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

[Rarity]

And speaking of competition to rival Tesla Germany, this announcement from VW...

Volkswagen's $2 billion Trinity EV plant gets delayed and possibly shelved

Volkswagen’s plans to build its Trinity electric vehicle (EV) factory, a plant that was supposed to rival Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency, has been delayed, and may not even be built at all. The $2 billion Trinity […]

driveteslacanada.ca

I'm not sure that I understand this. What is the cause of the delay? Is the E3 2.0 platform a car software system or a factory software system?

Of course, delaying that software to 2029 means that it probably won't happen. 7 years is an eternity in the software world.

 

[WattsHappening]

And speaking of competition to rival Tesla Germany, this announcement from VW...

Volkswagen's $2 billion Trinity EV plant gets delayed and possibly shelved

Volkswagen’s plans to build its Trinity electric vehicle (EV) factory, a plant that was supposed to rival Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency, has been delayed, and may not even be built at all. The $2 billion Trinity […]

driveteslacanada.ca

Software has been delayed from 2026 to 2029? Seriously? I'm not a software engineer, but that seems ludicrous.

 

[elasalle]

Software has been delayed from 2026 to 2029? Seriously? I'm not a software engineer, but that seems ludicrous.

Competition is NOT coming

 

[Cosmacelf]

And speaking of competition to rival Tesla Germany, this announcement from VW...

Volkswagen's $2 billion Trinity EV plant gets delayed and possibly shelved

Volkswagen’s plans to build its Trinity electric vehicle (EV) factory, a plant that was supposed to rival Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency, has been delayed, and may not even be built at all. The $2 billion Trinity […]

driveteslacanada.ca

From the article:

The automaker’s new CEO Oliver Blume wants to delay that until 2030 because new software will not be ready on that timeline, according to a report from Germany’s Manager Magazin.

The software, dubbed E3 2.0, has been delayed from 2026 to 2029, the report added.

A huge manufacturing plant is being delayed due to software? This is ridiculous. Either VW is next level bad at software (which is entirely possible), or it is an excuse. There's zero reason why software should be a hold up if you have a competent team. I guess Tesla's software team is looking better and better these days, right?

Incidentally, my new Rivian R1S has its share of software bugs and stupidity. Their app design isn't great for instance. I'm just trying to say while I've dumped on Tesla software in the (more distant) past, in comparison with the rest of the industry they are light years ahead.

 

[Artful Dodger]

What is the cause of the delay?

Two possibilities:

VW can't write good software, their HR dept can't hire people who can write good software, and their senior management thinks 'good software' was changing the company name to 'Voltswagen' as an April Fools' Day joke...

... or it's this:



German engineering...

 

[Mengy]

Competition is NOT coming

At least not from VW anyway!!!


Seriously though, that's a terribly bad omen for the future of VW. Like extremely bad. Remember how many EV's per year Tesla plans to be selling by the time they even get this new factory up and running? And you can bet the Chinese EV makers aren't waiting that long until they begin exporting EV's....

 

[AndrewZ]

From the article:



A huge manufacturing plant is being delayed due to software? This is ridiculous. Either VW is next level bad at software (which is entirely possible), or it is an excuse. There's zero reason why software should be a hold up if you have a competent team. I guess Tesla's software team is looking better and better these days, right?

Incidentally, my new Rivian R1S has its share of software bugs and stupidity. Their app design isn't great for instance. I'm just trying to say while I've dumped on Tesla software in the (more distant) past, in comparison with the rest of the industry they are light years ahead.

Did a bit of research and looks like it's not regular software, this Trinity plant was planned to specifically produce Level 4 autonomous EVs. To me, this appears to be a realization that Level 4 technology will not be realized as quickly as they supposedly previously believed.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Seems pretty obvious to me that TSLA is being set up for a flash crash sometime between now and Q4 P/D numbers.

Wall St has been consistently pressuring it downwards and capping on any up days. I can't even remember the last time TSLA actually outperformed it's beta (on either red day or green day).

