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

[heltok]

A few different people are claiming that 2020.36.x contains the new rewrite 4D neural networks in shadow mode.

 

[amolina]

Yeah many people claiming that theier car is uploading tons of data

 

[UnknownSoldier]

Damn, glad I got my HW3 retrofit done literally just last week. I'm ready.

 

[mrdoubleb]

It is easy to overstate the European desire for small cars. The area I live in has lots of tradesmen with vans, often sprinters or transits. Other areas I know most households have multiple vehicles, often one is a SUV and another a about town runabout. Lots depends on the availability of off-street parking, suburban areas typically have a garage with off street parking for 1 or 2 cars. The area I live in, many of the front gardens have been paved over for hard standing for 1 or 2 cars. There are lots of mid to large size BMW, MB, Audi and equivalents on the roads around here.

Where my wife used to live in London, where there are rows of terraced flats there was enough parking for one small car between two dwellings (only on street). Most people there obviously do not have cars. Bus, train and tube links were very good so that is what people used, with COVID-19 restrictions public transport is nowhere near as convenient now. Probably a prime area for robotaxi.

Anecdotal evidence is one thing, actual data shows something else. These were the top selling cars in Europe in 2019.
From the Top 10, 3 are C segment (Golf, Focus, Octavia), 4 are even smaller B segment (Clio, Polo, Fiesta, 208), 2 are a supermini/small CUVs (Captur, Sandero) and is a compact CUV (Tiguan).

 

[dww12]

I ride dirt bikes and I know that battery density and electric motors is sent to revolutionize that industry. Everybody complains about the smoke and the noise from Dirtbike. I really think this will help push the movement forward that it’s just another way to get out and experience nature on an EV!

Have you seen the Surron? Those look awesome and fairly cheap, and there are aftermarket controllers to make them even faster.

 

[dww12]

A few different people are claiming that 2020.36.x contains the new rewrite 4D neural networks in shadow mode.

Here is someone with it.

Twitter

 

[Tim S]

What I'm seeing at E*Trade is that if I look at my account I see all my positions correctly with pre-split numbers. If I look at the summary page for all accounts, the numbers reflect zero value for TSLA options. So about 70% of my account value is gone at the moment, at least on the summary page.

Same here on ETrade. The "Complete View" page is missing the value of my options.

 

[dhanson865]

Anecdotal evidence is one thing, actual data shows something else. These were the top selling cars in Europe in 2019.
From the Top 10, 3 are C segment (Golf, Focus, Octavia), 4 are even smaller B segment (Clio, Polo, Fiesta, 208), 2 are a supermini/small CUVs (Captur, Sandero) and is a compact CUV (Tiguan).

Why is Tesla not in the left column?

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

It is good to see 2020.36 being released as there should be some deferred revenue recognition associated with this. Difficult to asses how much - how does speed limit recognition compare to traffic light and stop sign recognition?

Surprised to see it released today, as google calendar says we are still in week 35, but it does raise the possibility that 2020.40 might also be released in Q3 if it is only 4 weeks from now. That would be nice

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Why is Tesla not in the left column?

Because they didn’t sell enough cars in Europe (yet) to make the list. The #25 - Honda - sold 121,000 cars in Europe last year.

 

[tinyrodent]

 

[Mo City]

The first pile driver didn't show up until May 14 and it's not even September yet.

Giga Berlin construction is like a runaway locomotive! Prefab FTW.

 

[Tim S]

Why is Tesla not in the left column?

According to this link, Tesla sold 111,000+ cars in Europe in 2019, so they were probably next on the list after Honda.

Tesla Europe Sales Figures

They will move up every year until they eventually reach #1 after Giga Berlin is operating at full capacity, or after they start making a smaller car.

 

[FireMedic]

Have you seen the Surron? Those look awesome and fairly cheap, and there are aftermarket controllers to make them even faster.

I actually prefer my electric mountain bike when it comes to that FormFactor.
My former Roomate was a rep for a company called Alta that made actual production scale Dirtbikes that were ****ing amazing but they mysteriously got acquired and bankrupted overnight.
They basically destroyed every thing they had except for a few bikes that are still around.
KTM makes the free ride it is pretty amazing and will be better once battery packs and motor modules get better. I’ve got nothing against the sur Ron. But if I’m gonna ride a dirt bike I want to ride a dirt bike and if I want to ride something smaller I ride my electric mountain bike so for me it’s a no go. Just stick with my TE250i for now.

