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

[Brian121]

Somebody responded my previous post with a simple catch word "Jack Ma". Even though he deleted it within one minutes, but still I would like to response because even this simple word show how lack of understanding westerners to the Chinese.

I think the poster's idea is this is a post from a person that heap praise to Chinese government because he is the beneficiary of the current Chinese dictators, like Jack Ma benefited and as if he would have praised Chinese government.

Wrong. Laughably wrong. Recently Jack Ma's Ant group's IPO was sacked by Chinese governing body because he business model is suspected of highly leveraged lending and the result could be that if the business is good, Ant group reap in all the profit, and if the lending defaulted, then Chinese government and people had to bear the blunt. Very similar to our sub prime blunder.

In fact, Jack Ma gave an angry speech again the "excessive oversight" right before his IPO went sour. Man, this would have become the biggest fintech IPO.

Jack Ma do not always like Chinese government. And before you make any such shallow comparison, please open up your eye and see the world. It's good for you.

 

[buttershrimp]

Somebody responded my previous post with a simple catch word "Jack Ma". Even though he deleted it within one minutes, but still I would like to response because even this simple word show how lack of understanding westerners to the Chinese.

I think the poster's idea is this is a post from a person that heap praise to Chinese government because he is the beneficiary of the current Chinese dictators, like Jack Ma benefited and as if he would have praised Chinese government.

Wrong. Laughably wrong. Recently Jack Ma's Ant group's IPO was sacked by Chinese governing body because he business model is suspected of highly leveraged lending and the result could be that if the business is good, Ant group reap in all the profit, and if the lending defaulted, then Chinese government and people had to bear the blunt. Very similar to our sub prime blunder.

In fact, Jack Ma gave an angry speech again the "excessive oversight" right before his IPO went sour. Man, this would have become the biggest fintech IPO.

Jack Ma do not always like Chinese government. And before you make any such shallow comparison, please open up your eye and see the world. It's good for you.

Guys guys... let’s get back on topic.... making fun of the Russian and Indian governments.

 

[AZRI11]

I get this could be an unpopular question but should we not have seen some new S/X models delivered by now?

It's over a month since the production was supposed to get started again. With no deliveries yet the production so far can't be more than the low hundreds can it? Even if the manufacturing ramps up faster from here this can't be good for margins in Q1.

Seems like a really slow ramp up to me.

I believe production started the first week of February. Should see some deliveries this upcoming week. Model S only for now.

 

[willow_hiller]

Supposedly the $25k designed-in-China Tesla vehicle was approved in September 2020, with official certification coming next month. Rumored to appear at the Guangzhou Auto Show this November and be on sale in 2022: https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/1360782625909010432?s=20

Massive amounts of sandbagging if this is all true.

EDIT: Bit of follow-up research. Evidently the original source was contacted by Tesla China that added a statement to the effect of "This is just a rumor" https://twitter.com/DongyanWang8/status/1360776211677388802?s=19 I don't know enough about the context to tell whether that's a non-denial-denial.

Original source: 消息称特斯拉中国总裁朱晓彤证实将推出更便宜车型，官方回应：谣言，从来没说过

 

[Coolio2000]

Elon is not soft to Chinese because of the economic benefit. Elon is objective toward China, he is not kowtowing to Chinese government. And Chinese government deserve credit for taking care of their people. And Elon is brave to see it and say it as it is.

Recently, Elon said that "Chinese government took better care of their people", but in the same speech less than half minutes later. He said he support Pres. Trump's trade policy to China to a certain degree because China had unfair trade advantage due to the tariff difference.

If one see how Chinese deal with the pandemic, one will know that Chinese is indeed take better care of their people.

I understand that Chinese did not handle Wuhan situation well at the beginning and the world is a mess now. But if one look at how USA handle the situation since March, 2020 when China's woe had played out in front of our eyes, we cannot totally blame others with our misfortune.

And please don't bring up the concentration camp in Xinjiang or human right violation in China. Or Chinese lack of freedom, or whatever. Let's just realize there is a big culture difference between American and Chinese and don't naturally belittle Chinese's effort in improving their life.

