

Mobility will continue to increase over time. People will have more choices. But this doesn't mean domestic air travel will decrease.

Autonomous cars will be more convenient for shorter travel distances (ie., under 6 or 7 hours of driving). But plane travel will still be attractive for a lot of people when travel distance is longer than 6-7 hours of driving.

For example, if I had a choice:
1. I could take an autonomous car from San Diego to San Jose and it would take 8-9 hours
or
2. I could drive 15 minutes to SD airport, wait 45 minutes for my flight, take 1 hour flight to SJ airport and arrive.

I would choose #2 all day, every day.

Also, think about in 10 years, will more people or less people in the U.S. be flying into southern california to tour the sites?

And I would choose #1 all day, every day and have (except for the autonomous part). I don't fly (anymore). That's just me.

 

[Singuy]

Small correction Mercedes biggest profit model is E Class. For BMW it is the 3 Series.

Or at least it was. It might be switching to GLE and X3 CUVs as we speak.

Mercedes, like all luxury brands, are trying to get younger people hooked on their brand and then have them move up the stack as they become more mature/affluent (which was not a strategy of theirs in the past.) The point is to get as many people possible to sit inside their cars, trying to win them over for life.

Elon would probably give out his cars at a loss...bet you he would do something crazy like this if Tesla was a private company. The significance of luring ICE people over can't be understated.

 

[Joe F]

There are people with no time constraints?

<< Raises hand >>

Except for the TMC time sink, that is...

 

[dww12]

So why is Tesla trading with the China news worse that others? Isn’t Tesla’s exposure actually less/better than most and way less in the long run with GF2?

 

[elasalle]

IPO day, EOD UBER market cap @ 69.7B

 

[Menifeer]

... Insane that we are down $150 from all time highs.

The market is telling us that those ATHs were the insanity...

 

[Anstandswauwau]

Re-evaluated TSLA after taking a break from anything related to Tesla for more than a week:

• Capital raise pump was surprisingly short-lived
  
  
• TSLA "not-fundamentals" are looking pretty darn bad right now; still trapped in that ugly f***ing w*dge
  
  
• Macros are now down the shitter thanks to the Orange Clown
  
  
• Uber IPO flopped, not helping the robotaxi narrative
  
  
• Not seeing any positive catalysts until Q3 EC

Trend: Still looking at the low 200s for months to come.

 

[elasalle]

Re-evaluated TSLA after taking a break from anything related to Tesla for more than a week:

• Capital raise pump was surprisingly short-lived
  
  
• TSLA "not-fundamentals" are looking pretty darn bad right now; still trapped in that ugly f***ing w*dge
  
  
• Macros are now down the shitter thanks to the Orange Clown
  
  
• Uber IPO flopped, not helping the robotaxi narrative
  
  
• Not seeing any positive catalysts until Q3 EC

Trend: Still looking at the low 200s for months to come.

Insurance, MY factory update, China GF update, Q2 numbers, Q2 cc ... cheers!! (looks like you forgot a lot in 1 week, welcome back)

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Re-evaluated TSLA after taking a break from anything related to Tesla for more than a week:

• Capital raise pump was surprisingly short-lived
  
  
• TSLA "not-fundamentals" are looking pretty darn bad right now; still trapped in that ugly f***ing w*dge
  
  
• Macros are now down the shitter thanks to the Orange Clown
  
  
• Uber IPO flopped, not helping the robotaxi narrative
  
  
• Not seeing any positive catalysts until Q3 EC

Trend: Still looking at the low 200s for months to come.

There’s a direct correlation between #1 and #3 above(hint: look at exactly when that bump of the capital raise went away).

And you don’t think high deliveries/cash flow in Q2 would be a positive catalyst?

 

[JRP3]

The market is telling us that those ATHs were the insanity...

So what was the market telling us when the stock was at those ATH's?

 

[JRP3]

Interesting.
on Twitter

I have to congratulate @Tesla once more, as an expert on monitors and after having dismantled a #MCU I have found a level of quality, protection and assembly only comparable to the medical monitors I usually receive. My sincere congratulations.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Interesting.
on Twitter

Hm, especially since they’re supposed to be replacing all of those come July.

 

[DocZ]

Hm, especially since they’re supposed to be replacing all of those come July.

Really? Would be really interested in this if true

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Really? Would be really interested in this if true

Yep, current screens develop yellow bands around the edges after a while(mine did after ~2 years). Support has said they’ll replace all MCU screens with new ones that won’t have that problem in July.

 

[Anstandswauwau]

Insurance,

Let's see how it does first. Anyhow, I doubt insurance will make a dent until late '19.

MY factory update, China GF update,

Positive news is priced in 100% ("Okay, they're building factories, so what?" ~ market) yet lots of potential downside if they miss their targets.

Q2 numbers, Q2 cc ... cheers!!

You learned nothing from the Q1 earnings, did ya?

Cheers!

 

[JusRelax]

Tesla M3 arrival in Taiwan: Vincent on Twitter

 

[Tslynk67]

Hey everyone - what a shitty week that was, over nothing too! Hey ho, have a nice weekend y’all.

Stole this from Facebook Model X Owners...