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

[Tslynk67]

I disagree.

Assuming FSD is ultimately a success, once it is up and running in a form that can be used on the Tesla Network the market value for FSD should be far higher than it is today. For customers who have not bought FSD and don't want to pay the market price, Tesla can start repurchasing used Model 3s and put them on the Tesla Network, which would allow Tesla to capture the full value of FSD. This is similar to how Tesla is handling Model 3 leases -- they are ensuring they will retain ownership of leased vehicles at the end of the lease so they have the ability to maximize the number of vehicles on the Tesla Network, and capture 100% of maximized FSD revenue.

Or a private buyer can purchase the car and put it on the network to start earning money. Either way, Tesla comes out much farther ahead by encouraging the use of FSD on the Tesla Network than offering rich subsidies for below market rates for people who don't buy FSD now and don't want to pay the market price or put it to full use later.

You snooze you lose.

Why not keep the cost of FSD reasonably low, but put a higher %age margin on the taxi usage, that would be fair to everyone.

 

[Pezpunk]

I think most people (especially here) understand that advertising DOES affect the kind of coverage, especially from unscrupulous “news” organizations. The question is should Tesla engage in this legalized bribery?

Well, that depends. Is your goal to fail with a valid reason to whine about failing, or to actually succeed?

 

[kengchang]

Elon's asking people to gamble - no different to buying their stock.


This will backfire. As a non Tesla owner looking to buy a Jag, would you:
1) Question why you are being ripped off, by an extra $3k?
2) Find out what this Tesla thing is


Still a way to go unwinding the wave.

On IPace forum, they are celebrating because Tesla cuts price more often so Jag isn't so bad

 

[Tslynk67]

Interesting. The Renault Zoe sells more than I think it would. Don’t know too much about the car. Is it because it’s cheap or small? Or both?

It's quite cheap because Renault offer a battery-easing deal, means you ca lease them for €200 per month (or at least could last year when I saw some ads in my letterbox). But on top of that it's a nice little car, perfect for city use and quite zippy. I had a friend rented one for the weekend and he was very impressed.

As I've said before, if Tesla were to come with a small city car, at a good price point, then it really would be game-over, in Europe at least.

 

[LN1_Casey]

What the hell is this???

View attachment 442370

Looks like it's a College essay. Copy/pasted from the sourse, but with just enough edits to not be plagarism.

 

[skivi]

According to eu-evs.com the deliveries goes up just half in the Quarter i think that's a good sign.
And now the nex big ship has landed in Zeebruge for August deliveries. Yay!

 

[DRAW]

It shouldn't be too hard to make it appear that Denmark has initiated an incident that forces the US to declare a war and claim Greenland as a spoil of victory.

There is an extremely limited list of nations in the world that can resist a hypothetical US military attack for any significant amount of time. Denmark is not one of them.

Your remarks comes across as an adult joking about how easy it would be to generate an incident in order to enter a kindergarten and steal the children’s toys.

Yes it is easy for the strong to beat the weak. Is this funny? If yes, to whom?

 

[DRAW]

Forgive me but I feel like a trillion dollars for Greenland would be a hard pass for the danish government. Over the next century i expect Russia Canada and Denmark to benefit the most from warming polar regions. Greenland between resources, land, and strategic positioning in the arctic circle could prove to be very valuable.

Trillion is not the same number in the US as in Denmark.
Trillion - Wikipedia

I am not sure anyone can afford the higher version of the number.

 

[Thekiwi]

For the “recession shouldn’t have much impact on Tesla car sales” folks, I’d like to note that the Energy side of the Tesla business is going to be a much harder sell when John Q. needs to reroof and is out of work for a year or takes a big pay cut. Solar Roof and Powerwalls aren’t going to be in the family budget during harder times IMO.

To add to this, it isn’t the ~5% or so of the workforce losing there jobs in a recession who have the biggest detrimental impact on discretionary spending - it is the other 95% of the workforce who are worried about losing there jobs and who think twice about getting a new car (or powerwall.)

 

[Leo9]

Nope just Tesla. But it's not like I used all my margin. I had a close look at the chart and decided it's very unlikely that SP drops more. If it drops more, I'll buy more.

The chart looks horrible to me.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Inverted Yield Curves Are Signaling a Deflationary Boom

A primer on the deflationary boom that is upon us. Or, why the inverted yield curve is a good signal this time.

