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

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Let me throw something out for comment.

I suspect that a lot of folk would have liked to have sold TSLA at $400 in Oct-2021 and have bought back in at $120 or so in Dec-2022, with the benefit of hindsight and perfect timing and all that.

But without the perfect retrospectascope the thought may be niggling at folk to sell a little bit of TSLA from time to time in a rising market and derisk things that way. But when to sell, and when to buy.

With that in mind I've taken my success case model where Tesla does get to 20m by 2030, and maintains an automotive GM% of about 30% the whole duration (however unlikely that may be). This yields a forecast of net income per share, i.e. Earnings Per Share (EPS) for the next several years.

In the red boxed row the future share price is computed assuming a trailing PE of 40 x EPS, or the end-year historical is noted. So this means the historical PE varies (grey line on graph) but the share price is correct, whereas the future PE is pretty flat but the PE-driven share price forecast is likely to be wrong. I picked a trailing PE of 40x to drive the future forecast (red line on graph) and that corresponds to a 'future' PE of 25-35 (flattish grey line). (I'm explaining the difference between 40x and 25-35x which is a nuance. You can ignore this if it confuses you).

In the purple boxed row the share price is computed using the 10-year NPV of the EPS, and with the discount rate set to being the 10-year bond rate plus the typical equity risk premium. (I used the OECD data for US 10-year.) This means that the effect of rising Fed rates are correctly reflected in the purple box. (By way of comparison the green box holds the NPV discount rate invariant at 10%). The equity risk premium is the market-average - if anyone can point out sector specific equity risk data that is better I'd be interested.

I appreciate these are crude calculations, but I am a bear of little brain.

1675011909312.png


Next I've plotted them. Of course these are year-end numbers for each year and a lot can happen within a year. So to get a feel for how much can happen within a year I've overlaid the actual historical share price scaled to fit (that's the light green line). So the red line and the green line coincide perfectly at 12-month intervals if you look carefully.

Only the next few years are interesting so I've truncated share price at $600 (!!). The NPV calculation looks at the successive 10-years of EPS, but since I hold EPS flat beyond 2030 the NPV calculation gets a little screwy after 2025. But since I can't forecast that well it doesn't matter.

1675012714114.png


Remember this economic model for EPS is of course at the high end of the range, i.e. 20m by 2030 and maintaining 30% automotive gross margin (in a sense this is where FSD is taken into account). My model assumes success in energy at a lower GM%, and takes no account whatsoever of RoboTaxi or of Optimus.

The first observation I make is that PE on its own is not a sell signal. Selling at PE of over 100x can cause a great deal of missing out in a growth share such as TSLA.

A second observation is that when the market share price reaches double the NPV-driven share price that ought to be a sell signal as irrational exuberance is probably driving a share price bubble. Conversely when market share price is significantly below NPV-driven share price that may be a buy signal. This degree of deviation from NPV seems to be an actionable observation.

A third observation is that one has to have a somewhat sensible forecast to drive the NPV calculation in a EPS model such as this. That is of course the conversation that rational longer term investors are trying to have in the noise of all the short term traders, and we are all doing it through the mechanism of the share price. But one must have such a model if one is to be able to form a independent view using the NPV-deviation signal.

I guess a final comment is that this in turn relies on Tesla giving its shareholders sufficient information in a transparent and reliable and trustworthy and methodical manner that shareholders can form a rational view.

(P.S. I've looked at the PEG metric and it is not giving a reliable / useful indicator, that is why I am not showing it on the graph. You can see it in the table.)
 

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Are they? Shanghai has had quite a bit of down time in January. There will be some offset from other factories ramping but assuming they want to continue to flatten the wave I'd be surprised if Q1 blew the doors off in terms of sales.
Shanghai is always impacted in Q1 for Chinese new years. So compared to last year’s Q1 (which is the only proper way to compare quarters in a cyclical sales company), this quarter should still be solid. But yes, it would be better if Shanghai got right back to high production which I guess is an unknown at this point? Anyone have current production rumors from China?
 
