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

[Fobble]

1. Watched who killed the electric car

I wathed this 2 years ago, I believe. Hard to swallow what GM did. It seems to be a decent start and plenty of followers on the EV1 at that time.

 

[NicoV]

I dunno. I thought Tesla is already Apple of car makers, though not yet reach its full potential as current Apple. Should take out the "if", and go straight to the calculations.

I think of Apple as the Tesla of the phone manufacturers.

 

[Dutchie]

I do advise learning more about the company you invested in, so you won't be among the 99% you mentioned.

100% agree. That is what I learned as well. It makes you much more resilient against all the FUD out there. Knowledge is power. I was talking to a friend the other day about investing. Talking about Tesla. He found it investing in TSLA too risky. My reply was “How can this be risky when they have $20 billion in cash and hardly any debt?” …. Silence

that is why this forum is so important

 

[adiggs]

100% agree. That is what I learned as well. It makes you much more resilient against all the FUD out there. Knowledge is power. I was talking to a friend the other day about investing. Talking about Tesla. He found it investing in TSLA too risky. My reply was “How can this be risky when they have $20 billion in cash and hardly any debet” …. Silence

that is why this forum is so important

One addition on the knowledge is power front - I consider owning and driving a Tesla on a daily basis to be crucial to a long term buy and hold investment. The money used to buy the Tesla isn't a lost opportunity cost - it's possibly the most important thing one can do to help with the resilience to FUD. A daily reminder that the product matters, and the Tesla product is .. good

Worth noting - regular lurking and contribution on TMC is probably more important to me, but the two - own and drive a Tesla + TMC = golden goose that keeps on giving. Or in my case - early retirement.

Thank you TMC!

 

[Fobble]

“How can this be risky when they have $20 billion in cash and hardly any debet” …. Silence

To be fair, it's easy to see this way now. However, before M3 was in high volume ramp, invest in TSLA was quite risky. I started my Tesla investment in mid 2018, Compared to those started earlier, it was not too bad. At least I can see and feel the products (MS and MX). I went >90% of my ROTH IRA, Personal Savings, HSA and teenage kids' Savings after:
- Test drove the Model S and bought one. There was nothing out there like the MS in 2018 in terms of fun to drive and the technology. Of course, now we have NIO, Lucid, ... who also claim to have similar tech.
- Direction of Tesla to try to build out super charging infrastructure along major highways. Without that, an electric car is just a fancy weekend or in-town car
- Elon: he seems to be able to get things executed and make things happened consistently once a plan is set in his mind. This is still a major factor to differentiate Tesla from other companies going forward. My trust in him is still strong.

 

[Coolio2000]

100% agree. That is what I learned as well. It makes you much more resilient against all the FUD out there. Knowledge is power. I was talking to a friend the other day about investing. Talking about Tesla. He found it investing in TSLA too risky. My reply was “How can this be risky when they have $20 billion in cash and hardly any debet” …. Silence

that is why this forum is so important

I had a friend at work ask if Tesla was still losing money.

There is still a big disconnect about Tesla and Joe Public.

 

[Singuy]

I had a friend at work ask if Tesla was still losing money.

There is still a big disconnect about Tesla and Joe Public.

Guy must not have a TV or access to the internet. Tesla joining the trillion dollar club is a bigger deal than S&P announcement. There are 500 s&p companies, but only 5 trillion dollar companies.

 

[redan]

Ummm ... Giga Shanghai, wow!!!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1454800603599757316

 

[Dutchie]

One addition on the knowledge is power front - I consider owning and driving a Tesla on a daily basis to be crucial to a long term buy and hold investment. The money used to buy the Tesla isn't a lost opportunity cost - it's possibly the most important thing one can do to help with the resilience to FUD. A daily reminder that the product matters, and the Tesla product is .. good

Worth noting - regular lurking and contribution on TMC is probably more important to me, but the two - own and drive a Tesla + TMC = golden goose that keeps on giving. Or in my case - early retirement.

Thank you TMC!

Yes, I remember that. I bought my shares in 2018 too. There was a quite stressful time with the ramp of the M3 production. I was in the red a long time with my shares. I regularly took my car for a drive, just to get a bit more relaxed and to convince myself that it will be OK in the long run.

 

[Mengy]

I had a friend at work ask if Tesla was still losing money.

There is still a big disconnect about Tesla and Joe Public.

Very true.

When I "retired" this past May I had a co-worker ask me how I could afford to do it. When I told her I made enough money on my TSLA investments which enabled me to quit, her reaction was "What, that electric car company that's going out of business?". No lie, all she had heard about Tesla was how doomed it was compared to regular gas car companies.

