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

[Zaxxon]

What is your order - SR/LR/P ? Wondering whether they are just prioritizing highly priced orders first - or there are just a lot of orders compared to their production.

LR 7-seat Red/Cream. So not the top-end but more than $15k in options.

 

[EVNow]

Don’t miss the forest from the trees. As long as they can sell all the cars they can build, we don’t need to divert the cash.

Again - at what ASP ?

I posted this before - at $1 per click and 1% conversion rate, $100 will sell a car. Much better than discounting pre-ravens $15k or reduce prices by $3k at a time.

 

[jerry33]

OT

Hypnotising - you're gonna love it.

I particularly like the six lane with no traffic lights where the cars go right under the semi trailer.

 

[mikevbf]

You never know. Last thing you want companies to think is that the news outlet is willing to spread lies about your company even when you are paying customer. I am thinking it's more of company culture thing and a small amount of money may just buy you some good will.

Tesla needs to change the perception of its brand as it grows. The trajectory just isn't good in terms of perception if you start fast forwarding. Elon loves The Onion form of mock news. Why not have a small group who puts out a weekly Tesla sponsored video making fun of how ridiculous the views are of the company and cars while spending a small time at the end debunking the amazing amount of FUD.

It literally feels like the time advertising tried to convince us smoking is good by tobacco companies showing healthy people having a great time on billboards all over the country. I would love to see a video spoof of oil execs getting pitched a campaign on how healthy tailpipe exhaust is and how not to trust electric cars and then a graph of the damage particulates do to us as separate from the spoof kind of like an entertaining public health message. There is no reason Tesla has to do conventional advertising, but they do need to do something in their own way.

 

[EVNow]

LR 7-seat Red/Cream. So not the top-end but more than $15k in options.

Going through some of the S order related posts - looks like they started delivering only last week of May. S=X deliveries are still concerning this quarter.

 

[AZRI11]

I wonder if the buggy makers fought this hard and this dirty when the first of the horseless carriages started to pop up?

Michael Crichton was a climate change denier, though I'm sure he would've reached a compromise solution. It's the weekend

 

[Christine69420]

New EV cars registered in Norway in May:

#01 Volkswagen Golf 886
#02 Tesla Motors Model 3 705
#09 Tesla Motors Model X 263
#17 Tesla Motors Model S 49

Source: Elbilsalget måned for måned

 

[Doggydogworld]

Gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks should only be allowed on Mars. Mars needs greenhouse gases and global warming

Mar's atmosphere is 95% CO2...

Getting back on topic, does anyone have any numbers for Raven production rate, or how many they shipped overseas? Euro and China S/X sales were way down in Q1, trying to get a sense of how things look for Q2 and going forward. I expect them to clear out most of the pre-Raven inventory this quarter. Along those same lines, how big was the surge in Raven S/X orders after the announcement?

 

[cdnev]

Tesla needs to change the perception of its brand as it grows. The trajectory just isn't good in terms of perception if you start fast forwarding. Elon loves The Onion form of mock news. Why not have a small group who puts out a weekly Tesla sponsored video making fun of how ridiculous the views are of the company and cars while spending a small time at the end debunking the amazing amount of FUD.

It literally feels like the time advertising tried to convince us smoking is good by tobacco companies showing healthy people having a great time on billboards all over the country. I would love to see a video spoof of oil execs getting pitched a campaign on how healthy tailpipe exhaust is and how not to trust electric cars and then a graph of the damage particulates do to us as separate from the spoof kind of like an entertaining public health message. There is no reason Tesla has to do conventional advertising, but they do need to do something in their own way.

Yes, they should counter the FUD with facts mixed with humour where appropriate...this video has received 10.1 million views:

 

[Alphacrux]

Judging by the lack of movement on my Raven X order from weeks ago that had a May delivery estimate which is now missed, likely yes. They're incentivizing inventory non-Ravens as of course they are, but there are a lot of us with pending orders and long (for 2019) waits. Tesla's certainly selling every Raven they make currently.

I’d b happy with an inventory non-raven with free supercharging, but I can’t find the configuration I want: blue exterior, white interior, p100dl (S), 21” wheels, sunroof. And I would want the $20k discount ludicrous discount for previous owners. Are the offering that for inventory cars? Can anyone locate my configuration in their area?

 

[RobStark]

That's still a joint venture, though. Are there others apart from Tesla that are not JVs?

They used to be limited to 49%. Now they control the JV and the flow of IP.They have pre-existing legal partnership contracts above and beyond Chinese law.

In the same way legacy OEMs have franchise law and specific agreements with franchise dealers.

If Rivian or some new automaker wanted to build a factory they could also build a 100% owned factory. After going through all the permitting and licensing.

 

[madodel]

Michael Crichton was a climate change denier, though I'm sure he would've reached a compromise solution. It's the weekend View attachment 414471

Shouldn't that have a Chevy or Chrysler nameplate on it? Or maybe the original Ford Econoline Wagon? From what I see here Fiat-Chrysler is dying, and Ford is in for some hurt when the all electric Tesla Pickup arrives.