I'd put money on there being some sort of FUD that hedge funds are sitting on which will come out right after a huge bear raid. No clue how low they'll get it to go given Elon's antics adding to the lack of buying interest from institutional investors and macro's could be unsteady until the next CPI print comes in.

TSLA at a TTM PE of 56......they'll definitely test 50 and possibly test investor appetite for TSLA at a TTM PE of 40.......which puts us at 128'ish a share. If it hits something like that, it would probably be an intra-day low followed by major last two hours rally back up to something like 135-140/share.

But just in case you're on margin and/or wanting to use margin, this setup looks pretty likely. Wall St knows it has a limited time window before Q4's earnings drop TSLA's metrics (TTM PE and Forward PE) + TSLA likely initiating a buy back during Q1. Even if deliveries come in at the low end, the earnings growth will still make a huge impact to PE ratios. They know this. They can't control the macro's but they can definitely keep TSLA right at the edge of another leg lower and if the macro's cooperate with them, then the bear raid is on.

Would really wish Elon would do something symbolic here since the destruction in just the past 2 and half weeks is entirely on him. But he's more likely to sell more stock than to buy back or do something that actually helps the stock. I feel for anyone teetering on the edge of a margin call in a significant way. They're likely going to get wiped out

 

[MartinAustin]

Market still looking as dreary as ever. Doesn't feel like we're going to see an end of year rally for 2022, even despite the promising CPI numbers.

Higher lows, though. Another day ending slightly down or neutral

 

[StealthP3D]

Perhaps it was because he was so right about autonomy. When Elon was saying it would all work soonish, he was adamant that they hadn't even gotten to the hard part yet.

Investing is not about being right about one detail - it's about being right about the overall trajectory of a company. Autonomy was not even part of Tesla's valuation in 2019, let alone now. The market is valuing Autonomy at essentially zero then, and now, so being bearish on autonomy would be a particularly foolish reason to sell TSLA.

 

[AndrewZ]

Investing is not about being right about one detail - it's about being right about the overall trajectory of a company. Autonomy was not even part of Tesla's valuation in 2019, let alone now. The market is valuing Autonomy at essentially zero then, and now, so being bearish on autonomy would be a particularly foolish reason to sell TSLA.

And then you have @ 38:35

 

[Optimeer]

And speaking of competition to rival Tesla Germany, this announcement from VW...

Volkswagen's $2 billion Trinity EV plant gets delayed and possibly shelved

Volkswagen’s plans to build its Trinity electric vehicle (EV) factory, a plant that was supposed to rival Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency, has been delayed, and may not even be built at all. The $2 billion Trinity […]

driveteslacanada.ca

I would say, the reason for the delay of Volkswagen’s EV plant is probably linked to the industry-friendly proposal from the EU Comission from November 10, 2022 for the new Euro 7 emission standard which is expected to be in place in about 2025.

Press corner

Highlights, press releases and speeches

ec.europa.eu

Since harsh CO2 Emission target will be put in place as late as 2030, obviously the deal was that the auto industry gets a relieve for Euro 7.

To give you an idea, I created a comparison for the emissions per km for passenger cars (Class M1)

	Petrol 6d	Diesel 6d	Petrol & Diesel 7
NOx mg	60	80	60
PM mg	4.5	4.5	4.5
PN10	6x10^11	6x10^11	6x10^11
CO mg	1000	500	500
THC mg	-	100	100
NMHC	-	68	68
NH3 mg	-	-	20

The whole rulebook is ridiculous complex in my opinion with many vehicle classes and a lot of special rules.

They even created new emission rules for EVs . I don‘t think they will be an issue for Tesla, the purpose is likely just to communicate that EV‘s do also create pollutions (tires, braking dust, I haven‘t looked into that).

There might be largely the letters from the lobbyists in the Comission’s Proposal. The auto industry will optimize a bit and in the worst case for them they need to retire diesel engines, which are anyway no more en vogue in Europe.

