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

[Bet TSLA]

Costco is weird.

I get that the gas is cheaper- but yeah ours always has lines too (not NEAR as bad as yours though).... despite there being 10 stations with NO lines within a mile of the place, just 10 or 20 cents more expensive.


Given it's in FL in your shot I can only assume it's old people whose time isn't worth anything to themselves and they're ok wasting 40 minutes in line to save $2 on a tank.

Same folks who'll waste half an hour arguing with the grocery store manager over their expired 10 cent coupon being honored or not.

I think you have to figure that a fair percentage of them have a spouse shopping while they're getting gas. So not quite wasted time in an absolute sense. But yes, perception of saved money is a powerful lure.

 

[Christine69420]

I always thought they were HVAC mounts. But I'm no expert in constructing.

Just spotted what looks like solar panel mounts to me on the roof of the drive unit building of Giga Berlin in The Wolfpack´s latest drone footage .
View in this pic is east. Maybe someone with solar installation expertise can chime in if that makes sense?

View attachment 599716

 

[Beltsbear]

GM's R&D spend is 5X that of Tesla, yet their realized improvements appear to be 1/5th that of Tesla. At GM's current R&D spend they should have flying cars by now. Is it possible GM's R&D spend is simply a method used to avoid paying taxes?

Interesting that the only improvement I know of on the bolt was due to actions of their suppliers. We have seen almost nothing from GM research into electric cars recently. They had a huge lead with the EV1 and even 1st gen Volt and wasted it.

 

[ZeApelido]

China already coming out with tabless cells?

Blog - Tesla Unveils Tabless Battery Cell That Boosts Range by 16%

 

[Words of HABIT]

Asking not an advice for a friend who is looking to retire, only given family annual income X, early 50s, no debt, no private pensions, with conservative Assets: TSLA - 20X, House - 10X, Other - 1X

Option 1 - Sell 1/12X TSLA per month starting 2021.

Option 2 - Take out Secured LOC for 4X. Draw up 1/12X per month from LOC for first four years. Sell 1/12X of TSLA per month starting 2025. (Line Of Credit is currently Prime + 0.2% or 2.65% per annum in Canada.)

Please rate this post Helpful for Option 1, or Informative for Option 2.

Should you have any comments, please do not clog up this thread and post here When to retire?

 

[Sudre]

Just spotted what looks like solar panel mounts to me on the roof of the drive unit building of Giga Berlin in The Wolfpack´s latest drone footage .
View in this pic is east. Maybe someone with solar installation expertise can chime in if that makes sense?

I always thought they were HVAC mounts. But I'm no expert in constructing.

They are either Chiller mounting hardware or air handlers. The rails for solar are quite different.

 

[kanweg]

Interesting that the only improvement I know of on the bolt was due to actions of their suppliers. We have seen almost nothing from GM research into electric cars recently. They had a huge lead with the EV1 and even 1st gen Volt and wasted it.

Does the self driving development by daughter Cruize count in these research and development costs? I can imagine it costs a pretty penny.

 

[Knightshade]

You might be right. But what you quote is a year old, and relies on data older still. Can you point to new peaker plants currently being funded and built? I just keep reading about cancellations. Current information is especially important when processes are exponential rather than linear.

I don't see that that Chesterfield plant has been approved.

The chesterfield NG plant has a link on Dominions website that goes to a not found page, so could be delays or could be incompetent web admin.


I did find this:
Despite Clean Economy Act, Dominion forecasts a strong role for natural gas in Virginia - Virginia Mercury

It's from only 5 months ago mentioning the recommended 15-year future energy plan from Dominion includes

construction of gas-fired [combustion turbine] units

in order to address probably system reliability issues from renewables.

Which sure sounds like new NG peakers to me.


Over in NYC, here's a story from less than 2 months ago-
New York City’s hottest new energy fight

NRG Energy wants to replace a 50 year old oil burning peaker with a natural gas one.

