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

[VValleyEV]

Wow, the comments on that article are terrible.

Holy Moly, thanks for pointing that out.

I did my small part and posted the following:

>>>>>
I encourage those who have commented negatively to dig just a little deeper. The total lifecycle of EVs produces far less emissions than gasoline-based vehicles. You can cherry pick data to attempt to show otherwise, but that picture stands throughout the world and is getting better. One of the places has shown dramatic progress is in the US: our energy utilities are moving away from coal big-time: 39% of production was coal-based in 2014, and that had gone down to 27% in 2018.

Note that the EV you purchase today continues to produce lower and lower emissions each year as the utilities get cleaner, whereas your gasoline-powered car emissions remain the same at best or more likely get worse. Also consider that there are far fewer parts in an EV drivetrain, requiring way less maintenance than a gasoline-powered engine and transmission.

Here are two very good sources:
1. The big global picture
Factcheck: How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change

2. A nice overview of how the picture has getting better in the US, with a nice color-coded map, much better than words:
New Data Show Electric Vehicles Continue to Get Cleaner

>>>>>

 

[dmvevguy]

Been playing with V10 - Tesla delivered! Any thoughts on stock price action this week b/c of V10 rollout and a lot more tweets / youtube videos in the past 24-48 hours. Assuming they hit record deliveries this quarter, along with V10 rollout, they are delivering on all cylinders!!!

 

[Fact Checking]

Sorry to have created confusion but I honestly cannot see how anyone who read the post could believe it was about Tesla
1. Referred to q2 cc, last Tesla q2 was 11 months ago
2. None of the details in anyway apply to Tesla

Unfortunately stealthp3d is only 1 of two posters on this suite I have blocked so I did not know about any confusion.

( I don't think it really matters, but wasn't Tesla's last Q2 conference call on July 24, just two months ago? I can see how someone reading just the first two sentences of your comment could think it referred to Tesla - and skipped the rest. This is a busy forum with a lot of comments. I had to read it twice as well. )

Your insight into NIO is much appreciated, it also matches @ReflexFunds's impression:

I was previously wishing Nio well, as for all EV startups.

Nio obviously have a far inferior product to Tesla in terms of quality and safety and also have far less vertical integration. Their business model is also basically just trying to copy what Tesla does. They do not even have their own auto factory, but at least they are manufacturing their own battery packs and motors, more valuable IP in the long run than auto assembly i think.

But I've now lost all respect for Nio management after yesterday's call. They announced they are cancelling their plans to build their own factory (they now plan to outsource manufacturing indefinitely). They also announced a forecast 50% QoQ reduction in volume in Q1 and said Q2 will also be weak. They blamed this in part on people waiting to get news on China's new EV subsidy program (which doesn't make any sense as everyone expects the subsidies to be cut significantly).

Rather than properly addressing these significant issues, Nio spent the majority of their call attacking Tesla and spreading significantly incorrect numbers, almost without exception. In particular they said Model 3 range is only 300km (in reality LR is close to 700km on Nio's NEDC standard) and that Model Y will not be a competitor because it will cost over $60k (Elon's tweet implies $38.5k, and China pricing may be lower given significantly lower production costs).

Mentions on Nio call: Tesla 8, Model 3 13, Model Y 11, Model X 3.

Is anyone else following developments at Nio? They are looking in very bad financial shape right now and I’m concerned how a collapse could setback the EV industry. Nio are trying to negotiate a $1.4bn investment (read bailout) from Beijing “E-town” capital, I think this will likely happen, but at the cost of selling most of their assets into a JV. However if it falls through Nio could very quickly fall into bankruptcy and I think this outcome would be a large setback for many of the EV startups who still need continuous financing.

Nio free cash outflow was around $700m in Q1 despite cancelling plans to build their own factory and what looks like a cut to production to avoid inventory build. They finished Q1 with $1.1bn cash and I expect this will be much lower by now given Q2 and July sales were worse than Q1. In July sales were abysmal with just 164 ES8 sales (down from 927 in June and a peak 3,318 in Dec ) and 673 of the new cheaper (almost certainly lower margin) ES6s. Q1 gross margin was -13%, Q2 gm is likely to be worse, while Q3 margin will be hit further by the ES6 mix and also by the massive reduction in EV subsidies at the end of June which wasn’t passed on to consumers. Nio are guiding for a better August with 2000-2500 sales (July production apparently impacted by building batteries for recalls), but this still isn’t nearly enough to be profitable even on the gross margin level.

I generally wish all EV programs and EV startups well, but I’ve got no respect for Nio management. They have been very dishonest in their investor communication and earlier this year the CEO spent as much time lying about Tesla on his investor call as he did talking about his own products. Still, I hope they can turn this around.

I'm wondering to what extent the Chinese government would bail NIO out, to avoid the national embarrassment.