Volkwagen‘s new management business decision seems to be to down-regulate investments and to milk their cash cow as long as possible. Maybe they don‘t worry about their future because they are busy surviving today and tomorrow. We will find out.

 

[Gigapress]

A huge manufacturing plant is being delayed due to software? This is ridiculous. Either VW is next level bad at software (which is entirely possible), or it is an excuse. There's zero reason why software should be a hold up if you have a competent team. I guess Tesla's software team is looking better and better these days, right?

Making a good manufacturing execution system (MES) for a huge manufacturing plant is actually very difficult, involving for example:

• All kinds of regulatory compliance details to get right
• Connections to a bunch of heterogeneous databases (for design data, installation plans, nonconformance/quality records, supply chain and inventory management, and so on) that maybe have poorly designed interfaces
• Info security
• Dozens of stakeholder groups who all have difference preferences for how it should work and may actively dislike and distrust each other or have decades-long histories of political battles between them
• User experience that must not be clunky and unintuitive for folks who may not even be comfortable or knowledgeable with computers

Also, it can take years to make a passable MES in old-fashioned companies (most of them) where management still prefers waterfall software development processes and doesn't really take feedback from users--especially shop floor employees--because it might bruise egos of someone in the senior leadership team or engineering who had their own ivory tower vision of what the program should look like and how it should function and who view themselves as too important to go to the factory floor and interact with the hourly employees like equals.

A badly designed MES can certainly be a showstopper or at least cause chaos in factory operations. Boeing attempted to design a new MES with the 787, and it was a big mess which contributed greatly to the chaos in the early years of the 787 program. (I worked at Boeing in a huge manufacturing plant for six years before retiring in January.)

I think a big part of the problem for most companies is that most software engineers don't want to work on enterprise software like an MES because it's usually boring, slow and frustrating. The fact that Tesla makes allegedly excellent enterprise software and gets the developers excited about doing it seems to be exceptional more than common. I believe the probable primary reasons are:

• All or almost all of the Tesla engineers are located on the factory floor interacting directly with the users, the robots, and the production processes, resulting in:
  • Better understanding of the actual needs and wants
  • Better interpersonal relationships between the different people involved
  • Tighter feedback loops between design and reality

• The company CEO/Technoking views (correctly) the factory as a "cybernetic collective", personally programmed computers for 30 years, spent years working on the factory floor with everyone else, and generally knows what needs to happen on a deeper level than mere buzzword propaganda campaigns and PowerPoint presentations about "digital transformation", "automation", "IoT" etc.

• Tesla apparently has found a solution for nearly eliminating petty internal political conflict and aligning everyone to a common mission

• Tesla focuses more on trying stuff and iterating rapidly instead of holding slow boring meetings, sending back and forth emails, and waiting on management and stakeholder approval for making something

A lot of these engineering advantages are the same ones that make Tesla's cars so much better. As a long-term investor one of the main risks I foresee is that at some point, perhaps after Elon or his successor is gone, Tesla will end up ossifying and becoming bureaucratic and political like most large organizations. I hope that this won't happen until decades from now.

 

[elasalle]

At least not from VW anyway!!!


Seriously though, that's a terribly bad omen for the future of VW. Like extremely bad. Remember how many EV's per year Tesla plans to be selling by the time they even get this new factory up and running? And you can bet the Chinese EV makers aren't waiting that long until they begin exporting EV's....

I asked IBM's Watson ..it told me likely VW gonna use IBM's quantum computing

 

[traxila]

Seems pretty obvious to me that TSLA is being set up for a flash crash sometime between now and Q4 P/D numbers.

Wall St has been consistently pressuring it downwards and capping on any up days. I can't even remember the last time TSLA actually outperformed it's beta (on either red day or green day).

I'd put money on there being some sort of FUD that hedge funds are sitting on which will come out right after a huge bear raid. No clue how low they'll get it to go given Elon's antics adding to the lack of buying interest from institutional investors and macro's could be unsteady until the next CPI print comes in.