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Dirty Tesla compares 2 year old FSD Beta vs today's newest revision. Went from 10 disengagements + 8 interventions to 0 disengagements +0 interventions. People really have a hard time understanding incremental improvements. We complain after every release about how it didn't fix X, Y, and Z. However if you zoom out, the improvements are massive.


This is true but there is a reason I became a lot less optimistic about the timeline for full autonomy sometime around the middle of last year. Basically, it's due to the flattening of the improvement curve, a curve that was previously steepening. Trends matter. Previously, the improvement curve was accelerating, and I expected that to continue. That was my failing. The reason it did not, IMO, is we have entered the "march of 9's" and I think it's under-appreciated how significant the "march of 9's" really is. Even Musk seems to know this judging by the fact that most of his specific near-term statements about FSD timelines exclude regulatory approval and actual autonomous deployment, choosing to focus instead on "feature complete" or other metrics that are before the "march of 9's" is fully complete.

Because I think the bulk of the value of FSD does not happen until it is fully autonomous and, even then, it will take a while for the general public to accept its superior safety, I think most of the value will be recognized and capitalized on in a more gradual manner, over a longer period of time, not in a singular "aha" moment. FSD is already contributing to auto margins and that will gradually accelerate with increasing levels of adoption, increasing levels of revenue recognition and, eventually, greatly increasing prices and real-world, profitable applications. But it will be a gradual process, overall, and there is no one defining moment at which it is perfected. That is what the "march of 9's" is. A long, gradual process.

I do have some hope that Dojo will greatly accelerate the "march of 9's", hopefully starting later this year, but that doesn't mean it will be a fast thing, simply that Tesla has increasingly powerful tools for a very difficult job. That said, people who think full autonomy will take until 2030 or beyond are just out in left field without sufficient imagination to see that the foundations have been laid for full success, well before this decade lapses.
 
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Let me throw something out for comment.

I suspect that a lot of folk would have liked to have sold TSLA at $400 in Oct-2021 and have bought back in at $120 or so in Dec-2022, with the benefit of hindsight and perfect timing and all that.

But without the perfect retrospectascope the thought may be niggling at folk to sell a little bit of TSLA from time to time in a rising market and derisk things that way. But when to sell, and when to buy.

With that in mind I've taken my success case model where Tesla does get to 20m by 2030, and maintains an automotive GM% of about 30% the whole duration (however unlikely that may be). This yields a forecast of net income per share, i.e. Earnings Per Share (EPS) for the next several years.

In the red boxed row the future share price is computed assuming a trailing PE of 40 x EPS, or the end-year historical is noted. So this means the historical PE varies (grey line on graph) but the share price is correct, whereas the future PE is pretty flat but the PE-driven share price forecast is likely to be wrong. I picked a trailing PE of 40x to drive the future forecast (red line on graph) and that corresponds to a 'future' PE of 25-35 (flattish grey line). (I'm explaining the difference between 40x and 25-35x which is a nuance. You can ignore this if it confuses you).

In the purple boxed row the share price is computed using the 10-year NPV of the EPS, and with the discount rate set to being the 10-year bond rate plus the typical equity risk premium. (I used the OECD data for US 10-year.) This means that the effect of rising Fed rates are correctly reflected in the purple box. (By way of comparison the green box holds the NPV discount rate invariant at 10%). The equity risk premium is the market-average - if anyone can point out sector specific equity risk data that is better I'd be interested.

I appreciate these are crude calculations, but I am a bear of little brain.

View attachment 901003

Next I've plotted them. Of course these are year-end numbers for each year and a lot can happen within a year. So to get a feel for how much can happen within a year I've overlaid the actual historical share price scaled to fit (that's the light green line). So the red line and the green line coincide perfectly at 12-month intervals if you look carefully.

Only the next few years are interesting so I've truncated share price at $600 (!!). The NPV calculation looks at the successive 10-years of EPS, but since I hold EPS flat beyond 2030 the NPV calculation gets a little screwy after 2025. But since I can't forecast that well it doesn't matter.

