EVNow
Well-Known Member
Either way they are not selling cheap robotaxis- that simply doesn’t make sense.I don't want them to take on debt. I'd rather they sold enough super high margin robotaxis to pay for the ones they keep.
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Either way they are not selling cheap robotaxis- that simply doesn’t make sense.I don't want them to take on debt. I'd rather they sold enough super high margin robotaxis to pay for the ones they keep.
Just watched the relevant portion again. The graphic says the cost is <38k. It’s not clear if it is because the price of sr+ is 38k and they didn’t want to give any more info about COGS or whether they assigned any cost to FSD or ....
Essentially I don’t think we can derive margin from this information. I mean COGS could be 30k and the graphic would still be accurate.
SR+ wasn’t there right after Q3 ER. Apparently you didn’t even know that.SR+ is clearly more than 38k$. You've spent 500+ hours here since Q3 financials came out. Any time between then and now you could have sat down and figured this out yourself.
Electric Mercedes Benz doesn't scare the bejezus out of Toyota nor Detroit.
You need a compelling $25k CUV/hatchback and a compelling $35k Pickup for that.
My quess - robotaxi presentation slide
The funny thing is, when they have that people will say: $25k still too expensive, once they have a $15k CUV and $25k pickup... goal posts always on the move.
It doesn't have to scare Toyota or Detroit (though based on the Prius decline I'd say it does scare Toyota).
It has to scare BMW/Audi/MB first. Tesla is a premium product. It has to be because of the cost to produce. It cannot be sold (yet) at a mass market cost. This is good anyway as the transition to EV is partly a perception problem. If EV can be seen a "premium" thing, that will create a better leverage effect than it being just a "green thing".
Plus the inherent benefits of EV (more space, more safety, more torque) line up naturally with a premium experience. It will eventually trickle down to the masses. It's the way forward.
Detroit can/will be the last to adopt electrification. It wouldn't make financial sense for them yet, plus their customer base is less enthusiastic about it.
You’re the largest outside holder of Tesla [TSLA]. In March, you toldBarron’s you’d be OK with Elon Musk stepping aside as CEO and taking another role at the company. Do you still feel that way?
I still feel that way, but it seems less likely to happen now than when we talked. After speaking with Barron’s, I went to see Tesla and met with the new chair [Robyn Denholm]. You can imagine we discussed this. It was plain to me that Tesla needed to strengthen some of the other voices on the board, and encourage a greater degree of understanding on the part of Mr. Musk about his responsibilities. The new chairman made it clear she regards him as a good chief executive. There is also a stronger team now. Sanjay Shah, who came from Amazon, understands what needs to be done on the batteries and energy front. I like the chief financial officer [Zach Kirkhorn], who, although young, has the kind of relationship with Musk that allows him to tell Musk things. I would still say it is conceivable that Musk wouldn’t remain CEO, and it might not be a bad thing if it happened, but I hope I wasn’t definitive in saying he had to go.
Given Tesla’s challenges, including its latest quarterly loss, Musk’s controversial statements, and his tendency to make promises the company can’t keep, how do you know you have backed the likely winner in electric-vehicle technology?
Tesla’s recent earnings numbers were worse than expected, and it was unfortunate that Musk made a point of saying there would be a million Tesla robo-taxis on the road in a year. You can convey great and justified excitement about the company’s comparative advances in autonomous vehicles without providing a timetable. We were also puzzled by the company’s change of tone on raising capital. We have said in discussions with Tesla that, if they decided to raise capital, we would understand it and be prepared to back it, which remains the case. Ideally, we prefer companies to raise capital when confidence and share prices are high; otherwise they have to issue more shares to raise the same amount of capital. Obviously, Tesla’s share price today is considerably lower than it was eight or nine months ago [the stock has fallen 37% since early August, to $237], but we remain supportive shareholders.
Although we have reservations about some things at Tesla, we are upbeat about the company’s leadership in its industry. Tesla is six to seven years ahead of the competition in the product and battery technology. Clayton Christensen [a Harvard Business School professor known for his theory of disruptive innovation] was basically right in noting that it is profoundly difficult for traditional companies to change. The decline in the fortunes of the traditional auto makers, particularly luxury-car companies, has been happening faster and more seriously than we would have expected five or six years ago. We feel more confident about Tesla’s underlying position than we did 12 months ago.
That might have been a short term positive but I prefer they use that capital for a new manufacturing line in the biggest EV market in the world. Longer term the Shanghai factory will be key factor to Tesla’s success.
