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

[AudubonB]

Here's the fuel prices at Saskatchewan Crossing, on the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Banff on May 15th:

View attachment 809700

These prices are in Cdn $ per Liter, so in US units, gas prices were:

• REGULAR: USD $6.84 / US gal
• MID-GRADE: USD $6.96 / US gal
• PREMIUM: USD $7.17 / US gal

But right around the corner from those gas pumps were two 'free-to-the-public' Tesla Destination Chargers. Ironically, the entire site is powered by a diesel generator. But even then, a Tesla is still cleaner than burning fuel in an ICE car.

View attachment 809704

Cleaner, and better looking too!

Cheers!

Cheap!
I paid US$7.90/US gallon for diesel along the Alaska Highway, in Yukon, a few weeks ago. Getting close to European levels.

 

[DarkandStormy]

How would Elon know Bill's short position? If Bill shorted when TSLA was 900, it would not be 1.5-2B to close it out, he would be making a ton still.

Elon is either lying or doesn't know how shorts work.

 

[AudubonB]

One cautionary viewpoint might be that where words are powerful scammers will be attracted.

We have moderation and room for good ideas to bubble up.

Disruption is messy work and some community adds reassurance.

But moderation is the key to decent signal to noise value.

I‘m thinking of creating a GoFundMe page for Moderators. Just don’t misspell that middle four-letter word, please.

 

[Discoducky]

Your first statement is incorrect. But even if it were true, there's only been no accidents because a human driver is needed to monitor and intervene.

You are making a definitive based on faulty assumptions. There's simply no way to compare the safety of FSD to a human driver unless you just let FSD run unsupervised and uninterrupted.

The math is shown and the statement is valid.

 

[Singuy]

Your first statement is incorrect. But even if it were true, there's only been no accidents because a human driver is needed to monitor and intervene.

You are making a definitive based on faulty assumptions. There's simply no way to compare the safety of FSD to a human driver unless you just let FSD run unsupervised and uninterrupted.

"Human supervised FSD beta..." looks like English to me so I don't understand what the confusion is. No one said FSD beta..uninterrupted..is safer than a human. The argument from critics is the fsd beta program using regular volunteers and with the software at it current state dangerous to society. Considering the program resulted in millions of miles driven without harm, the answer should be that it poses no risk to society.

 

[DarkandStormy]

The math is shown and the statement is valid.

It's really not, because it doesn't factor in what would have happened if a human didn't intervene. I can assume a crash would have taken place at every intervention point and suddenly FSD isn't safer than a 7 year old driving.

 

[JustMe]

Elon is either lying or doesn't know how shorts work.

I would play a mournful dirge for the billions of dollars that Tesla haters and shorters have lost betting against this stock, but I’ve lost track of the wold’s tiniest violin. If anyone finds it, please let me know.

 

[Gigapress]

There's simply no way to compare the safety of FSD to a human driver unless you just let FSD run unsupervised and uninterrupted.

Correct. That’s why I explicitly based the comparison on “human-supervised FSD Beta”. You are making a straw man argument by completely changing what my claim was.

The entire premise of the Beta program is to safely test and improve FSD until it does finally reach the point where supervision is unnecessary. The criticisms are that the Beta program is creating crazy hazards, which is demonstrably false.

 

[AudubonB]

It's called indicative analysis. Not claiming to be exact, just an estimate based on data.

With all due respect, @AudubonB , I'll take data-driven estimates over the 80% of posts here (see? another unsubstantiated WAG) that are opinions with no foundation in fact - notable exceptions IMHO are @The Accountant @Artful Dodger @Gigapress @jbcarioca (I'm forgetting others) who always provide evidence / sources for their assumptions. Opinions are informative and I like reading most of our opinions here. They're just not necessarily an improvement over data-driven estimates. If you could give evidence for your "I know enough" statements, we're all ears. Otherwise, please don't fault me and @ZeApelido for trying.

I hope I have earned from all participants their respect, confidence and the reliability of my own posts over the many years I have molded and massaged this thread and forum that my statements can be taken at face value. I certainly am not going to abuse others’ trust in giving the evidence you request; particularly because I have not read any kind of answer to my question: “To what non-prurient interest, to what good use would amassing these data go?”.

 

[AndrewZ]

Correct. That’s why I explicitly based the comparison on “human-supervised FSD Beta”. You are making a straw man argument by completely changing what my claim was.

The entire premise of the Beta program is to safely test and improve FSD until it does finally reach the point where supervision is unnecessary. The criticisms are that the Beta program is creating crazy hazards, which is demonstrably false.

