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

[NicoV]

UI code is super trivial to maintain.

Having implemented lots of UI, I disagree. But designing your code in such a way that it supports both the two screen layout of the S and the single screen layout of the 3 is fairly easy.

 

[NicoV]

Also saves a lot of software dev time once the main screen is in the same orientation across all the cars

Not, the effort to support multiple layouts should be negligible compared to all the other stuff the UI needs to support.

 

[Thekiwi]

The S/X interior is very dated compared to the 3.

I’m surprised there is no refresh. Also saves a lot of software dev time once the main screen is in the same orientation across all the cars

Pay attention to Elon’s wording, he’s trying to drum into people that there are no big model updates planned for existing vehicles - instead they are treated like constantly evolving products. That doesn’t mean parts of the interior (and exterior) wont get updates, but they might be little changes here and there rather than one big combined change.

What exactly is it people don’t like about the interior of the S/X?

 

[Cosmacelf]

Pay attention to Elon’s wording, he’s trying to drum into people that there are no big model updates planned for existing vehicles - instead they are treated like constantly evolving products. That doesn’t mean parts of the interior (and exterior) wont get updates, but they might be little changes here and there rather than one big combined change.

What exactly is it people don’t like about the interior of the S/X?

Personally, I was never on the Model S/X refresh coming soon bandwagon anyways. The Raven upgrades are nice enough.

 

[MP3Mike]

What exactly is it people don’t like about the interior of the S/X?

For the S things like no door pockets or coat hooks.

 

[Fact Checking]

No revamped interior "soon" per Elon

In fact Elon said there won't be any significant interior refresh "anytime soon", which is an even stronger statement.

 

[BLSmith2112]

I at least hope they have a plan to get S/X production/deliveries up to the 25,000+ level. Personally not confident a minor change here or there will bring in 8,000 new orders per quarter. Obviously I haven’t been reading as much as I should from TMC as several people apparently have been waiting for Elon to day this.

 

[Fact Checking]

I kinda see their point on total number of units for the year. I don’t think demand or delivery logistics will be a problem (or in the case of logistics at least not unsolvable problems) but unless there is a significant increase in battery production I think 350,000 units might still be a challenge. Are there significant changes coming that will allow an extra 15000 to 30000 packs to be built? Not up on this.

Yes, Panasonic promised to scale GF1 output from the ~24 GWh early this year to 35 GWh by the end of year. It's unclear how far into this process they are at the moment.

 

[NicoV]

Yes, Panasonic promised to scale GF1 output from the ~24 GWh early this year to 35 GWh by the end of year. It's unclear how far into this process they are at the moment.

Iirc, they said they they would have corrected the issues by june 2019.

 

[Mike Smith]

I think it's interesting Musk waited until now to finally refute the 'refresh coming' claims. I think the upgrades they were doing to allow room for Model Y production restricted the production capacity for S/X, and they're just now getting back to previous capacity, so now he can re-ignite demand. Maybe Q3 will be back near 25k?

 

[CorneliusXX]

My Q3 deliveries guesses: assuming the same quarter over quarter production increase as Q1->Q2 which was +15% from 62.9k to 72.5k, we'd get Q3 Model 3 production of 83.4k units. Model S/X production was 14.1k in Q1 and 14.5k in Q2 - it was all about the pre-Raven inventory flush it appears. Depending on how much they'll be able to produce in Q3 I'd guess S+X production of 18k-20k.

With that the Q3 production range is 102-104k units, with deliveries a few thousand below that to refill the previously pre-Raven inventory - my guess would be around 100k deliveries - which is below the +15% historic range.

But it's too early to tell - Tesla's pricing and bundling decisions and other 'demand levers' during the quarter should give us hints about how confident they are feeling about the Q3 order book.

If the rumours around the jig upgrades to the cell lines at GF1 in June did occur I wonder if cells are still the bottleneck to M3 production or if there is a new limiting factor.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Thanks for the updated data from NYC. NYC has the absolute highest taxi miles-per-year in the entire world, last I checked, so the NYC 64.6K miles/year should be considered a maximum. Other cities will have lower miles per year.

Robotaxis, if and when they arrive a decade from now, won't go any more miles per year than that. Most New York City taxis are owned by fleets, and the fleets put a different driver on each shift in the same taxi to get maximum utilitization, already. Utilization is demand-limited by the rush hour phenomenon, not supply-limited.

Geez. This is the inverse error to all the people who worry about whether Tesla has demand for their cars (no, Tesla has a supply shortage). In the case of taxi services, they're demand-limited most hours of the day; there's plenty of supply. Hours utilized per day won't go up.

Bringing the price down may increase demand in rush hour, but at midnight? Not so much.

