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

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These "buying opportunities" keep coming...
Does anybody has any cash left to spend ?

2 Jan 25 300 leaps
1 Jan 25 270 leap
..all from pigg(CC)y bank shares ... yesterday i had to roll this Fri 308 calls to Oct (loss but paid for by OPM - other peoples money), thinking of a different outcome. :) All's well now, the Oct CC's gonna expire :) Right or wrong the game continues ;)
 
These "buying opportunities" keep coming...
Does anybody have any cash left to spend ?
I take some risks every time I sell a little. But today, somehow makes it OK; this is my revenge on FUD because I imagine a short feeling my opposites and I know I have Popeye on my side. Of course this amplifies the TSLA peaks and valleys when many do the same (including Bob). Sorry about that. (The swings, not Bob). Sell at your own risk of missing out, but enjoy the dips like a good fart after the meal. TSLA returns every single time without fail. And it simply cannot fail.
 
That oversimplifies the reality. The facts argue for manufacturing excellence and. closely related, highly developed factory operating systems. That is not exactly 'economy of scale'. In fact it is that very flexible production technology that allows Tesla to produce many variants of vehicles while reducing unit cost.

Proof of that is most obviously seen with the multiple battery systems and assembly techniques presently produced all as 'Model Y'. 4680, 2170, prismatic, structural packs, non-structural packs, one giga casting, two gigacasting, AWD, RWD and so on. Those are different vehicles.

In short it is not simple scale. It is manufacturing excellence in highly differentiated products.

Certainly from a naive view, like Moody's, Tesla has four models, only four models, the 2012 Model S and a 2022 Model S are identical aging models. Still, with modest volumes the new Model S is not only superior in all respects but also is much cheaper to build. Modest volume, very high margins. Partly that is because all the variants Tesla makes have the same vehicle operating system. That does give them major scale economies, as does using the same motors (even for SpaceX F9) and many parts in all or most products.

Obviously Tesla has some scale economies that are 'Big Deals' but those are the product of the manufacturing systems, not an independent factor. Typical industrial scale economies are found by using suppliers which sell almost identical parts for many OEMs.

Tesla achieves those scale economies by deploying the same operating system and viewing manufacturing as a product, not simply as a means to an end. Doing that makes them more highly integrated than has been any auto manufacturer since the Ford River Rouge Model T. Ford, though, dealt with pure scale economy. Tesla, by contrast, does it by having the capacity to make dozens of change order a day.

True continuous improvement generates significant differences from day to day. That flexibility is vastly different and more complex than conventional scale economy.
We are just comparing 2017 vs 2022 here. Not 2022 vs 2021. Over 90%+ of the cost reduction went from building a few hundred model 3 cars a quarter to a few hundred thousand cars a quarter using the same building and machines.
 
There have been a lot of comments about the increasing price of FSD mostly they refer to reducing take rate or FSD’s increasing value. My doofus view is that Tesla is piling up cash to refit all cars sold with FSD with the hardware that will actually be needed for it to work. My car was sold to me with the commitment to upgrade any equipment if necessary for true FSD. We have seen hardware 2 1/2 cars getting upgraded computers. We also know hardware 4 computers are under development, and I wouldn’t be surprised if hardware 5 is being blue skyed. Cameras with higher resolution and contrast are needed to see further down the road. Also, there is at least one problem unsolvable with the current camera suite, passing on a two lane road. Too much car has to be exposed when peeking, with centerline cameras. A camera in the drivers side mirror would probably be best. I think Tesla will have to replace all cameras and computers and probably add at least one camera on all FSD cars that are sold under this commitment. Either that or I will be a party to a record class action suit. Your opinion may differ.
 
This feels like one of those days where hedge funds had a plan and have just gone thru with it even though the news came in opposite. We've seen it a bunch of times with good Tesla news that then tanks the stock.

Nice to have it for support today. Lets see if it holds.
Feels very odd to say this on a day where the Nasdaq and SP500 are down 3% and 2%, but yeah surprising support. I expected a strong test today (may still come) of the 11.5-11.6 range for the Nasdaq.
 

"According to Tesla head of investor relations Martin Viecha, however, the company may need to release a more affordable EV before the rollout of the dedicated Robotaxi"


IRA incentives must have caused changes in decision/policy and goals. cheers!! No FSD required for a cheaper EV model :) eazy peazy!!
 
