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

[willow_hiller]

Reminding folks that this thread exists for discussing Twitter: Elon & Twitter

And it already has a discussion going about that tweet.

Don't give the mods a rough time on a Sunday morning.

 

[ammulder]

I thought the IRA was passed under budget reconciliation rules, as that’s the only way to do it with 50 votes. Can the new congress not just pass a new budget that changes or eliminates the money for the IRA? The same way the IRA replaced the prior EV subsidies? Is budget reconciliation veto-able? (Google says: yes) I guess what I don’t know is if congress can pass a big enough reconciliation bill that it’s not obviously tenable to veto it, for instance if it includes lots of popular measures but also ends the IRA. Ah, politics.

 

[Artful Dodger]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1586693920859234304

"20k Model Y built at Giga Texas to date."
This bodes well for Q4 production.

Some quick math:
Based on Troy and Rob, around 11-12k Model Y were built at Giga Texas until the end of the third quarter.
Hence, 8-9k Model Y were built in 29 days of October. This is already an average weekly rate of above 2,000 cars with quite some more growth in Q4.

For comparison: Troy estimated on October 11 around 15k Model Y deliveries in Q4 from Texas. Even with the current run rate, we should be at above 25k Model Y produced.

This is the 2nd such tweet from Tesla. Here is the previous one from Sep 17, 2022:

Tesla on Twitter: "10,000 Model Ys built at Giga Texas to date https://t.co/4cOlnpCRa0" / Twitter​

So that's 43 days (~6 wks) to manufacture 10K more Models Y, which is an average of ~1,670/wk. Together with Elon's comment on the Q3 Conf. Call that they had just touched a 2K/wk run rate, we can now expect the next tweet for 30K total production at Giga Texas in about 5 weeks, or around Dec 6, 2022 if the run rate does not accelerate.

Of course, if the "30K produced" tweet comes before Dec 6, 2022 then we know that the run rate has increased.

#Predict

Cheers to the Longs!

 

[wipster]

Lopez is in the category of humans that are so stupid, they can't even conceive how stupid they are. There's no hope for Lopez.

She's got an agenda that she has to stay on because that's where her money is. Ever since she discovered (or created) the whistleblower, she's dealt in nothing but unproven innuendos and outright lies regarding Elon and Tesla. And now that Tesla has proven her wrong, she's turning to Elon's purchase of Twitter... whole lotta crap coming...

 

[Cosmacelf]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1586522774171852801

Gawd, when people see those things silently driving around town, and accelerating like a car, that'll be the biggest EV commercial you could ever have.

 

[betstarship]

Presumably a must watch:

I feel so dumb trying to keep up with the conversation...wish Karpathy comes back to Tesla. Also, the conversation definitely makes me hopeful for a multi-planetary civilization and that, over the next 2 decades, we're going to see massive positive value creation for all life off-planet and on-planet thanks to the folks at Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, Twitter, etc. I just don't see how they lose unless something desperately stupid happens and no one listens to each other.

I get why Twitter is important too now. Why not build redundancy in intelligence sharing world wide in order to better collaborate across borders and within borders towards better futures? Propellant to everything that Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring Company, etc. do.

 

[AudubonB]

BEFORE I MOVE a dozen or so Twitter-related posts over to where they belong - although this one will remain here as a traffic signal, a question - one which is in the forefront of why I ALWAYS have written that I despise Twitter:

Can anyone show me just one example of Twitter bringing out not the worst, but the best, in people? Examples of the former are piling up ever faster and more furiously.
===>Replies THERE, not here.<===

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's not actually a 'waste' if Tesla uses all that funding to grow the battery supply. That is the intension of the legislation. Its appropriate to sunset the IRA law once that objective has been met. The larger issue is, if only Tesla has achieved the required critical mass, and few to none of the existing auto majors is able to survive w/o subsidies, will they continue while Tesla is cut off? That's a sheer waste, and historically, its exactly what happened with the 200K lifetime EV limit per manufacturer with the previous tax-credit. So yeah, it's quite possible to turn into a waste unless consumers vote overwhelmingly for Tesla.

