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

[Thekiwi]

Interesting that the free colour has gone from black to white. Is this a cost of painting thing or an appealing to a wider market thing?
If painting white is cheaper than painting black, I'd love to hear why.
I can vouch that in most of Australia, black paint is terrible - rapidly turning the car into a solar oven. I also prefer white paint for safety (visibility).

Twitter

Agree 100% will definitely get white for primary reason of safety

 

[Tim S]

I try not to write anything that might be used by trolls and I may be under 2 NDAs but I agree with @nerodan that FSD is a long way away based on our M3. I do not consider it an enhancement re investment for at least 5 years since it is a WIP. I have had the M3 for over a year and 40k miles and it has improved but still has some of the issues it had a year ago on AP. Some of them disappeared and then came back months later (today). IMO FSD will come and Tesla is well positioned but EMs projection is very unlikely.

You don't have the FSD computer yet. Be patient.

 

[samk579]

Maybe Musk knows they already made their 2nd quarter and decides to get those on the fence on buying a black Tesla to have a choice of white in 2 weeks. It both pushes a value added for the black M3 of $1000 and those who waited can choose white instead of black which is everywhere.

 

[ZeApelido]

Fact Checking I reran the calculations and the results will be delivered to your front door...

In a box.

 

[kengchang]

I try not to write anything that might be used by trolls and I may be under 2 NDAs but I agree with @nerodan that FSD is a long way away based on our M3. I do not consider it an enhancement re investment for at least 5 years since it is a WIP. I have had the M3 for over a year and 40k miles and it has improved but still has some of the issues it had a year ago on AP. Some of them disappeared and then came back months later (today). IMO FSD will come and Tesla is well positioned but EMs projection is very unlikely.

In reality, Tesla only worked on it for 2.5 years not 5 years.

 

[Mike Smith]

Agree 100% will definitely get white for primary reason of safety

Also raises the visibility of the cars to potential buyers. Every Tesla is an advertisement.

 

[Tslynk67]

Because English is my first language, I can say without ambiguity that "will" is not present tense. "Will consider" means he is expecting that he will consider the pros and cons at a future date. If he was already weighing the pros and cons the proper statement would have been "I am considering it". Yet he only stated his intent to consider it at some nebulous point in the future. I don't read FayRed anymore but if his headline said that Tesla "is considering", that would be irresponsible journalism. But we already knew FayRed was not a responsible journalist so this is a big nothing burger.

Carry on...

IMO, "will consider it" is a nice way of saying "are you out of your ***** mind?"

 

[Solar Aussie]

What better car for iron man to drive than a Tesla???

Remember Apple got a lot of PRODUCT PLACEMENT without ever paying a dime. Whereas other companies pay heaps to show their products.. I think the attractiveness and difference of Tesla's i.e. X doors means it is so good for free placements

And its a GIG economy opportunity for owners..,
Today in Australia group

Model X in a TV Commercial - PLACEX​

A small advertising agency in PlaceB is doing a TV commercial for a stylish mens product. On Friday 28th June they are filming in PlaceB

One shot getting in and the other getting out. No driving required. It will only take a couple of hours.

Offering $200 and bragging rights! Call phone no X

 

[Fact Checking]

Because English is my first language, I can say without ambiguity that "will" is not present tense. "Will consider" means he is expecting that he will consider the pros and cons at a future date. If he was already weighing the pros and cons the proper statement would have been "I am considering it". Yet he only stated his intent to consider it at some nebulous point in the future. I don't read FayRed anymore but if his headline said that Tesla "is considering", that would be irresponsible journalism. But we already knew FayRed was not a responsible journalist so this is a big nothing burger.

Carry on...

This is the right answer. Anyone trying to parse the words of "Will consider" too closely should remember that Elon isn't writing computer code on Twitter, he was replying to a normal person in idiomatic English, putting perhaps 30 seconds of thought into the reply (on a good day).

The meaning of that phrase is unambiguously ambiguous and non-committal:

• it's a polite but non-binding way of acknowledging the validity of a (feature) request and indicating that it has a nonzero chance of being adopted in the future,
• he wrote it to a person who matters (Tesla owner with 9 referrals),
• he wrote it at a time when owners who made 9 organic referrals already matter a lot (end of quarter push),
• there's zero guarantees that this will result in anything, and as others pointed it out a ~$6k reward plus its demand reduction effect is probably too expensive at the 10 referrals tier,
• as @Lycanthrope pointed it out the probability of it being adopted is significantly lower than 50%: if Elon found it a really good idea he'd have characterized it positively: "Good idea, will discuss this with the team".
• it might make sense to make such perks selectable at higher referral tiers though. "Upgrade your current Tesla to Performance" could be a higher level perk too, all in the style of lootboxes.
• The fact that only owners of Teslas can refer should already be a big filter against most abuses. I have no problem with popular Tesla topical YouTube channels spamming their referral code - other carmakers would probably be giving free cars or significant ad revenue to them if they were promoting and selling their cars.

 

[Fact Checking]

Honestly, I doubted they'd bother with this having so many internal issues to deal with, but recently somebody posted an article about Tesla and cited a ton of trollish comments under it. When I went and looked, there were zero comments. Then somebody mentioned Google was cleaning up troll accounts recently.

Was it this comment by @TradingInvest:

I noticed something strange. In the past, under every Tesla article on Yahoo, there were tons of comments from Tesla haters. Same for other websites. Now they all mysteriously disappeared. Were those all from bashing bots? or from a group of paid bashers that their master told them to hold? Now all comments seem to support Tesla.

