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

[JusRelax]

Done.

Such a weak long.

 

[Fact Checking]

So these are either high-vacuum high-pressure castings

Tesla's GF4 filings suggest that its 5,000 bar high-pressure and vacuum molding of metal loads up to 100 kg, which is then cooled down afterwards and finished up a bit, then inspected for flaws via an X-ray machine.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Is the second installment of the Third Row interview with Elon available for public consumption yet? If so, can someone post a link? Thanks.

Dan

 

[CorneliusXX]

no. it's learned behavior, and a symptom of rape culture that men feel inherently privileged to constantly judge the appearance of women, and vocalize those judgments to those around them. we only believe it's "inherent to the gender" because we marinate in this sexism all our lives.

Dear Mods. In terms of topics that can derail a thread, gender arguments must be near the top. Can you please take a hard line against it.

Not saying it isn't important, just not welcome on an investor thread.

—-

Mod: you are absolutely right. Any gender related posts after this one will be removed.

RSF

 

[dww12]

Done.

I’m about to go to one of those make your own bumper sticker/coffee mug sites.

 

[jerry33]

Well, when the SP is a boring $645.

 

[ZeApelido]

Elon's comments on Autopilot in the second Third Row Podcast are extremely exciting.
This is probably the most important information we have got this week. It sounds like Tesla is almost done with the complicated pathway to Autonomy.
This could well be the game changer that dramatically reduces disengagement rates and makes people finally start to believe the Robotaxi story.

Elon Musk: "There’s quite a significant foundational re-write in the Tesla Autopilot system that’s almost complete.
Instead of having planning, perception, image recognition all being separate, they are all being combined.
Effectively the neural net is absorbing more and more of the problem.
Beyond if you see an image, is this a car or not, its what do you do from that information.
3D labelling is the next thing when a car can go through a scene with 8 cameras and paint a path and label the path in 3D.
This is probably a 2-3 orders of magnitude improvement in labelling efficiency and labelling accuracy. "

I'm not one to toot my own horn (wait I did that yesterday?) err...

But I nailed it! 2 years ago LOL

[Speculation] Tesla going to use End-to-End Deep Learning to Control Vehicles

Most people have assumed that Tesla will use some deep convolutional nets for Tesla Vision, but not for end-to-end actual control of the car. Indeed it can be seen as dangerous.

However the lead of Tesla's AI division, Andrej Karpathy, recently wrote this blog post. An interesting take on the future of software. The example I wanted to focus on was the robotics example:



A self-driving Tesla is essentially a robot. All those blocks are what are done now for robots / self driving. Andrej is clearly insinuating that eventually Software 2.0 will take over all of self-driving code, but is he hinting that would be the case even in the next year or so at Tesla?

A person who recently had a discussion about this with Andrej also wrote a blog post. Again very clearly arguing that deep nets (or something similar) taking over the entire program.

It seems Andrej believes this. Will he implement this belief at Tesla? If so, will it be sooner than we think?

 

[JRP3]

Such a weak long.

Longs still need beer money

 

[ZeApelido]

Longs still need beer money

I live in the Bay Area so that covers a stick of gum.

 

[TradingInvest]

The 2nd question isn’t totally 100% stupid. Tesla certainly does not have any need to raise any more cash through a new share issuance, BUT one could make the case that it would benefit investors to some extent to raise enough cash to pay off all debt - thereby erasing the ~$700 million in interest costs Tesla is currently paying annually and improving EPS. However Tesla management likely (and rightly) thinks that the share dilution of ~7% or more that this would have is a worse outcome for shareholders, especially when the amount of debt is becoming increasingly inconsequential given the profitability trajectory the company is now on.

Sure $700 million less in interest costs would be great for 2020 results (eliminating $175 million in cost per quarter), but in the next couple of years when profits reach the mid single billions, increasing to tens of billions by decade end, that one time 7% share dilution will be the equivalent of tens of billions dollars worth in extra shares outstanding, the value of which would have otherwise been held by existing pre-dilution shareholders.

So not entirely stupid, but still not a good question, as it is one that is focused on short term benefit at the sacrifice of much larger long term value.

For Tesla, issuing stock to pay down debt would be a costly mistake from long term view.