I think we take our knowledge here for granted when in fact we are the minority, there are LOTS of people out there who don't know much at all about Tesla yet.

 

[Singuy]

Guess when you can't solve world hunger with 8 billion, you surely can solve it with 6 billion.

Contributions to WFP in 2020 | World Food Programme

TOTAL CONTRIBUTIONS: US$ 8,423,397,661 as of 18 March 2024

www.wfp.org

 

[Johann Koeber]

I don't get all the talk about suggesting how Elon Musk should spend his fortune.

1. Do you really think, you know better than Elon himself?

2. Wealthy people are short of cash. Its not like he has millions or billions sitting around somewhere (couch cushions?). Otherwise he would not be wealthy

3. Were he really to sell some of his stock to pay for a world food program, any other charity or personal consumption, suddenly he would not be so wealthy as the stock price would fall like a rock. The wealth is only on paper and there is no easy way to cash out (the market and the taxes would take their toll).

So better we trust EM himself to make the right decisions.

 

[dhanson865]

As we all know, Tesla absolutely dominates EVs, but yet to dominate total market share. They'll need to make at least 10M/year to do that I suspect by 2025, but the momentum that is building now is the foreshadowing. I guess the market will just need to see Berlin and Austin fully ramped which I'm targeting Q4 next year to be that moment. Guessing a 2M/year runrate from all factories at that time.

What is going to be truly magical will be the inflection of the switchover to 4680s at volume when 2170s start being less than 50% of total volume production. Huge, crazy, off-the-chart margins. When this happens is more of a SWAG, but hoping for Q4 2022 as well.

The leader right now has 8.5% market share. If ICE manufacturers don't recover Tesla could take that lead with 5M cars in 2023.

note the numbers in blue are from about 2 seconds worth of thought and have about that much value as a prediction.

Just saying if the has beens continue to falter while Tesla rises they might meet us in the middle.


edit: if you assume a lesser falloff for the ICE cars then Tesla has to get to about 6M produced to take the lead

edit2: doh! I messed up on the Tesla production for 2019-2020 throwing all the other numbers off. Corrected table below

 

[RobDickinson]

I don't get all the talk about suggesting how Elon Musk should spend his fortune.

1. Do you really think, you know better than Elon himself?

2. Wealthy people are short of cash. Its not like he has millions or billions sitting around somewhere (couch cushions?). Otherwise he would not be wealthy

3. Were he really to sell some of his stock to pay for a world food program, any other charity or personal consumption, suddenly he would not be so wealthy as the stock price would fall like a rock. The wealth is only on paper and there is no easy way to cash out (the market and the taxes would take their toll).

So better we trust EM himself to make the right decisions.

Hell yes.

If $6bn can indeed solve world hunger forever that's less than 10% of the US military budget alone, this is why you have government, to solve social problems.

That individuals are targeted only shows government has failed

 

[22522]

This is important, and I have worked very hard to include something for the Quant people here.

Executive Summary:

Full Self Driving (FSD) will be a great boon to humanity; however, early learning is characterized by uncertainty. This uncertainty would be vocalized in the words, "I am not sure." It is this uncertainty during learning that impedes our path to a much safer future.

Uncertainty is not new. There are standard ways to accommodate uncertainty and make progress. The key way being safety margin, or factor of safety. In traditional engineering calculations this factor of safety, or over design, varies from 2.5 to 10.

Tesla has more active and passive safety margin in their vehicles than any other manufacturer. The cars can accelerate, corner and stop faster than their competitors. This means that FSD Teslas can drive more safely than their competitors, even if the AI recognition speed is identical.

When differences are considered, it is important to know the basis for normalizing those differences. Consider for example braking distance, which can be converted into time. All these measurements should be normalized on clock cycles. As in, "How many extra clock cycles does Tesla provide for the AI computer to identify and act on a hazard without hitting it?"

I don't know that any other brand will have the fleet performance safety margin that Tesla has in the next two years, if ever. Cars that are already marginal on safety do not have any extra margin to allocate to the FSD adoption task. There is no headroom. Tesla, on the other hand, has designed their fleet with the safety margin to support adoption of FSD, including the uncertainty that occurs as the process is refined, This will make a gap happen in the time required to demonstrate safe FSD. This gap should eventually be recognized in the stock price.

This is sort of a latent capability sort of thing. Other manufacturers may be in a "can't get there from here" position.

Now for a quantitative analysis of factor of safety applied to today's mountain bike ride.

@Electroman

You asked if I might have a concussion.

My answer, upon reflection was, "Not sure."

