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

[Opus BC fan]

Macros good, Tesla down. Any specific reason? Also, very low volume today.

Any TSLA share price movement <5% is essentially noise.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Tesla roof installed in one day:

Tesla will make a lot of money on this and make a lot of people very happy.

 

[Runarbt]

Isn't TSLA supposed to go up on no news?

YES - when it doesn't go side ways or.. down.

 

[WattsHappening]

Maybe a good day for us worker bees to actually get some work done.

 

[Nocturnal]

Acoustic foam and low rolling resistance are incremental improvements, but I would love to see Tesla or somebody else to address the list of challenges listed above from a first principles standpoint.

VETOL. The best tire is no tire.

Tesla roof installed in one day:

Tesla will make a lot of money on this and make a lot of people very happy.

These guys operate in my area. I need a new roof but can't justify the cost compared to my home value. I need to upgrade to my Teslanaire home before that becomes reasonable.

 

[Paracelsus]

Macros good, Tesla down. Any specific reason? Also, very low volume today.

Still on the same trajectory on the 1-month chart. Might see some green after-hours and then again tomorrow. This is probably a good pattern to shake some shares from weak Longs even though the overall trend has not yet been broken.

 

[ZeApelido]

Talking about tires . . . must be a slow trading and TSLA news day.

I just wanted to kick the tires on tires, just for kicks.

 

[Dave EV]

Gas tax is where the majority of the road works $$$ comes from the GA. I am okay with it as the EV tax is far FAR less than gas tax I used to pay based on my daily commute ~100 miles a day.

The GA EV tax is a flat tax and because you drive far more miles than the typical driver it works out for you.

EV taxes in general as they've been implemented are a poor replacement for the gas tax, because it is a flat tax instead of at least somewhat based on how many miles you drive as a gas/diesel tax is. These flat taxes can be a significant disincentive to EV ownership compared to the typical gas/diesel tax, except for those who drive a lot. This also represents a headwind for EVs in general, including Tesla.

A simple, more equitable method is change the EV tax to a per-mile based tax simply based on your odometer reading that you self-report each year when you renew your registration. Yeah, this doesn't take into account miles driven out of state, but that percentage of miles should be relatively low in general. It also relies on people to be honest, but so does many other things - just audit the value when you transfer ownership of the vehicle augmented with random spot checks or other inspections.

Here's a list of states that are assessing EV taxes along with the fee amount - I'll let someone else do the math to figure out how many miles in your average vehicle that EV fee represents for each state, but I think any state charging significantly more than $100 is probably charging far too much per EV on average compared to it's average gas tax collectins.

Alabama $200, Arkansas $200, California $100, Colorado $50, Georgia $212.78, Hawaii $50, Idaho $140, Illinois $100, Indiana $150, Iowa $65 (rising to $130 in 2022), Kansas $100, Michigan $135 (indexed to cost of motor fuel tax), Minnesota $75, Mississippi $150, Missouri $75, Nebraska $75, North Carolina $130, North Dakota $120, Ohio $200, Oregon $110 ,South Carolina $120 ,Tennessee $100, Utah $90, Virginia $64, Washington $150, West Virginia $200, Wisconsin $100, Wyoming $200

 

[willow_hiller]

That can't be Tesla. They talk about Manz welding the cells into modules but Tesla is moving away from modules to the structural pack.

Could be Rivian or Lucid, maybe Lordstown?

All possibilities, but they didn't actually say the laser assembly would be used to weld cells into modules. Just that Manz is known for that process, and the order will rely on the laser assembly.

Manz sets itself apart from its competitors with a laser process for welding round cells into modules. According to CEO Martin Drasch, the customer relies on Manz’s BLS 500 laser platform and LightAssembly modular assembly platform.

I still think it could be Tesla, and they're using Manz's laser platform to cut and form tabless cells: Tesla announces "tabless" battery cells that will improve range of its electric cars

During the event, Drew Baglino, Tesla’s vice president for powertrain and energy, offered more insight into the new cells. He said that Tesla’s engineers “laser patterned” the existing foils in the cell to create a “shingled spiral” that results in a shorter electrical path length of 50 mm, versus the existing 250 mm length in the current cells.