View attachment 901007

Remember this economic model for EPS is of course at the high end of the range, i.e. 20m by 2030 and maintaining 30% automotive gross margin (in a sense this is where FSD is taken into account). My model assumes success in energy at a lower GM%, and takes no account whatsoever of RoboTaxi or of Optimus.

The first observation I make is that PE on its own is not a sell signal. Selling at PE of over 100x can cause a great deal of missing out in a share such as TSLA.

A second observation is that when the market share price reaches double the NPV-driven share price that ought to be a sell signal as irrational exuberance is probably driving a share price bubble. Conversely when market share price is significantly below NPV-driven share price that may be a buy signal. This degree of deviation from NPV seems to be an actionable observation.

A third observation is that one has to have a somewhat sensible forecast to drive the NPV calculation in a EPS model such as this. That is of course the conversation that rational longer term investors are trying to have in the noise of all the short term traders, and we are all doing it through the mechanism of the share price. But one must have such a model if one is to be able to form a independent view using the NPV-deviation signal.

I guess a final comment is that this in turn relies on Tesla giving its shareholders sufficient information in a transparent and reliable and trustworthy and methodical manner that shareholders can form a rational view.

Awesome post and I don't think I read this in it, but want to add: if Tesla only gets to 50% output out of that stated goal, it's still 5x increase in automotive revenue. We're so used to Tesla hitting astronomical goals and getting rewarded for them later that even hitting a partial amount of an astronomical goal is an incredible achievement and would, highly probable, be rewarded in the markets along the way.

It's just an incredible company to invest in.
 
AEG has done this previously:

Hmmm...

"Anderson Economic Group is proud to be part of the auto dealer family through our active membership in the National Association of Dealer Counsel (NADC), and through our very origins: Our company was founded by (and continues to be led by) a Detroit area auto dealer’s son."

 
So being relatively new to this and only ever exposed to "buy and hold" what about options? Do I just keep buying TSLA stock or do I look at options for less risk exposure?
”options for less risk exposure”? You might get derisive comments on that one. Playing any kind of options veers much closer to gambling and veers away from investing. The problem is the time element. Crap happens. No one could have predicted Covid and the effect it had on everything, and if you were long on options during that time, your options timed out and you lost everything. Meanwhile stock investors just had to do nothing and eventually their stock appreciated.

Buy and hold is a perfectly good strategy since timing the market is fraught with challenges. Experts, very experienced people who do this as their day job can’t even time the market with any degree of repeatability. So you and I sure aren’t going to.

The most repeatable investment strategy is to learn about a few companies. Do a deep dive into them. Actually read *sugar*. From there, you can gain a good understanding of what their growth or stability prospects are (depending whether you are buying a growth stock or dividend stock). And then keep up to date on those companies. After buying a company’s stock, be mindful if the company starts to not resemble the company you invested in in a negative way for what looks like is going to be a longish time (more than a year or two). That’s when you sell.

99% of ”investors” don’t do this meaning they make decisions based on almost zero real data. That’s why I said pick just a few companies, because keeping tabs on dozens is, like, a full time job. Also pick companies operating in a market you care about and are interested in, that way keeping tabs on them won’t be such a slog.
 
Q - have there been any collisions in operating the Las Vegas boring loop yet?

(I'm asking in regards to the parts of that loop that are out-of-tunnel too)

Edit: I ask because couldn't the loop, throughout Vegas and when implemented by hopefully the Superbowl next year, dramatically reduce down collision rate for the whole city (and increase the improvement curve) while FSD is enabled?
 
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Let me throw something out for comment.

I suspect that a lot of folk would have liked to have sold TSLA at $400 in Oct-2021 and have bought back in at $120 or so in Dec-2022, with the benefit of hindsight and perfect timing and all that.

But without the perfect retrospectascope the thought may be niggling at folk to sell a little bit of TSLA from time to time in a rising market and derisk things that way. But when to sell, and when to buy.