Yup, it's a boom, the likes of which we haven't seen since the invention of the electricity grid.

Please read. There are a lot of people out there misreading the now inappropriate indicators.

 

[LN1_Casey]

The chart looks horrible to me.

View attachment 442394

As a long bull, it looks like opprotunity to me.

 

[EinSV]

Why not keep the cost of FSD reasonably low, but put a higher %age margin on the taxi usage, that would be fair to everyone.

Let's imagine for sake of discussion that the Tesla Network goes "live" in 2022 in a reasonable number of jurisdictions (the exact date doesn't matter for present purposes) and that Tesla charges users $1 per mile, with the customer getting $0.70/mile and Tesla retaining $0.30, as Elon has suggested.

Tesla retains ownership of half of the cars it makes to run exclusively on the Tesla Network and sells the other half to customers (again, the exact breakdown doesn't matter for this discussion).

Because of the ability to generate significant revenue, demand for 3/Y with FSD should increase dramatically allowing Tesla to significantly increase the price. FSD will very likely be included as standard in every car, with the starting price increased significantly to reflect the value of FSD (let's say by $20,000-$30,000).

Why will FSD be standard? Because it makes zero sense to sell a Model 3 or Y without FSD for $40,000 when you are supply constrained and you have the ability to sell the same car with FSD for $60,000-$70,000 with FSD plus earn a portion of revenues generated on the Tesla Network. (Or, better yet, Tesla can just keep the car itself and generate $60,000+ in revenue per year at high margins.)

At that point, as far as "fairness," it would be unfair to charge new customers $20,000-$30,000 for FSD, while offering the same functionality to existing customers for $3,000, especially when those same customers had every opportunity to purchase FSD earlier at a discount but chose not to. It would also not serve the mission to accelerate sustainable transport -- a 3/Y that joins the Tesla Network can easily run 60,000 miles per year, displacing the miles of 5 ICE cars (or more). So the last thing Tesla will want to do is offer FSD discounts to customers who don't want to pay full price because they don't want to use their car on the Tesla Network.

Now FSD may not work as advertised. If it does, it is hard to see how the price of FSD would not be much higher in the future. For everyone -- both new and existing customers.

 

[Artful Dodger]

There is an extremely limited list of nations in the world that can resist a hypothetical US military attack for any significant amount of time. Denmark is not one of them.

Your remarks comes across as an adult joking about how easy it would be to generate an incident in order to enter a kindergarten and steal the children’s toys.

Yes it is easy for the strong to beat the weak. Is this funny? If yes, to whom?

Relax, DRAW. This is American-style sarcastic humor. Curt likely should have included the /S.

FYI, @Curt Renz is a former soldier and veteran and knows 1st-hand the horror and waste of war. Now, shake hands and make up with your brother...

Cheers!

 

[Sean Wagner]

Puzzling macro optimism bias on this thread these days. Did no one catch the second half of what Yellen said?

“Yellen also said she does not think the U.S. is headed into a recession. "I think the U.S. economy has enough strength to avoid that, but the odds have clearly risen and they're higher than I'm frankly comfortable with."
There’s a big world out there. Answers on a postcode where the global growth is coming from next year. Germany? China? Japan? EM?

Data point CA H1 YOY:
...
Across California, new-vehicle sales fell 5.6 percent during the first half of the year, with light truck sales declining 1.1 percent and passenger car deliveries falling 11 percent.

Tesla registrations surged to 40,085 in the first half, giving it 4.2 percent market share in the biggest U.S. state by population and light-vehicle sales.
...
Tesla gains EV share in California


Mod: part of post moved to
Service and communication (out of main)
--ggr.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Why not keep the cost of FSD reasonably low, but put a higher %age margin on the taxi usage, that would be fair to everyone.

What if Tesla sold FSD “options”. The option to buy FSD for $6000 in 2020 could cost $500 today.

They really should have a fixed "personal FSD" price, like $5k or whatever people concerned with safety can bear and price the TN component separately - and they can increase this piece $1k every 3 months as they make more progress.

It's not fair for people wanting their vehicles for personal use to pay for whatever taxi can earn from FSD. That is if there's enough supply. If Tesla can sell all their vehicles with max FSD price option, then...tough luck, not sure what they'll do.

