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

[wipster]

Really? YouTube account “Corey Feldman” is the official BBC YouTube release conduit? It’s a pirated copy complete with a five minute glitch at the end. As I said, it’s the only way to watch it unless you use a VPN.

It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV...

 

[Words of HABIT]

I did not notify TMC about this poll while it was operative, so as not to skew the results:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1579944487409037313

49 total votes. Were they all at the same bus stop?

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV...

Thanks! That’s the info I was looking for!

Edit: I just checked, could not find it on either.

 

[wipster]

I did not notify TMC about this poll while it was operative, so as not to skew the results:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1579944487409037313

But you know Curt that the GSA will instead purchase some Electric Hummers and maybe some Cadillac Lyrics. They might get them by 2027 if GM can make enough that is...

 

[Words of HABIT]

Wouldn't it be nice if we could simply invest in TSLA and forget about it for a couple of years, knowing we will be richly rewarded?
So sure. So simple.
Yet we keep coming back here of all places.
Day after day.
(...and no, this doesn't rhyme.)

 

[verystandard]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1581764872702132224

Deus ex machina (/ˌdeɪəs ɛks ˈmækɪnə, - ˈmɑːk-/ DAY-əs ex-MA(H)K-in-ə,[1] Latin: [ˈdɛ.ʊs ɛks ˈmaːkʰɪnaː]; plural: dei ex machina; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.

Solved FSD? or have idea to buy uber/square?

 

[wipster]

This is my friend who is forced to drive an EV company car that's a Volvo. He used to have a 3 and now an X. He dreads his life every single day. This picture he showed me on a typical Friday. 4/6 EA chargers are working and this is the line. Right across is a bunch of superchargers about to come online for use. Because every car has a different range and charging profile, the length of wait is pretty much random. My friend's volvo can only hit 72kwh and has max range of 210 miles. Just imagine if you are waiting on him while your Lucid can charge way faster. So he spend hours a day charging and waiting in line.

The contrast is dire and painful to watch.View attachment 864555

Makes me wonder how many *Boycott Tesla" folks will boycott Superchargers when they become available. Most of them I hope and the ones that do will say "I didn't know this was a Tesla charger."

 

[Chunky Jr.]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1581764872702132224

Deus ex machina (/ˌdeɪəs ɛks ˈmækɪnə, - ˈmɑːk-/ DAY-əs ex-MA(H)K-in-ə,[1] Latin: [ˈdɛ.ʊs ɛks ˈmaːkʰɪnaː]; plural: dei ex machina; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.

Solved FSD? or have idea to buy uber/square?

I'd guess the X is a reference to X.com

 

[M|S|M MYP]

For GM auto union workers, there's still a lot to learn about making EVs

GM's Lake Orion, Michigan, plant made Chevy Bolt EVs as far back as 2015, and its UAW union workers were among the first to be trained for the new auto era.

www.cnbc.com

Surprise, surprise...no mention of Tesla, even in this statement:

 

[Mengy]

All numbers in thousands.

Fremont
S/X 112
3/Y 532
Tot 644

Shanghai
3/Y 1300

Berlin
Y 445

Texas
Y 425
Cyber 4

Grand Total
2819

Check my post history for more on how I derived these estimates if you're interested. Basic summary is:

• Fremont did 141k in Q3, which is 562k annualized. This was the average for the whole quarter but the run rate at the end of September was probably higher than the average, so maybe 575k is the current annualized rate. 644k for '23 would be modest 12% growth. 650k is the nominal installed capacity per the Q2 report, and if I remember correctly Elon or Drew mentioned on one of the recent earnings calls that it could get to 750k in the long run.
  • View attachment 864520
• Shanghai is already at around 1.1M rate right now and probably closer to 1.2M run rate by end of year, so 1.3M would be barely any growth across '23.
  • I think they'll probably beat this but I also am discounting for potential CCP tyranny/idiocy with respect to shutting down the factory and supply chain again.
• Berlin and Texas ramps are modeled as starting '23 with 5k per week and then ramping 10-15% slower than Shanghai did in '21 at the same part of the ramp curve, as illustrated in my post #370,415 earlier today

The "official" guidance is 50%+ growth, but Elon's statement at the Brandenburg County Fair speech last year was that Tesla had been growing at 70-80% and "maybe higher than that in the future".