The fact is that most people actually don't make a lot of joyride trips. Even private cars are predominantly used for commuting. The only way to get increased hours-per-day utilization is to replace non-commuting miles, but there just aren't that many non-commuting miles in the fleet as a whole.

Do you think there is much room for optimisation in an autonomous fleet compared to standard taxis?

Potential improvements could include having more granular data around passenger trips, leading to less dead time waiting for the next fare.

Another could be the willingness of passengers to cabshare with other strangers as an app based network can match passenger destinations and reduce the inconvenience to individual passengers who cabshare. This could also increase the average utilisation rate of each autonomous vehicle as the could carry multiple passengers during peak hours and a single passenger in off peak hours- reducing the maximum number of AVs needed.

 

[sundaymorning]

View attachment 427750 Yay. Can finally put this one to bed.

If anyone wants a refresh Tesla, get the pickup truck. I hear it’ll be a completely different animal than the SX or 3.

 

[Singer3000]

This is the number one problem for non-retired Tesla owners on the Tesla network. They will want to use their cars at the same time that the demand is there.

I can tell from this statement that you live somewhere where commuting by car is the norm. This is not true in very many places. In fact I’d say almost every major developed world metropolitan centre outside North America.

For example I’ve spent the past couple of weeks driving around provincial commuter towns in the South East of England, where everyone gets the train to work. The roads are often as busy at midday as at 8am, filled by the retired, stay at home parents, work from homers, delivery vehicles, manual labourers etc... I can’t speak for the US but in the UK the idea of rush hour barely seems to exist anymore, it’s busy ALWAYS!

To those that say there will be only limited demand uplift from cheaper journeys, absolute nonsense. Cheaper journeys will be a massive stimulant to demand. Most of the population thinks quite carefully about the cost of discretionary journeys when fuel (or taxis) is as expensive as it is here. They just don’t spent much time writing on investor forums. This is especially true when there are less convenient but cheaper public transport alternatives. If it comes, Tesla Taxis will kill the London Night Bus stone dead.

Musk has foreseen all this and realises that journeys won’t be that much cheaper if fuel/driver costs are replaced by very high congestion charges. It’s the reason he’s started the Boring Co.

 

[sundaymorning]

People complain that these rebate programs are just a handout to the rich, but in fact it effectively lowers the cost of EVs for everyone since it causes the price of used EVs to fall by a comparable amount - especially over the coming years as the used market is flooded with EVs.

Oil companies have been receiving tens of billions of “handouts” for a very long time now, this is peanuts compared to what EV owners are receiving. Plus there’s nothing wrong with my tax dollars going back to me, although I don’t want it going to oil, it still does..

 

[EVMeister]

I can’t speak for the US but in the UK the idea of rush hour barely seems to exist anymore, it’s busy ALWAYS!

In Newcastle where I live there is absolutely a "rush hour" (both ways) and several traffic peaks throughout the day. The heaviest traffic occurs both when people are going to work and when kids are being dropped off at or collected from school. And it is made worse by bad weather. Traffic is noticeably lighter over the school holidays! With kids being off school and many parents taking time off.

It is the same story in many cities here, I've lived in and visited quite a few.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

For the S things like no door pockets or coat hooks.

blimey, thats it! im buying an e-tron!

 

[CorneliusXX]

New Zealand Government proposes fee/rebate scheme for new & used vehicle sales. New EVs to receive $8000 rebate (over $5k USD). proposed Rebate will be capped, only Available for cars costing less than $80k NZD (so would apply to SR+ model 3 and SR model Y)

Rebate for used EVs will be $2.8k NZD (under $2k USD) - makes sense to include used vehicle sales given the high proportion of the vehicle fleet which are imported used cars from Japan.

Scheme will be fully funded by a new fee on lower efficiency ICE vehicles (hybrids & fuel efficient ICE cars will also get a rebate).

Government scheme could slash prices on cleaner cars, and make dirtier cars more expensive

NZ market is around 100k vehicles p.a. and given their relatively rural lifestyle and level of income I doubt there will be thousands of Tesla's sold there each year.

Last year Tesla sold 254 cars in NZ. Although the release of the M3 should drive numbers up nicely.

MIA > Sales Data > Vehicle Sales

 

[Mars ☰mperor]

These are screenshots of i-Pace mobile app.

Is this fugly sugar a joke?

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I can tell from this statement that you live somewhere where commuting by car is the norm. This is not true in very many places. In fact I’d say almost every major developed world metropolitan centre outside North America.

Rural areas still exist! *waves from a field*.

I live in rural SW UK, with a super-low population density, No EV-network or Uber service will EVER service where I live. Our village has 2 buses.... a week.
I will very much HAVE to own an EV when I retire, regardless of whether I drive it, or it drives itself.