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

[Webeevdrivers]

I did not try this hard. Simple preheating works for me. I live in NJ and the winter months are very cold (at least the dreaded polar vortex). If there is more issue, you can try the vent option as you are thinking above; but for me preheating is fine. Most times I carry hand gloves anyway.
Regarding touchscreen, it is like using you phone, you can either buy a special touch glove or you just take one off to touch and keep the other on to hold the steering. To be honest I never had to worry about any of this.

Actually that is helpful coming from someone who experiences a real winter. Thanks.

Another question. If they did come out with a heated steering wheel later I wonder if it could be added after the fact. Opinions?

 

[Pezpunk]

Yah I suppose. Do you find the steering wheel actually heats up though or is it still pretty cold. We northerners get pretty attached to our toasty warm steering wheels. Not sure he’ll be convinced.

Is there a reason Tesla doesn’t do a heated steering wheel?

My Model S has a heated steering wheel. Gets quite hot actually!

 

[jerry33]

Actually that is helpful coming from someone who experiences a real winter. Thanks.

Another question. If they did come out with a heated steering wheel later I wonder if it could be added after the fact. Opinions?

This was possible on the S, though I haven’t done it. Needs a steering wheel replacement and some wiring.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

This was possible on the S, though I haven’t done it. Needs a steering wheel replacement and some wiring.

I wonder who he would contact if he wanted to confirm the possibility of an upgrade. Just general number or maybe a specific email. Or maybe send Elon a tweet. (Kidding).

 

[SW2Fiddler]

. PR is press release, public relations or Puerto Rican.

Plaid Roadster! “FrunkPuppy kept tweeting his referral code to gain a PR.”

Re summons. (Non Tesla owner here).

A.. is this true...

Thanks in advance.

Absolutely not. It’s spelled “Summon.” The plural is a legal document.

 

[EVNow]

I wish he'd stop using phrases like "cease to exist" :Þ That said, this tweet:

View attachment 465220

This is one of those things that is good to tell owners/customers why the price is increasing, but bad for investor sentiment.

Tesla cannot continue to lose money. To achieve our goal of environmental sustainability, Tesla must be financially sustainable or we will cease to exist.
​

His email about how the newly raised money will only last 2(?) quarters sent the SP $30 down, below $200.

 

[Steve m]

I think there is still a healthy chunk of risk ahead for tesla which should be reflected in the stock price. Keep in mind VW had $242 B of revenue last year and is valued at about $85 B. Tesla achieves $153 B, so what? What market cap does that justify? With traditional auto margins and assuming that growth stops there maybe 60-70B market cap, so more than today which is in the 40's but not a ten bagger. For a 10x jump up you need bigger revenue or bigger margins. Certainly possible, but probably not from just becoming a large vanilla automaker. And it's not a given Tesla can get to 153 B that quickly either there is big risk of needing to ramp slower due to constraints in their engineering resources or ability to scale production, especially battery cell production. I'm just pointing out you can have a fundamentals based short thesis (I personally don't) it doesn't have to be a momentum or fud fueled one like tslaq

To make 153 B of vehicles how many new factories will they need? How will they fund these as well as the increased float of materials and inventory? Even if all can be built at Chinese speed when do they need to break ground?

To sell 2.1M 3/Y how do you increase demand to that level, is just the lower asp enough or do you need advertising and other increased costs? What's the uncertainty in it and the cost beyond just lower asp? (Ie new service centers)

To me 140ish B in automotive revenue seems like a hard goal to reach within 5 years.

Tsla went from 4B to 24B in 4 years. A multiplier of 6x. Do that again and you are at 148B.

Product pipeline includes Model Y. Pickup truck and trnucks for the transportation industry. Don't forget the energy storage business. Don't forget the sale of apps and streaming services.

Tesla behavior indicates when vendors fail to meet their needs they vertically integrate ether organically or by buying other companies.

At this point the only limitation to their growth seems to be how much free cash flow they can generate and use to fund growth or raise from stock and bond sales.

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

Which reminds me of the fact that Tesla teams up with FCA for the European Emission scheme.

Except this is a false equivalence. Tesla uses that money to expand and sell more EVs. FCA (or any other legacy automaker for that matter) only sells EVs to allow them to sell even more ICE.

 

[EVNow]

Yah I suppose. Do you find the steering wheel actually heats up though or is it still pretty cold. We northerners get pretty attached to our toasty warm steering wheels. Not sure he’ll be convinced.

Is there a reason Tesla doesn’t do a heated steering wheel?

With an early small battery Leaf, heated steering wheel was very useful (2011 Leafs actually didn't have them, though). Saved a lot of energy using heated st wheel instead of full cabin resistive heating.

With the larger battery, not sure it matters that much.

