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

[OrthoSurg]

There isn't going to be a Model Y that costs half of the current Model Y.

Sorry I meant battery pack cost at 50% of the price of the actual one.

 

[ZachF]

Yes this interview was cringe
The part where Jack Ma says « Mars doesn’t interest me, I’m just coming back from there. » was not funny at all. Dismissive.

I thought Jack Ma was richer being the head of Alibab, well 28th place makes me feel better :X

I don't remember exactly what number he was, but it's between 15th and 30th. There's also large daily churn in that area too.

 

[Open Interest]

Back in the '90s, lo those many years ago, when I worked at Qualcomm, I was always amazed that the company would beat the wall street estimates and then QCOM would go down, because "they didn't beat the estimates as much as we thought they would!" I think this is now being applied to TSLA. Wall St says 141k, Troy says 144k (just from memory), what's the bet that if deliveries are fewer than150k the stock will drop on the next trading day, along with fake news saying that Tesla missed expectations (not estimates). But hold anyway.

The “whisper” number

 

[ggr]

Everything "Shown" at Battery Day could have been done much better in a packaged presentation just released on Youtube. Or a webcast.

I wasn't there, although wish I could have been. But I understand that the attendees did get to do a tour of the factory after the presentation. And after signing NDAs and agreeing not to take photos or videos.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Musk's choice to not do a better presentation. Musk's choice to tweet "very insane" in advance of battery day. There was no "very insane".

In the long run it doesn't matter. Tesla seems on the right track.

It was insanely insane.

In case you missed some of the details, battery costs will drop by more than 50%. That makes fossil fuel uncompetitive for the vast majority of the economy.

The presentation was to announce that there is a clear and known end date to the oil and gas industry.

Insane.

 

[S3XY]

Very interesting:

Tesla Cybertruck Makes Surprise Appearance At Fremont Production Line

What is Cybertruck doing at the Fremont production line ?

I think the question should be why did Elon drive his Cybertruck inside the Fremont plant? Maybe to inspire the workers? Other than that, no news here.

 

[S3XY]

More from Munro:

Mostly a push for support for three wheel vehicles.

Elon already said he has no interest without having a fourth wheel.

 

[RED MDL3]

I wasn't there, although wish I could have been. But I understand that the attendees did get to do a tour of the factory after the presentation. And after signing NDAs and agreeing not to take photos or videos.

Some large investors got a tour. The majority were first escorted out. Although I enjoyed seeing Semi, Roasdster, ATV, and Cybertruck up close, the presentation was better via the web. From my car I couldn’t see the stage and large screens didn’t sync well with audio.

 

[ggr]

Thinking about 4d chess... 4d because of the time element. I believe GF3 is currently not producing because they're doing annual maintenance on the existing lines and re-tuning. In the past, when they've done that at Fremont, it's always been at the beginning of the quarter; Tesla has always been trying to maximize the quarterly result. Now, there are two kinds of people , those who already know that the Q3 production is going to be much higher than Q2, and those who don't. By taking a small hit in Q3 production, I assume because Elon/Zach already know it's "good enough", from GF3, but guaranteeing to hit the ground running in Q4, which is traditionally the best-selling quarter of the year too, I think they are betting on some more mind-blowing results in Q4. Just me thinking out loud, not advice.

For @Krugerrand:
10 goto 20
20 buy TSLA
30 goto 10

 

[ZachF]

It was insanely insane.

In case you missed some of the details, battery costs will drop by more than 50%. That makes fossil fuel uncompetitive for the vast majority of the economy.

The presentation was to announce that there is a clear and known end date to the oil and gas industry.

Insane.

Yep.

This is where the given numbers lead. Wall Street analysts aren't smart enough to connect the dots though.

 

[phantasms]

Some large investors got a tour. The majority were first escorted out. Although I enjoyed seeing Semi, Roasdster, ATV, and Cybertruck up close, the presentation was better via the web. From my car I couldn’t see the stage and large screens didn’t sync well with audio.

As awesome as the day was I'm so glad I didn't drive from NY for that. lol

 

[Tslynk67]

Back in the '90s, lo those many years ago, when I worked at Qualcomm, I was always amazed that the company would beat the wall street estimates and then QCOM would go down, because "they didn't beat the estimates as much as we thought they would!" I think this is now being applied to TSLA. Wall St says 141k, Troy says 144k (just from memory), what's the bet that if deliveries are fewer than150k the stock will drop on the next trading day, along with fake news saying that Tesla missed expectations (not estimates). But hold anyway.