 

[StealthP3D]

Acoustic foam and low rolling resistance are incremental improvements, but I would love to see Tesla or somebody else to address the list of challenges listed above from a first principles standpoint.

I don't understand the thinking that tires are under-developed and insufficient. Certainly tires have the most difficult task of any item of a car. But untold billions have been spent on improving the grip, safety reliability, noise and life of automotive tires. In the last 50 years, tires have improved more than any aspect of the car. By far! Anyone who drove on the bias ply tires that were still popular in the US into the 1970's can attest to that. And current radials are leaps and bounds above anything available in 1990. Winter tires offer incredible snow and ice traction without the compromises studded tires introduce.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that since tires are the weak link that they have not received enough development effort. Quite the opposite, actually. As consumables, the market for tires is huge and we have over 10 major brands spending huge sums of money every year to develop better, cheaper, longer-lasting, higher performance, quieter tires.

It would be like saying, "Current solar panels have awful efficiency at only around 22%. They waste 4/5ths of the suns energy. That's a terrible product. Why doesn't someone fix this? Someone should do something about this travesty."

Well, yeah, people ARE working on it. Care to join them?

 

[GrandEnigma]

Well that was a long MMD. It was nice to have a 3hr window to get work done without too much excitement

 

[Curt Renz]

Electrek - half hour ago: Tesla is looking to implement new automated camera system for quality inspection at Fremont factory - Electrek

Job Description:

“The vehicle engineering team at Tesla is looking for a highly motivated Quality Inspection Engineer to apply their experience with vehicle assembly lines and manufacturing software systems to lead the installation and operations of automation camera inspection systems into existing manufacturing lines.”

 

[Hock1]

Because MMs decided that the price should be $840 today and without significant buying pressure, they’ll get what they want!

Mostly has to do with manipulators setting up for monthly options expiring Friday, IMO.

 

[Buckminster]

Not sure if this was posted earlier:
Tesla (TSLA) could be a $2 trillion company in just '1 or 2 years,' says top Wall Street analyst - Electrek

 

[Todd Burch]

I fail to see how either Tesla or Mobileye camera suite can see far enough down the road at a T intersection to safely make a left turn. You come up to a stop sign on a rural road, you stop, you look WAY down the road to see if some maniac is coming and then quickly make your turn. The camera ranges shown by Tesla and Mobileye do not make me confident they can make this turn safely. I'm sorry. If I am missing something, it's because they have not shown me why they can handle this situation.

I don't think the camera range means anything. I don't even know why they show that on the Tesla page.

It's not like light stops after traveling 80 meters. Your eyes can see all the way down the road. So can a camera.

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

Because MMs decided that the price should be $840 today and without significant buying pressure, they’ll get what they want!

And just after I wrote this, I had to be proven wrong

 

[bkp_duke]

And just after I wrote this, I had to be proven wrong

Keep em coming . . .

 

[AZRI11]

Yes indeed. We discussed it in quite some detail back in the day (a couple of years, I think), when Fact Checking (=Truth Tesla) was a regular here. I had totally forgotten about it, but has been known for a long time

Go back to drinking beer your brain cells our being depleted of it's necessary nourishment or is it the other way around

 

[jerry33]

If that is your metric for taxation, then why doesn't the gas tax include extra taxes to fund chemotherapy, asthma and COPD treatments, doctor visits for headaches, sleeplessness, and other proven ailments and deaths caused by breathing road fumes? It doesn't stop there because we have global warming induced sea-level rise, loss of property value, increased storm damage, higher air-conditioning bills, and on and on. Limiting the gas to tax to only pay for road maintenance is irrational in the extreme. If the true property and health costs of ICE vehicles were included in the gas tax, I estimate gas would cost $10/gallon.

If gas taxes are not raised to reflect these things than EV's should at least be free of road taxes!

And with all the toll roads, there's not that much difference between gas and electric in the first place.

 

[2daMoon]

And just after I wrote this, I had to be proven wrong

Write some more ...