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

[Maarten]

My 2 cents about Tesla's refusal of the huge subsidy (being my gut-feeling):
This subsidy is to accelerate the wide-spread use of batteries.
Very likely there are conditions connected to the subsidy that any progress in battery-technology within a certain period must become freely available for other parties.
Also very likely those conditions were still under development in the past.
Now that they have become official, they are not acceptable for Tesla, which is far ahead of other companies in battery-technology.
The only possible and correct decision by Tesla.

 

[lafrisbee]

Two things:
Germany is NOT the place for any healthy company to try and manufacture.

The Subsidy money must have some bizarre BS stipulations, or Our Boy would take the money for a SECOND Manufacturing plant, and build the first one for whatever reason he is going ahead and doing....

OR he's got a better deal to do it in another part of the EU that hasn't been publicly shared.

 

[Highway2Heel]

Or maybe Elon doesn’t need the money and is aware of the positive PR associated with declining…

 

[JRD1]

Re: declining the German battery subsidy - turns out it had a €4500 union stipulation in it. /s

 

[2daMoon]

I'm still reeling from yesterday's Tryptophan overdose and this morning's news across all fronts isn't doing anything to offer relief.

Bleary-eyed, and grappling with it all has me wanting to crawl back into bed for a few more hours while idle speculation on COVID, "12/9" / X.com, German subsidies, and the SP work out all their own frustrations upon each other.

Happy Black Friday all.

 

[mongo]

Tesla doesn't need the subsidy to fund expansion. Allowing it to go to someone else more in need should help accelerate cell/battery/vehicle/renewal energy expansion thus supporting the mission.
Bonus side effect if it increases 3rd party cell supply to Tesla.

 

[Artful Dodger]

A paltry 1.64 M chairs swapped in the 1st 15 min of the Main session:

The real Wall St. is off today enjoying the holiday while the chickens turncoats rule the roost. h/t @2daMoon

Cheers!

EDIT: Meager 2.63M chairs traded in the 1st 30 minutes.

 

[2daMoon]

A paltry 1.64 M chairs swapped in the 1st 15 min of the Main session:
The real Wall St. is off today enjoying the holiday, while the chickens turkeys run the roost.

Cheers!

FTFY

 

[MABMAB]

Y'all be bunch of armchair CEOs with yer highpot in thizing round here.

 

[lafrisbee]

Or maybe Elon doesn’t need the money and is aware of the positive PR associated with declining…

no

 

[CatB]

Please, no. This place is a sanctuary away from that tedious dreck.

Disagree - the Coronavirus thread is still there to protect this thread from OT: Coronavirus

and also to protect the coronavirus thread from the OT chatter here. A number of valued contributors have made that thread very helpful, actually.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Y'all be bunch of armchair CEOs with yer highpot in thizing round here.

It's one of my favourite pass times.

 

[lafrisbee]

There is not a story about why Tesla withdrew its request for the government subsidy.
There is a reason why Tesla does not qualify, but without any facts there is no "news" story.

 

[JoRoMo]

There is not a story about why Tesla withdrew its request for the government subsidy.
There is a reason why Tesla does not qualify, but without any facts there is no "news" story.

«does not qualify» comes from…?

 

[JimS]

My wife was curious as to why CNET would publish such a negative article on the Model Y:

2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

The Tesla Model Y seems like the complete package, but its active safety suite is so fundamentally flawed that the whole dish is completely ruined.

www.cnet.com

I'm curious about that myself since the CNET web site shows this:

"Marketers:
License CNET logos and content in your advertising and product packaging."

I guess they are not going after a share of Tesla's advertising budget. /s

Questions for you MY owners:
1. Any leaky frunks? If so did Tesla fix them?
2. Did any of you pay $10k for FSD that didn't want any of its current features or didn't want to be a part of one of the biggest technological advances in recent history?

 

[Singuy]

I love the smell of 1.4% 10 year in the morning.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Good Morning everyone. My neighbor just told me about the market selloff today, and I forgot it was a trading day. Initially concerned TSLA might get hit especially hard on a macro dip... come to find it's nothing unusual and just tracking the macros - seems unusual for TSLA. It either behaves like a regular stock, or it has fits of bipolar swings.

So now, when Mr Market acts up, I tell my car to take me somewhere. Seriously, FSD 10.5 is that good. Not ready wide use as it seems to be trying to figure out a few new line markings around Az, but it always seems to correct on the spot and only a matter of time now. Sometimes it's correcting mid right-turn realizing it's a bit close to the curb - very human like. No FSD wheel scrapes yet (to compliment my existing little niks).