 

[Alphacrux]

Mar's atmosphere is 95% CO2...

Yes, I know. Too bad. That’s why I put a by my post. Too bad really, a few tens of millions rednecks (apologies to all for use of the term) all spewing greenhouse gases into mars atmosphere from 10 mpg pickups would help enormously (double )

 

[Krugerrand]

My coworker are asking me if I feel safe having my Tesla park in my garage due to spontaneous combustion. My dad is advising me to not us AP due to it killing people. The brand is being damaged. In fact elon's going private email specifically said the reason to go private is because teslas brand is being damaged.

We can’t pick our family nor rarely our coworkers. All you have to do is take the time to educate them in a manner they can understand. And if they’re not receptive to correct information, then they fall into the ‘meh’ category and not worth the time or effort. They’ll get it on their own time or they won’t. We don’t need them to.

Absolutely nobody in my circle of family, friends or even acquaintances has fallen for the FUD or are spouting nonsense.

I meet new people all the time all over the world, none of them has fallen for it either. There’s some occasional lack of knowledge, which I’m always happy to impart to those who are receptive.

The brand is just fine.

Coworker: Do you feel safe having your Tesla parked in your garage due to spontaneous combustion?

You: *cackle hilariously*. Funny, I was just going to ask you the very same thing about your BMW, Ford, fill in appropriate internal combustion engine car.

Dad: Son, don’t use AP in your car, it’s killing people.

You: No, dad. It’s the people behind the wheel killing people.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Mar's atmosphere is 95% CO2...

A bit misleading, it also has 1/166th the surface atmospheric pressure of Earth. It needs oxygen(and nitrogen and water) too, but also needs greenhouse gasses. And, of course, an enormous magnetic field.

 

[RobStark]

Advertising isn't just about generating total unit demand and brand perception.

It is about product mix and ASP as well.

We know demand for Model S has been falling.

To some degree Tesla is agonistic and production is variable between S and X.

But it is not 100% variable. Tesla can't make 100k Model X per year. I don't recall the exact variance Elon mentioned.

We also know ASP has been falling. Getting more people to buy Performance, AP, and FSD may generate some excellent ROI from advertising. The options aren't spend $3B like GM or spend $0 like Tesla. You can have a budget somewhere in between. Tesla's first paid advertisements well generate a lot of free media on people commenting on them.

 

[JRP3]

Tesla's first paid advertisements well generate a lot of free media on people commenting on them.

Along with a huge FUD storm about how Tesla is in trouble because they needed to start advertising.

 

[Ad Astra]

I think Tesla should just do a crowd funded (with special edition hats or something) Superbowl ad every year.

Might be slightly OT but...

I wonder if there might be something to this. While I was employed at Tesla, I created a significant amount of training content (mostly well received) and recently I started toying with the idea of creating Tesla related content from an owner/investors perspective in an attempt to combat the FUD. Unfortunately, this strategy is only effective if the reach is expansive enough and, since I do not partake in social media, I fear that most of the content will fail to reach a wide enough audience. That begs the question: what would crowdsourced advertising in this context look like?

 

[Tenable]

Might be slightly OT but...

I wonder if there might be something to this. While I was employed at Tesla, I created a significant amount of training content (mostly well received) and recently I started toying with the idea of creating Tesla related content from an owner/investors perspective in an attempt to combat the FUD. Unfortunately, this strategy is only effective if the reach is expansive enough and, since I do not partake in social media, I fear that most of the content will fail to reach a wide enough audience. That begs the question: what would crowdsourced advertising in this context look like?

If you create quality content it will be spread far and wide by TMC and other Tesla groups. Yesterday a gentleman posted that he was taking down his Sentry mode video of a family hitting his car 3 times because they saw the posts and contacted him to apologize. Having your message distributed won’t be the hard part. It’s creating a message that resonates which is most difficult.

 

[AcesDealt]

Advertising isn't just about generating total unit demand and brand perception.

It is about product mix and ASP as well.

We know demand for Model S has been falling.

To some degree Tesla is agonistic and production is variable between S and X.

But it is not 100% variable. Tesla can't make 100k Model X per year. I don't recall the exact variance Elon mentioned.

We also know ASP has been falling. Getting more people to buy Performance, AP, and FSD may generate some excellent ROI from advertising. The options aren't spend $3B like GM or spend $0 like Tesla. You can have a budget somewhere in between. Tesla's first paid advertisements well generate a lot of free media on people commenting on them.

Yeah this bothers me. Elon is being ideological about it. Advertising likely has some low-hanging fruit and the first 10 million dollars could go a long way. Most contrarian positions are wrong, they are just extremely profitable when you pick one that happens to be right. I don't see any deep reason why Elon would have insight into the productivity of advertising spend. It's not an engineering discipline.