The entire premise of the Autosteer on City Streets Beta program is to safely test and improve the user experience until it can be released to the full fleet as a Level 2 ADAS requiring constant supervision at all times, and then Tesla can realize the revenue/profit in their financials.

After Autosteer on City Streets is released to the wider fleet, further iterative processes will begin with the goal of bringing FSD to something looking like Level 3+ requiring less supervision. The current Beta program will not bring full Robotaxi functionality, these are Tesla’s own words from the end of 2020.

 

[Gigapress]

I hope I have earned from all participants their respect, confidence and the reliability of my own posts over the many years I have molded and massaged this thread and forum that my statements can be taken at face value. I certainly am not going to abuse others’ trust in giving the evidence you request; particularly because I have not read any kind of answer to my question: “To what non-prurient interest, to what good use would amassing these data go?”.

1) It’s fun to know, as evidenced by the participation in the poll. Arguably this is a “prurient interest”.

2) It provides some insight into a low-end estimate of how much of overall TSLA action and sentiment is accounted for by active members, passive members and visitors here

3) In light of point 2 and the mission, being aware of the multibillion dollar influence of this forum provides a clear reminder of the importance of keeping posts high-quality and on-topic by reminding us all that every crappy post that is so tempting in the moment is actively slowing down the achievement of the goal and might be better for Reddit or Twitter

4) In light of point 3, it might save you and other mods time and frustration reining us in

 

[Prunesquallor]

I would play a mournful dirge for the billions of dollars that Tesla haters and shorters have lost betting against this stock, but I’ve lost track of the wold’s tiniest violin. If anyone finds it, please let me know.

Tiniest I’ve found:

 

[Prunesquallor]

LOL. My guy.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Zero accidents thus far has demonstrated that human-supervised FSD Beta is at least 500x safer than the average human, conservatively assuming the average beta tester has done only 1k miles on Beta since most testers were added recently.

If you want to estimate 5k miles per tester thus far, the safety is then at least 2500x safer than the average human.

I need to say “at least”, because:

• With zero crashes we can only have a one-sided confidence interval for the true probability of collisions
  • E.g. Collision probability of 1 in a billion miles and in 1 in a trillion miles both would likely have shown zero accidents in a 100M mile sample.
• FSD Beta has been significantly improving over the time the sample was collected, so we’re estimating a moving target which moves because of the same process that generates the measurement data.

If each one of the 100k FSD Beta drivers has averaged at least 2 miles on Beta and if Beta were truly more dangerous than human driving, we’d expect to have seen a crash by now. If it’s soooo dangerous, where are all the injuries and deaths?

This is hard, indisputable evidence that these safety criticisms have no basis in reality and whoever publishes them either has no idea how to do basic statistics or has a malicious agenda.

Unfortunately, there are many people who don’t know basic statistics (or at least forget to think about them when confronted with emotionally-triggering anecdotes) and the smart malicious people are well aware of this fact.

Tesla employee was fired after sharing video of a crash on Full Self-Driving Beta

A Tesla employee who has been posting videos of his experience with the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta has been fired....

electrek.co

Hard to claim "zero accidents" when this happened.

 

[Singuy]

People don't understand the scale of 100k beta testers not having any major accidents to date.

Waymo alone had 18 accidents in 20 months with "professional drivers.

Waymo’s driverless cars were involved in 18 accidents over 20 months

Waymo released a safety report outlining the accidents and near-collisions its cars encountered in the years they've been driving in Phoenix.

www.google.com

There are 1400 self driving test cars total in the US spanning from 62 companies.

Self driving car statistics for 2021| Policy Advice

Self driving car statistics point to AVs as the cars of the future. Look here to discover just how safe they really are, including the latest market trends.

policyadvice.net

Assuming self driving cars professional are being tested 12hrs a day x 1400 cars = 16800 test hours a day on predetermined routes going around in circles over and over.

Tesla's 100k tests, Assuming being tested 1hr a day is being tested 100k hours a day on random roads with zero accident every day.

So just think about the fact that for every one day Tesla is piloting with 100k users, it's 5x more than all companies combined when it comes to risk, not even mentioning that this is random roads and not roads on rails.

And we know it has been at least 3 months at 100k. This is equivalents to 17 months of the entire industry still without accident. Waymo had 18 accidents in 20 months with much less test hours. In fact Tesla has blown waymos test hours of 20 months in a matter of 2 weeks from 100k users.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Tesla employee was fired after sharing video of a crash on Full Self-Driving Beta

A Tesla employee who has been posting videos of his experience with the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta has been fired....

electrek.co

Hard to claim "zero accidents" when this happened.

