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

[insaneoctane]

Probably a license/royalty arrangement.

Doesn't Tesla open source all their patents? I've always been confused by this....

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Doesn't Tesla open source all their patents? I've always been confused by this....

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but Tesla opened up their patents as they were AT that specific time. Future patents/IP is/was not part of that.

People keep thinking that Tesla made some sort of declaration/pact that all IP including future IP is part of that and that's not how it works at all.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Interesting...

"...the Wuling HongGuang Mini EV clocked sale of 9,150 units in August, its second full month of sales.

The boxy EV sees huge sales numbers because it comes at $4,200, a fraction of Tesla's $42,691 price tag for Model 3, FT reports.

The HonGuang Mini EV is a joint-venture product between General Motors Company (NYSE: GM), SAIC Motor, and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Co Ltd."

China EVs Are Catching Up With Tesla

Whatever gets ICE cars off the roads, regardless of how it looks.

 

[ABCTG]

https://twitter.com/mortenlund89/status/1321712574325555201

 

[bkp_duke]

Doesn't Tesla open source all their patents? I've always been confused by this....

Someone else can probably speak more authoritatively than I on this, but I was under the impression that was a few years ago, and has not applied to more recent developments.

 

[Mo City]

https://twitter.com/mortenlund89/status/1321712574325555201

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Not true because people on the internet say demand for Model 3s in Europe is falling due to competition.

They can't all be wrong, can they?

 

[ABCTG]

Why are they called "tabless," when in fact they have lots of little tabs that fold down on each other?

Jordan Giesige of The Limiting Factor kind of addresses this at around the 7:30 point

 

[corduroy]

This has the potential to be a Perfect Storm..........or perhaps a "Perfectly Controlled Storm" by those with enough money to hold the steering wheel - IMO creating a unique opportunity for a rather serious squeeze followed by a rather quick sell off back to these levels before a longer and more sustainable run begins. I posted about that potential yesterday. After watching Mark Blyth's prediction for a seriously contested election in which it might take weeks to get a final results I feel the potential is real enough that I am now positioned accordingly in a manner that would not have too much downside for me if this didn't happen, but would have tremendous upside if it did. Remember, Mark Blyth was one of the very few that got both Brexit and the Trump election correct.

Uncertainty has caused many small and mid-size investors to put their money on the sideline prior to the election - most of us already accept that on this board. This has serendipitously given a select few of the Big investors the pressure relief valve they needed to acquire a large number of the TSLA shares they must hold before-and-during a well-timed S&P500 inclusion. I say this inclusion is 'well timed' because it has the potential to minimize the pain of those institutions that are big enough to potentially have some influence on the S&P500 decision process. Of course I have no proof of that. But if Mark Blyth is right once again, this where it can really get exciting - a bit of FOMO, the willingness of WS to eat its own (i.e. GS killing and eating Lehman Brothers because it could), and the potential for a contested election would really make this an exciting ride. Thus I can see this as a potential scenario........

TSLA is added to the S&P500 tomorrow or Monday (at 420 to add a dose of innocence) after a very long effort to keep that price as low as possible, and it soon becomes clear that more shares have been locked up in these weeks of silence before the storm than we were aware of. But that still leaves a tremendous amount of shares that need to be acquired by institutions with the S&P500 addition..........perhaps about 200 million now after the split? And then don't forget about FOMO. Everyone that had lightened their position will suddenly want it back asap. Drop that news on a Thursday after the bell or Friday morning and there will be TSLA panic buyers all day Friday followed by people panicking all weekend about how they can add TSLA on Monday. Then it only gets even more interesting if early results on Tuesday show Biden with a lead - driving people to feel even more comfortable about TSLA at very high prices with the potential of a Green New Deal just around the corner.

Now imagine Mark Blyth is right - which is not hard to do since he is very likely one of the sharpest political economists on the planet and has often been right at the times where more frequently used household names were very wrong. The election becomes contested by Wednesday and we see the equivalent of Hanging Chads all over again. Except this time we have a President who completely rejects the idea of stepping down in a contested election, and this drags on - potentially for weeks. Here is the perfect ingredient to turn TSLA into a 'Pump and Dump'..................WS makes money both ways (making money on the way up and on the way back down), and then has the opportunity to re-position itself after TSLA is once again comfortably sitting on its current trendline - a trendline of sustainable long term growth which Chamath Palihapitiya and others expect to continue under either Biden or Trump.