With that in mind I've taken my success case model where Tesla does get to 20m by 2030, and maintains an automotive GM% of about 30% the whole duration (however unlikely that may be). This yields a forecast of net income per share, i.e. Earnings Per Share (EPS) for the next several years.

In the red boxed row the future share price is computed assuming a trailing PE of 40 x EPS, or the end-year historical is noted. So this means the historical PE varies (grey line on graph) but the share price is correct, whereas the future PE is pretty flat but the PE-driven share price forecast is likely to be wrong. I picked a trailing PE of 40x to drive the future forecast (red line on graph) and that corresponds to a 'future' PE of 25-35 (flattish grey line). (I'm explaining the difference between 40x and 25-35x which is a nuance. You can ignore this if it confuses you).

In the purple boxed row the share price is computed using the 10-year NPV of the EPS, and with the discount rate set to being the 10-year bond rate plus the typical equity risk premium. (I used the OECD data for US 10-year.) This means that the effect of rising Fed rates are correctly reflected in the purple box. (By way of comparison the green box holds the NPV discount rate invariant at 10%). The equity risk premium is the market-average - if anyone can point out sector specific equity risk data that is better I'd be interested.

I appreciate these are crude calculations, but I am a bear of little brain.

View attachment 901003

Next I've plotted them. Of course these are year-end numbers for each year and a lot can happen within a year. So to get a feel for how much can happen within a year I've overlaid the actual historical share price scaled to fit (that's the light green line). So the red line and the green line coincide perfectly at 12-month intervals if you look carefully.

Only the next few years are interesting so I've truncated share price at $600 (!!). The NPV calculation looks at the successive 10-years of EPS, but since I hold EPS flat beyond 2030 the NPV calculation gets a little screwy after 2025. But since I can't forecast that well it doesn't matter.

View attachment 901007

Remember this economic model for EPS is of course at the high end of the range, i.e. 20m by 2030 and maintaining 30% automotive gross margin (in a sense this is where FSD is taken into account). My model assumes success in energy at a lower GM%, and takes no account whatsoever of RoboTaxi or of Optimus.

The first observation I make is that PE on its own is not a sell signal. Selling at PE of over 100x can cause a great deal of missing out in a growth share such as TSLA.

A second observation is that when the market share price reaches double the NPV-driven share price that ought to be a sell signal as irrational exuberance is probably driving a share price bubble. Conversely when market share price is significantly below NPV-driven share price that may be a buy signal. This degree of deviation from NPV seems to be an actionable observation.

A third observation is that one has to have a somewhat sensible forecast to drive the NPV calculation in a EPS model such as this. That is of course the conversation that rational longer term investors are trying to have in the noise of all the short term traders, and we are all doing it through the mechanism of the share price. But one must have such a model if one is to be able to form a independent view using the NPV-deviation signal.

I guess a final comment is that this in turn relies on Tesla giving its shareholders sufficient information in a transparent and reliable and trustworthy and methodical manner that shareholders can form a rational view.

(P.S. I've looked at the PEG metric and it is not giving a reliable / useful indicator, that is why I am not showing it on the graph. You can see it in the table.)

I *LOVE* back of the napkin, rough estimates, without getting stuck in the weeds with thousands of details. Mostly to give me a feel for where things might be going. But, to view things like that it is necessary to take off the blinders. In other words, the glaring fault here is that you are using broad generalities to model a very narrow, very specific thing, auto revenues without FSD, without energy and without any other additive revenues and profits. When modelling uncertainty with broad general models like this, it actually helps to throw everything into the model because winners and losers might tend to balance out. In the end, no model looking out 7 years is ever going to be correct and the percentage of time it will be wildly incorrect, is high.

I think if you continue to have a dim view of Tesla's future energy prospects, FSD earnings, robotics, etc, you might as well just sell now and give up on Tesla ever offering superior returns again. I remain invested because I see something very special about the manner in which Elon runs his companies and I have more certainty about that than I could ever have while modelling auto profits more than a year out, or the P/E assigned to those at any given point in time. You seem to be trying to look at TSLA more like a story of a car maker who does well. I see more, much more. Time will tell.
 