It took Toyota two decades to convince people their cars last longer though. Most people would need to see many old Tesla's running on the road to be convinced. So this thing will have no effect on stock price for a long time.
You are obviously an outlier, who is using things that nobody else uses or cares about (much). Specifically, Tesla does not care about the things you care about. Nobody will buy a Tesla because it handles music on USB sticks well, and nobody will not buy a Tesla because it doesn't. I'm sure you've had to live with that your entire life and have figured out how to deal with it. It can't possibly be surprising to you at this point. So why do you keep complaining about it?
Pretty much the entire time I worked at Apple, I spent most of my working time using the command line interface to the underlying Mac OS X Unix system. All the cool stuff we were doing to make Mac OS X good for customers was totally useless to me and made my life not one bit better. The bugs I cared about almost never got fixed. Such is life when you're not part of the mainstream. It's not worth complaining about.
Agreed, if the autocratic government of the worlds largest auto market offers you an amazing deal (cheap debt, cheap land, changing the laws to allow you to own the company 100%, preferential supplier and construction treatment, apparently free utilities connections, control of the media narrative, etc) to produce 10s of thousands of additional vehicles in a few years you don't say hold on a year or two until I tweak my current factory to increase production by a couple of K per week.Seems like China was the smart play considering all the problems in the USA. China rolled out the red carpet for Tesla. Readily available supply of batteries in China. Chinese loans for the factory. Rapid construction for a factory they were always going to build anyways.
Do you know for a fact that the original plan was 5k / week / GA line and not 2.5k / week / GA line?If you can get 10k/week out of one set of lines at one factory -- rather than 7k/week -- you are producing more cars for the same capital cost, more cars for the same human labor cost, and essentially you have a lower cost structure per car.
Straight up economies of scale. That's what you're missing. The better the economies of scale are, the more profitable Tesla is. If they're capped out at 7k/week in Fremont on three GA lines, that's fewer economies of scale than if they can hit 10k/week in Fremont on two GA lines (as originally planned).
That is all.
This is exactly right. The COGS for model 3 and the trajectory of it has been easily estimated since Q3 last year when they hit reasonable volume and it was clear that the cost for the base model was coming in around 37k$ to 38k$ (Elon then literally confirmed it in a Q4 employee email, and then again recently in regard to the cost of a robotaxi). Given the wide ranging implications of this fact, it should have been the key point of discussion the last 9 months but was largely ignored. I'd be wary of those showing up on your disagree list.
Elon said their production cost of their base Model 3 is <$38k in his autonomy day presentation.
Also, in the investor call for cap raise he said that their production cost for base Model 3 is about $38k.
Just watched the relevant portion again. The graphic says the cost is <38k. It’s not clear if it is because the price of sr+ is 38k and they didn’t want to give any more info about COGS or whether they assigned any cost to FSD or ....
Essentially I don’t think we can derive margin from this information. I mean COGS could be 30k and the graphic would still be accurate.
Perhaps that analytical skill could be shared with us idiots.SR+ is clearly more than 38k$. You've spent 500+ hours here since Q3 financials came out. Any time between then and now you could have sat down and figured this out yourself.
I gave the above a disagree, because when something so basic and simple to fix as not being able to listen to one's own music collection in one's car (the second most expensive purchase one makes), then it really is a poor advice to just say: "Take your money elsewhere".
LTSE would need to be ubiquitous with foreign investments for TSLA to move (example: Canadian RRSP, TFSA, etc.) or need not apply. All existing NASDAQ shareholders would need to be portable. If so, LTSE may be well suited for TSLA listing to reduce short interest. More information is needed.Indeed, LTSE is serious. Much more so than the New York based financial media, who are barely covering the story.
For example, the 'Silicon Valley Entrepreneur' the Reuters article declines to name is none other than Marc Andreessen (co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz):
SEC approves new Silicon Valley stock exchange backed by Marc Andreessen, other tech heavyweights
This could get big, fast.
Cheers!
And i'll say this is untrue. I have an extensive music collection that plays flawlessly on my Model 3 sound system. The music resides in the memory of my iPhone - the same one used to unlock and remotely control the car. Why would I want to have to duplicate and maintain/sync this collection on a separate dedicated off-line memory device? That is an exceedingly poor implementation IMHO. It would bother me not at all if the USB music feature was removed entirely and its software support reallocated to other priorities.I gave the above a disagree, because when something so basic and simple to fix as not being able to listen to one's own music collection in one's car (the second most expensive purchase one makes), then it really is a poor advice to just say: "Take your money elsewhere".