The end result is a chart that looks a bit like the VW squeeze (starting ironically also at around $400), with a spike from the well-played Pump, followed by the Dump from the potential for post-election indecision and chaos.

Here is the link to the Mark Blyth video with his prediction for the election outcome. The entire video is well worth watching, but if you don't have the time or interest, you can skip straight to the host's question to him on the election outcome which happens at 56:20 in the video (last question of course):

I appreciate your commentary and your scenario is possible. I'm not sure about Mark Blyth though. I checked out his twitter feed and a recent post was:

"There are no self driving cars, or trucks, Bitcoin is a rich person's gambling asset, there are no blockchain businesses anywhere, the robots who were meant to take your jobs a decade ago are still not here, and yet every year the same crap projections. Why? Thoughts?"

He might be good at political science, but he doesn't seem to be up on tech. Can someone get him a ride in an FSD Tesla, or even a Waymo in Phoenix?

 

[Causalien]

I appreciate your commentary and your scenario is possible. I'm not sure about Mark Blyth though. I checked out his twitter feed and a recent post was:

"There are no self driving cars, or trucks, Bitcoin is a rich person's gambling asset, there are no blockchain businesses anywhere, the robots who were meant to take your jobs a decade ago are still not here, and yet every year the same crap projections. Why? Thoughts?"

He might be good at political science, but he doesn't seem to be up on tech. Can someone get him a ride in an FSD Tesla, or even a Waymo in Phoenix?

He sounds like he deals in absolutes.
The robots are slowly taking over jobs. But it hasn't taken over your jobs yet cause it hasn't replaced all jobs.
Bitcoin is a rich person's gambling asset because it is too expensive for poor ppl? Just like a $1 bill is too expensive for poor ppl? Maybe in Venezuela.
There are no self driving cars.... well I might agree with him here since the self driving car is a 1 or 0 event. Once its sentient, it will be everywhere at once.

 

[kanweg]

Doesn't Tesla open source all their patents? I've always been confused by this....

Any patent (application) is open source. That is the whole point of the patent system. It is a deal between society and an inventor. Society benefits of knowledge is shared, so others can build on it. In return for sharing his invention the inventor doesn’t get a bag of money but a temporary right to exclude others from using the invention.

Now, society doesn’t benefit if such monopolies were given nilly Willy. If society already knows the invention, you can’t get a patent. Society isn’t going to give you a monopoly that is already known. Thus, the invention has to be New. If society can easily think up the invention, the inventor doesn’t deserve a monopoly either. So, the invention should not be obvious.

In addition, there are several limitations such as geographically, as it only is valid in the countries where you apply the patent for, and limited in duration.

I don’t know very well what Tesla’s offer is, but I believe I heard it Is something like this: You can use our patents freely. In return we want you to give up your right to sue over your own patents.

 

[kengchang]

Here is ICCT's May estimate for the 2020 EU CO2 compliance. It would appear that PSA-Opel and Nissan would be strong pooling contenders since they are both predicted to exceed their CO2 reduction requirements.

However, a couple of important points:
1) The "Phase-In" compliance credits (PI column) go away after 2020.
2) The “Super-Credits" compliance credits (SC column) get cut by ⅓ in 2021.

If we make those corrections to the totals (assuming all else remains the same) the 2021 PSA-Opel Target Gap would only be -1 and the 2021 Nissan Target Gap would be zero. So neither will be strong contenders for pooling (and of course PSA-Opel will have merged with FCA). None of the other manufacturers/pools will meet their limits next year given those assumptions (Toyota-Mazda may just barely make it).

FYI, the Super-Credits continue to decrease in 2022, are eliminated in 2023 and the targets themselves are substantially reduced in 2024.
It looks like Tesla will get credits for every single car they sell in the EU for a while. Wonder why there's talk of exporting MIC cars to EU?

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No one is beating the target

 

[adiggs]

Any patent (application) is open source. That is the whole point of the patent system. It is a deal between society and an inventor. Society benefits of knowledge is shared, so others can build on it. In return for sharing his invention the inventor doesn’t get a bag of money but a temporary right to exclude others from using the invention.