There was also an interesting comment by @ReflexFunds:

We know Nio previously made a deal with Shanghai for its factory (though China later banned Nio from building the factory until Tesla's is finished). The deal was that Shanghai will build Nio's factory & rent it to Nio for free for 5 years & discounted for another 5 years. Shanghai also offered to guarantee local debt to finance half of Nio's $650m equipment capex.

Does this mean that the Chinese central government intervened against NIO and prevented their Shanghai factory?

Does anyone have any guesses about why that was done? Tesla is a cool company and Elon's a cool guy, but I doubt he has even a fraction of the influence with the Beijing Politburo which is required for such a feat, especially against a pure Chinese car company.

So who made that Shanghai factory rule that prevented NIO's factory and why?

Also, that decision against NIO would be an indication against a bail-out as well?

It would also explain the NIO CEO's hatred of Tesla, at least in part.

 

[Chickenlittle]

( I don't think it really matters, but wasn't Tesla's last Q2 conference call on July 24, just two months ago? I can see how someone reading just the first two sentences of your comment could think it referred to Tesla - and skipped the rest. This is a busy forum with a lot of comments. I had to read it twice as well. )

Your insight into NIO is much appreciated, it also matches @ReflexFunds's impression:





I'm wondering to what extent the Chinese government would bail NIO out, to avoid the national embarrassment.

There was also an interesting comment by @ReflexFunds:



Does this mean that the Chinese central government intervened against NIO and prevented their Shanghai factory?

Does anyone have any guesses about why that was done? Tesla is a cool company and Elon's a cool guy, but I doubt he has even a fraction of the influence with the Beijing Politburo required for such a feat, especially against a pure Chinese car company.

So who made that Shanghai factory rule and why?

Also, that decision against NIO would be an indication against a bail-out?

It would also explain the NIO CEO's hatred of Tesla, at least in part.

Correct

 

[VValleyEV]

THIS.

R&D in real manufacturing innovation for car production has been very low for decades as the global auto industry settled into a comfortable oligarchy with no culture of progress or innovation. This means the industry has not been learning enough from the hundreds of millions of cars it has produced over recent decades and there is a lot of slack for Tesla to apply new technology to reenergize innovation in components which are already extremely high volume.

 

[mongo]

Sorry to have created confusion but I honestly cannot see how anyone who read the post could believe it was about Tesla

Raises hand. (Should I feel bad/ badly/ poorly?)

1. Referred to q2 cc, last Tesla q2 was 11 months ago

This is covered:

( I don't think it really matters, but wasn't Tesla's last Q2 conference call on July 24, just two months ago? I can see how someone reading just the first two sentences of your comment could think it referred to Tesla - and skipped the rest. This is a busy forum with a lot of comments. I had to read it twice as well. )

Correct

2. None of the details in anyway apply to Tesla

Which is exactly why it seemed like a shorty FUD post. Lead in was about having been a TSLA investor, but not seeing how anyone could be now. Combined with username. So I asked directly many pages ago if it was TSLA or NIO which you kindly answered.

As a somewhat related personal plea, would people please stop making paragraph long posts that are FUDdy only to end them with /s? It's funnyish in the end, but as I'm wading through the muck, my cognitive dissonance/ blood pressure is not healthy.

 

[StealthP3D]

How does the system respond to signals humans commonly use to communicate courtesies, intentions while avoiding collisions, such as hand gestures, horn beeps, flashing lights, etc.?

That's more of an East Coast thing. The West Coast pioneers have proven that we can navigate parking lots without any cutesie hand gestures, flashing lights and beeping horns. We just do it. At that speed, people can see your intentions by what you're doing.

Remember, you are in a frickin parking lot going less than 5 mph! Let's not complicate things!

 

[Fact Checking]

You can’t expect an entire EV to follow the same experience curves – some of its components have already gone through 50 years of learning in ICE cars. Most of an EV Powertrain should follow steep experience curves to some extent - this includes Battery Cells, Packs, BMS, chargers, converters, motors, inverters, cooling etc.

One additional data point: there's one class of automotive parts that both ICE cars and Teslas use, but where Tesla has a big advantage: electronics, sensors, infotainment, computers and software.

These are actually about 20% of the CoGs of a premium class ICE car, and are the Achilles heel of ICE OEMs: they never learned how to do electronics and software properly - it's been a bolted on, outsourced headache since the 80s, and it's getting worse.

This is not the Tesla fanboy in me talking: Tesla's hardware and software practices are arguably "average" within Silicon Valley: they are not as good as Google, Apple or say Nvidia - but Tesla is still lightyears ahead of the automotive industry.

Not a single one of the U.S. or German Big Three does electronics and software even halfway as well as Tesla - the chasm in gigantic.

If Tesla can leverage their agile approach in their new factories and with Grohmann it's game over I think, Tesla will have won.

 

[xhawk101]

>i

Been playing with V10 - Tesla delivered! Any thoughts on stock price action this week b/c of V10 rollout and a lot more tweets / youtube videos in the past 24-48 hours. Assuming they hit record deliveries this quarter, along with V10 rollout, they are delivering on all cylinders!!!

