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

[kbM3]

I'd say it's nice to have a central place to go to if you fall behind on your news feed, like if you've gone out of country for holiday, or have family visit and they soak up the time you'd usually have for it.

It allows you to catch up quicker.

Tesla Daily is more than a news aggregator. He also provides wonderful analysis and insight, and occasionally great interviews. The one with jimmy_d about detailed speculation on Tesla Autonomy was particularly informative!

 

[kbM3]

A commenter on Electrek mentioned he was an engineering professor who had many students that worked at VW. I took the opportunity to ask him about his students opinions of Tesla as a competitor.

He said they thought:
1) Tesla will win in Autonomy
2) CATL will win in accumulator production (batteries?)
3) German brands will go the Volvo way.
4) There’s a lot of fear around Wolfsburg.

 

[Thekiwi]

pretty blatant troll-fest going on for past couple days, coordinated comments by a handful of long-cons (who just follow up by claiming to be shareholders). Should aggregate all the accounts who said things like "not a good look for Tesla" into one mega-troll account.

To be fair, 7 solar roof install for one customer catching fire is a legitimate “not a good look for Tesla” bad PR moment, regardless of the legal behind the scenes contract disputes.

 

[Fact Checking]

To be fair, 7 solar roof install for one customer catching fire is a legitimate “not a good look for Tesla” bad PR moment, regardless of the legal behind the scenes contract disputes.

It's actually 4 installations out of 248 they complained about so far - the other 3 were apparently added very recently for the lawsuit only and apparently never told Tesla about them prior July 31.

Also, to quote Tesla's position:

"Of those, 244 systems are offline not because they are inoperable or unsafe, but because Walmart unfairly seeks to exploit claims it asserted - concerning just four other systems - as a pretext for refusing to comply with Walmart's contractual obligations and for demanding concessions from Tesla on all 248 systems. For over a year now, Tesla has made extensive efforts to accommodate Walmart's inconsistent and shifting positions, repeated delays, and unreasonable demands, all at significant cost to Tesla. My client continues to prefer a business solution to this dispute, but Walmart's conduct has put the parties on a collision course for litigation."​

I believe it's pretty clear that Walmart wanted this lawsuit and there's little Tesla could have done to prevent it being filed. People here theorized that a motivation might have been an effort to discredit rooftop solar, which is competing with the Waltons' utility solar interests.

 

[Xenius]

It's actually 4 installations out of 248 they complained about so far - the other 3 were apparently added very recently for the lawsuit only and apparently never told Tesla about them prior July 31.

Also, to quote Tesla's position:

"Of those, 244 systems are offline not because they are inoperable or unsafe, but because Walmart unfairly seeks to exploit claims it asserted - concerning just four other systems - as a pretext for refusing to comply with Walmart's contractual obligations and for demanding concessions from Tesla on all 248 systems. For over a year now, Tesla has made extensive efforts to accommodate Walmart's inconsistent and shifting positions, repeated delays, and unreasonable demands, all at significant cost to Tesla. My client continues to prefer a business solution to this dispute, but Walmart's conduct has put the parties on a collision course for litigation."​

I believe it's pretty clear that Walmart wanted this lawsuit and there's little Tesla could have done to prevent it being filed. People here theorized that a motivation might have been an effort to discredit rooftop solar, which is competing with the Waltons' utility solar interests.

I'd like to financially f*ck the waltons, but as I pointed out on twitter. I HIGHLY doubt there is more than a percentage overlap between Tesla customers and Walmart victims, err, customers.

 

[humbaba]

To be fair, 7 solar roof install for one customer catching fire is a legitimate “not a good look for Tesla” bad PR moment, regardless of the legal behind the scenes contract disputes.

...and how many times did these "fires" result in the fire department being called?

Its not a good look for Walmart to file a lawsuit in bad faith.

 

[Xenius]

If Walmart was concerned about what a bad look was, they wouldn't be Walmart.

 

[KarenRei]

To be fair, 7 solar roof install for one customer catching fire is a legitimate “not a good look for Tesla” bad PR moment, regardless of the legal behind the scenes contract disputes.

It may look bad, but one has to remember that the size of an installation on the roof of a Walmart is huge, and the odds of a fire occurring is proportional to the generating area. Heck, just a building the size of a Walmart has on its own a high fire risk regardless of the presence of solar. As Tesla's response in the lawsuit noted, there's a fire at a Walmart somewhere once every few weeks.

But yes, solar fires are a real thing, and more common than most people realize.

 

[HG Wells]

We interrupt this program for a word from our sponsors.

Tesla up 6 in premarket.

 

[Antares Nebula]

226 premarket. News?

 

[Xenius]

226 premarket. News?

