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

[MC3OZ]

Who the hell is thinking how Tesla does on the "track" when buying a family sedan? You guys are obsessing too much about this whole thing. The damn car does 2.4 seconds to 60 already! And people are worried about race track performance? I could care less.

I get the whole image thing, but it matters less than people obsessing about this think in relation to track times.

I think a lot of us are interested in cars, and who is the fastest, or best.

For Tesla Model S/X sales are still important, as is the image of being the best.

Tesla doesn't advertise and this is a great way of generating interest...

it is also a great idea to keep improving the cars...

So it is generating publicity, being seen to be the best, and able to match or exceed Porsche in every aspect.
it is important as people have always thought EVs and Tesla could not match ICE cars in some aspect. When an EV is superior in every way there is no reason to buy an ICE. When a Tesla can match or exceed a Porsche in every way, that helps sell Teslas even though very few drivers ever use a car on a track.

 

[Jo-]

lmfao you guys are so funny. Arguing about Plaid... Musk just curb stomped Porsche... Jesus Christ... 4 years of development, $6b of R&D in the garbage. He positioned Tesla to leapfrog any “competitor” that comes close. You people need to realize something... Musk is the most ruthless capitalist to ever set foot on Earth. He doesn’t give a ****. He will bankrupt every single car company including Tesla and then start Tesla 2 if he has to. He is angry. It’s not about greed either. He doesn’t need yachts to make him happy. This is a game for him... it’s about a lust for blood

I’m not sure about the anger and lust, but yes...he’s been fighting against bullies his whole life.

 

[Intl Professor]

it’s about a lust for blood

Just a quibble over language. I think he's a nicer guy than that. We'll see how his kids turn out despite all the notoriety. He is relentless in the pursuit of perfection for real. My 2001 Lexus LS 430 is a great car, but it's no Model 3.

 

[Causalien]

Thank you. Well said.

There’s also this likely reaction... “Three motors? Why would I want three motors? That sounds like 50% more things that can go wrong. I’ll take the two motor model thanks”.

Remember someone who proved to me that EV didn't need anything more than dual motors. For me at that time, the technicalities of it was correct since I understand very little about ev motors. Then things improve and things happen like Porsche so we have 3 motors. Ya, now we are talking.

When roadster 2020 comes. I want the option to get 4 motors. So 3 motors let us shift to different gear ratio. So 4 should let us tap into ultra capacitors. And I want super precise computer controlled automatic drifting in tandem with spacex package thrusters keeping the car grounded and on the road. All activated by a nod of my head detected from the interior facing teslacam.

Let's call it. "Falcon punch" mode.

 

[MC3OZ]

Taycan and Model S side by side from same spot angle on Nurburgring...Model S seems to be going significantly faster : teslamotors

What is most interesting is this seems to be a regular P100D not the red P100D+ and it seems to be going about the same pace as the Taycan on an early run...

As mentioned earlier if they can clock a good time in a regular Raven P100D that is great.

 

[Mobius484]

It will be great/profitable when the FSD P100D+ autonomous robotaxi is giving laps at the ‘ring. And at 7 passengers, it would be a wild ride!

 

[RFernatt]

I totally disagree with that characterization. Musk is probably the most productive and brilliant industrialists of the 21st century. And one of the better marketers. He has an innate sense of what will work and what won't. Anyone else trying to start a new American car company probably would have floundered and fizzled years ago yet all indications point to Tesla becoming one of the greatest American carmakers to ever exist.

I love it when someone not even possessing 1/10th of someone else's achievements criticizes that person as if they would be better at it.

 

[LJS22]

It will be great/profitable when the FSD P100D+ autonomous robotaxi is giving laps at the ‘ring. And at 7 passengers, it would be a wild ride!

I see the humor in this, but I think one of the reasons we saw TSLA jump this week is hearing Elon talk about a new powertrain. I think many investors were discouraged by the FSD talk. It seemed Tesla were getting away from the present and focusing on something with a lot of uncertainty. This week feels like a flashback to the innovation side of making electric motors exciting. This track testing has been very exciting to follow and restores some confidence that Tesla hasn’t thrown all their eggs in one basket. But just a theory. I think there’s a lot to be excited about for this company.

 

[keydiver]

Wasn't there a Porsche VP who said in public a few years ago "Tesla did everything right."

I thought that was an Audi (or perhaps BMW) engineer?

 

[S3XY]

Jesus. Fahrvergnügen!

Edit: Ok, way too late.

I let the first correction slide but now that there's two I have to correct the corrections. I was making reference to the Emissions Testing feature in Teslas so the misspelling was intentional. Anyhoo, obviously wasn't worth the effort in the first place. At least I amused myself.

 

[Antares Nebula]

Very few people here understand how brilliant business visionaries like Jobs and Musk, as well as how brilliant scientists and artists think. Very few. Think Musk and Jobs are like others? They are not. Think Hawking or Feynman are like Einstein and Galileo? They are not. Think Mozart and Beethoven are like other classical composers? Most bulls here are simply engaged in idle worship and have not critically assessed the man. He is brilliant, but he is human too. Too appreciate their greatness, you have to also appreciate their flaws.

