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

[LJS22]

How many model Y’s has Tesla sold..I’m at a service center in Austin today and have seen 7 get driven off the lot by customers in just over an hour. New ones keep arriving to take their spot too

 

[Curt Renz]

Craig Johnson is a managing director and technical strategist at Piper Sandler (formerly Piper Jaffray). He was a regular guest of mine on my old TV show, and still sends me his newsletters. In early 2013 he recommended TSLA, which led to my first purchase at $38. His auto analyst colleague Alexander Potter has a BUY rating on TSLA.

This morning in his monthly "Informed Investor" booklet, Craig noted that TSLA is his top choice among major auto manufacturers, and reiterated his Tesla comment from last week:

TSLA—Shares are trading in record-high territory after surpassing resistance off the February ’20 highs; above the rising 10-/30-week WMAs; constructive/confirming RS trend and impressive TechniGrade ranking; add to positions, as we suspect the stock has more room to run.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I want to take a moment to compliment everyone for the outstanding comments today. It's been a very worthwhile discussion.

Thanks to all who participate.

Cheers!

 

[vikings123]

How many model Y’s has Tesla sold..I’m at a service center in Austin today and have seen 7 get driven off the lot by customers in just over an hour. New ones keep arriving to take their spot too

I realize VINs are not a good measure but they are definitely useful for estimation purposes. I read somewhere that people have reported VINs in the 21XXX range.

 

[LJS22]

max pain is 985? I’m excited for our M&M friends to come help us. They owe us a few hundred dollars

 

[Tslynk67]

How many model Y’s has Tesla sold..I’m at a service center in Austin today and have seen 7 get driven off the lot by customers in just over an hour. New ones keep arriving to take their spot too

They allowed to do that in TX? Or maybe you can take delivery, but you're not allowed to buy. Not quite sure the logic there though...

 

[ZeApelido]

To accommodate new battery manufacturing equipment and R&D space (known as ROADRUNNER), the Project proposes to construct an additional floor area of approximately 21,485 square feet at the second floor (covering a portion of the central space that is open to the second floor roof – see Figure 4) and to add an additional, smaller approximately 8,260 square-foot third floor above (see Figure 5).
​

It is interesting that they are adding the 3rd floor to accommodate the RoadRunner equipment. Maybe it is some tall machine that is gravity fed materials from above. But also note in the recent GF1 satellite photos, it looks like they have removed a portion of the roof there also. Possibly to install similar equipment that is taller than the existing GF1 factory. So we may have 2 RoadRunner sites running by September. Can anyone find recent building permits for GF1?

Bill Wright tweeted that it was for a new battery line.

But not whether it was a Panasonic or Tesla line...

 

[Knightshade]

They're not part of the study, but the study finds... Yeah, right...

Bit misleading- they explain it in the story... 35/50 states registration info is available without MFG permission... in 15 it's not... Tesla does not give them permission.

So they still have data on 70% of US states to send surveys to owners, just not the other 30%.

Unless there's a reason to think there's a big quality difference between the 70% states and the 30% states that shouldn't matter a ton to the results.

 

[AZRI11]

Yeah they just featured this on CNBC. It seems JDP don't have any data for Tesla via the usual survey, but somehow found Tesla is the worst of all.

Google search "who pays J.D. Power"
JD Power is a paid award, companies pay a hefty amount for them to do "surveys" on behalf of the company. Yes, it's all voluntarily supplied customer data (so there's a lot of confirmation bias), and a blown engine is as bad for quality as too few cupholders. Each is simply one reported issue.

 

[LJS22]

They allowed to do that in TX? Or maybe you can take delivery, but you're not allowed to buy. Not quite sure the logic there though...

Yea you just take delivery here, all paper work will have been done prior.

 

[StealthP3D]

They allowed to do that in TX? Or maybe you can take delivery, but you're not allowed to buy. Not quite sure the logic there though...

It will make perfect sense once you put on a ten-gallon hat...

 

[elasalle]

just received email reminding to Upgrade from AP to FSD

 

[copyhacker]

... as recommended by Clayton Christiansen in The Innovator's Dilemma. I'm not aware of any company successfully doing it.

GM could have done this with the Saturn brand. They still could resurrect it as their EV nameplate a la Polestar. They won’t, though.

 

[mekberg]

just received email reminding to Upgrade from AP to FSD

SAME. Currently struggling whether to buy FSD for 3k or more TSLA. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Mateo7]

Regardless of short-term noise, consider this: I picked up a Model Y Performance on March 26 (just as Covid shut everything down). No issues at delivery and no problems since. The screen even seems to work. My wife greatly prefers the Y over our Model 3. Spacious, power lift-gate, higher point of view, ever-improving safety features. And I appreciate the stealthy sports-cars performance. Couldn't be happier with the purchase.

 

[tinm]

Here's more nonsense to add to the newsfeed:

From CNBC:
Tesla lags auto industry in quality, finds new J.D. Power study

Seriously: I would love to speak with even one Tesla owner who has ever spoken with, emailed, answered a survey solicitation, or otherwise engaged with J.D. Power and Associates with regard to their Tesla purchase.

As far as I know, Tesla is one of the few OEMs who is not a client of J.D. Power and Associates. I have asked JDP and in fact have interviewed some people who work there, and they won't say. Does anyone know any different?

Not that I doubt for a moment that a number of Tesla owners are encountering quality issues with their new deliveries; heck, just scan the threads on TMC. But who's taking to JDP&A, and how?

 

[tinm]

Those 11 people must drive with their back up camera on

I have done so since 2013. It's how I roll.

 

[jerry33]

Not that I doubt for a moment that a number of Tesla owners are encountering quality issues with their new deliveries; heck, just scan the threads on TMC.

The problem here is that you can't scan the threads for owners without problems because most never join this or any other forum. There's a million Teslas out there. Just one percent would still be a sizable number. Then there's the complaints on the threads from those who don't even own a Tesla, and those who do but post their issues multiple times.

 

[Tslynk67]

I have done so since 2013. It's how I roll.

Really, I find it super-distracting. But that's one of the pleasures of having a Tesla - we can choose what we prefer

 

[Knightshade]

Seriously: I would love to speak with even one Tesla owner who has ever spoken with, emailed, answered a survey solicitation, or otherwise engaged with J.D. Power and Associates with regard to their Tesla purchase.

As far as I know, Tesla is one of the few OEMs who is not a client of J.D. Power and Associates. I have asked JDP and in fact have interviewed some people who work there, and they won't say. Does anyone know any different?

Not that I doubt for a moment that a number of Tesla owners are encountering quality issues with their new deliveries; heck, just scan the threads on TMC. But who's taking to JDP&A, and how?

Again- this is explained in the link.

Why do people keep commenting on a story they clearly have not read?

35 states allow JD Power to get new owner registration info without needing MFG permission.

That's who they send the surveys to.

In the other 15 states, everyone except Tesla gives permission- so they send new owners surveys in those states too for everyone but Tesla.

“Unlike other manufacturers, Tesla doesn’t grant us permission to survey its owners in 15 states where it is required,” Doug Betts, president of the automotive division at J.D. Power, said in a statement.

“However, we were able to collect a large enough sample of surveys from owners in the other 35 states and, from that base, we calculated Tesla’s score.”