One example, in any city now, China has achieved 100% coverage of the video surveillance. Their facial recognition is used in many major public spaces and I guess everyone is recorded and analyzed. From western eye, this is a police state and major violation of the human's personal freedom and privacy. This I agree.

But Chinese view it differently, because there is virtually no pocket picker now since they get caught with the video all the time. They are also able to solve 20 years, 30 years non solved murder cases if there is a mug shot of the suspect 20, 30 years ago. The story tells that when the at large suspect got within an airport, or train station, they face was analyzed by advanced facial analysis algorithm, and compared with 20, 30 years ago mug shot and sometimes within as little as 5 minutes, the arresting policeman showed up. Chinese are willing to sacrifice personal individuality for the common good, while we value our personal individuality that even as simple a thing as wearing a mask because such a fuss.

We don't like it. But we cannot ridicule them to think this improve their life. And to some degree, it is very tempting for me to say that somehow I would like to sacrifice my privacy a little bit if we can catch 30 year murderers too.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or be utterly terrified on what you just wrote.

 

[Singuy]

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or be utterly terrified on what you just wrote.

It's pretty obvious that Brian121 is Chinese and it's a good opportunity to understand how the Chinese think as they are culturally bread to be different. Remember that time a Chinese coworker (not born in the US) raised hell in front of their boss? Probably not as stereotypically Chinese people are rule followers in the face of authority like how they were raised to be as such in the mainland. The people actually enjoys government intervention and large governments. They also enjoy authoritarianism as they see it as efficiency, taking the politics out in which it's proven to stifle specific goals (they watch Republicans and Democrats battle back and forth with zero progress toward anything after 4 years as they build transformative sustainable energy infrastructure at record speed). Every time I hear politicians say "how can we have the Chinese have the fasted rail system while we fall behind?" How? Politics...The CCP doesn't believe in negotiations, they just do and it's done. How did the government stop Covid? They shut down the citizen of a particular area. If you don't have a negative test you can't buy food...while you can't even get people to wear masks here. Like I said, what the CCP wants they get..they want near zero Covid cases they will get it no matter how much freedom they take away.

Citizens are used to falling in line and just cares about similar goals, which is money and status. Honestly I have never heard any of my relatives wishing there's more human rights or freedom as they don't really care about such things as much as an American would. Propaganda works, and having many Chinese citizens driving Mercedes S classes just reinforce that propaganda.

Unfortunately this kind of upbringing doesn't lead to a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box, hence all the IP stealing.

 

[Mokuzai]

Weekend story time!

Was minding my own business watching some WandaVision videos on YouTube at a supercharger when a white Model S with chrome delete caught my eye. Not uncommon seeing chrome delete around here but then I noticed the manufacturer plates so I started to pay attention to the dash as he drove by and I saw the screen poking up above the dash...!!!

A Plaid S in the wild! Or at least a refreshed long range since it didn't have a spoiler. I talked to the driver for a couple minutes as he was plugging in but he couldn't share...well anything...except that it was headed back to Fremont which is about 325 miles away. Haven't heard of any sightings this far away from Fremont so was super excited to spot it.

I grabbed the video from my BlackVue. It's a bit hard to see since it was night but you can see the refreshed front facia pretty clearly as he drives by. At the time of this posting YouTube is still processing the 4k version of the video but the 1080p version is available.

Up close the exterior changes, while subtle, looked pretty slick IMO.

 

[wnorris]

For those of you that are tracking FSD progress via Youtube I highly recommend watching Frenchie's videos. He is a beta tester out of Chicago that takes the car downtown and through various routes around the city. He tends to be pretty conservative in taking control, but his videos highlight that there is still a lot of work to do.

IMO...his videos give a more realistic depiction of where FSD is at relative to the more popular FSD beta tester videos in California.

Frenchie's Youtube channel

 

[samppa]

Elon doesn't chew the fat with national leaders. If he's offering to talk, it means he's thinking about something he wants. Could be a factory for Tesla, could be a launch center for SpaceX, who knows. And then you're involving yourself with The Impaler and that's inherently dangerous.