Now, society doesn’t benefit if such monopolies were given nilly Willy. If society already knows the invention, you can’t get a patent. Society isn’t going to give you a monopoly that is already known. Thus, the invention has to be New. If society can easily think up the invention, the inventor doesn’t deserve a monopoly either. So, the invention should not be obvious.

In addition, there are several limitations such as geographically, as it only is valid in the countries where you apply the patent for, and limited in duration.

I don’t know very well what Tesla’s offer is, but I believe I heard it Is something like this: You can use our patents freely. In return we want you to give up your right to sue over your own patents.

Just adding on for those that haven't read the details:
The Tesla Blog:
All Our Patent Are Belong To You

The legal details:
Privacy & Legal | Tesla

The top line / summary:

Tesla’s Pledge

Tesla irrevocably pledges that it will not initiate a lawsuit against any party for infringing a Tesla Patent through activity relating to electric vehicles or related equipment for so long as such party is acting in good faith. Key terms of the Pledge are explained below.

EDIT TO ADD: I've seen a couple of articles like this one, providing a short assessment of the consequences to a company that decides to make use of Tesla's pledge:
Does Tesla’s open source patent philosophy mean they are free to use? : News & Insight : Resources : Venner Shipley

My own understanding from these assessments - the pledge has some serious consequences it brings along for the ride, for any company that decides to make use of Tesla's patents. Much further reaching impacts than might be immediately obvious.

 

[jerry33]

While theoretically true that patent rights can be extended via legislative action, let's go with "that ain't gonna happen" due to centuries of accepted practice around the patent concept extending (today) around the world. A single country going that far out of step with the rest of the world on patent practice, especially while the world is busy getting more and more collaborative (at least around the sharing of patent data) is .. unlikely?

Unless of course you're a patent lawyer and/or legislator with insight into an effort to so seriously change the balance of benefits and rewards between society and inventors.

You're likely correct, but they did it for copyright and fair use, so it's not a big stretch to think that.

 

[Green Pete]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but Tesla opened up their patents as they were AT that specific time. Future patents/IP is/was not part of that.

People keep thinking that Tesla made some sort of declaration/pact that all IP including future IP is part of that and that's not how it works at all.

Pretty sure it also came with a poison pill clause. You can use ours if anyone can also use yours

 

[Prunesquallor]

No one is beating the target
View attachment 603510

Yeah, I just pulled that info, too. Something went south between the April and August projections. I was trying to pull from the data what changed.

In any event, it adds more mystery about who would want to pool with Ford (other than Tesla). Daimler or VW could, I suppose, pay Ford for the emission dilution a pool would provide since they are in even worse shape.

 

[kengchang]

Yeah, I just pulled that info, too. Something went south between the April and August projections. I was trying to pull from the data what changed.

In any event, it adds more mystery about who would want to pool with Ford (other than Tesla).

Wasn't it Renault that opened up the pooling? Could be them

 

[Mike Ambler]

Last time, being in Italy, I knew that Covid was going to hit markets later in US. I sold an handful of shares, and then SP plummeted. But I didn't really rebuy at the bottom, so only half of the play was right. I now have a couple shares less than before.

You need a big sell / re-buy delta on the drop, when you have to pay 26% tax at time of sale (sadly no tax free accounts for us....at least none that I know of ).

 

[Causalien]

There is one more industry that should be added to the "to be destroyed" list.
Short haul flights will be completely taken over by TSLA FSD. Think about it this way. Would you rather have your car drive you overnight to destination or risk COVID from getting crammed into a plane while going through germy airport security checks?
If FSD can be perfected while this pandemic is still going on. It'll hasten the transition.

On top of that. Once FSD is realized, I bet ppl will be willing to take 2~3 days and drive overnight to a destination rather than flying there right away.

 

[Knightshade]

Pretty sure it also came with a poison pill clause. You can use ours if anyone can also use yours

Of course as more of the market moves to EVs, there's increasingly less poison in "You have to share your ICE patents"

 

[Mike Ambler]

Why are they called "tabless," when in fact they have lots of little tabs that fold down on each other?

Introducing the 4680 Gigatab cell! .....or maybe 4680 Autotab?
(sorry, it's been a long day)