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

[Discoducky]

Great read and it is the conclusion I came to as well.

However, Ford has bigger issues in two quarters due to the Rivian investment if the stock price doesn't recover, half of Ford's profit comes from Ford finance and the stunning losses in China.

All of these point to a very high likelihood of even further major restructuring.

Why Tesla's Revenue Will Pass Ford's Within 6 Months - CleanTechnica

I look at 4 metrics, market cap, profits, revenue and unit sales. Looking at when Tesla exceeds Ford in each of the 4 metrics!

cleantechnica.com

 

[MP3Mike]

Exactly this. We are supply constrained and not production capacity constrained. With plenty of production capacity available, when shanghai is back online they can push to 100% cap and excess supply should be able to go to the other three factories to absorb until we hit max potential production for the year. That's what's important and not quarterly fluctuations due to macro factors.

Yep, but the market probably won't believe it until they see it. I.e. Q3

 

[Singuy]

Shanghai lockdown was extended indefinitely and to a larger area.

Wall Street estimates for Q2 are at 340k, but I imagine they’ll start to come down if we don’t hear news about a reopening soon.

Shanghai exchange is green after a bloody day today. Seems like no one cares for now. Or this is all part of some technical trade.

 

[CorneliusXX]

It’s a good thing they have a new factory to pick up the slack.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1510711332366131209

Umm… make that 2 news factories to pick up the slack. They can’t just hand off inventory to the other locations, but if some supplies (chips) are still tightly constrained, they have enough spare capacity to use them and perhaps not suffer too much from this down-time.

Fortune really does favor the prepared. Shanghai was ramping just as Fremont was having covid issues, now Berlin and Austin can help out with Shanghai covid issues.

Imagine where we would be if we didn't have Elon constantly pressing the accelerator to the floor.

 

[replicant]

>New car registrations' data for Germany Q1/22 available now: Share of battery-#ElectricVehicles slightly higher than in Q1/21 but lower than end-22 and stagnating. Also for average CO2 not much progress since #co2standards targets for 2020/21 have been met. https://t.co/oRAk6dyEZF

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511351013256667142

 

[Baumisch]

>New car registrations' data for Germany Q1/22 available now: Share of battery-#ElectricVehicles slightly higher than in Q1/21 but lower than end-22 and stagnating. Also for average CO2 not much progress since #co2standards targets for 2020/21 have been met. https://t.co/oRAk6dyEZF

Keep in mind that no manufacturer can deliver in time atm - and subsidies are getting cut, "innovationsprämie" ends FY22 - so next year 3k instead of 6k incentive. Also Tesla just raised the M3 SR by 7k effectively (including subsidies cut as M3SR+ leaving the high-subsidy bracket pricerange).

So imho the demand is growing but supply is limited and customers don't want to gamble on the 3k incentive gap wether manufacturer can deliver until EOY.

EDIT: another factor are PHEV subsidies which new government is commited to cut hard or phase-out next year - so imho more people that were eyeing PHEVs are waiting for a possible EV purchase next year. Same for gas prices - government is reducing GAS taxes for 3 months, I guess people are also waiting to see where prices fall EOY.

This is all aligning with GigaBerlin ramp up quite nicely.

 

[Todd Burch]

Didn’t see this coming due to their recent light-hearted(?) exchange on Twitter, but interesting validation:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511494788960309250

 

[Todd Burch]

I hope you all are right RE picking up the slack for Shanghai, although keep in mind their lockdown will introduce a whole new set of supplier shortages as well. You can’t make up production if that one bolt made by Shanghai Nuts-n-Bolts, Inc. runs out of stock.

China needs to end this zero-tolerance policy. It’s madness and unrealistic—the supply chain needs to go back to normal after years of disruption. They should use their powers to mandate vaccines if anything—not shutdowns.

 

[hobbes]

Anybody heard of a new form factor for Superchargers? Just saw this on the web:

Ain´t nothing new, design has existed since 2017:

Supercharging Cities | Tesla

www.tesla.com

 

[Thekiwi]

It is pure fantasy to think that Fremont, Berlin & Austin can pick up any of the Shanghai production in any meaningful way for this quarter. Austin & Berlin are limited by their own ramp curves, and Fremont is basically near capacity as it is. We all just need to accept that production lost from the Shanghai factory closure will only have any chance of being made up by the Shanghai factory itself once it reopens.