FSD pricing is a very complicated decision and its difficult to know the optimum approach.

What does the current $6k FSD price correspond to?
To start with, buying FSD today is really purchasing 3 very different things in one bundle:
1) Navigate on Autopilot, Auto lane change and Autopark. These features are already available and have been rapidly improving in functionality. Many people attach a high enjoyment, convenience and tech novelty value to these features alone. I would guess of people buying FSD for $6k today, around $4k on average is the value people (likely subconsciously) attach to these currently available features.
2) Future Summon, Traffic light, stop sign and city driving Autopilot features. People buying FSD today are also buying an option on these driver assistance features becoming available. As it stands, it looks likely that most of these features will be released in the relatively near future. I would guess customers attach around $1k of the $6k to these features today.
3) Future Robotaxi ability. This has an unknown probability of delivery in the short to medium term, but it is definitely significantly less likely than Tesla delivering the remaining driver assistance features in 2. However, if it is delivered, this option has huge huge value (personally I estimate $100k plus depending on Tesla's fare cut % and how far Tesla is ahead of the competition - they should charge around $2.5 per mile until the Robotaxi market begins to get saturated). So if current FSD customers are attaching around $1k of the $6k value to this option, this is likely attaching less than 1% probability of Tesla ever releasing Robotaxi functionality.

Elon plans to increase the price of FSD when the value of 2 increases, and when the probability of 3 increases.

What should Tesla sell if it does deliver on Robotaxis?
If Tesla really does deliver a generalised Robotaxi solution ahead of the competition, then it is very likely to be supply constrained even with a compulsory FSD option priced at $100k. Company management has a legal obligation to make decisions in the best interests of the company and its shareholders - I think its questionable if it would even be legal for Elon to sell a Model 3 without FSD for $40k when he can sell all he can produce for $100k. But more important than that - Tesla's ultimate mission is to reduce carbon emissions. This means doing whatever it can to minimise fossil fuel miles driven. This means they want to maximise the electric miles driven per year of every car they sell. The annual miles driven of a Robotaxi is significantly higher than a personally owned car so Tesla's mission statement requires them to maximise Robotaxi sales and minimise personal car sales.

Should Tesla sell FSD to a customer rather than attach to a car?
There are pros and cons to Tesla separating the car and option.
Pros:

• Insurance costs will be lower reducing the total cost of ownership.
• Customers will be more willing to upgrade their Tesla cars to the latest model.
• If Robotaxis are delivered, Tesla Robotaxi owners can have more confidence their revenue stream will not be disrupted by an accident.

Cons:

• Tesla will lose high margin FSD option sales from existing Tesla customers upgrading to the latest cars.
• Tesla will lose high margin FSD option sales paid by insurance companies when customers cars are totaled.

I think as the price of the FSD option increases, the insurance cost penalty will prove increasingly heavy and Tesla is likely to separate the FSD software option from the car. This should become more obvious to Tesla when it releases its own insurance product - however keeping the car and software attached will provide Tesla's Insurance offering with a significant cost advantage vs third party insurers - given the software replacement is zero cost for Tesla.

 

[Sean Wagner]

While in Switzerland at least, and despite the "wave", the Model 3 held on - just - to its 4th position among the top ten best selling vehicles this July. Source: auto-schweiz: Zulassungen neuer Personenwagen nach Modellen

 

[LN1_Casey]

Ah, boo. Just tried to order some Tesla Solar + Powerwall for my back state side rental. Unfortunately, Tesla doesn't service Ridgecrest, CA, apparently.

Come on, Tesla! I'm trying to do my part to help the Q3 numbers!

 

[CorneliusXX]

It’s actually not *that* crazy of an idea. The U.S. has flirted with the idea in the past.

Ironically, much land there might end up being more valuable in the future as a result of climate change.

Of course, I doubt it would ever happen.

I think everyone believes land will be more valuable there in the future, however few investors have the money and patience to wait for a gigantic island to thaw out.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

As it will take about 1,000 years for the 3 km thick ice sheet on Greenland to melt (and it better take that long, or gets stopped, as it adds 8 m to global sea levels), let's end the irrelevant and very very OT discussion about what to do with a Greenland without ice.

I also sense a service discussion is hatching. Again. We have a dedicated thread for that: Service and communication (out of main)

Mod: Indeed, I moved them. --ggr