Wow, you expect Austin and Berlin to ramp MUCH faster than I do.

I hope you are correct!

 

[wipster]

It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV...

Never mind, not the same documentary, apparently the one they show, even though it came out in 2022, is a hit piece. Yet the new one, The Elon Musk Show, is getting terrible comments because it's not a hit piece.

Damn, he can't win for losing! Hopefully it'll be a big win on Wednesday and Thursday's trading day!

 

[Gigapress]

Wow, you expect Austin and Berlin to ramp MUCH faster than I do.

I hope you are correct!

To be honest I'm mostly just following Tesla guidance on Austin and Berlin in the absence of any better source of information, as well as just empirically looking Shanghai's historical performance as being a representative benchmark for what Post-Production Hell Tesla can do nowadays with a greenfield custom-designed factory. It seems to me like a lot of investors are looking at the 2021 Shanghai ramp as a fluke which won't be repeated or surpassed by A&B, despite many concrete reasons to expect them to ramp faster, many of which reasons Tesla explicitly discussed on the recent earnings Q&A sessions.

According to Tesla, A&B are supposed to be at 5k per week sometime around December and they're supposed to ramp faster than Shanghai did. The only area I'm differing from guidance somewhat is modeling for more than 10k per week for A&B by the end of 2023, but that is mostly due to ambiguous messaging from Tesla. Shanghai made it to 15k per week by the end of 2021 after starting at 5k in Jan '21, but Elon's more recent comment on the call provided 10k per week as the probable benchmark for A&B next year. However, this slower possible ramp for A&B would only change my expectation by about 0.2M down from 2.8M to 2.6M if I hold the expectations for Shanghai and Fremont constant.

2.1M cars for 2023 is equal to what Tesla said on the Q2 call as the probable annualized exit rate for this year (40,000 per week x 52 weeks), so that sounds really low. In September we already saw Shanghai do 82k, and Fremont was probably at around 145k/3 = 48k per month, and A&B were at roughly 12k per month combined, so the total run rate as of last month is likely already at 144k per month or 1.73M annualized. 2.1M for 2023 would represent an expectation of merely 22% growth from the September run rate.

Q1 Call:

Martin Viecha: (28:58)
Thank you. At what rate do you expect Berlin and Austin to ramp relative to Shanghai? Are you able to leverage learnings from Shanghai or are the processes substantially different in the new factories?

Elon Musk: (29:10)
Ramp production are faster than Shanghai because we have learned a lot and we have basically veteran teams that have seen the 3/Y ramp, the Y ramp especially, in multiple locations and we’re obviously sharing what we’ve learned. And so we don’t want to get complacent or entitled, but this should be a faster ramp because we have learned more and we have done a lot to simplify the production process of Model Y. That should lead us to a faster ramp in Texas and Berlin.

Speaker 1: (29:54)
We also have, because it’s structural and casting, about 30% less robots. We expect to almost double the capacity for body, for example, reducing the number of robots, but doubling our capacity in a lot of areas.

Elon Musk: (30:07)
Yeah, right. The body line for the structural pack, and if you got a structural pack, and front and rear castings, the body shop size drops by over 60% relative to the standard way of making a car.

Lars: (30:33)
That tacks into general assembly and everything else because we have the structural battery, the floor is the battery. We put the seats on the battery and then we put that in their car, so it’s actually between 10 and 15% less stations in GA because of the general assembly start as well. So really I think about this in the way that we think about cars. If you’re waiting for the best Tesla, you’re going to be waiting forever. If you’re waiting for our best factory, you’re also going to be waiting forever, because every new factory is better than the last one because we take all that learnings and we throw it into the new one.

Elon Musk: (31:03)
Yeah.

Q2 Call:

Emmanuel Rosner -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst

Yeah. My follow-up was actually on the supply side. So it was very encouraging to see that you're quantifying your current installed capacity at basically already in excess of 1.9 million units installed currently. How quickly do you think that you can fill that capacity?

Elon Musk -- Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect

Well, I mean, we -- I think we've got a good chance of exiting this year at 40,000 vehicles a week. [2.1 million annualized]

Drew Baglino -- Senior Vice President, Powertrain and Energy Engineering

Yeah. I mean our internal plans are to have the capacity utilized by the end of the year. It takes time to ramp there. It will be a challenge.

