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

[JRP3]

I'll go one farther: Within the next two years the stores will be closed and sales will be limited to fleet operators who will use the cars on the Tesla network. Elon has already stopped selling to people after their leases expire. He tried to shut down the stores already so there is doubt as to them fitting into the long term plan. We'll need every car we can build on the network.

Elon said to follow battery production and autonomy to track the progress of the company. He didn't say follow new vehicle roll out. The semi is a great product but it isn't autonomous.

The non-autonomous electric car market is going to be an overcrowded mosh pit with cars selling way below cost in a few years. Better to be in the supply constrained robotaxi business. True, it's not as much fun just being a robotaxi company, but it's ten times more profitable and better meets the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

It all depends on FSD. No FSD, no robotaxi and we build out the platform as planned. An indication that I'm right would be that the truck doesn't get announced. I put it at 50/50.

I put it at 100% you being completely wrong.

 

[jerry33]

So what I’m saying is a F150 is a fairly practical vehicle for your once a month trip to Home Depot or whatever, but as long as you don’t commute with it it doesn’t do that much harm. And resell value as it’s a ICE is crap anyway so might as well keep it.

But you're still paying license fees and insurance just to have it mostly sit there.

 

[JRP3]

perhaps we need a separate thread for uber-bull predictions.. it is posts like this that give the dumdum TSLAQ crowd ammunition to convince people how misguided (some) TSLA longs are.

There is an uber bull thread already.

 

[urarthur]

Saw it on twitter.
Elon is currently the longest-serving and most experienced automotive CEO.

Alp Soycengiz on Twitter

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

But you're still paying license fees and insurance just to have it mostly sit there.

If it's mostly sitting there, there's potentially no requirement for insurance/reg until you have a need for it. I have a few cars that I register/smog/insure when I need them.

 

[KSilver2000]

If it's mostly sitting there, there's potentially no requirement for insurance/reg until you have a need for it. I have a few cars that I register/smog/insure when I need them.

But you're still paying license fees and insurance just to have it mostly sit there.

Not sure about other states, but the law in CA allows for planned non-operation of a vehicle, meaning you don’t have to pay registration or insurance. You still have to pay a nominal fee to file it PNO.
But, you must have the car parked on your private property boundary the entire time. Even driving it just once during PNO, or keeping it stored or parked in front of your house on the public street, will trigger requirement to pay full year registration and insurance.

 

[neroden]

Yep. Registration requirement for cars is linked to *driving on public roads*. If you keep your car on private property, and load it onto a flatbed or train car whenever you need to move it to a different private property, you don't have to register it. If you don't have to register it, you don't have to insure it. (Though many people who own unregistered cars are collectors and would therefore be well-advised to insure their cars against fire and theft!)

If you want to sell it, the fact that many states link title to registration can make proving ownership a little messy sometimes, but there are procedures for it.

 

[Cobos]

If it's mostly sitting there, there's potentially no requirement for insurance/reg until you have a need for it. I have a few cars that I register/smog/insure when I need them.

I'm not sure how those rules are in the US, but in Norway minimum insurance with minimum miles which is 5000km or so is fairly cheap. In Norway a car barely used costs you around $500/year to be able to drive it legally. If that car does something which is unusuall to find in rental cars or you just like a beater car that you don't have to care about whatever you throw in the back I can easily see that being worth $500. If you are driving less than 1000km you don't really care about gas milage either.
Where we are seeing the biggest change in EV useage now is the professional sector, tradesmen and contractors. They usually drive panelvans here, not pickups, and for those tradesmen operating around the cities, cars like this one seems to be catching on.

So in the not to distant future you will see almost only EVs on the road in the cities but there might actually just be 30% of the car population being EVs. Because in every garage there is a classic car, or not so classic but usefull car waiting for it's blue moon when it can see the sun

 

[Krugerrand]

I'll go one farther: Within the next two years the stores will be closed and sales will be limited to fleet operators who will use the cars on the Tesla network. Elon has already stopped selling to people after their leases expire. He tried to shut down the stores already so there is doubt as to them fitting into the long term plan. We'll need every car we can build on the network.

Elon said to follow battery production and autonomy to track the progress of the company. He didn't say follow new vehicle roll out. The semi is a great product but it isn't autonomous.

The non-autonomous electric car market is going to be an overcrowded mosh pit with cars selling way below cost in a few years. Better to be in the supply constrained robotaxi business. True, it's not as much fun just being a robotaxi company, but it's ten times more profitable and better meets the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

It all depends on FSD. No FSD, no robotaxi and we build out the platform as planned. An indication that I'm right would be that the truck doesn't get announced. I put it at 50/50.