TSLA at a TTM PE of 56......they'll definitely test 50 and possibly test investor appetite for TSLA at a TTM PE of 40.......which puts us at 128'ish a share. If it hits something like that, it would probably be an intra-day low followed by major last two hours rally back up to something like 135-140/share.

But just in case you're on margin and/or wanting to use margin, this setup looks pretty likely. Wall St knows it has a limited time window before Q4's earnings drop TSLA's metrics (TTM PE and Forward PE) + TSLA likely initiating a buy back during Q1. Even if deliveries come in at the low end, the earnings growth will still make a huge impact to PE ratios. They know this. They can't control the macro's but they can definitely keep TSLA right at the edge of another leg lower and if the macro's cooperate with them, then the bear raid is on.

Would really wish Elon would do something symbolic here since the destruction in just the past 2 and half weeks is entirely on him. But he's more likely to sell more stock than to buy back or do something that actually helps the stock. I feel for anyone teetering on the edge of a margin call in a significant way. They're likely going to get wiped out

Wow price target of 128 in the next month.

That is more bearish than I could have imagined you @StarFoxisDown!.

 

[StealthP3D]

2) TSLA is extremely volatile in general, which makes assigning narratives to its price movement a very sketchy endeavor ripe for confident conclusions that are nothing more than psychological illusions and confirmation bias. It's really easy to look at a big TSLA movement than coincides with variable X and say "Aha! X caused TSLA to move" but actually building a strong case for causation is a lot trickier.

That statement is a big, fat winner in my opinion and should be taken to heart by those who are constantly trying to assign meaning to movements that are not clearly associated with a specific news released at a specific time within market hours. Even in that very clear case, the news item cannot be assigned to 100% of the change in price that follows, because time marches on.

Everyone should read that statement one more time and let it sink in. This is true for every high-flyer I've ever invested in and yet it is very common for people to try to explain various moves in the share price with logical reasons that are often flimsy at best, even though they seem solid to the person proposing them because it "seems correct".

 

[elasalle]

Sunrise on the Union (Dylan /s)

GM expects EV profits to be comparable to gas vehicles by 2025, years ahead of schedule

General Motors expects its new electric vehicles to be in-line with traditional cars and trucks with internal combustion engines by mid-decade.

www.cnbc.com

GM CEO Mary Barra on Thursday said the significant increase in profits factors in federal incentives under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which includes money back for companies that produce EVs in North America as well as consumers and fleet customers that purchase the vehicles

+Wonder what happens to Tesla US under such environment

 

[Gigapress]

That statement is a big, fat winner in my opinion and should be taken to heart by those who are constantly trying to assign meaning to movements that are not clearly associated with a specific news released at a specific time within market hours. Even in that very clear case, the news item cannot be assigned to 100% of the change in price that follows, because time marches on.

Everyone should read that statement one more time and let it sink in. This is true for every high-flyer I've ever invested in and yet it is very common for people to try to explain various moves in the share price with logical reasons that are often flimsy at best, even though they seem solid to the person proposing them because it "seems correct".

Relevant xkcd

https://xkcd.com/552/

 

[thesmokingman]

Did a bit of research and looks like it's not regular software, this Trinity plant was planned to specifically produce Level 4 autonomous EVs. To me, this appears to be a realization that Level 4 technology will not be realized as quickly as they supposedly previously believed.

Regular software or not, legacies are clueless with software. If anyone thought they had a remote chance of achieving L4 autonomy, there are many bridges you'd be interested in as well. Take Ford, they can't do software so they steal it.

 

[AndrewZ]

Regular software or not, legacies are clueless with software. If anyone thought they had a remote chance of achieving L4 autonomy, there are many bridges you'd be interested in as well. Take Ford, they can't do software so they steal it.

Haven't watched the video yet but VW would not be developing their own Level 4 software, they have a software branch called CARIAD and were previously partnered with Argo AI but diched that recently in lieu of expanding their partnersip with Mobileye.

I don't know if any of the OEMs are actually doing their own autonomous software, I think they're basically all running Mobileye stuff in different configurations. Tesla was also previously partnered with Mobileye way back in the day.