You must be new here. Tesla can swing 30% either way for no real reason

That said, this might be related to South Korea, and the banning of VW Diesel plus introduction of Model 3.

 

[LN1_Casey]

You must be new here. Tesla can swing 30% either way for no real reason

That said, this might be related to South Korea, and the banning of VW Diesel plus introduction of Model 3.

I think it may be that, in addition to the fading shock of the Walmart suit.

Or, you know, just TSLA being TSLA.

 

[Leo9]

Rumors from Germany regarding a potential takeover.

Obviously false, but you know how the market works.

 

[Navin]

Tesla: Daimler, BMW und Volkswagen machen Jagd auf Elon Musk

 

[22522]

It's also worth mentioning that that's 100kW charging at ~15% lower driving efficiency than a Model 3, meaning that it's equivalent to ~87kW in a Model 3.

These sort of numbers games that mislead consumers are annoying.

Slippery matters. Frontal area matters. Motor, regen and system efficiency matter.

The managers at VW either:

A) don't know what matters, or
B) are too scared of the incompetence/push-back of their designers and engineers to ask them to deliver a car, that people will buy, that also efficiently uses natural resources.

 

[Fact Checking]

226 premarket. News?

Yes:

Tesla: Daimler, BMW und Volkswagen machen Jagd auf Elon Musk

"Tesla: Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are hunting Elon Musk"​

The first paragraph isn't very useful, they portray analyst Adam Jonas as a prophet...

The byline is ridiculous:

"Elektrovisionär Elon Musk scheitert an den Niederungen des Autogeschäfts. Wichtige Investoren verlieren das Vertrauen, die deutschen Premiumanbieter schalten auf Angriff. Tesla wird reif für die Übernahme."

"Electro visionary Elon Musk fails at the banalities of the car business. Important investors lose confidence, the German premium providers turn to attack. Tesla is getting ready for a takeover."​

FUD mostly.

But "Manager Magazin" IIRC has pretty good high level sources at Volkswagen. There's a paywall, does anyone have the full article?

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Yup, I actually laughed into my coffee reading the bit about jonas 'seer of the capital markets'. LOL. what horseshit. If anyone takes over anyone it will be Tesla rummaging through the garage sale that is VWs assets in 2030.

 

[Antares Nebula]

Yes:

Tesla: Daimler, BMW und Volkswagen machen Jagd auf Elon Musk

"Tesla: Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are hunting Elon Musk"​

The first paragraph isn't very useful, they portray analyst Adam Jonas as a prophet...

The byline is ridiculous:

"Elektrovisionär Elon Musk scheitert an den Niederungen des Autogeschäfts. Wichtige Investoren verlieren das Vertrauen, die deutschen Premiumanbieter schalten auf Angriff. Tesla wird reif für die Übernahme."

"Electro visionary Elon Musk fails at the banalities of the car business. Important investors lose confidence, the German premium providers turn to attack. Tesla is getting ready for a takeover."​

FUD mostly.

But "Manager Magazin" IIRC has pretty good high level sources at Volkswagen. There's a paywall, does anyone have the full article?

Yes, I saw this too. But yeah same problem for me too. Also saw the below on stocktwits. Appears to just be rumors at this point. Can't imagine Elon selling out now.

 

[wnorris]

I think the autonomy day was wishful thinking - the vast majority of analysts don't understand FSD implications and most of the population don't care. Even we Tesla owners and well-informed investors care more for how our car drives on EAP rather than having any grasp on FSD.

Battery tech is more tangible though. If Tesla could state that their current pack cost is $125/kWh, but in year this will drop to $100, then $75 a year later, half the costs will be passed to price reductions, the rest added to margins. This is something that people and markets can understand. Also if they could drop a Model S will a real-world 500 miles range and 250kWh charge-rate, then I'm sure the SP would react very positively.

The problem that Tesla faces surrounding these big events is credibility. Credibility related to timelines. We have seen solar roof, Semi, Roadster II, and countless other products roll out significantly later than presented (in some cases suggested). No need to mention the software side of things. Now we are seeing that the dates presented during the autonomy event look less likely.

Elon needs to do a better job on this as it looks as his credibility related to timelines may have eroded to the point that it is not the internal motivator that it once was (a little speculation on my part). Granted part of this is due to an aggressive disinformation campaign, but his continued schedule misses further erode remaining credibility with employees and investors.

Whatever is displayed during the battery event really needs to be shipped within six months to a year. Anything beyond this general timeline will be blown off. Hopefully you are right, @Lycanthrope and the tangible nature of batteries will make this event more noteworthy.

I also hope my dulled enthusiasm signals that this time might be different.

 

[Navin]

Maybe Tesla is entering into a supply agreement for batteries and power train with theses groups.