I would guess it's just open a presence there. There is no Tesla in Russia at the moment. No sales centers, nothing. The Teslas that have been imported privately to Russia are serviced here, in Helsinki.

 

[Intl Professor]

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

My public high school was kind of a feeder school for MIT, Buzz Aldrin graduated about four years prior to me and at one point I was impressed the Director of MIT Admissions knew my high school counselor. A Belgian education researcher visited our student newspaper class and said "In Belgium we teach students how to think, here you are taught how to behave." Made sense to me then. Everything in our newspaper had to be approved by the teacher. In our honors Art-English team-taught class we were scolded for failing to identify the Smugs, in "The duchess and the Smugs," as symbolic of Communists. McCarthy was riding high, then. Caramelized his liver later, but his heart failed first.

I think we are massively confused about individualism and creativity. The truly creative are usually scorned which, paradoxically, can help.

 

[t153]

For those of you that are tracking FSD progress via Youtube I highly recommend watching Frenchie's videos. He is a beta tester out of Chicago that takes the car downtown and through various routes around the city. He tends to be pretty conservative in taking control, but his videos highlight that there is still a lot of work to do.

IMO...his videos give a more realistic depiction of where FSD is at relative to the more popular FSD beta tester videos in California.

Frenchie's Youtube channel

Wow, that was pretty bad compared to the vids ive seen from cali.

 

[lklundin]

Russia is in the Paris Climate Accord and got hit heavily by climate change last year.

Also, Russia has vast mineral resources, including - yes you guessed it - nickel. In fact, some years ago Russia was the World's leading nickel producer. So it's quite possible that Tesla would like to get their hands on some Russian nickel - maybe in the form of locally produced cells, if need be.

Btw, most of what I know about geopolitics seems to come from Stephen Colbert:

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Epic thread by ICannot_Enough ( James Stephenson) on twitter:

Thread by @ICannot_Enough on Thread Reader App

I'm forecasting 178,254 deliveries in Q1 and almost 875K deliveries for 2021. That's 75% deliveries growth YOY.

Detailed bottom up financial forecast for this year.

 

[RobStark]

Russian nickel is the dirtiest on the planet, by a wide margin.

 

[Tslynk67]

Weekend story time!

Was minding my own business watching some WandaVision videos on YouTube at a supercharger when a white Model S with chrome delete caught my eye. Not uncommon seeing chrome delete around here but then I noticed the manufacturer plates so I started to pay attention to the dash as he drove by and I saw the screen poking up above the dash...!!!

A Plaid S in the wild! Or at least a refreshed long range since it didn't have a spoiler. I talked to the driver for a couple minutes as he was plugging in but he couldn't share...well anything...except that it was headed back to Fremont which is about 325 miles away. Haven't heard of any sightings this far away from Fremont so was super excited to spot it.

I grabbed the video from my BlackVue. It's a bit hard to see since it was night but you can see the refreshed front facia pretty clearly as he drives by. At the time of this posting YouTube is still processing the 4k version of the video but the 1080p version is available.

Up close the exterior changes, while subtle, looked pretty slick IMO.

4K works for me, but are you telling me you didn't go over and investigate/film close-up, dude!!

One thing, have they updated the tail-lights, could you tell? By that I mean are they a still looking like separate LED's, or do they have the soft look that you have with the MX?

 

[UkNorthampton]

Employment is tricky there are forces pulling in opposite directions:-

• Aging population / eventual population decline - fewer workers.
• Space and other new industries - more jobs
• Africa/India improving living standards - larger global market, and more workers
• Automation, Robots , AI - fewer workers required

Wil may need a UBI, unless it turns out there are enough jobs for everyone., the best hope for full employment is space travel and other new industries create a lot of new jobs.

Winner take most economy.

So many manager, admin, shop, physical, driver jobs will go.

UBI is best idea, allows people to take time off/go part-time to look after young or old family, allows retraining.