 

[bhtooefr]

I don’t understand how a compact hatchback serves the mission in the next 5 years.

At an incredible 50% growth we hit 3.75M vehicles / year in 5 years.

S3XY CRS demand should be plenty to drive demand to this level. The only thing introducing a compact hatchback would do, is decrease production of one or more of those. This has two consequences

1) Each vehicle in Tesla’s lineup displaces a gas vehicle that burns more carbon than the gas hatchbacks displaced by EV hatchbacks.

2) EV hatchback sales will generate less cash, thereby slowing down factory buildout, which is the most critical aspect of all in furthering the mission.

If the drag coefficient can be kept down (this is a big if!), a narrower compact car will have lower energy requirements, and therefore fewer cells required for the same range. If Tesla's cell-constrained, the mission is furthered by getting more range per cell.

Additionally, if Tesla can get similar profit per cell on a finished lower-priced car, there's no impact on factory buildout.

 

[keydiver]

The problem is that literally anybody can produce a $150K+ EV. The challenge is getting it down to a price point where people can actually afford it.

Audi, BMW, and others have agreed that Tesla did things in the right order, larger, more expensive cars first. The problem I see with anyone trying to copy Tesla's model is that Tesla has already sold $100,000+ EV's to most of the people that were waiting for one. How much market is left?

 

[smorgasbord]

It was interesting watching Cathie Wood try to defend her "portfolio management" strategy of keep no stock above 10% on any real basis.

I found this Warren Buffett video:

In which he says:

If you really know businesses, you shouldn’t own more than 6 of them.
Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea.

Of course, Buffett himself completely missed TSLA, because it's something he doesn't understand. That's OK, we understand.

 

[keydiver]

Re speed of 5 for 1 split conversion in brokerage accounts, so far it is
1. Schwab (all accounts x5)
2. IBKR (not possible to log on)
3. eTard - still showing same pre split numbers.

My Ally account shows no changes yet at all, but my Merrill Lynch account is really messed up. It shows my actual number of shares (pre-split) and the old stock price from closing Friday, but it is multiplying my pre-split number of shares by the new /5 share price, so the value in my account shows down by 80%.

 

[smorgasbord]

My former Roomate was a rep for a company called Alta that made actual production scale Dirtbikes that were ****ing amazing but they mysteriously got acquired and bankrupted overnight.
They basically destroyed every thing they had except for a few bikes that are still around.

Alta is an interesting story, and there's probably some shenanigans involved. I know a bit about this because I had started interviewing with them when they thought they had additional financing arranged. Then Alta was under negotiations to be acquired by Harley Davidson. Somehow that fell apart, the company couldn't survive, and Harley hired a bunch of Alta employees. I didn't end up at Harley, but a person I worked with previously did. Harley appears to have folded the Alta program into their Livewire offering.

 

[PeterJA]

It will be extremely difficult for competition to catch up with Tesla, They design their value added components from Atom level and up versus competition rely on suppliers, all other automakers are basically assembler and they have no control over software design all semiconductor in cars.

Years ago, before Audi cancelled their E-tron and later revived it, I saw a promotional video about Audi's process of choosing a movement sound for the E-tron. Audi hired a Hollywood sound designer, and the video showed him playing around with synthesizers and a foot pedal, making cool space-age sounds. The kicker was a manager boasting that the development process took three years.

I thought then and now that Audi is doomed. In three years, Tesla could (and did) design an entire car... or build three gigafactories.

Many people, especially TSLAQ, underestimate the power of human intelligence. Combined with iron determination, such as Elon has, superior intelligence is hard to beat no matter how deep or dirty your pockets are. Reusable rockets, Mars missions, Starlink, Dojo and the FSD rewrite, megacasting and octovalve, terrawatt-hours of million-mile batteries, RNA microfactories, Autobidder, Virtual Power Plants, tunnels, neural implants... Elon's teams have just begun. Buckle up.