Agreed. Toyota developed the Prius because they were desperate. No one under fifty purchased a Toyota and 40% Japanese market penetration appeared to be an impossible goal (a couple of decades earlier it was closer to 80%). They took the top engineers from their various devisions and gave them a mandate to create systems for the 21st century. An actual car wasn't expected. Once the Prius was successful and the market share in Japan was at reasonable levels, they went back to Toyota's normal bureaucracy, which is why development pretty much stopped for the Prius in 2004. (Source: The Prius that Shook the World)
The real point being that just like mainstream auto is trying to milk the last little bit of profit from the ICE, Toyota also benefits from milking the hybrid drivetrain for all its worth as quickly as they can. Understandably until recently they had the technological advantage over everyone else and could offer a car at a lower cost-per-mile than all their competitors.

They're well aware, however, that the risk of cannibalization is there. Every Prius or Rav4EV Hybrid sold is one less Corolla or Camry non-hybrid as it has been basically since the Gen 2 Prius in 2004. Introducing a marketable and desirable EV as a third variation stands to drive their bean counters nuts! They're still trying to drive down the development costs for all those Hybrid drivetrains they've just expanded out to in the last decade. This is exactly why we got "unconventional" designs like the Mirai, Bolt EV, and Leaf from mainstream auto - staying engaged enough to learn the technology but not threaten the existing ICE product line.
 
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I *LOVE* back of the napkin, rough estimates, without getting stuck in the weeds with thousands of details. Mostly to give me a feel for where things might be going. But, to view things like that it is necessary to take off the blinders. In other words, the glaring fault here is that you are using broad generalities to model a very narrow, very specific thing, auto revenues without FSD, without energy and without any other additive revenues and profits. When modelling uncertainty with broad general models like this, it actually helps to throw everything into the model because winners and losers might tend to balance out. In the end, no model looking out 7 years is ever going to be correct and the percentage of time it will be wildly incorrect, is high.

I think if you continue to have a dim view of Tesla's future energy prospects, FSD earnings, robotics, etc, you might as well just sell now and give up on Tesla ever offering superior returns again. I remain invested because I see something very special about the manner in which Elon runs his companies and I have more certainty about that than I could ever have while modelling auto profits more than a year out, or the P/E assigned to those at any given point in time. You seem to be trying to look at TSLA more like a story of a car maker who does well. I see more, much more. Time will tell.
Yeah, but his model predicts a 42% share price appreciation by end of 2023 from now, and a 125% price appreciation by end of 2024. Meaning, it is a great growth stock even without these other potential upsides.

And he does kinda take them into account (remember this is napkin math) by pointing out his model parameters are very bullish to begin with so one would assume some tailwinds from IRA and FSD.

Finally, energy, teslabot, and others are going to take quite a while to impact earnings, not because they aren’t great products, but because Tesla automotive is so huge and growing fast that it’ll take them a long time to ramp enough to be significant to the huge automotive bottom line.

If you want a more detailed granular spreadsheet, please make one, I’d be interested in seeing it.
 
”options for less risk exposure”? You might get derisive comments on that one. Playing any kind of options veers much closer to gambling and veers away from investing. The problem is the time element. Crap happens. No one could have predicted Covid and the effect it had on everything, and if you were long on options during that time, your options timed out and you lost everything. Meanwhile stock investors just had to do nothing and eventually their stock appreciated.

Those who know me know I'm not a big fan of options. But it should probably be said that options are not just one thing, they can be used in many ways, including reducing exposure to risk. But it needs to be said, that will come at a high cost. While you can reduce the risk of big losses, you will also reduce your chances of big gains. Use of options in general will result in lower returns, on average, than buying and holding good companies.

And an investor would have to be awfully risk adverse to find buying and holding a handful of good companies to be a risky long-term strategy. What's actually riskier is holding cash over long periods of time. Spending cash on assets that are almost certain to have a declining value is even riskier!
 