I think Tesla will have to replace all cameras and computers and probably add at least one camera on all FSD cars that are sold under this commitment. Either that or I will be a party to a record class action suit. Your opinion may differ.
From our perspective as investors this would be a trivial cost compared to unlocking the full value of FSD, assuming it's needed at all. I'm not worried.

IRA incentives must have caused changes in decision/policy and goals. cheers!! No FSD required for a cheaper EV model :) eazy peazy!!
And let's be real. Even best case we are a few years away from meaningful robotaxi contribution.
 
I'm genuinely surprised inflation numbers came in higher than expectations and core (sticky) CPI is going ham, we're going to see an even more hawkish central bank looking to get inflation expectations back under control.

How new vehicle prices are shooting up so intensely after all this, I don't even know. Interest rates are surely going significantly higher.
 
There have been a lot of comments about the increasing price of FSD mostly they refer to reducing take rate or FSD’s increasing value. My doofus view is that Tesla is piling up cash to refit all cars sold with FSD with the hardware that will actually be needed for it to work. My car was sold to me with the commitment to upgrade any equipment if necessary for true FSD. We have seen hardware 2 1/2 cars getting upgraded computers. We also know hardware 4 computers are under development, and I wouldn’t be surprised if hardware 5 is being blue skyed. Cameras with higher resolution and contrast are needed to see further down the road. Also, there is at least one problem unsolvable with the current camera suite, passing on a two lane road. Too much car has to be exposed when peeking, with centerline cameras. A camera in the drivers side mirror would probably be best. I think Tesla will have to replace all cameras and computers and probably add at least one camera on all FSD cars that are sold under this commitment. Either that or I will be a party to a record class action suit. Your opinion may differ.


Updating cameras to higher res in existing locations, and updating driving computer in existing location would be (relatively) trivial to do-- and has already been done on older cars to the current HW level so doing it again isn't much of an issue.

ADDING cameras in new locations would be vastly more expensive and complex (wiring and body mount locations as a few but not all the reasons)

But further discussion should probably go here where the topic has been gone into in some depth numerous times in many threads:

 
Shanghai ports are shutting down, bracing for Tryphoon Muifa. Projected track looks to be heading directly to Shanghai.

 
Shanghai ports are shutting down, bracing for Tryphoon Muifa. Projected track looks to be heading directly to Shanghai.


Final month of quarter, no Tesla ships/cars in port
Karen, I think had bought up item of how GF Shanghai was in flood zone, so hope no issues there.
 
so as a user the only thing i can proactively do is clean camera glass and use FSD beta more often ... nothing for me to calibrate as a user .... sorry for OT but i get quicker answers on Investment thread

@Zero CO2, there is a way to reset/recalibrate your autopilot cameras. It takes less than 50 miles too (even though it warns you that it can take up to 100 or 200 miles). Don't remember where it was, but I think in the Service menu somewhere. I did it early on during the FSD beta and it did improve it then. Haven't done it since.
 

Sorry about the multiple Sawyer Merritt tweet thread links (I usually don't link his tweets), but I found this to be very informative.

He also tweeted that Goldman Sachs reiterated price target after the conference.
"This is an important sales lever that we've never touched, but in the future we might be boosting demand in other ways," Viecha said.

What is "this" that is a sales lever they never touched? Sawyer quotes it but that quote seems incomplete / out of context.
 
There have been a lot of comments about the increasing price of FSD mostly they refer to reducing take rate or FSD’s increasing value. My doofus view is that Tesla is piling up cash to refit all cars sold with FSD with the hardware that will actually be needed for it to work. My car was sold to me with the commitment to upgrade any equipment if necessary for true FSD. We have seen hardware 2 1/2 cars getting upgraded computers. We also know hardware 4 computers are under development, and I wouldn’t be surprised if hardware 5 is being blue skyed. Cameras with higher resolution and contrast are needed to see further down the road. Also, there is at least one problem unsolvable with the current camera suite, passing on a two lane road. Too much car has to be exposed when peeking, with centerline cameras. A camera in the drivers side mirror would probably be best. I think Tesla will have to replace all cameras and computers and probably add at least one camera on all FSD cars that are sold under this commitment. Either that or I will be a party to a record class action suit. Your opinion may differ.
If this is an issue (and I have no opinion if that is so) then cameras will be needed in both side mirrors (or some other place, but on both sides). Quite a lot of cars drive across borders between LHD/RHD in Europe. However this likely won't be much of a retrofit liability (as FSD not sold here AFAIK) .