 

[hobbes]

>New car registrations' data for Germany Q1/22 available now: Share of battery-#ElectricVehicles slightly higher than in Q1/21 but lower than end-22 and stagnating. Also for average CO2 not much progress since #co2standards targets for 2020/21 have been met. https://t.co/oRAk6dyEZF

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511351013256667142

Interesting. Bad for stopping climate change when EV share goes up slower, but at the same time Tesla share of whole German market is the best it has ever been, which highlights Tesla´s strength compared to other manufacturers!

 

[Chenkers]

It’s a good thing they have a new factory to pick up the slack.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1510711332366131209

Umm… make that 2 news factories to pick up the slack. They can’t just hand off inventory to the other locations, but if some supplies (chips) are still tightly constrained, they have enough spare capacity to use them and perhaps not suffer too much from this down-time.

It won't be simple for Berlin to pick up slack with Shanghai being shut down. Berlin's drive building is still being fitted out and the 4680 factory is still being constructed. Berlin was relying on extra production of drive units and complete battery packs from Shanghai for their initial ramp. With Shanghai closed, the Berlin production ramp could slow as they draw down on their inventory supplied from Shanghai.

Austin should be in better shape but could be limited by Kato and local 4680 production. Hopefully we hear a positive update on their ramp progress at the Cyber Rodeo.

 

[elasalle]

It is pure fantasy to think that Fremont, Berlin & Austin can pick up any of the Shanghai production in any meaningful way for this quarter. Austin & Berlin are limited by their own ramp curves, and Fremont is basically near capacity as it is. We all just need to accept that production lost from the Shanghai factory closure will only have any chance of being made up by the Shanghai factory itself once it reopens.

It depends on how long Shanghai remains closed
2-3 weeks definitely can be made up

I think there will be a better than expected ramp for Berlin . Cheers!!

 

[hobbes]

Interesting that dropping radar results in Tesla dropping max speed for Autopilot (EDIT-drop only temporary):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511590724080480256

EDIT 2 - and this just in actually makes it likely Tesla will be able to restore original AP pilot soon also outside FSD beta:

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/tx4vvt

 

[heltok]

Didn’t see this coming due to their recent light-hearted(?) exchange on Twitter, but interesting validation:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511494788960309250

Yeah, Tesla were thinking correctly from the start. They went with setting up the biggest data gathering fleet, knowing that compute will get cheaper. The problem of labeling all that data they solved using compute by autolabelling. They can iterate quickly by throwing compute at the problem. And with Dojo they will scale compute even faster and inhouse.

Comma are using end2end which also is heavily dependent on compute. They skip the inbetween step of labelling, which Tesla solved by autolabelling, but at least they don’t have to figure out how to label when complexity of labelling is growing.

The article talks about search and learning. Tesla uses search for control policy. As for learning, there seems to be little reinforcement learning at Tesla, maybe they will use RL to augment the dataset of crashes. I think Waymo intend to use RL for training their control system in simulation and mobileye have previous use RL at least for demos of cute simplified scenarios.

 

[nativewolf]

Yeah, Tesla were thinking correctly from the start. They went with setting up the biggest data gathering fleet, knowing that compute will get cheaper. The problem of labeling all that data they solved using compute by autolabelling. They can iterate quickly by throwing compute at the problem. And with Dojo they will scale compute even faster and inhouse.

Comma are using end2end which also is heavily dependent on compute. They skip the inbetween step of labelling, which Tesla solved by autolabelling, but at least they don’t have to figure out how to label when complexity of labelling is growing.

The article talks about search and learning. Tesla uses search for control policy. As for learning, there seems to be little reinforcement learning at Tesla, maybe they will use RL to augment the dataset of crashes. I think Waymo intend to use RL for training their control system in simulation and mobileye have previous use RL at least for demos of cute simplified scenarios.

and this is very interesting and I appreciate the post very much but it is likely to lead to an extreme off topic chain and this coming from someone that goes off topic at the drop of a hat. So maybe we could save the moderators some work and put this in the FSD section in the most appropriate thread? Again, a very nice reply to a very interesting post.

 

[Nocturnal]

CNBC is basically telling people to start considering which neighbor they want to eat. Probably won't be a fun day.

 

[WADan]

Don’t know if this has been posted here.

Nissan Is Having a Tough Time Launching the Ariya EV

Nissan's been trying to hit another EV home run, but things haven't exactly gone according to plan.

www.thedrive.com

 

[hobbes]

Bloomberg says (this morning) Giga Shanghai reopening earliest on Fri, according to their sources:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511653932472360965

 

[new_sneakers]

First mention of FSD Beta 10.12 (no release date):

Elon tweets that it will significantly improve unprotected left turns.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511681820437450755