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

[MTL_HABS1909]

Wouldn't it be great if they preannouce ipo of starlink, but the amount of shares you can buy is based on your tsla stocks times a multipler that is based on the amount of years you've held tsla stock.

This should cause a short squeeze, but we don't really have much shorts to squeeze anymore.

That’s not true. The number of shares shorted may be down from all time highs, but due to the rise in share price, the dollar value has skyrocketed. It’s over $20B shorted right now.

 

[jbcarioca]

I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. Whatever Tesla's accounting practices, they did tons of stuff on my 2014 Model S and called it goodwill and charged me nothing and made me a happy customer. I'm quite certain that the same sort of thing can happen with insurance, and Tesla, being the source of cars and parts, has lots of wiggle room on how and when those appear and what they cost. I don't believe that "regulation" will make that too difficult.

But perhaps I'm simply naive.

Sorry, as much as I want to agree, it simply is not so. Tesla can handle many things through customer service, but not others. Certainly customer service and claims treatments are highly variable but both reserving and pricing are most definitely regulated activities gross premium to payout ratios themselves are components of regulation in most jurisdictions. There are obviously dramatic differences between carriers as anybody who's had claims experiences with, say, in the US; both State Farm and Progressive can attest.

Warranty treatment is an entirely different matter. That subject has considerable leeway. There are other threads that discuss details including the Warranty Week comparisons that are highly favorable to Tesla even including goodwill repairs, which in Tesla practice do charge to the warranty expense category, while many competitors charge such treatment to a GS & A account.

As investors it is important to understand how these practice affect and effect P&L accounts. Obviously we all care very much about how they deal with customer service and problem resolution. Those are not insurance issues.

Once again, there is not any doubt that there is plenty of room for Tesla to improve insurance. The surest here, though, is how Tesla superior technologies can afford them opportunity to improve the overall product compared to any given competitor. Their innovations will certainly also be avenues for better customer experiences also.

 

[Electroman]

Amazing. He can see the future but cannot spell *than*.

Give it a rest. That was a friggin fat finger typo. That's all.

 

[Robocop]

Aspects of this have been discussed, but I was doing some research on VW and came across this: Volkswagen builds battery factory in Salzgitter - electrive.com Their Saltzgitter 'gigafactory'. Basically I dismiss all 'Tesla Killer' articles unless that company has a real commitment to a battery factory. Normally this disqualifies all ICE manufacturers.

Design all the prototypes, or even production facilities you want, without the batteries you get nowhere. Literally and figuratively, ha.

VW seems good at talking the talk, but their first battery factory will be only 16 GWh, STARTING around 2024. They are *currently* building this factory supposedly. And this factory was announced in 2019. 5 years to build something that Tesla could build at Kato rd in approx 1 year?

It just seems like by 2024 VW will catch up to where Tesla was in like 2017. And this gap seems wider every year I check. Astonishing. And VW has one of the best potentials, obviously other ICE companies are even worse.

Just feels like by 2024 Tesla could be 10x+ (20x?) the battery production of the BEST competition. RIP to Ford etc. who won't even try.

 

[Artful Dodger]

More and more comments these days are AI generated so don't read too much into them.

I work in AI

Lol, so how many traffic lights do you see in our future? (click all that apply)

Cheers!

 

[jerry33]

Great video.

What I wondered while listening to his commentary... why are OEMs collaborating on EV platforms and features? Why don't they share ICE engines instead? Seems like everyone has more or less the same palette of 4-cylinder engines these days. Could they start shedding legacy obligations by sharing engine designs, freeing up engineers and factories to focus on EVs, where there's more opportunity and potential for differentiation?

That sounds logical, but the main differentiation between legacy manufacturers are the engines and body styles (also the areas that they sell cars to). I can't see it happening (unless all the legacy manufacturers merge into one company). Freeing up engine design engineers doesn't help with electrical design. Engineers are not pegs that can be moved from hole to hole.

 

[tinyrodent]

Berlin factory update - first windows installed in drive unit building! Amazing progress all over the site.

 

[PokerFJÆS]

MODERATOR:

This post does NOT belong here. I am not removing it nor porting it over to the SpaceX site where it belongs, but leaving it up as a warning, as follows:

Do not use this forum to discuss other topics that obviously are better discussed elsewhere. What IS appropriate is to give a BRIEF heads-up that there is an item of interest on some other page. No more than two lines.

The small number of responses already posted will remain, with some kind of Mod asterisk.

Thank you.


Twitter user Bradford is facilitating a SpaceX investment opportunity at a minimum entry of $250k.

https://twitter.com/bradsferguson/status/1314392986575343616

EDIT: Mr. Ferguson has tweeted Tesla related topics for a long time,.

This post is not an advice or endorsement, but I know many here are actively looking for a SpaceX investment.

 

[gaswalla]

Give 250k to a dude on Twitter? Uh ok

 

[gabeincal]

@gabeincal have you had a chance to fly over Kato road in the last couple of weeks? Any chance you could do a new video? would be interesting to see if there are any cells being moved.

Would be my pleasure, though not sure how much we actually see from the air nowadays! I’ll go on a weekday soon and make a longer flight! I was thinking about tackling a sunset flight over the factory also to capture some glamorous scenes - wind permitting....

 

[tinyrodent]

Texas factory update. Getting a lot busier. In addition to the usual massive earth moving and geopier operations, there is now continuous pumping of concrete, and a large crane is being assembled.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

....deleted stuff...


Wildly inappropriate to post Twitter "investment opportunities".

Mod: Correct, as noted in offending post.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Mod: Correct, as noted in offending post

...deleted stuff

Guys, there is a dedicated SpaceX investor thread. Please use it.

