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

[bdy0627]

It’s less about making money and more about the future Musk envisions. He sees autonomous driving happening very soon. He knows you can’t have people just sitting there looking at the road as the car drives...they’d rather be in control. But now let’s say in the future you can play a game while you drive, or watch a movie/tv show. Now the car provides entertainment thus making autonomous driving even more attractive.

Seems to me 90% of people would turn to their phones, tablets, and laptops rather than using a fixed screen in the car for their entertainment. Maybe for watching a movie or show it makes some sense, but for social media and games, I think people would turn to mobile devices that they usually use.

 

[Zero CO2]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Innovators Dilemma kicking into full gear at BMW... this transition is going to be really hard for the incumbents ... and it is just getting started ...

 

[neroden]

Despite of Tesla’s wish to get rid of the wave, they will probably not succeed in doing that this quarter. There are several circumstances (negative sentiment, Raven delivery delays due to certification or other issue, tax incentive cut from 50 to 25%, many ships for Europe and China still at sea) which will cause June to be an extremely hectic month again, until the last hour.

Given what happened with Raven, my current hope is that they partially unwind the Model 3 wave. But not completely -- make enough white interior cars to get everyone who's currently waiting for white interiors in the US their cars before the June tax credit expiration. And I think they shouldn't unwind the Model S/X wave at all this quarter. Unwind the S/X wave next quarter; it's smaller and it's less important to unwind it.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Seems to me 90% of people would turn to their phones, tablets, and laptops rather than using a fixed screen in the car for their entertainment. Maybe for watching a movie or show it makes some sense, but for social media and games, I think people would turn to mobile devices that they usually use.

I'm less sure. Why choose the 4" screen you have to hold constantly instead of the 15" screen that's already *right there* in front of you? That goes double if you're wanting to play/watch something with friends in the car with you.

People use their phones/etc on the go right now because, by and large, there's no other, better screen that can be used in that fashion.

 

[Joe F]

Can I just say that @WarpedOne doesn't have a bearish or FUDish posting history, quirky, yes, but that's all. I think like many, he/she has been thrown a curveball with recent events, causing a lot of frustration and, in some cases, considerable financial distress.

I think everyone who's invested with the stock has the right to criticise without being laid open to personal attacks. The criticism itself is fair-game for debate, but play the ball, not the man.

This doesn't apply just to this particular sub-discussion in this thread, but to a lot of recent bickering; I think we should all calm down a bit.

Sorry, I'll stand by my observation RE the tone as of late from those who spew BS (at least one of which was banned because of it, so...) and am not the only one here who's taken note of it as well.

While, as you state, this poster may not have a history here of FUD, it doesn't sit well that the recent comments lean that way. My $.02, ignoring the exchange rate.

A personal note: my comment in no way "laid open" anyone. It certainly was not "a personal attack" IMHO. It was a statement that the BS level is elevated. True, it was in a reply to warped, however it was as mild as I could put it at the time.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Seems to me 90% of people would turn to their phones, tablets, and laptops rather than using a fixed screen in the car for their entertainment. Maybe for watching a movie or show it makes some sense, but for social media and games, I think people would turn to mobile devices that they usually use.

Not really, they'll use plugin attachments into the USB ports of the Tesla car. Plug in your game controller....Plug in your mouse and keyboard, etc...I think movies, tv, and gaming will be 75% of the usage in the car which is more preferable to do on a larger, fixed screen. The odds of people having laptops is pretty slim.

 

[Drumheller]

I know that is not enough to convince you otherwise, for what is worth, Amazon has been proactively cut the price of AWS when there's no competition at all. They also had a history to lower free shipping limit before everyone else.

Appreciate your thoughtful reply.

I'll disagree about AWS. Microsoft's Azure and Google's Cloud Computing Platform are direct competitors to AWS. AWS is the best of the three, but the gap between them is much smaller than the gap between Tesla and other automakers.

One of the development teams reporting to me looked into using the various platforms and decided on Azure, back in 2015. It was good enough then to pick it over AWS for the cost difference, which was substantial.

I have no experience with shipping to comment.

I think the Tesla demand question is a fair one to be asking in this thread. I don't see that anyone has enough visibility to state, either way, where demand lies right now. However, the external signals indicate that Tesla has pulled some demand levers.

 

[jerry33]

With Tesla, especially, you have so many discussions about what is the proper way of driving, charging, and storing, just to keep the battery from degrading faster than normal.

All of which are kind of pointless because Tesla has a proper battery management system. Plug it in. Set the slider to max daily charge. Set the start time to the wee hours. Enjoy.