The IRA is a breathtaking piece of government industrial policy. It impacts domestic mining and manufacturing, free trade agreements, and international trade in general because it is seen by non-free trade partners (like the EU!) as hugely protectionist, and thus maybe even illegal under international trade rules.

Its implementation may very well launch a trade war.

Even if modified, I suspect it will have a big impact on domestic manufacturing - mining is unknown because the other branches of the federal government, like the EPA, might continue to bog that sector down.

Also of interest is the government's $2.8 billion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. If you look at the 19 or so companies it showered $50M++ grants onto, most of them are moonshot battery technology stuff. These are mostly lab scale battery materials companies where 1 in 10 will graduate to economic industrial scale manufacturing. Many are private that are being funded by VCs. I mean, god bless the government for taking such risks, but wow, these are very early stage companies to shower with such large grants.

If the US doesn't end up with a quantum leap in battery technology from all this, you can't say the feds didn't try.

 

[Xepa777]

The Twitter thread on TMC looking like TSLAQ. Yikes. Scary place to visit.

 

[Cosmacelf]

My take is that Bezos is /was an excellent /topnotch entrepreneur with a vision and the oomph to see it through. He saw the opportunity for online shopping, starting with books, which at the time, ca. 1996 were an excellent business proposition: list price was 40% above purchasing price for retailers, AND retailers had the right at any time to return books for a refund.

Bezos actually put a lot of thought into what kind of Internet company to launch. The founders got together and in MBA style, whiteboarded a bunch of Internet company ideas and researched them to come up with books as their #1 idea. Even so they had little idea just how quickly their company would grow. The very first day their website went live, they had more orders than they could handle, and that continued for many more years leading to a very chaotic but fast growing company.

Growing by acquisitions Amazon found itself in a computing systems mess as each new acquisition had a different IT system.

To Bezos' great credit he imposed ONE standard across all the disparate outfits making up Amazon. This took guts and strong conviction, as this created a huge chaos during that transition.

The interesting /lucky /serendipitous part is that out of this standardization came Amazon's Cloud (AWS) which became the hugely successful cash machine for Amazon.

Yep. When they launched AWS, again it was a very considered decision, and at the time they thought it would be an enduring business. They thought they had about 2 years before competitors would appear to challenge them. They ended up with like a 7 year competitive head start! They were blown away by how slow the industry was to react (parallels to Tesla where Elon's original idea for Tesla was to convince big auto to build EVs, turns out they dragged their feet probably to extinction).

 

[Matias]

The Twitter thread on TMC looking like TSLAQ. Yikes. Scary place to visit.

Good that you have safe space

 

[wipster]

Gawd, when people see those things silently driving around town, and accelerating like a car, that'll be the biggest EV commercial you could ever have.

It would be way cool if they had a big CyberTruck painted or wrapped on the sides of the trailer. Can't wait to see one on the road!

 

[ZachF]

Largest companies by market cap 1979-2021:

 

[ZachF]

Gawd, when people see those things silently driving around town, and accelerating like a car, that'll be the biggest EV commercial you could ever have.

Cybertruck wrapped in black with brush guards and a winch is basically a batmobile

 

[petit_bateau]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1586693920859234304

"20k Model Y built at Giga Texas to date."
This bodes well for Q4 production.

Some quick math:
Based on Troy and Rob, around 11-12k Model Y were built at Giga Texas until the end of the third quarter.
Hence, 8-9k Model Y were built in 29 days of October. This is already an average weekly rate of above 2,000 cars with quite some more growth in Q4.

For comparison: Troy estimated on October 11 around 15k Model Y deliveries in Q4 from Texas. Even with the current run rate, we should be at above 25k Model Y produced.

FWIW my numbers for Austin are in line with the analyis of @Todesbuckler. Here is the entries I had in my system after Q3 results. (Since then evidence has appeared that suggests the Berlin number may have been 7,000 higher).

 

[insaneoctane]

I don’t doubt that a bailout will come. I’m just not sure the shape of it.

Say there is a $20 billion bailout. That isn’t going to fix GM or Ford. You still have a company which is incapable of producing a product people want.

