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

[scaesare]

I'm in VA and I am paying a little over $110/mo. Note I am 60 and a good driver, so there's that. I switched from Progressive when their latest 6-month bill for my model Y was ~$1,100, so that may give you a better indication on how good of an insurance it is.

I'm also in VA, and about $107 currently for 2013 Model S 85 and a 2006 Toyota Sequoia.

 

[scaesare]

We use a tesla 5-20 adapter in campgrounds that have 5-20 receptacles. The tesla gets 16 amps at 120 instead of 12 amps at 120. Cuts the charge time down buy a quarter.

The other cord is our trailer.

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Cuts down charge time by a 3rd, right?

 

[MC3OZ]

Isn’t Toyota already done for? They’re too late to the BEV game. Everyone else has come up with at least an acceptable product, and Toyota doesn’t even have a prototype. Toyota today is like Nokia in the late 2000’s. Nokia was too late to adopt Android and decided to go all in on Windows Phone. It was a decent wager because Nokia was already too far behind competitors in producing Android phones. Too bad they lost.

The only possible way out is for Toyota to purchase another EV maker to adopt the technology. It’ll be a painful learning process but it’s the only thing that will keep them from bankruptcy.

There is a slim glimmer of hope, depending on what Japan and Toyota do next.

The smart thing to do is get tear down reports on all Tesla models but particularly Gen3 cars, copy everything they can.
Start with new vehicle designs and new factories, and a dedicated EV specialist team.
Use Chinese LFP packs for now, but work hard on local battery production, including local LFP and battery innovation.

Try to licence critical technologies that are hard to make from Tesla, including FSD, but also perhaps including motors and some electrical components.

Adopt charging overseas standards where possible,

The big question is the money to fund all of the new factories, I think they can find enough smart hardworking people,

Ford managed to pivot reasonably quickly and perhaps some clever recruitment was part of that,.

Nothing to lose by giving it a shot..

 

[printf42]

Unpopular opinion, please change my mind:

Elon was intentionally crashing TSLA.

Steps:

1. Repeatedly saying recession is coming
2. Go on a random Twitter space and say when recession comes, Tesla will go low margin or even negative margin to keep growth and FCF, tell people to go off margin, at the worst possible time so far.
3. Now on Q4 call, it becomes when recession comes, input costs would drop, leads to higher margin, deflation?

What the hell happened between step 2-3?

Convince me otherwise…

 

[Artful Dodger]

~ 200 Million shares traded and climbing... does anyone smarter than me, which includes all of you, know the ATH daily amount of shares traded?

Ha! Not even close to record high volume for TSLA today. Here's the (split adjusted) Top-5 TSLA Volume Days:

Date​	Close SP​	Volume​
02-04-20​	59.14​	914,081,400​
02-05-20​	48.98​	726,357,600​
02-03-20​	52.00​	708,502,500​
12-18-20​	231.67​	666,378,570​
02-06-20​	49.93​	598,211,250​

Notice that 4 of the Top-5 volume days occurred during the 1st week of February, 2020? Yes, that's the week that Cidadel first became an options market maker for TSLA (and has been manipulating the stock ever since).

Today's TSLA volume of 234M shares traded isn't even close to a record. It ranked 167th in high vol days.

TL;dr Shortzes and hedgies are roiling the market, stealing from Mom'n'Pop investors, while Congress and the #SEC fiddles.

 

[Ogre]

I have a slightly different take...

Akio Toyoda getting criticism from current Chairman, wants more control, handpicks successor & replaces Chairman with himself.

Hydrogen, hybrid & synthetic fuel full ahead. Toyota accelerating towards irrelevance.

That’s not too different from my take.

I don’t see their chances are good.

 

[kbM3]

Dojo and inference . . . Elon is speaking over the heads of all of these analysts.

They won't get it until FSD goes out of beta.

Actually I don’t think Wall St. will get it until they see the profits from either FSD or robotaxis rolling in. They very much have a show me the money mindset.

 

[wipster]

What did it seem Jonas knew that he shouldn't have?

Reading the transcript, it was the way he asked his second question:

Adam Jonas -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

"Thanks, Elon. And just a follow-up. I don't want to steal thunder from March 1 down in Austin, but how close are we to that step-change improvement in BOM cost where you could sell an EV for under $25,000 or $30,000 and actually generate a profit, that kind of real moving assembly line moment in manufacturing? Again, I don't want to steal the thunder, but just if you wanted to kind of wrap up with thoughts there, that would be helpful."

He asked it like he knew the answer and was baiting Elon to reveal something... Elon did not take the bait.

 

[Ogre]

Unpopular opinion, please change my mind:

Elon was intentionally crashing TSLA.

Steps:

1. Repeatedly saying recession is coming
2. Go on a random Twitter space and say when recession comes, Tesla will go low margin or even negative margin to keep growth and FCF, tell people to go off margin, at the worst possible time so far.
3. Now on Q4 call, it becomes when recession comes, input costs would drop, leads to higher margin, deflation?

What the hell happened between step 2-3?

Convince me otherwise…

Musk said Tesla would go low or no margin if they needed to maintain growth. He was just giving some insight into what they would do if things got bad.