 

[Alphacrux]

And some internal cabling, I think, to boost the peak Supercharging rate to 200kWh

It’s not clear to me: can non raven 100 kwh S charge up to 200 kw rate on v3? I know non-raven 100 kWh S can now charge up to 150 kw on v2, but what about max charge rates on v3?

 

[Tenable]

This is crazy. Do they leave pricing decision responsibility to an intern? Stick with a price and work with it. Don’t change it every month.
These constant price changes, along with EOQ discounts, is no different than all the other brands with sales, rebates, dealer holdbacks, incentives, etc.

Agreed, adjusting the price this frequently is absurd. I'm also having to deal with friends I've talked into buying Tesla's feeling remorse at the barrage of price cuts after their order was delivered.

 

[bdy0627]

Isn’t it scary, that Q4 CEO thinks next quarter might be profitable and it ends being 700 million negative?

We can feel however we want about it, but it's clear that the market sure finds it scary, even more so the uncertainty with demand right now.

 

[EVNow]

The 3,000 initial target did not have a time attached, but the recent goal is 1k-2k this year per:

Oh well - remember that 500k tweet ? EM explained it by saying 10k/wk by end of the year - 7k in Fremont and 3k in GF3.

 

[kyzhk]

Agreed, adjusting the price this frequently is absurd. I'm also having to deal with friends I've talked into buying Tesla's feeling remorse at the barrage of price cuts after their order was delivered.

Thats a tradeoff. Price adjustment for cars is a very common thing in traditional dealership (within a day you can see exactly the same car sell for couple grand differences) - you just don't hear about it because all transactions are done individually and the terms and pricing are not announced to the whole world.

With online sale model of Tesla they have no way to adjust price in private.

 

[bdy0627]

$300 Jan 15, 2021 calls sold for $22.20 earlier today. If that can slip down a good bit more by the 4th of July I'm loading up for 12x leverage.

Weren't some of the biggest bear attacks over holiday weeks last year? Maybe targeting Jan 3-5 is a good strategy for buying the bottom with leverage. If we can hover at SP $200-210 for another 6 weeks, those calls should come down on lower volatility, no?

Hover here for 6 weeks? Good grief, we probably won't hover here for 6 days.

 

[kyzhk]

$300 Jan 15, 2021 calls sold for $22.20 earlier today. If that can slip down a good bit more by the 4th of July I'm loading up for 12x leverage.

Weren't some of the biggest bear attacks over holiday weeks last year? Maybe targeting Jan 3-5 is a good strategy for buying the bottom with leverage. If we can hover at SP $200-210 for another 6 weeks, those calls should come down on lower volatility, no?

I personally wouldn't make that trade. I think it is suicidal to sell short $300 strike leap call. I would get rid of them quick.

edit* Well actually, I think I will load up (long) some $300 strike leap call.

 

[DaveT]

@DaveT

Not finding direct quotes on this topic.

September for the first 3s was reported by Tencent News via Vincent:
Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory On Track To Produce Cars As Early As September | CleanTechnica

Yeah, I'm not finding any quotes from Tesla directly regarding Model 3s off the line in September for Shanghai. All I see is speculation from "sources".

@neroden Are you sure Tesla said they expect Model 3s to come off the line in September for Shanghai?

 

[Subhuman]

You’re saying, that 2013 price was right and current price is wrong. Maybe Tesla was overvalued 2013? i’m not saying it was, just to point out, that that is also possible explanation.

Yeah, I get that. I also bought additional shares around $120 the same year after the whole fire fear mongering. It was a volatile stock then as it is now. Was it over priced in 2013...maybe but we haven’t see seen sub $200 since 2016 which points you in the direction of the stock currently being undervalued.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Thats a tradeoff. Price adjustment for cars is a very common thing in traditional dealership (within a day you can see exactly the same car sell for couple grand differences) - you just don't hear about it because all transactions are done individually and the terms and pricing are not announced to the whole world.

With online sale model of Tesla they have no way to adjust price in private.

So stop adjusting it then. It's obvious that S/X have a demand problem. Stop making it worse, just stay the course until the full refresh is announced. Tesla is a really unfortunate victim of the thinking only every quarter mentality and it is earning them zero goodwill with existing owners.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Wait..... we're printing money again? WTF is this headline that Fed is buying tons of treasuries?

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

So stop adjusting it then. It's obvious that S/X have a demand problem. Stop making it worse, just stay the course until the full refresh is announced. Tesla is a really unfortunate victim of the thinking only every quarter mentality and it is earning them zero goodwill with existing owners.

Literally every other carmaker in the world would be making the same adjustments.