I can’t go one further because it’s against forum rules.

 

[KSilver2000]

Where we are seeing the biggest change in EV useage now is the professional sector, tradesmen and contractors. They usually drive panelvans here, not pickups, and for those tradesmen operating around the cities, cars like this one seems to be catching on.

Definitely difference in culture between US and Norway/EU.

Here, in urban areas, even the main contractor who barely gets his hands dirty need to be driving 70-75 meter long trucks. (Including one of my contractors, lol). Helps with their ego. Not much different compared with regular folks who just cannot get themselves to drive a minivan.

On that note, if someone made a BEV minivan, I’d buy one ASAP for hauling the family around town and on vacations. It’d be the primary car. Doesn’t matter the car brand.

 

[StealthP3D]

In the case of cars, since the average age of cars on the road is 12 years, if this stays true, then after we reach 100% new car sales electric, it'll still be 12 more years before
*half* of the cars on the road are electric. Retirements of old cars might accelerate, but you get the picture.

That's not even close to being true, even if the retirement of fossil cars doesn't accelerate (and it almost certainly will).

One error you made is that you assumed that when we reach 100% electric sales that half of all cars on the road aren't already electric. It all depends on how fast the EV adoption curve unfolds. I think what you meant to say is, "Since the average age of cars on the road is 12 years, assuming none of them are currently electric, if sales suddenly switched to from 100% ICE to 100% EV's then it would be *six* years before half of the cars on the road are electric." And even that is not exactly correct due to age distributions. But in any realistic scenario, the percentage of gas cars will decline to 50% long before 100% of new cars sales are electric.

Big difference. And I'm looking forward to the day when I can breathe easier because only half the cars on the road are fossil powered. In the US, the transformation to 50% will happen more quickly than most people assume and it will be primarily due to personal economics, convenience factors and desirability, not government mandates.

 

[StealthP3D]

I'm not sure how those rules are in the US, but in Norway minimum insurance with minimum miles which is 5000km or so is fairly cheap. In Norway a car barely used costs you around $500/year to be able to drive it legally.

It sounds like the rules in Norway are more sensible.

So in the not to distant future you will see almost only EVs on the road in the cities but there might actually just be 30% of the car population being EVs. Because in every garage there is a classic car, or not so classic but usefull car waiting for it's blue moon when it can see the sun

That's a very good point. The metric that matters is not the percentage of registered vehicles (ICE vs. EV) but rather the percentage of miles driven.

 

[KSilver2000]

That's assuming that the roads are subsidized by the government, right?

On the other hand, if the tracks were likewise subsidized by the government, or the trucks actually paid for road damage, then robotrains would be much cheaper than that *and* substantially faster. (This isn't disputable. Do the math.)

I don't think the government will subsidize trucking forever, not even to the extent it subsidizes it now. There is already major pushback against endless funding of asphalt, and more and more people are aware that trucks cause a vast supermajority of all road damage (the rest is caused by frost in the winter).

We can thank the auto and oil industries for that.
GM, Firestone, Dow and others basically bought up early passenger rail systems and closed them down before it became popular. Then they lobbied to fund road construction across the country.

As long as there are cars, regardless whether ICE or EV, I think government will continue subsidizing roads. To what extent, not sure. May be less over time as you say.

Unfortunately, vast majority of rail is privately owned. Thus, even Amtrak needs to lease use of tracks on almost all of their routes and give right of way to freight trains. Only short commuter railways are publicly held.

 

[printf42]

OT

On that note, if someone made a BEV minivan, I’d buy one ASAP for hauling the family around town and on vacations. It’d be the primary car. Doesn’t matter the car brand.

I suggest you to look at an Electric Minivan™ called Model X.

 

[Captkerosene]

I can’t go one further because it’s against forum rules.

I forget the Elon quote but it was something like "you'd be a fool to buy any other car than a Tesla FSD." Or "they'll be worth 200k each.' The more foolish thing to do would be for us to produce cars that don't fit into the robotaxi business; to be a seller of that car. The most foolish thing to do is to sell our 200K (value) car for 40K so that our customer can compete with us.

I know my writing style is cryptic, often misunderstood and usually irritating. I'm happy to say what people often don't want to hear. I post because I want to learn from others. If I'm wrong, which I often am, I want to know. And, I want to know why I'm wrong. So, maybe you could point out the flaw in my logic.

 

[Unpilot]

I forget the Elon quote but it was something like "you'd be a fool to buy any other car than a Tesla FSD." Or "they'll be worth 200k each.' The more foolish thing to do would be for us to produce cars that don't fit into the robotaxi business; to be a seller of that car. The most foolish thing to do is to sell our 200K (value) car for 40K so that our customer can compete with us.