So on today's ride, I copied Tesla by using:

1. The best Michelin tires in the world (DH22 with 2.5x the knob height and a 3 step fade on the edge block traction (vs. the typical 1 or 2 step traction fade)) FS = 2
2. A fork with 180mm of travel vs the usual 100mm. FS = 1.8
3. A dual suspension bike rather than the front suspension only bike. FS = 2
4. 4 piston hydraulic disc brakes with fin cooled pads and rotors. FS = 2
5. Flat pedals rather than clip in pedals. FS=1.8
6. Mega in the name. It is not Giga, but Nukeproof makes up for it!

I was able to safely complete the ride because I copied Tesla and the latent capabilities they designed into their product to support a driver who is not completely sure.

For all you Quant folks, there you have it! And for the visual folks, here is a picture:

Important points being:

• "Not sure" can be planned for and made safe. To succeed at Full Self Driving you have to do this.
• Tesla has done that safety margin improvement to their entire fleet. Under that sleek exterior Tesla has factors of safety in response time - like you see in the "lots of headroom for mistakes" bike above.

Thank you ELECTROMAN.

 

[MXWing]

I had a friend at work ask if Tesla was still losing money.

There is still a big disconnect about Tesla and Joe Public.

Man that convo between us would have went like this:

Friend: is Tesla still losing money?
Me: Have you asked your wife's boyfriend?
Friend: No, who's that.
Me: Yes you have. It's me. And no it isnt.

That's the big problem with streaming only content like Netflix and Disney+. No one pays attention to any news unless the mobile device makers really wants to push something.

Apple News and Google News will never talk about the great things Tesla and Musk is doing. I don't even trust them to offer criticism without an ulterior agenda.

 

[22522]

I don't get all the talk about suggesting how Elon Musk should spend his fortune.

1. Do you really think, you know better than Elon himself?

2. Wealthy people are short of cash. Its not like he has millions or billions sitting around somewhere (couch cushions?). Otherwise he would not be wealthy

3. Were he really to sell some of his stock to pay for a world food program, any other charity or personal consumption, suddenly he would not be so wealthy as the stock price would fall like a rock. The wealth is only on paper and there is no easy way to cash out (the market and the taxes would take their toll).

So better we trust EM himself to make the right decisions.

It is important for everyone to look in the mirror that is the EV support bill crafted by your elected representatives. That means you own it and it is an accurate reflection of you, your heart, your entire being. That bill is who you are.

So when you ask for money for any "reason," when he looks into your eyes, he sees the bill you wrote.

Can you blame him?

(I am hoping this gets the entire "beg for graft from Elon" conversation kicked out of this thread.)

 

[StealthP3D]

1.) I’m a de-jedi-generate gambler like my father before me.

2.) Bored watching the descent from 900 to 550 and slow rise back up over 900 in 7 months time. TSLA did not do much for longs if you were not consistently buying the dip. Buying the dips might not have been possible either if capital was already fully deployed.

3.) Overall portfolio balance with options outperformed a scenario compared to sitting with static shares.

4.) It irritates my wife.

5.) You learn much more about the market and hone your investing craft when +/- 10% swings is an ordinary day.

6.) I'm a smooth brained ape that can't process the security and benefits of "time in market" vs "timing the market".

7.) It irritates my wife's friends and their husbands waiting for me to fail. (HE MUST BE LOSING BIG AND NOT TELLING YOU RIGHT? LOL)

8.) I offer a valuable service by providing liquidity to people like Dr. Burry. If he wants puts, someone has to sell them.

9.) Life is fascinating when you don't know if dinner is going to be Wendy's or steak on any given day.

Not bad. You nailed #1 and #6. I'm not sure if 2 out of 9 is a passing grade but at least we got to read 7 very human excuses!

This is what makes human behavior so interesting.

 

[ZachF]

The leader right now has 8.5% market share. If ICE manufacturers don't recover Tesla could take that lead with 5M cars in 2023.

View attachment 727799

View attachment 727800

note the numbers in blue are from about 2 seconds worth of thought and have about that much value as a prediction.

Just saying if the has beens continue to falter while Tesla rises they might meet us in the middle.


edit: if you assume a lesser falloff for the ICE cars then Tesla has to get to about 6M produced to take the lead

edit2: doh! I messed up on the Tesla production for 2019-2020 throwing all the other numbers off. Corrected table below


View attachment 727822

ICE peaked in 2016/17.

 

[ZachF]

Hell yes.

If $6bn can indeed solve world hunger forever that's less than 10% of the US military budget alone, this is why you have government, to solve social problems.

That individuals are targeted only shows government has failed

I highly, highly doubt that only $6 billion could feed the world’s hungry since the raw cost/production of agriculture in the US is about $250 billion per year (~1% of GDP)… That’s not even counting distribution and other costs.

Worldwide agricultural output is probably in the range of ~$4 trillion.