There's a lot that needs to happen to get there but that's what we're working on.

Elon Musk -- Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect

Yeah. We've had many 30,000-car weeks already, so I think a 40,000-car week is within reach by the end of this year.

Drew Baglino -- Senior Vice President, Powertrain and Energy Engineering

Shanghai and Fremont, as we said last month for record production and they're really fire to better doing really well. But then also Berlin are coming on strong. Theoretically, they also had record quarters, last quarter. And if we ramp them to the capacity shown in the deck by the end of this year, we'll be at that rate.

Elon Musk -- Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect

There's always a lot of uncertainty like the production looks like S-curve, and that intermediate part of S-curve the difficult to bridge that with high certainty. But the end part of the S-curve, you can say, I think you can have a lot more certainty. And so that's why I'm confident we'll get to 5,000 cars a week at -- in Austin and Berlin by the end of this year or early next year and probably but not certainly, 10,000 cars a week at both locations by the end of next year.

 

[Tommy O]

Never mind, not the same documentary, apparently the one they show, even though it came out in 2022, is a hit piece. Yet the new one, The Elon Musk Show, is getting terrible comments because it's not a hit piece.

Damn, he can't win for losing! Hopefully it'll be a big win on Wednesday and Thursday's trading day!

Elon Musk is the Tom Brady of nerds (us TMC posters). Everyone you know hates him, but he’s actually widely admired and appreciated.

To spell it out, Brady is actually well liked…even though everyone I know and maybe you know hates him. Musk is the same.

Elite opinions are not representative of the public.

 

[insaneoctane]

Over a multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries. The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, factory uptime, operational efficiency and the capacity and stability of the supply chain.

Let's help WS out....if :
year 1 = 51%
year 2 = 49%
year 3 = 52%
year 4 = 48%
....Is that a miss vs Tesla's guidance? Shouldn't you have basic math skills to be an analyst?

 

[Prunesquallor]

For GM auto union workers, there's still a lot to learn about making EVs

GM's Lake Orion, Michigan, plant made Chevy Bolt EVs as far back as 2015, and its UAW union workers were among the first to be trained for the new auto era.

www.cnbc.com

Surprise, surprise...no mention of Tesla, even in this statement:

View attachment 864592

True one percenters.

 

[wipster]

For GM auto union workers, there's still a lot to learn about making EVs

GM's Lake Orion, Michigan, plant made Chevy Bolt EVs as far back as 2015, and its UAW union workers were among the first to be trained for the new auto era.

www.cnbc.com

Surprise, surprise...no mention of Tesla, even in this statement:

View attachment 864592

Ha, that last sentence is priceless!!

 

[MrMoo]

Over a multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50% average annual growth in vehicle deliveries. The rate of growth will depend on our equipment capacity, factory uptime, operational efficiency and the capacity and stability of the supply chain.

Let's help WS out....if :
year 1 = 51%
year 2 = 49%
year 3 = 52%
year 4 = 48%
....Is that a miss vs Tesla's guidance? Shouldn't you have basic math skills to be an analyst?

Wait, im confused. Are you unhappy with the analysts or the people who actually control the money? The analysts don't actually invest their own money so they don't directly influence the stock price.

Or are you unhappy with the funds? The funds have their own analysts who decide what to buy and what to sell.

 

[Doit]

Plus, the other obvious things: Tesla paid 3x overtime to keep Shanghai open during the Chinese holiday at the start of Q4, and *still* hasn’t lowered prices, despite having plenty of margin to do so.

3x overtime is the minimum required overtime payment for holidays stipulated by Chinese labor law.

Similarly, 2x for weekends, 1.5x for weekdays.

Companies are not necessary following this rule and there is a thing called 996. On the other hand, for Tesla Shanghai as a 100% foreign owned entity, it would be unwise to have obvious violation of labor laws.

 

[phoggy123]

Did it have to go out of state to get back in? There was conversation a while ago on this Texas dealership law and don't remember what the outcome / consensus ended up being.

It was shipped to the Kansas City service center where they picked it up.

 

[Tommy O]

3x overtime is the minimum required overtime payment for holidays stipulated by Chinese labor law.

It’s not their compliance with the law, it’s the fact they chose to keep production running during the holiday. That’s a signal that their production needs to keep going to satisfy demand.