This is what my big concern is. A bailout is entirely possible, but would be 100% pointless. Everything that makes GM and Ford critical to US manufacturing is worthless in 5-10 years time. Pouring government billions into that money pit doesn’t change this. Does the government subsidize inefficient manufacturing processes indefinitely? Now we’re back to the weird EV rebates with a union clause.

What’s even weirder is the government incentives which these companies helped create are very likely going to accelerate their demise.

Just can’t get my head around how you salvage Detroit’s auto industry when this really hits full swing.

If only we could get the media to do their job. What a story this would have been for the media of yore...being able to read the writing on the wall and report legacy OEMs short term greed was going to cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and additional environmental impact in the soon-to-be future. Seems like a scandal to me, potentially actually led by Mary Bara!

 

[EVDRVN]

Lopez is in the category of humans that are so stupid, they can't even conceive how stupid they are. There's no hope for Lopez.

Don't watch Joy Reed she has hit pieces on musk that are full of BS.

 

[capster]

No. I've been through this in detail before. Humans:

• take >18 years from birth to entering the productive economy (subtract the resources they consume til them)
• more resources consumer for higher skilled workers > ie: post-graduate
• bot's work 3 shifts/day, 365 days/yr, while you need > 4x humans to staff the same job (1 shift/day - weekends, holidays)
• humans get sick, quit, waste time at work; bots get more productive with each software update
• humans sue the company for monetary gain; agitate for unions; actively try to slow down work

Those are just aquisition and operating costs. Then there's the biology deficit:

• Electric motors are ~90% efficient; human muscle is <25% (that's ~4x better for 'bots)
• silcon solar cells are ~20% efficent; photosynthesis (sunlight-to-biomass) efficiency is ~2% (~10x bots)
• plants redirect most solar energy into growth, much is not edible (less animal feed, waste-2-energy)
• humans eat animals which eat those plants; this reduces photosynthetic efficiency to 1:100 (diet-dependant)

The bottom line is that humans need ~1,000x more area under agriculture to do the same work as 'bot powered by solar. Now, how much land which is unsuitable to agriculture is suitable for solar farms?

Right now in terms of economics, it costs ~$300/mth for basic fuel needs of a human worker in America. Bot will need btwn 60KWh to 200KWh of electricity/mth. At $0.07/KWh (wholesale solar) that's roughly $15/mth or about 20x less than the cost to fuel a human. Or, you can run 20 'bots for the same price as 1 human. That human's gonna need to be the supervisor or foreman to earn their keep. (this is before the cost of scrub-land used for solar vs prime farm-land used for crops or pasture land for animals). Eventually, you run out of prime farm land, and this becomes a limit to growth for the economy. Solar/batteries/bots breaks out of that limit to growth.

TL;dr It's not even close. Humans can not compete for physical labor. Intellectual tasks requiring experience and judgement are next to go in the list of things that humans aren't as good at as 'bots.

Lawyers, accountants, politicians; I will miss them. /s

Hmm, you did fail to account for the evolution of a species capable of designing and manufacturing robots as well as the creation of a society and economy capable of building and operating factories, transportation systems, and all the other impedimenta required to bring robots to market and to scale.

 

[insaneoctane]

I have very mixed feelings about the IRA (right down to the actual name of the act). By 2027 or 2028, it will be "common knowledge" that the IRA is the sole reason motorists are making the transition to EV and also why Tesla dominates the car industry while the rest struggle. They will claim (falsely of course) that Tesla would be bankrupt or a minor player if not for the IRA which has benefitted them so greatly at taxpayer expense. That Tesla's success is a creation of government policy. You will not be able to convince most people otherwise.

We'll just need to keep 2 sets of numbers....with and without IRA. The without IRA numbers will not be as good as with IRA, but they'll still be industry leading and factually all you need to refute the misperception. Agree it might yet another challenging false narrative for Tesla to battle, but we're used to this, right?

 

[Drumheller]

Mary is petty.

GM temporarily suspends advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk takeover

General Motors is suspending advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform.

www.cnbc.com

Wow, Elon has already improved Twitter. That was quick!