NHTSA Complaint: Driver Fought To Control Tesla On FSD Before Crash

This has to be one of the strangest Tesla FSD-related incidents we’ve come across, but luckily nobody was hurt.

insideevs.com

Very easy to find FSD accidents.

 

[Gigapress]

People don't understand the scale of 100k beta testers not having any accidents to date.

Waymo along had 18 accidents in 20 months with "professional drivers.

Waymo’s driverless cars were involved in 18 accidents over 20 months

Waymo released a safety report outlining the accidents and near-collisions its cars encountered in the years they've been driving in Phoenix.

www.google.com

There are 1400 self driving test cars total in the US spanning from 62 companies.

Self driving car statistics for 2021| Policy Advice

Self driving car statistics point to AVs as the cars of the future. Look here to discover just how safe they really are, including the latest market trends.

policyadvice.net

Assuming self driving cars professional are being tested 12hrs a day x 1400 cars = 16800 test hours a day on premarket routes going around in circles over and over.

Tesla's 100k tests, Assuming being tested 1hr a day is being tested 100k hours a day on random roads with zero accident every day.

So just think about the fact that for every one day Tesla is piloting with 100k users, it's 5x more than all companies combined when it comes to risk, not even mentioning that this is random roads and not roads on rails.

And we know it has been at least 3 months at 100k. This is equivalents to 17 months of the entire industry still without accident. Waymo had 18 accidents in 20 months with much less test hours. In fact Tesla has blown waymos test hours of 20 months in a matter of 2 weeks from 100k users.

Exactly. Well put.

Human-supervised FSD Beta is starting to prove safety levels competitive with commercial aviation. It might already be there but we don’t have enough test data to know yet.

The number of deaths per passenger-mile on commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles.[3][4] For driving, the rate was 150 per 10 billion vehicle-miles: 750 times higher per mile than for flying in a commercial airplane.​

​

Transportation safety in the United States - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

With FSD Beta having on the order of 0.1-1B miles thus far, we would’ve expected to have 1.5-15 fatalities by now if it were at least as dangerous as human driving, with about 10x more injuries and about 100x more total collisions.

FSD Beta is already saving lives and ambulance rides, and those saying it should be slowed down or cancelled are either dangerously incompetent or using ostensible safety concerns as a pretext for ulterior motives.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Why the animosity toward TA? Some of us actually know what the chart says. For the records, I called the bottom on Tuesday before a 140 point rally

People use TA to call at least 500% (made up number) of actual bottoms. And tops. And whatever else you like. They do no better than monkeys with a dartboard. Then they point to the many cases where they were right and crow about them.

Mostly, of course, what you get are people using TA to talk about what happened in the past. The phrase "so predictable" is often used. The ones who actually predict and put real money on it aren't anywhere to be found, as they go broke quickly.

And the rally to 750 today? Who could have guessed?

View attachment 809677

I'm sure it was "so predictable".

And, to be clear, I have no problem with TA in its proper place: not in this thread.

 

[Mengy]

Why the animosity toward TA? Some of us actually know what the chart says. For the records, I called the bottom on Tuesday before a 140 point rally

A broken clock is right twice per day!

While TA can be interesting at times, it's also terribly imprecise. The truth is no one and no math can accurately predict stock price movements, if any such thing existed then everyone investing in stocks would be rich and rarely lose any money.

There is only one reliable tried and true way to make money reliably in stocks:

Buy shares of financially sound companies and hold for the long term.

Sure it's possible to make money with options and day trading and whatnot, but statistically its very difficult and unreliable. People make it work, but often times they could have done just as well (or better) by simply buying shares and holding them for 5-10 years or longer.

There is a reason why statistically "dead people" make for the most successful investors.

 

[IamJohnGalt]

People use TA to call at least 500% (made up number) of actual bottoms. And tops. And whatever else you like. They do no better than monkeys with a dartboard. Then they point to the many cases where they were right and crow about them.

Mostly, of course, what you get are people using TA to talk about what happened in the past. The phrase "so predictable" is often used. The ones who actually predict and put real money on it aren't anywhere to be found, as they go broke quickly.

I'm sure it was "so predictable".

And, to be clear, I have no problem with TA in its proper place: not in this thread.

"The ones who actually predict and put real money on it" can be found quite easily if you know where to look. Everyone should pay attention to volume, support and resistance and understand basic chart patterns before they actually put on the trade...even long term investors, which I am. Just making smart entries and exits.

You might be right about too much emphasis on TA not being appropriate in this thread, however, there is a ton of other dumb *sugar* that gets discussed that is far less relevant to the investment world....just sayin.