As the story points out, there's a LOT of old peakers out there- they're dirty, they're expensive, and there simply isn't enough large scale batteries to get rid of them... hence building new, 30 times cleaner (in this specific case) as well as cheaper NG plants still makes sense for now.


I think that ties back to the earlier link I posted- where a lot of mention is given to the 200 new peakers under development- where they'll be a lot cheaper and cleaner to run than current plants, but are unlikely to make it to their 40 year lifespan.... because while they still make sense to build NOW in lieu of enough renewable+battery capacity, that lack of capacity won't take 4 decades to fix.

So obsolete eventually- but not yet- because we simply can't produce enough replacements soon enough.

Yah probably.

Note. This is Palm Springs California. Et especifiquement the Costco in Rancho Mirage.

Sorry always forget there's a west coast one too...

Still, appears almost half the population of Rancho Mirage are senior citizens and median age of the whole city is 62.3 years old.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Tesla is starting to export made-in-China Model 3 to Europe
Fred Lambert

- Oct. 18th 2020 2:03 pm ET

Tesla is starting to export made-in-China Model 3 vehicles to Europe – something the automaker originally said it didn’t plan to do.

When Tesla started building its Gigafactory in Shanghai, in an attempt to reassure people that the automaker wasn’t just shifting production capacity to China, CEO Elon Musk was adamant that it was to supply local demand in China and not to export to other markets. /...

Source: Tesla is starting to export made-in-China Model 3 to Europe - Electrek

Don't know if this has been posted in this thread...

 

[smorgasbord]

Sure.

But it makes no economic sense to keep a car around JUST for that. Especially when parking in NYC can cost more than your new car payment.

It'd be far, far cheaper to rent for the occasional road trip (especially when you're also right next to 3 major airports and in the middle of the one place in the US even trains are a viable travel option to get to other cities)

"No economic sense" and yet living in The City - I'm guessing you haven't ever lived in Manhattan.

First, one is always balancing economics with quality of life. It makes no economic sense to buy a Model X Performance over a Model X LR+: it's more expensive and less efficient. Yet, people buy those all the time because it improves their quality of life. Same for owning a car to use versus renting for when you need one. Do you really want to take a family vacation in some worn, smelly rent-a-car?

Second, it is more than just road trips. Like heading out to your second home in the Hamptons on weekends. Yeah, it'd be more economical to take the LIRR and then hire a cab/uber/rent, but we're talking convenience and quality of life here. You're not thinking like a Manhattanite thinks because you haven't lived that life.

 

[Buckminster]

Giga Shanghai to EU confirmed:
Tesla is starting to export made-in-China Model 3 to Europe - Electrek

 

[WVCS]

Thanks for posting this. Great to see and hear Elon speak. He seems to be in good spirit and shape. A benefit of doing zoom interviews is that Elon is not as easily interrupted, which most journalists do when interviewing him. (This was also not journalists interviewing him.)

Most striking for me was hearing Elon explaining how he starts with the goal and then works out what is needed to reach that goal.

I think that this is one of Elon’s superpowers, and essential to understand him as an innovator and business leader.

So: 1) start with the right goal and then 2) use first principles to work out how to achieve that goal.

Sounds easy, but is hard to do in practice. Elon’s goals are super ambitious and seems
to be mainly altruistic, like making humanity multi-planetary or getting the economy out of its fossil fuel addiction. That altruistic value-base might help in perseverance to apply first principles and thinking “outside the box”.

I believe that people who do things on a grand scale (good or evil) that get written up in history books do not follow third party constructed formulae to do what they do; they have a bright light burning inside that impels them on the direction to take. Elon Musk belongs in this category. It is an interesting exercise nevertheless to juxtapose Elon Musk’s model for operating (as you have characterized it) with Ge Wang’s ideas on design.

I believe Ge Wang’s idea on design (not limited to product but to much broader theaters of effort or even to life itself) is that we strive to do beautiful things, things that elevate our spirits. And that when we do strive for lofty ideals, practical matters will sort themselves out as a byproduct. In particular, he argues for inverting “function first, form later” view of organizing anything. He recommends going for inspiration and high values first.