 

[Tim S]

Very few people here understand how brilliant business visionaries like Jobs and Musk, as well as how brilliant scientists and artists think. Very few. Think Musk and Jobs are like others? They are not. Think Hawking or Feynman are like Einstein and Galileo? They are not. Think Mozart and Beethoven are like other classical composers? Most bulls here are simply engaged in idle worship and have not critically assessed the man. He is brilliant, but he is human too. Too appreciate their greatness, you have to also appreciate their flaws.

Wow, 8 straight hours of criticizing Elon and collecting disagrees. It's almost as if you are getting paid for it.

(You posted this 6 1/2 hours ago: "Lot of bulls here are letting their bias cloud their judgement. I'm not going to belabor the point further;")

 

[Antares Nebula]

Wow, 8 straight hours of criticizing Elon and collecting disagrees. It's almost as if you are getting paid for it.

Like Elon, I don't mind collecting disagrees.

(Was I criticizing Elon? Hmm... Interesting.)

 

[Tim S]

Like Elon, I don't mind collecting disagrees.

Well I mind wasting my time reading your extremely repetitive and incorrect posts. I will ignore you now.

 

[kengchang]

BLD2020-01673 Racks at D/30
BLD2019-00235-004 Admin ADA ramp, electrical revision
BLD2020-01687 Site & foundations package.

 

[Fact Checking]

Official Nasdaq short interest figures have been released after an apparent 24 hour delay.

Short interest as of 8/30 settlement is 39,744,386. This reflects an increase of 447,870 shares shorted since the prior reporting period.


Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) Short Interest

So 39.74m TSLA shares shorted was the 8/30 figure, and Ihor Dusaniwsky's closest short interest figure was 39.90m TSLA shares shorted one day before that, on 8/29:

That's pretty impressively accurate, given that the NASDAQ figures update once a month, so whatever algorithm Ihor is using has the highest inaccuracy right before the official report. I did point out in the past when Ihor's short interest guesses were off, and I regularly double check the track record of his methodology.

I'd also like to note that if Ihor had anything to hide about his firm's methodology, he'd likely avoid reporting his guesses right before the official report's settlement date, which makes it easy to double check and falsify.

So if Ihor says that the last two weeks wasn't short covering that's probably an honest opinion based on data, and let's not attack the messenger over that ...

BTW., this also means that most of the shorts missed the dip from ~$250 levels to $180 levels and squandered ~$2.8b profits by not covering, waiting for TSLA to hit $0 I suppose?

 

[Causalien]

It will be great/profitable when the FSD P100D+ autonomous robotaxi is giving laps at the ‘ring. And at 7 passengers, it would be a wild ride!

I want to see tesla plaid mode rollercoaster doing a vertical loop.
Now that'd be great publicity.

 

[Buckminster]

Are these the future option packages?

3
SR+
LR
Performance

S
LR
Performance (Was P100d - ludicrous)
Performance+ (Plaid - 3 motors)

Roadster
Performance (Plaid)
SpaceX edition

 

[Fact Checking]

Just a quibble over language. I think he's a nicer guy than that. We'll see how his kids turn out despite all the notoriety. He is relentless in the pursuit of perfection for real. My 2001 Lexus LS 430 is a great car, but it's no Model 3.

Here's an anecdote that nicely demonstrates your observation I think.

Regular readers of TMC might remember that weird case in early 2019 when there was someone on Reddit claiming to be a Tesla supplier of high end plastics products for car interiors, posting unhappy messages about having seen her S/X components order volume cut in half and about how hard it is to work with Tesla as a supplier.

As it later on turned out that's exactly what happened in Q1, S/X production volume was cut in half. (She also deleted her messages and her account shortly afterwards.)

As a Tesla supplier it was clear that she was very unhappy, and one of her complaints about Tesla was:

"I’m working on a project right now, I assist with some of the interior colors approved and we are working through an approval right now that’s going to trials with their molder, but that takes a while. Tesla uses mainly subjective measures to approve colors so it’s a lot of back and forth. Last time it took 20 iterations for one black for the side panels."

...

"I’ve been saying this since they became a customer of mine last year, we deal with other luxury automotive brands, but Tesla is the only one that operates like a consumer electronics company."
​

She's supplier of plastics granulates, and in 2018 Tesla insisted on 20 iterations to get the color of a black side panel just right ...

That's one of the essences of Tesla I think, they managed to carry over the culture of an obsessive-compulsive Silicon Valley high-end electronics company that for example Apple represents, into the automotive industry, and Elon is at the center of that obsession - just like Steve Jobs was at the center of Apple's focus on artistic design and quality.

 

[Artful Dodger]

They did an objective and positive reviews of the Model 3 and bought one for their testing.
|snipped 5 vidz + 1 website|

But Edmunds is the bad guy now..........Good grief.

Your attempt at a gish-gallop was unsuccesful (5 vidz). Your false equivalence is painfully obvious. There is nothing objective about a supposedly neutral auto website comparing the intro of one brand's new model (Taycan) with the twitter handle for another brand's Share Price ($tsla). Edmond's deserves what they get.

Bad show, old boy, bad show.