I did not get the impression he was predicting that would happen. Certainly wasn’t my take-away from that call.

 

[ZeApelido]

Small 3rd shift has started in Berlin

https://twitter.com/x/status/1618763363806490627

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Cuts down charge time by a 3rd, right?

Sounds right. Math was never my strong suit. Grade 3 was the best two years of my life.

 

[MC3OZ]

Reading the transcript, it was the way he asked his second question:

Adam Jonas -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

"Thanks, Elon. And just a follow-up. I don't want to steal thunder from March 1 down in Austin, but how close are we to that step-change improvement in BOM cost where you could sell an EV for under $25,000 or $30,000 and actually generate a profit, that kind of real moving assembly line moment in manufacturing? Again, I don't want to steal the thunder, but just if you wanted to kind of wrap up with thoughts there, that would be helpful."

He asked it like he knew the answer and was baiting Elon to reveal something... Elon did not take the bait.

IMO what AJ said could be deduced from previous on the record statements from Elon and Tesla.

Specifically being able to build 2 Gen3 cars for the cost of a Model 3/Y.

And it is very likely that Gen3 is a topic of conversation of March 1,

 

[JRP3]

"Salton Sea lithium deposits could help EV transition, support economically devastated area"​

PBS - yesterday:

Maybe not:

Oakland-based Lilac Solutions told Forbes that it was pulling out of the Lithium Valley, citing risks from toxic elements in the Salton Sea geothermal brine that might make their way into the air during the extraction process.

“There are challenges related to the very high temperature and the materials, including toxic materials, that are dissolved into it,” David Snydacker, Lilac’s founder and CEO, told Forbes.

Lilac had developed an ion-exchange technology to separate lithium from superheated brines and was working with Controlled Thermal Resources to extract lithium from the Salton Sea geothermal brines. Now, Lilac says this brine is too difficult to handle and is taking its technology elsewhere.

Issue 20: A California draft report on lithium misses its deadline

A blue-ribbon commission tasked with studying the impacts of lithium in the Imperial Valley has delayed the release of its draft report.

lithiumvalle.substack.com

 

[Artful Dodger]

For the record. At current rate, we are 10 days from the ATH.

160*1.1^1.1 = ~415 which is roughly the ATH.

So... ur sayin' 2 weeks?

 

[kbM3]

Absolutely. And anyone who listened to today's call, and ALL previous calls, will know that Tesla management doesn't see any demand problems. They re-iterated that demand is strong looking forward as far as they can see. And they have much better visibility into demand than any investor or analyst can hope to have without having access to the dynamic picture painted by Tesla's order books.

I'm saddened that demand worries continue to take center stage in so many investors' minds when that narrative is a construct of the shorts and those who want Tesla to fail. People who buy into the idea that Tesla is developing a demand problem actually further the goals of those who started the unsupported rumors and highlight how misguided they are as investors. Tesla management has been clear as a bell on this issue. There are literally millions of people who aspire to own a Tesla and Tesla continues to sell more each year vs. the last. They have no real competition that is more significant than their own growing production and sales. Tesla's biggest competitor is Tesla and they have plenty of pricing power to manage that threat if needed. The effect of lowering prices just highlights how far everyone else is behind Tesla in the EV space while simultaneously highlighting what a bad value ICE vehicles are.

it depends on the meaning of the phrase demand problem. I think the phrase is vague.

Personally I would say there is a demand concern whenever orders are incoming at a rate slower than production (or near future production), especially when wait times are already short. It’s a concern, in that it means it needs to be addressed. And this definitely happened in late q4.

I assume when you say there’s never a demand problem, you’re referring to the fact that Tesla has plenty of demand levers to pull to address any demand concerns, before taking the last resort of slowing production growth?

I.e. It seems like you believe having demand problems and being (or about to become) demand constrained are synonymous phrases?

 

[Artful Dodger]

the NASDAQ TSLA chart page shows ATH Volume was on 2/5/2020 at 726M shares.

That day wasn't the ATH. That was the previous day, 2020-02-04 at 903.4M (split adjusted 15:1)

 

[Artful Dodger]

WHAT DID I MISS???

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... Buying 60 Put contracts on the way down.

 

[Sparky4life]

Reading the transcript, it was the way he asked his second question:

Adam Jonas -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

"Thanks, Elon. And just a follow-up. I don't want to steal thunder from March 1 down in Austin, but how close are we to that step-change improvement in BOM cost where you could sell an EV for under $25,000 or $30,000 and actually generate a profit, that kind of real moving assembly line moment in manufacturing? Again, I don't want to steal the thunder, but just if you wanted to kind of wrap up with thoughts there, that would be helpful."

He asked it like he knew the answer and was baiting Elon to reveal something... Elon did not take the bait.

To me it just sounded like “When is the $25k car coming?” in flowery analyst-speak.

 

[Todd Burch]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1618444845701562370

Do you suppose Mr. Zhu’s oversight in Fremont helped lead to this?

Slight increase in production rate at Fremont perhaps?

Every little bit brings down costs…

Edit: or maybe this is referring to Q4 production? Not clear if this is a daily/weekly record or a quarterly record celebration.

 

[ZeApelido]

Can’t replicate this indirect marketing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1618284029765160963