SpaceX investor's thread

 

[Sudre]

Way off weekend topics here.... trains

Here is a week end topic about TSLA....
So Tesla buys Spodumene from a mine in NC and then refine it in TX. A whole lot of tons of Spodumene are going to need to be railroaded(?) to TX. From what I have gathered the spodumene in NC can be refined to yield about 1/8th Lithium compound by weight.
A refinery right next to the mine would reduce the freight charges by 7/8ths. So why not build the refinery at the mine? And then ship the finished product to the battery factories?

I don't know the answers but these are some of the options:
The cost to build and run a refinery in Texas is much less than one in NC.
NC has much stronger rules concerning what to do with the waste leftovers from refining.
Tesla sees Piedmont as a short term source so putting the refinery there means once the switch to another source would make the mine in NC a logistical complication($).
Tesla is building the refinery where it logistically makes sense concerning future sources of Lithium (Besides CO?).

Does someone have another?

On the train front I have often wondered what it would take, like the sail boat recently posted, to strip out the diesel generator and add a battery pack to the train with a battery car or two added for range and for quick swap outs so no need to wait for charging. It's probably faster to swap battery cars then to add diesel fuel if engineered right. Can it be cost effective tho?
The batteries in the train engine would be for moving around the train yard so the locomotive is powered while swapping battery cars... that and added weight. Could probably use the cheapest batteries out there since space is not the issue and the locomotive needs weight to pull.

 

[gabeincal]

Way off weekend topics here.... trains



On the train front I have often wondered what it would take, like the sail boat recently posted, to strip out the diesel generator and add a battery pack to the train with a battery car or two added for range and for quick swap outs so no need to wait for charging. It's probably faster to swap battery cars then to add denial fuel if engineered right. Can it be cost effective tho?
The batteries in the train engine would be for moving around the train yard so the locomotive is powered while swapping battery cars... that and added weight. Could probably use the cheapest batteries out there since space is not the issue and the locomotive needs weight to pull.

Or at least a hybrid drivetrain so that energy can be captured downhill and help with braking... That itself would probably make a huge difference for freight trains..

 

[Bet TSLA]

Sorry, as much as I want to agree, it simply is not so. Tesla can handle many things through customer service, but not others. Certainly customer service and claims treatments are highly variable but both reserving and pricing are most definitely regulated activities gross premium to payout ratios themselves are components of regulation in most jurisdictions. There are obviously dramatic differences between carriers as anybody who's had claims experiences with, say, in the US; both State Farm and Progressive can attest.

Warranty treatment is an entirely different matter. That subject has considerable leeway. There are other threads that discuss details including the Warranty Week comparisons that are highly favorable to Tesla even including goodwill repairs, which in Tesla practice do charge to the warranty expense category, while many competitors charge such treatment to a GS & A account.

As investors it is important to understand how these practice affect and effect P&L accounts. Obviously we all care very much about how they deal with customer service and problem resolution. Those are not insurance issues.

Once again, there is not any doubt that there is plenty of room for Tesla to improve insurance. The surest here, though, is how Tesla superior technologies can afford them opportunity to improve the overall product compared to any given competitor. Their innovations will certainly also be avenues for better customer experiences also.

Okay, I hear you. I certainly know nothing about all the laws surrounding insurance. I'm sure they are like other laws: slowly accreted over the centuries as people find new ways to cheat other people and rules are put in place to prevent it under specific circumstances. No doubt a complete mess by now.

Disruption of the industry will include disruption of those laws, either by changing them to reflect new circumstances, or by going around them entirely in some interesting way (e.g. hey, we've got this new NOT INSURANCE product -- go ahead and buy the cheapest possible legally mandated insurance from our partner over there and wrap our new thing around it and you'll achieve Tesla nirvana quite legally). I'm quite sure that Tesla is willing to bend the rules pretty hard so long as they are acting ethically. Rules are often truly stupid when they are designed for yesterday's reality and then applied to today's. We'll get a preview as we watch what happens to rules governing auto-pilot in Europe over the next year or two.

 

[ZsoZso]

Yeah, 2 years ago:

#57228

TL;dr about $1.5B USD for the 30 GWh battery @ $50/kwh with Tesla prices in 2030.

Gonna need another order of magnitude cheaper batteries to make that work financially. So, 2038?

Even at a "Wright's Law" pace of 17% drop in price per year, that's still a $5/kwh bty by 2045:

1.17^15 = 10.5​

We'll get there. By 2050, even trans-oceanic shipping will be well underway to the EV transition. I hope to live to sea that day.

Cheers!

How about hyperloop tubes at the bottom of the ocean ?
That would be an alternative way to electrify cross-ocean transport.

Deep down weather is not a problem, only near the end terminal close to surface, but that could be solved by a Boring-tunnel taking the exit to inland.

 

[mongo]

Or at least a hybrid drivetrain so that energy can be captured downhill and help with braking... That itself would probably make a huge difference for freight trains..

Trains do use the motors for braking and dump the power into a huge fan cooled resistor bank in the top of the unit.
Dynamic braking - Wikipedia

 

[samppa]

Way off weekend topics here.... trains



On the train front I have often wondered what it would take, like the sail boat recently posted, to strip out the diesel generator and add a battery pack to the train with a battery car or two added for range and for quick swap outs so no need to wait for charging. It's probably faster to swap battery cars then to add diesel fuel if engineered right. Can it be cost effective tho?
The batteries in the train engine would be for moving around the train yard so the locomotive is powered while swapping battery cars... that and added weight. Could probably use the cheapest batteries out there since space is not the issue and the locomotive needs weight to pull.

Or you could just electrify the railway, and feed AC directly to train.. oh hang on, we've already done that in most of Europe

 

[Compton]