Applying this idea to Elon Musk, if his goal is stated as sustainable energy or multi-planetary human life, his thought process aligns with Ge Wang’s ideas. If the goal is stated as 20M EV cars by a certain date with gross margin of x%, it becomes mundane, prosaic and reverts to “function over form” model of arranging life.

 

[mrmage]

GM's R&D spend is 5X that of Tesla, yet their realized improvements appear to be 1/5th that of Tesla. At GM's current R&D spend they should have flying cars by now. Is it possible GM's R&D spend is simply a method used to avoid paying taxes?

R&D includes every tiny engineering change to existing and new vehicles and services. Lots of different vehicles and services means lots of R&D. My guess is they aren't that efficient with engineering either.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Maybe they didn't talk about a million mile battery at battery day because they are working on 2M miles.

Jeff Dahn starts at 22:30

 

[mrmage]

"No economic sense" and yet living in The City - I'm guessing you haven't ever lived in Manhattan.

First, one is always balancing economics with quality of life. It makes no economic sense to buy a Model X Performance over a Model X LR+: it's more expensive and less efficient. Yet, people buy those all the time because it improves their quality of life. Same for owning a car to use versus renting for when you need one. Do you really want to take a family vacation in some worn, smelly rent-a-car?

Second, it is more than just road trips. Like heading out to your second home in the Hamptons on weekends. Yeah, it'd be more economical to take the LIRR and then hire a cab/uber/rent, but we're talking convenience and quality of life here. You're not thinking like a Manhattanite thinks because you haven't lived that life.

This isn't restricted to cars. People have game consoles, large TVs, larger homes than necessary, hobbies, etc. None of these make economic sense because people care about improving their lifestyle. Why should a car be any different?

 

[printf42]

This is a graph of current OEMs from Nov issue of “car and driver”.

Where is Tesla?

Yes Tesla is not just an auto OEM, but their auto business is already bigger than some of the old world players listed here.

I see a web of OEMs totally unprepared for EV transition, and throwing money at questionable autonomous contenders.

Tony Seba summarized it very well, disruption of an industry often comes from outside, the industry that’s being disrupted is often blind to the land shifting under their feet and do not even have the time to embrace for impact.

They think they are investing for the future, while what they could do is only demonstrate their mentality of spending equals progress, in reality they are just throwing money away and don’t even know what they need.

The same magazine, in another article, said in 2030, 78% of new vehicles will still have some kind of ICE in it...

Let’s revisit in 2030 and see how the industry is doing, and how wrong they were.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

For what it's worth, Troy has released his first estimate for Q4...

Hi everybody. This is estimate #1 for Q4 2020. I estimate,
• 181,365 deliveries in Q4 and
• 500,052 in 2020

https://twitter.com/TroyTeslike/status/1317936523166273536

 

[ammulder]

I estimate,
• 181,365 deliveries in Q4 and
• 500,052 in 2020

LOL, just a little bit of the tail wagging the dog, maybe?

 

[JustSaying]

Well, we are Canadian but for the last 17 years live anywhere from 3 to 5 months of the year in Palm Springs. This is our local costco. It is like this every time we go by it regardless of the time of day. Sometimes it is backed up to the street and they need cops to assist. I have no idea how much they save because its costco but it must be worth it for the 20 to 40 minute line ups they endure...with their motors running the whole time. At some point people are going to figure out its easier to charge at home while you are sleeping. We figured it out 5 years ago when we got rid of our last gas car.

Just sayin.

Dinah Shore and Monterey, right across the street there is a Sams Club gas station that is almost as busy.
We have a little place close by in Rancho Mirage Where is your place?

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Dinah Shore and Monterey, right across the street is a Sams Club gas station that is almost as busy
We have a little place close by in Rancho Mirage Where is your place?

Ramon in Cat city. Going to miss it this year. Border is still closed and little chance of it opening before Feb or March. Time will tell.