 

[Thekiwi]

NYU Professor revisiting his Tesla analysis

Cliffs: He sold his shares, based on 25% growth rate over 10 years. Imo he is still valueing Tesla as a car company...

Here is his blog post for those that prefer to read it in 2 minutes (rather than a 17 minute video).

Musings on Markets: An Ode to Luck: Revisiting my Tesla Valuation

Aswath Damodaran has a large following amongst value investors, and he himself says he uses very conservative assumptions in his models. I think this post from him where he uses a mid-level price target $427, and his reasonings for it, is actually fairly good news for someone with such conservative assumptions, and it also is a good basis to completely demolish most of the bears arguments from someone who isn’t perceived as a Tesla Bull. He notes positive points that many analysts miss (such as the convertible debt situation), and notes that he reluctantly sold today. He even goes out of his way to say he could tweak his assumptions and get a $1,168 price target, but it would seem to be outside his conservative nature.

Could tweaking the assumptions give me a value higher than the price? Of course! I could raise my end year revenues to $200 billion ( plausible in a market this size) and give Tesla an 18% operating margin (perhaps by calling it a tech company) and arrive at a value of $ 1,168 per share, but that to me is pushing the limits of possibility, and one reason why I hold back on simple what-if analyses.

...

Reluctantly, I sold my Tesla holdings at $640 this morning, and as with my buy order in June, I don’t expect immediate or even near-term gratification. The momentum is strong, and the mood is delirious, implying that Tesla’s stock price could continue to go up. That said, I am not tempted to stay longer, though, because I came to play the investing game, not the trading game, and gauging momentum is not a skill set that I possess. I will miss the excitement of having Tesla in my portfolio, but I have a feeling that this is more a separation than a permanent parting, and that at the right price, Tesla will return to my portfolio in the future.

 

[JRP3]

I live in the Bay Area so that covers a stick of gum.

Mogen David Pomegranate - at Drizly.com

 

[jkirkwood001]

Updated marketcap:

• TSLA now worth more than half of Toyota (hey, it's progress!)
• TSLA now worth $24.4 B (27%) more than VW (8 months ago, VW was worth almost 3x Tesla)
• TSLA now worth more than GM + Ford + Fiat-Chrysler together - effectively, more than the rest of the US auto industry combined
• TSLA is worth more than twice both BMW and Daimler, the latter of which has lost 11.4% marketcap per year over the last 3 years (I told you, Lewis Hamilton, get out of F1 and into Formula E if you care about the environment!)

 

[rsm287]

Look at the top comment on this clip, it is all. LOL (related to "what is battery day, Jim?")

It's batteries Jim, but not as we know them!

 

[Thekiwi]

For Tesla, issuing stock to pay down debt would be a costly mistake from long term view.

Yeah, that’s what I said in my post to which you are replying.

 

[MC3OZ]

Can This Image Confirm Tesla Model Y Will Have Single Cast Body Frame?

That article contains this quote:-

According to what we have researched on the subject, casting can limit high volume production. Tesla probably found a way to dodge this limitation. If that is the case, the company may have not only applied an innovative car body manufacturing method. It may have also revolutionized casting as a whole.

I'm curious what the peak rate of casting would be, and the initial ramp on Model Y might partially be dependent on tuning this casting process.

Looking at the picture of the machine, the top is unobstructed hence a robot arm could pick up the mould containing the cast metal and place that elsewhere, then another mould can be dropped its place, so higher throughput via multiple moulds might be possible, if that was necessary...

I am sure Tesla has a good solution, I would love to see a video of this machine in action, but I suspect we will not see that for sometime.. they don't want to give the competition too many clues.

 

[MC3OZ]

Yes. But then there is cost. Starlink, like all satellite services WILL have bandwidth constraints, and thus probably either data caps or expensive plans. It isn’t obvious that Starlink 5G backhaul, which would use a lot of continuous bandwidth, would be cheaper than fiber.

OK in that case it is probably only a good option for 5G in sparsely populated remote areas, those areas would also correspond to long fibre runs,,,, 100s of miles in some cases.. so they probably already use wireless or satellite internet.

 

[neezer]

Love the thumbnail:

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Yeah, that’s what I said in my post to which you are replying.

I do believe we'll see that steep cost of refinance move down dramatically this year.

 

[bzbee]

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