That tweet yesterday animating the differences in Beta 10.5 likely made all the difference. Makes me wonder, how did FSD work with nearby object disappearing in the first place? Maybe I misunderstood the post. Seems like a good time to test Beta since that upgrade. I might have to strap on my camera and post some drives locally in Chandler... the home of Waymo. They need to know we're here.

I realize that FSD can easily go OT, so I'll try to curb my enthusiasm here and stick to key points occasionally as it might affect changing value, if not just to validate changes with an honest opinion. Speaking of stock, besides FSD sales or subscription revenue, have the analysts baked in rideshare or licenses to other companies yet? I'm thinking not yet bc recent estimates are less than $5,000 a share still - I am seriously not worried about TSLA long run.

 

[Unpilot]

My wife was curious as to why CNET would publish such a negative article on the Model Y:

2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

The Tesla Model Y seems like the complete package, but its active safety suite is so fundamentally flawed that the whole dish is completely ruined.

www.cnet.com

I'm curious about that myself since the CNET web site shows this:

"Marketers:
License CNET logos and content in your advertising and product packaging."

I guess they are not going after a share of Tesla's advertising budget. /s

Questions for you MY owners:
1. Any leaky frunks? If so did Tesla fix them?
2. Did any of you pay $10k for FSD that didn't want any of its current features or didn't want to be a part of one of the biggest technological advances in recent history?

As always, follow the money.

CNET is NOT independent...it is owned by CBS.

CBS gets a lot of ad money from automakers.....but 0 from Tesla.

 

[30seconds]

Great post and to add some of my thoughts...

TL;DR - No auto company is going to survive that cannot figure out how to do software. This is truly the limiting factor for the future of the auto industry.

Elon is innovating on manufacturing to ensure he has the lead on BOM cost, throughput and vehicle build quality as he has solved software in that he is a true innovator and holds the total vertical software integration lead (from the chip FW all the way up to the final app's on the MCU - center display). Encompassing all code installed in the vehicle. Offers the most flexibility/agility, speed and quality control. Super highly functioning innovation machine.

Eventually this will culminate in solving FSD, but in the meantime, FSD will continue to get more and more valuable and cause the profit margins to incrementally go up until it blows-off-the-top with the full release.

All other auto manufacturers will be left with the crumbs. Low margin, less features, nothing to market of value, steadily declining sales as Tesla ramps up to offer shorter wait times.

I await the Sandy teardown of the Rivian and Lucid. The Mach E was very telling and Ford's days are numbered if that is where they are at with software and innovation (if that wheel on the screen wasn't a dead giveaway). The GM Bolt is dead in the water and the Hummer is a complete joke (no innovation, just a super large battery, with super low efficiency, which will be blown out of the water by CT). I also think the Ford Lightning is a joke (the vehicle on stage had an antenna). #TimeWillTell

Also, I know a bit about Apple. One of my best networking dev's at XBOX went to work in their chip team developing low level designs and efficiencies for networking speed and other bottleneck improvements at the lowest memory, channel and clock cycle levels. While I feel that Apple has done well as these levels, it is the small sandbox they play in compared to Tesla that is very telling. Their efficiencies will translate to vehicles, but their leader, Tim Cook, is just not an innovator, he's great at supply chain though. Apple will need to compete in vehicles by 2024 to remain the largest company on the planet.

I know a bit about Amazon/AWS as I competed with while working on Google Cloud Compute. Amazon is the leader and the lead continues to improve, but they play in a very different sandbox than Tesla. Amazon is similar to both Apple and Tesla as they have made their own chips, boards, trays, racks, data centers...etc the whole stack and innovate on it faster than any other company at every discipline. Compute, networking, storage are all done with their homegrown products and software. They invest more, they innovate faster and they are not slowing down. This is how Tesla operates and why the gap continues to grow each quarter.

My opinion is that some of the competition is starting to finally deliver decent EVs with the Mach-E as the closest in terms of price / value vs. the Model 3/Y. I think this is the benchmark as this is the highest volume segment and the one Tesla is currently focused on.

The big difference is the rate of change of improvement. Tesla has ongoing production improvements and is already making significant changes with dual casting Y production with Berlin & Austin and is looking to implement structural batteries soon as well. These are changes that look to decrease the cost of production while increasing production rate, quality and vehicle performance.

Plus, as you list, all the software - vehicle, Dojo, factory management.

Hard to see how the rest of the industry avoids being a bunch of also rans.

 

[SOULPEDL]

As always, follow the money.

CNET is NOT independent...it is owned by CBS.

CBS gets a lot of ad money from automakers.....but 0 from Tesla.

Yes, but when they come out with such BS, they sound like some leadership spewing it out recently at GM. Credibility is at stake for CBS and CNET and anyone else who tries to write creatively for pay.

We've got white seats on our Y - LOVE IT!