Some jobs will remain, some will be created, some much the same but it will be very UNEVEN.

Whole sets of people will lose jobs. In some countries that also means healthcare, pensions.

There's also another aspect... most people I know are spenders, always in debt, 'what if I die at 40', unable to cover small surprise (inevitable) life events such as illness, unemployment etc. A few people (like many reading this) are savers - and even then investors in S&P500, dividend shares (Shell, BP, Exxon etc) will be quite different from disruptive innovation investors.

There will be lots of upset from the changes that are here/coming.

UBI / Freedom Dividend / Citizens' Income is a way to avoid some of the worst social upsets that affect everyone (even the financial/jobs winners).

Otherwise, bad actors could rabble rouse a few luddites to get some anti-Tesla ideas & that could get ugly. As investors in Tesla it seems sensible to ease the transition via UBI, renewables jobs (solar).

I agree with Andrew Yang that direct retraining has proven not to work. Creating renewable jobs creates training needs that have practical value & likely to be much better for people and companies.

 

[petit_bateau]

It's pretty obvious that Brian121 is Chinese and it's a good opportunity to understand how the Chinese think as they are culturally bread to be different. Remember that time a Chinese coworker (not born in the US) raised hell in front of their boss? Probably not as stereotypically Chinese people are rule followers in the face of authority like how they were raised to be as such in the mainland. The people actually enjoys government intervention and large governments. They also enjoy authoritarianism as they see it as efficiency, taking the politics out in which it's proven to stifle specific goals (they watch Republicans and Democrats battle back and forth with zero progress toward anything after 4 years as they build transformative sustainable energy infrastructure at record speed). Every time I hear politicians say "how can we have the Chinese have the fasted rail system while we fall behind?" How? Politics...The CCP doesn't believe in negotiations, they just do and it's done. How did the government stop Covid? They shut down the citizen of a particular area. If you don't have a negative test you can't buy food...while you can't even get people to wear masks here. Like I said, what the CCP wants they get..they want near zero Covid cases they will get it no matter how much freedom they take away.

Citizens are used to falling in line and just cares about similar goals, which is money and status. Honestly I have never heard any of my relatives wishing there's more human rights or freedom as they don't really care about such things as much as an American would. Propaganda works, and having many Chinese citizens driving Mercedes S classes just reinforce that propaganda.

Unfortunately this kind of upbringing doesn't lead to a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box, hence all the IP stealing.

The Chinese are no more or no less 'bred' or indoctrinated than are US-ians , or for that matter Europeans. Which is to say that all cultures tend towards norms and individuals conform to those norms in order to achieve individually beneficially outcomes. And similarly leadership cadres and factions in all cultures wage their power struggles, to a greater or lesser extent in the open or otherwise.

I have watched - and listened - as senior people, and not-so-senior-people in China have openly criticised the premiership of Xi Jinping and the factional struggles within the CCP. Both in public venues and in private ones, in China and outside China.

Not all paths have to be the US-ian one.

 

[22522]

I would guess it's just open a presence there. There is no Tesla in Russia at the moment. No sales centers, nothing. The Teslas that have been imported privately to Russia are serviced here, in Helsinki.

1) Please remember that Space X satellites are not geosynchronous.

2) That essentially means that they will cover a lot of the earth as a by product of covering the part of the earth that can pay for it.

3) Russia may be covered for free as a part of this by product.

I have no idea how much the Russian government controls the internet, but incremental cost is just the hardware.

Tesla wins hearts and minds if they put it Elon Net in all the schools.

 

[OrthoSurg]

I would guess it's just open a presence there. There is no Tesla in Russia at the moment. No sales centers, nothing. The Teslas that have been imported privately to Russia are serviced here, in Helsinki.

Well, I guess the deal will work to sell Teslas in Russia if Tesla accepts to service Ladas in their service centers :X

 

[kbM3]

Woo hoo!

Conclusion? Still shareholders...

That video was recorded in 2019. If I had to bet, Mark and Martin sold some, if not all, of their TSLA shares during the GigaRise of 2020.