Anyway, as others have noted gloves can be a work around. Lots of gloves now are made to work with touch screens as it is a common concern for using smart phones.

 

[EVNow]

I wonder how it feels to drive around in that 500e (or the Ioniq from a few posts back) knowing that the CARB credits earned with that car made it possible to sell some more Chrysler gas guzzlers. Stuff that is too cheap always comes at a price.

This logic can be used against anything that earns regulatory credits.

To me its a question of how serious the OEM is. If they regularly talk ill of EVs (like FCA) I'd not buy their cars. Some other companies are at least making some attempt at being serious (Nissan, VW, GM …). Not everyone can afford a $40k car - so having $100/month EV is very useful. Better than $100/month ICE.

 

[Toumal]

Meanwhile in Shortsville: "TSLA earnings are a complete mystery"

Of course they are.

No link because I don't want to link to alleged stock manipulators.

 

[KSilver2000]

I wish Elon would stop saying “lose money”.

Twitter

Is that a hint as to what the Q3 ER might look like?

 

[Tslynk67]

If only for the fact that Overlord Musk would not have the time to post such detailed posts on the regular.

Could be a damn good test of Tesla's/Elon's AI bot tho'

 

[Steve m]

Did he used to be a character on Northern Exposure?

There was a bumper sticker up there that talked about the unbalanced ratio of men to woman... The sticker stated...

Alaska where the odds are good but the goods are odd.

In my experience the Northern Exposure characters were a good deal milder then those in reality.

 

[ZsoZso]

Re summons. (Non Tesla owner here). I have read about a couple issues and also a few comments that indicate it will continually improve the more people use it as the “neural net” learns as it goes.

A.. is this true.
B.. if so is it constantly being downloaded to the fleet or just on software revisions.

Thanks in advance.

When a Nerual Net "learns" that process has 3 distinct steps (unlike humans who do these simultaneously):
1. Data collection
2. NN training
3. Application / refresh of the trained net (download into the car)
Tesla explained on the autonomy-day presentations that their fleet does data collection (step 1) all the time for specific scenarios that they flag to the cars that are "interesting" for the next cycle of training. So the cars upload data to Tesla all the time for #1. Once enough data is collected, Tesla performs #2 on their servers, then send out an update to the cars with the new NN (step 3).

So:
A) yes (with the detailed explanation of meaning above)
B) Downloaded only when you get the notification in your car that a new version of software is available -- can happen fairly often, i.e. only few days between at busy times when they are improving a new feature such as Smart Summon recently.

 

[Tslynk67]

Last summer in CA you could score a Fiat 500e for $59/month nothing down for 24 months.

No wonder Sergio kept telling people not to buy them!

 

[KSilver2000]

I have a nephew currently driving a BMW who is considering the model 3. Like many of us in cooler climates he is curious if there has been any discussion on a heated steering wheel for the model 3.

What say yee.

I don’t think the 3 and Y, which are Tesla’s lower priced cars, will ever have these additional amenities that are in the S and X.
No heated steering wheel, no self closing doors, no heated seats, wiper blade defrosters, washer nozzle heaters, and the once available ventilated seats (which seems to make sporadic appearances).

At least I hope the Y will have a power rear hatch.

 

[jerry33]

I don’t think the 3 and Y, which are Tesla’s lower priced cars, will ever have these additional amenities that are in the S and X.
No heated steering wheel, no self closing doors, no heated seats, wiper blade defrosters, washer nozzle heaters, and the once available ventilated seats

The S didn’t have these items when it first came out either. It took a few years. No reason that I can see for the 3 and Y not to get them later as well.

 

[mongo]

I wish he'd stop using phrases like "cease to exist" :Þ That said, this tweet:

View attachment 465220

Reminds me of an older tweet (from Q2 '18 I think), which for some reason I can't find but remember clearly, where Musk made a comment roughly along the lines of, "It's a legitimate criticism. We've been around for long enough, and it's about time we start returning profits."

Anyone remember what I'm talking about? Anyone able to find it?

It was an internal e-mail that Elon also Tweeted in graphical form June 2018: Twitter

"Given that Tesla has not made an annual profit in the almost 15 years since we have existed, profit, is obviously not what motivates us. What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable. That is a valid and fair criticism of Tesla’s history to date."

 

[UncaNed]

With an early small battery Leaf, heated steering wheel was very useful (2011 Leafs actually didn't have them, though). Saved a lot of energy using heated st wheel instead of full cabin resistive heating.

With the larger battery, not sure it matters that much.

Anyway, as others have noted gloves can be a work around. Lots of gloves now are made to work with touch screens as it is a common concern for using smart phones.

There's always aftermarket cigar lighter plug steering wheel heaters that wrap around to warm it up. Wish I could have got a heated wheel as a stand-alone add-on when I bought my Model X.