Agree v10 is incredible and interested to get input on FSD charge realization in q3. Stopping for lights and stop signs will be much more valuable than smart summon imo.

Just wonder how they account for revenue however as this is likely to have material effect on share price.

 

[StealthP3D]

But the post @StealthP3D replied to didn't include the context from @SpaceCash anymore, so the context of NIO got lost big time, and this is why I think @StealthP3D thought @Chickenlittle was talking about Tesla - while he was talking about NIO.

So it's a genuine and understandable misunderstanding.

No, my use of Chicken Little had nothing to do with user ChickenLittle (unless I had subconsciously seen his username). I believe Chicken Little is an Americanized version of the European folk tale Henny Penny who thought disaster, end of the world, sky is falling, etc. was imminent. I've been hearing this term used since I was a small boy in the 1960's.

 

[Fact Checking]

Correct

I'm wondering what the driving force behind the anti-NIO decisions of Beijing is:

• Is it Tesla's lobbying prowess? Highly doubt it ...
• Is NIO a scam that Beijing realized too late and just wants to cut out before it festers? Possible, but then why didn't they just take over NIO and wind it down quietly, instead of letting it fail spectacularly? Tencent will lose big with NIO, and they should have 100x of Tesla's influence in Beijing.
• Some other motivation? Do they want to set an example? Did NIO attempt to bribe them or insulted the daughter of Xi Jinping?

It's a true mystery that is baffling to me: Chinese national pride is huge, and rightfully so considering the transformation to an economic and military superpower during the past 50 years, and it just doesn't make any sense to me why they'd so visibly choose a U.S. company over a Chinese one.

Does anyone have any good explanation for this?

 

[defc0n]

Does anyone have any good explanation for this?

Nope!

 

[madodel]

Wow, the comments on that article are terrible.

And we have trolls here who question concerted attacks on Tesla, while they attack Tesla. Any decency and attempts to save mankind are attacked. Apparently there are lots of people that will perform any sick, evil act for a buck.

 

[kbM3]

BTW, anyone figure out how to use the Caroke mic? Does your own voice come on speaker?

I believe the mic is a bad choice for an icon. It actually just mutes/unmutes the guide vocal track.

 

[jerry33]

That's more of an East Coast thing. The West Coast pioneers have proven that we can navigate parking lots without any cutesie hand gestures, flashing lights and beeping horns. We just do it. At that speed, people can see your intentions by what you're doing.

Remember, you are in a frickin parking lot going less than 5 mph! Let's not complicate things!

Add a zero to the five and you have where I live.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Number of twitter followers for various car companies. (If a company has a global and a USA account, I used the one with more followers):
Tesla 4.2 million
Audi 2 million
BMW 1.9 million
Porsche 1.8 million
Lamborghini 1.8 million
Jaguar 1.1 million
Ford 1.1 million
Chevrolet 1 million
Jeep 998k
Honda 993k
Dodge 894k
Toyota USA 772k
VW USA 581k
Ferrari 556k
Subaru USA 443k
Hyundai USA 374k
Kia USA 328k
Mitsubishi 258k
Volvo 201k
Rivian 32k
Nio 26k (Edit, not 26)

 

[mongo]

Does anyone have any good explanation for this?

NIO is a competitor to TSLA. Thus if NIO goes up, TSLA goes down

China wants TSLA to succeed so they made NIO so shorties would invest and pump it up

Then China took their money and used it to fund GF3 and closed shop on NIO.

 

[sparcs]

The pyromatter video posted earlier shows the foundations for a fairly large building getting built after that parking lot located at the end of GF3. Just past the 2 minute mark in the video link below.

Link to Video

Also a few smaller buildings getting built out near that substation as well that I noticed in this other video.

Link to Video

 

[phnix]

Does anyone have any good explanation for this?

AFAIK from the news, the "ban" is not specifically to Nio, but Nio's new factory wouldn't satisfy the guidelines of new all-electric passenger car project with the capex that they can afford, so Nio canceled the factory plan voluntarily.
Chinese electric carmaker Nio scraps Shanghai factory after losses double

I believe the main reason of Chinese government supports Tesla is to increase competition of Chinese EV market, to stimulate Chinese EV makers to produce EVs with higher standards. The government was unsatisfied by the EV makers producing low standard EVs lying on the subsidies. The "ban" is actually a result of a higher bar that applies to all EV makers.

 

[Fact Checking]

Elon was interviewed by CNN Business yesterday, about Starship:

[CNN Interview] Elon Musk: Starship could take people to orbit within a year : spacex​

He's in a really good mood, and his answers were perfect. No strain visible. The answer to Bridenstine's tweet was golden, yet not overly confrontational. CNN didn't try to insert any FUD and the cut wasn't manipulative.

I'm really glad the stressful time period of 2018 has passed without lasting battle marks, and that the mainstem business media is swinging back a bit from their Elon hate.

Does this bode well for Q3 deliveries?