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

[MikeAtkinson]

Labor Day (should be called No-Labor Day?), site mostly clear of standing water, some geopile work going on.

It looks like this central area is about that of Gigafactory Shanghai, and that the buildings will have the same footprint. Shanghai mostly uses 2 storied building, (sometimes 3 and a few parts single story), guessing that Austin will mostly be single story like Berlin. So production will be less in this first phase unless improvements in volumetric efficiency.

My guess is improved volumetric efficiency (more use of casting & cybertruck) leads to similar production levels to Shanghai.

 

[Drumheller]

Confession time:

Last week Monday I thought about selling some. I didn't and, instead, bought a few more shares Tuesday morning. First purchase in 6 months.

Last week I test drove a model y. I did another test drive today and am strongly thinking of buying one.

So the peak and the sudden change in model y delivery times might be related.

I will warn you if I think of buying any islands.

 

[Thekiwi]

Strongly disagree. Range is still an issue, especially in the lower priced vehicles, and EV's need to completely dominate ICE's in all aspects to truly win. If there aren't significant density improvements shown at battery day or at least a clear path shown in the near future it's going to be a large disappointment. Cost/density are the key drivers of the technology, production volume is just replicating factories.

I think the recent "cancellation" of the model Y SR is good news on this front, as Elon said anything below 250 miles range was unacceptable range (the model 3 SR+ is now listed as 250 miles range). Wouldn't surprise me to see a 250 mile software locked LR model Y become the model Y entry level in 2021 - with a post purchase software upgrade to 322 miles. eventually can see 300 miles being the entry level range for 3 & Y, with the eventual model 2/hatch being the only shorter range option.

 

[Tim S]

Got an email today from the Tesla Owners Club of NYS looking for volunteers to help with the end of quarter rush at the most popular delivery location in NYS, Mt Kisco, starting this Wednesday the 9th. They're looking for volunteers all day every day, not just weekends. That's 3 full weeks of EOQ deliveries. Gonna be a helluva quarter!

 

[Artful Dodger]

(Disclaimer: I read way too much into Elon's tweets )

Do you really though? What's that pinned tweet about passing the Great Filter?

What if the S&P Committee is the Great Filter, and we by-pass them?

Cheers!

 

[printf42]

Do you really though? What's that pinned tweet about passing the Great Filter?

What if the S&P Committee is the Great Filter, and we by-pass them?

Cheers!

I read that as “we must pass the GF” as in GF1, either means we now only build Tera Factories, or something would happen to GF1.

 

[Artful Dodger]

By having a 5B buffer, or roughly 12.5m shares that can go into the market on-demand, it can tame down the volatility going at either direction.

Eh? How does Tesla selling more shares into the market tame a downward move?

The only lever they have is to sell into an upward move. It makes little sense to sell on the way down when they don't need cash.

 

[Green Pete]

Do you really though? What's that pinned tweet about passing the Great Filter?

What if the S&P Committee is the Great Filter, and we by-pass them?

Cheers!

Given musks reason for Mars colonization being to save humanity and "great filter" being a phrase used to describe progression of life on a planet to various stages I think it's far more likely to be a covid reference than s and p. But given musks feelings on covid-19 I think it's just a SpaceX and mars tweet.

 

[SPadival]

Model Y LR wait time in US (h/t someone on Twitter)

 

[Chunky Jr.]

About a month ago there was only one or two Model Y's that I would see in our neighborhood. Now I see a bunch of them every day, including the one I bought a few weeks ago. I'm not surprised they are building a huge backlog for them.

 

[dhanson865]

I think the recent "cancellation" of the model Y SR is good news on this front, as Elon said anything below 250 miles range was unacceptable range (the model 3 SR+ is now listed as 250 miles range). Wouldn't surprise me to see a 250 mile software locked LR model Y become the model Y entry level in 2021 - with a post purchase software upgrade to 322 miles. eventually can see 300 miles being the entry level range for 3 & Y, with the eventual model 2/hatch being the only shorter range option.

Elon says that but I'd be very happy with a Model Y SR AWD and if one existed I might have already pulled the trigger. Even a Model Y SR RWD might pull me in. I don't care what the range is. I'll drive it less than 60 miles a day 99% of the time.

Of course he is saying 250 miles range is unacceptable for a robotaxi, he isn't saying that about drivers like me that would buy the car as is no matter the range. Literally if you offered me a Model Y with 200 mile range I'd buy it and still never charge it to full.

 

[gabeincal]

I’m not quite sure what is going on but Model Y NA is showing an estimated delivery of 7-11 weeks. Very interesting.

Edit: AWD is 7-11 weeks, Performance is 2-4 weeks.