The switch is so dramatic. I think this is a sign that the bashing was organized.

?

There's still sporadic negative comments at Tesla related Yahoo News articles, but it's not a TSLAQ cesspool anymore.

The Yahoo Finance TSLA discussion board is still infested with TSLAQ trolls (see the "Conversations" tab below):

TSLA Interactive Stock Chart | Tesla, Inc. Stock - Yahoo Finance​

... but I always had the impression that much of them were genuine shorts with a western origin, not scripted Russian bots.

These trolls have a permanent presence and try to dominate and brigade all the major Tesla stock related discussion forums: Twitter, Yahoo Finance, Reddit /r/investing, /r/wallstreetbets, /r/teslamotors, /r/teslainvestorsclub, Disqus, etc. - with sporadic guest appearances here at TMC.

90%+ of their trolling is low quality SMH trope, which have an effect on new investors but might also start being self-defeating: many Millennials and Gen-Z recognize self-serving trolling on sight, which might explain the record number of TSLA holders on RobinHood:

Robintrack​

I.e. like the GOP and the alt-right is increasingly seen as cathedrals of anti-science and anti-intellectualism, the "party of stupid", the quality of TSLAQ trolling has decreased measurably over the last 12 months as well, which is hurting their credibility with retail investors.

 

[CorneliusXX]

This just about sums up my thoughts on whether or not to offer FSD free for referrals.

Also to add to this, consider that Tesla is currently production-constrained, not demand-constrained. I don't want to sacrifice $6k of pure profit margin for an extra 10 cars that Tesla can't currently produce.

There could be a happy medium here. If Elon says he believes it's too valuable to give away for 10 referrals as it will generate lots of cash in a few years he could just set the threshold higher (e.g. 25). Most people would believe they will never get to 25 referrals so the idea would be removed from the purchase decision, while those who really want the free upgrade will work extra hard and generate a lot of revenue for Tesla.

 

[RobStark]

EV Sales: China May 2019

 

[Fact Checking]

(Of course there's plenty of success stories of college dropouts, but it usually requires choosing the right parents at birth.)

I was a bit concerned when my older son decided not to bother with college at all. However it's nine years later and the only problem he's had is shutting the doors of all the opportunities that don't interest him. Silicon Valley continues to be such that if you can do useful stuff nobody cares how you learned to do it. It's still nerd heaven.

* And, no, none of his opportunities came from me. Although the chance to interview for one internship came from a friend of my wife.

One could argue that being born and raised in Silicon Freaking Valley is a heck of a good opportunity in life for a nerd, and the fact that you are commenting here is evidence that your son did manage to choose the right parents as well, but nevertheless kudos to your son!

 

[Fact Checking]

EV Sales: China May 2019

Just for context, April was 3,000 units:

The very round 3,000 and 2,000 numbers suggest that there's significant uncertainty regarding this data, right?

Anyway, if June simply repeats May then that's 7k Model 3 deliveries alone in Q2. If Tesla China follows the pattern of past quarters then June would be double the deliveries of May, which would increase Model 3 deliveries to 9k perhaps?

They probably have the inventory, otherwise they wouldn't have pulled the various demand levers to move inventory.

Anyway, even with 7k this would suggest a record quarter if NA manages 66k deliveries and Europe manages 20k: 66k+20k+7k=93k.

 

[KSilver2000]

Just for context, April was 3,000 units:

View attachment 421181

The very round 3,000 and 2,000 numbers suggest that there's significant uncertainty regarding this data, right?

Definitely looks like numbers just coming out of ones behind. As you point out, the April chart show 6,738 total. Adding 2,000 from May should make it 8,738, but the tally in the May chart reads 7,392. Just 654 more?

 

[Alphacrux]

Got a phone call from ETrade saying that due to my “concentrated” position in TSLA, they are raising the margin requirement in my account from 40% to 45%. I’m perfectly fine, but then I started wondering, “why now”? Why not a month or so ago when the stock was below $180?

Then I realized that the movement since then has been in pretty much one direction, and that has been up. Could this be due to margin calls on the SHORTS, or am I reading too much into this? Funny that this never occurred since December of last year when the stock price was rapidly cut in half.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Hmm. It would be bad if people don’t tick the FSD option (all margin) on orders believing they can easily refer 10 friends.

Maybe set the free FSD bar at something only socialites and salespeople would believe achievable, 25 referrals.

Perhaps a rebate? And referrals for 10 sales of FSD, not just vehicles? How else would they demo the product to secure a FSD sale?

 

[Christine69420]

Apropos the recent discussions on charging costs at home. Found an article in tu.no where a housing coop in Norway retrofitted chargers for all 700 parking lots for about $350 per flat after subsidies. Without subsidies it would have been about $930 per flat.

The coop is from the 70's so not at all prepared for electric car chargers. They built two new transformers and added 15 new cables to the parking garages. Every garage gets 100-160 amperes. Up to 20 cars per garage can charge at full speed. If more cars charge then they use load balancing.

More info in the article:

Google Translate

 

[Fact Checking]

Nice move up in pre-market trading to ~$229 - largely tracking FAANG and NASDAQ futures enthusiasm about the Fed's dovish tone yesterday.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Because English is my first language, I can say without ambiguity that...
But we already knew FayRed was not a responsible journalist...

As a non-native speaker of pig latin, even I know the proper form is "redFay". For example, when Barney Rubble says "ixnay on the ealray amesnay, redFAy", or "nix on the real names" (S3E20 "Mother-In-Law's Visit").

Cheers!