I know my writing style is cryptic, often misunderstood and usually irritating. I'm happy to say what people often don't want to hear. I post because I want to learn from others. If I'm wrong, which I often am, I want to know. And, I want to know why I'm wrong. So, maybe you could point out the flaw in my logic.

Let me take a crack at this.
The mission statement tells you all you need to know.
Sure IF robotaxi take off the owner's will have a winner on their hands.
BUT the mission is sustainable transportation...that is a lot more than robotaxi's.

The reason for the mission is NOT to make some people rich...but to STOP putting poison in the air.

A lot of that poison comes from trucks and so the semi WILL be made.

 

[KSilver2000]

OT

I suggest you to look at an Electric Minivan™ called Model X.

Do you have small kids and drive an X yourself?

We have one, a P90DL X. I love it for around town. Take the little ones around, go grocery shopping, play dates, etc. Its fine.

But, long distance vacations with the family for 7+ days? Not our first choice.
It’s just enough space for a family of 4 with the car seats, luggage, cooler, strollers, etc. First time we did the Disney/Lego/SD Zoo trip with it, my brother and sister in law had to fly because not enough room in the X. So, in subsequent years, we took a minivan down whenever there were more than 4 of us. Fits everyone and everything, and more. More legroom and shoulder room for everyone, too. Not too bad gas mileage given the amount of hauling it does on those trips as well.

 

[neroden]

We can thank the auto and oil industries for that.
GM, Firestone, Dow and others basically bought up early passenger rail systems and closed them down before it became popular. Then they lobbied to fund road construction across the country.

Yes. So think about who paid for that lobbying, and what the state of those companies is going to be in a few years.

As long as there are cars, regardless whether ICE or EV, I think government will continue subsidizing roads. To what extent, not sure. May be less over time as you say.

I figure with the oil industry and the old-line auto industries collapsed, we won't see Tesla replacing their lobbying money.

We'll still have property taxes funding local streets, of course, but will we see the same pressure to spend income tax money on giant expressways? Probably in some areas, but not in others. 60 miles north of me, Syracuse, NY just decided to tear an expressway down.

With trucks being pushed more and more onto locally-funded streets, after a while the local towns will get annoyed that trucks are destroying their property-tax-funded roads and will start campaigning to get some funding out of the truckers.

Unfortunately, vast majority of rail is privately owned. Thus, even Amtrak needs to lease use of tracks on almost all of their routes and give right of way to freight trains. Only short commuter railways are publicly held.

Yeah. The US is one of very few countries in the world which still has significant quantities of privately owned railway tracks (the other two are Mexico and Canada). This is because having tracks privately owned doesn't really work (it's not working in Mexico or Canada either), just like privately owned roads don't really work. The trend in the US and Canada is, slowly but surely, state ownership of railroad tracks; they're being purchased a chunk at a time, and even the freight railroad operators prefer it that way. I won't go into detail because it's way off topic. (As a footnote, freight trains are legally supposed to give way for Amtrak, but the freight railroad operators have just flat out broken the law for 40 years. An interesting lesson in the relative importance of law vs. custom -- custom is more important.)

An interesting point of history: the UK used to have almost all privately owned toll roads. They were slowly nationalized a few at a time as it became clear that the economic model didn't work well and strangled the economy. The same then happened with railways, later.

 

[dha]

Uncharacteristically positive discussion over at Hacker News with many comments re: Tesla hitting the nail on the head:

BMW CEO to quit after carmaker loses early lead in electrics | Hacker News

The tide of public opinion is turning.

 

[mongo]

That's not even close to being true, even if the retirement of fossil cars doesn't accelerate (and it almost certainly will).

One error you made is that you assumed that when we reach 100% electric sales that half of all cars on the road aren't already electric. It all depends on how fast the EV adoption curve unfolds. I think what you meant to say is, "Since the average age of cars on the road is 12 years, assuming none of them are currently electric, if sales suddenly switched to from 100% ICE to 100% EV's then it would be *six* years before half of the cars on the road are electric." And even that is not exactly correct due to age distributions. But in any realistic scenario, the percentage of gas cars will decline to 50% long before 100% of new cars sales are electric.

Big difference. And I'm looking forward to the day when I can breathe easier because only half the cars on the road are fossil powered. In the US, the transformation to 50% will happen more quickly than most people assume and it will be primarily due to personal economics, convenience factors and desirability, not government mandates.

Yah, adoption curve does shift things. However, if average age of cars is 12 years and we assume median age is also 12 years*, then it would take 12 years to reach half EV if the switch was from 0% to 100% electric sales.

*median age 12 years: half of cars are less than 12, half older, none over 24.