Indeed, total BS. One reason why I'd like to offload my October 16 calls this week, but really need $460 to get the return I would like...

 

[dc_h]

Yeah I don't expect THREE $25k models. Surely whatever they come up with in China/Germany will make it here. Just too bad I'll be needing a Tesla long before they arrive. Oh well, guess I can settle for a Y.

It will be interesting if Franz comes up with a design and the local design centers just build out the low level design to meet local market requirements, if Franz and team come up with regional designs and the local teams do the low level design, or if they'll let the local design teams run with the entire design. I would expect at least some input to follow some Tesla design principles, but hope they push as much as possible down to local markets. Speed to market, fast fails and creating new global opportunities with local solutions.

 

[Robocop]

2017 is the global record year for new auto sales. In that year, VW had 10.6 million, Toyota 10.3 million, GM 9 million. So presumably, within the decade, Tesla is planning to sell twice as many cars as the previous record in history. Just food for thought. Makes it seem a little more achievable in that it is 2x a record, instead of 40x their current pace,

Edit: VW sold 10.97M in 2019. So more for them, but the year was less overall. I believe this is the record, unless some previous decade sold more, which I doubt.

 

[JRD1]

Some large investors got a tour. The majority were first escorted out. Although I enjoyed seeing Semi, Roasdster, ATV, and Cybertruck up close, the presentation was better via the web. From my car I couldn’t see the stage and large screens didn’t sync well with audio.

That was my understanding as well - only large institutional investors. Gali said he somehow tagged onto the tour as well.

Don't understand how this isn't selective disclosure and is allowed. I know all companies do it but it doesn't sit well with me.

 

[powertoold]

they'll let the local design teams run with the entire design.

It seems Elon doesn't want a "monopoly" within Tesla. He wants teams to compete with each other, and he thinks that's necessary to advance humankind. He's been on an anti-monopoly narrative lately.

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

Ok, that makes a lot more sense. What likely happened is that Tesla had talks with Cypress. Cypress wanted too much money for basically an R&D exercise that might never work (that method of lithium extraction has never been done before at scale). So rather than pay Cypress too much $$, Tesla said we can do basic R&D as well as anyone, especially when it is building factories, so they cut out Cypress. I infer from this that Cypress didn’t have any significant technology.

Maxwell was an example of the same thing that went the other way. Either Maxwell’s technology was further advanced, or it wasn’t and Tesla now feels they bought a pig in a poke and thus were wiser with Cypress (I offer that second hypothesis just as a possibility).

I'm glad you said this because that was one of THE most memorable moments during the Battery Day presentation for me where Elon basically eyerolled how "amazing" the Maxwell DBE technology wasn't after they acquired them. He noted that all they had was essentially a proof-of-concept, but was in no shape for mass production. "Since the acquisition we've [revised] the machine 4x... and there is still a lot of work to do..." noting that they'll "...likely need to get to rev 6 or 7 before we're ready for production."

I just found it revealing that a lot of Tesla folks (myself included) were very excited about Tesla incorporating the Maxwell tech, but felt that Elon sort of intimated during the presentation that the acquisition may not have yielded quite what we (and he) were expecting.

Link to specific timestamp where he talks about DBE and Maxwell

Edit: If link doesn't take you to the appropriate timestamp, go to 1hr 20min 20sec or so

 

[JRP3]

Wall St says 141k,

What's the source for this number? All I see is an older estimate from Troy at 141K.

 

[mongo]

That was my understanding as well - only large institutional investors. Gali said he somehow tagged onto the tour as well.

Don't understand how this isn't selective disclosure and is allowed. I know all companies do it but it doesn't sit well with me.

Everyone at the presentation (and online) was told about Kato/ Roadrunner and what it was doing. Some people just got to see it in action. Hardly actionable information disparity.

 

[Lessmog]

I'm glad you said this because that was one of THE most memorable moments during the Battery Day presentation for me where Elon basically eyerolled how "amazing" the Maxwell DBE technology wasn't after they acquired them. He noted that all they had was essentially a proof-of-concept, but was in no shape for mass production. "Since the acquisition we've [revised] the machine 4x... and there is still a lot of work to do..." noting that they'll "...likely need to get to rev 6 or 7 before we're ready for production."

I just found it revealing that a lot of Tesla folks (myself included) were very excited about Tesla incorporating the Maxwell tech, but felt that Elon sort of intimated during the presentation that the acquisition may not have yielded quite what we (and he) were expecting.

Link to specific timestamp where he talks about DBE and Maxwell

Timestamps do not survive video embedding on this platform, we need an actual time please.