When I ordered ours on Aug 8, it was 4-8 weeks, then became 3-7 weeks and last week it was 2-6 if I remember correctly. I’m still waiting for my VIN...

My theory, based on the VIN increments in the community spreadsheet is that Fremont should now have an operating megacast machine and the newer single piece rear underbody cars should be coming off the line.

I will report back with findings of course.

Also should be able able to swing over one of these days and fly the drone to confirm visually

 

[MC3OZ]

Not according to this contemporaneous Reuters article (Dated 11Dec2013):





The short answer is that the Committee can do anything they want. Yes, they have a written set of rules, but they also get to make the rules or change the rules at any time and the same Committee that decides who gets in writes the rules. Historically speaking, they have created rules that change whether companies will be added or not, but made those rules not retro-active so as not to kick out any existing companies (eg, dual stock voting tiers keeping SNAP out but leaving Alphabet in).

1) I'm warming to the idea that the $5B raise facility may be to allow the S&P committee to kick off the process.
Say an additional weighting of 10% adding 3% each month, with the plan subject to variation.
With the Tesla having the ability to issue more shares to cap peaks, and the index funds ability to buy dips, that is a combination that might lead to fairly stable price action.. the S&P 500 committee can do whatever they want, so why not do this?

My only other 2 reasons for the $5B raise facility are:-

2) Opportunistic - taking the ability to raise capital at good prices.

3) Capex spending will ramp up after Battery Day.

I would not discount 3) .. the early timing might simply opportunistic...

If the mission and future profits require a fairly rapid ramp of additional capex, I think we will get that.

if I have to pick a number as the most likely reason, I'm still going with 1), 2) & 3) are secondary benefits... so all 3 being true to sdodme extent would not surprise me.

 

[Ipe]

Eh? How does Tesla selling more shares into the market tame a downward move?

The only lever they have is to sell into an upward move. It makes little sense to sell on the way down when they don't need cash.

They can stop selling shares to tame a downward move.

 

[gabeincal]

Some more info on the 8 gigacast machines’ output from Reddit:

“The giga-casting of an aluminum Model Y frame will further reduce its weight, I'd guess ~250 kg frame weight.

This means 73,100 kg of casting capacity per day per gigapress = ~292 cars/day/press, and with 8 presses that's ~2,340 cars/day, or ~853k cars/year.

But those are peak rates, with 90% capacity utilization we get around 770k cars/year GigaBerlin capacity.

Which is 200%+ of Tesla's entire 2019 output in a single Gigafactory - crazy growth!

 

[Artful Dodger]

They can stop selling shares to tame a downward move.

Won't matter a wit when there were 17,185,166+ shares of TSLA sold short on a day like Friday. That's more that $5B of shorting in one day alone, and Tesla only planned to sell $5B total.

Shorts will ALWAYS pick up the slack. You're not thinking about the scale involved here.

 

[MC3OZ]

In relation to VW licensing technology from Tesla FSD is one left field possibility that just occurred to me.

At this stage I think VW and Tesla are just staying friendly and keeping communication channel open.

One reason to keep them open is if Tesla makes rapid progress on FSD and VW then decides to license the technology.

This can't be done quickly, perhaps it is very hard to do, So it is a long shot.... but a long shot with a potentially big upside for both parties.

 

[Oveeus]

Eh? How does Tesla selling more shares into the market tame a downward move?

The only lever they have is to sell into an upward move. It makes little sense to sell on the way down when they don't need cash.

High volatility implies high degree of speculation. Large funds could care less about not having TSLA that skyrocketed 10x in a year, their mission is to have a dependable return for decades to come when they are investing for things like sovereign funds/pension.

The lack of liquidity or the amount of shares in the market is what I suspect making TSLA going up and downs in such a violent matter.

Let's say Tesla is looking to raise at $500 a share roughly. When it suddenly shoots up to $550, it could sell some at 530. And when it drops to 450, it sells a volume at 470.

The SP is a calculation between bids and asks adjusted to their volume. Say for TSLA, there are 26 shares from A-Z, with most of the stocks locked into holding, all the volume on the market may be generated from exchanges of share A-F... and with Tesla now holding a-c, it can effectively manipulate the SP (to a degree... at least give time to the market).

It might not sound the smartest thing to sell at drop, but if the goal is to slow the fall/tame the raise to an acceptable degree, it's perfectly valid and exactly how the new offering's structure can legally do.

 

[Tslynk67]

Opened at just above $400 in Germany, dropped-back a few $ now, but still up 1.2%

Does it mean anything? Who knows, but I prefer it to being down!

 

[Joesantelli]

Tesla 397 in Germany