Since I am a novice maybe I'll stick to buy and hold.

What about diversification? TSLA is a great company and represents a great opportunity for investors. Why not go "all in" on TSLA? I completely understand the limit to downsides, etc., but seriously, what other company has as much upside as TSLA? Mod-deleted stuff followed.


You already have been warned once about bringing other investment possibilities in this thread. This is your 2nd strike.
 
anybody know the cab to bed ratio for the cybertruck?

saw this infographic and though of the cybertruck and also thought about the crazy grill size posts. Some cars will be all grill eventually and I guess some trucks will be all cab eventually.

HS-News-Brief_2023-01-27T011008.562Z.png
Measuring on the 3D printed Cybertruck I have on my desk right now that I have no idea if it's accurate or not

Its 64/36 (cab/bed)
 
Yeah, but his model predicts a 42% share price appreciation by end of 2023 from now, and a 125% price appreciation by end of 2024. Meaning, it is a great growth stock even without these other potential upsides.

I find the high p/e valuations for an auto only business to be unrealistic.

And he does kinda take them into account (remember this is napkin math) by pointing out his model parameters are very bullish to begin with so one would assume some tailwinds from IRA and FSD.
I think by stating the model used is at the high end of the range used is pretty much the same thing as saying autonomy revenues will never be very dramatic compared to auto revenues. I think it would be more realistic to model higher earnings at a lower earnings multiple (but those who know me will know I believe forecasting based upon earnings multiples is not exactly solid science).

Finally, energy, teslabot, and others are going to take quite a while to impact earnings, not because they aren’t great products, but because Tesla automotive is so huge and growing fast that it’ll take them a long time to ramp enough to be significant to the huge automotive bottom line.

Aha! There lies the problem. Because revenues don't have to flow to the bottom line to impact valuations. And this is why modelling such dynamic companies with earnings projections and p/e valuations is an excercise in futility. It only works for value investing. And if I thought value investing was a productive path for an individual investor, I would be a value investor. I'm not (thankfully) and therefore I don't want to fall into the same trap that value investors find themselves in.
If you want a more detailed granular spreadsheet, please make one, I’d be interested in seeing it.

I thought I made it clear I would not find a more granular spreadsheet helpful, quite the contrary. I have a dim view of that sort of analysis because it doesn't correspond well to the most profitable investments. I try to find real value (as opposed to over-priced crap), but it's not found using the techniques a value investor uses. This is not a business selling widgets, so it can't be modelled like a business selling widgets. This is where traditional analysts regularly fail. My biggest wins were all companies that I got into relatively early while traditional analysts failed to identify the extreme value they held. It's all about risk/reward, not modelling how they will be performing in seven years. That doesn't work if the goal is to have great returns.
 
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Since I am a novice maybe I'll stick to buy and hold.

What about diversification? TSLA is a great company and represents a great opportunity for investors. Why not go "all in" on TSLA? I completely understand the limit to downsides, etc., but seriously, what other company has as much upside as TSLA? {deleted stuff}
There are thousands of posts addressing all these questions in this thread and throughout TMC with people here taking just about every approach imaginable, quite often with rather detailed explanations of their rationales. It is really worth your time to go back through perhaps the last 12-15 months so you catch the exuberance of 2021 and the pitfalls of 2022, and decide which approaches make sense for you. People are very careful to NOT give advise, but the discussions are very educational.
 
This is true but there is a reason I became a lot less optimistic about the timeline for full autonomy sometime around the middle of last year. Basically, it's due to the flattening of the improvement curve, a curve that was previously steepening. Trends matter. Previously, the improvement curve was accelerating, and I expected that to continue. That was my failing. The reason it did not, IMO, is we have entered the "march of 9's" and I think it's under-appreciated how significant the "march of 9's" really is. Even Musk seems to know this judging by the fact that most of his specific near-term statements about FSD timelines exclude regulatory approval and actual autonomous deployment, choosing to focus instead on "feature complete" or other metrics that are before the "march of 9's" is fully complete.

Because I think the bulk of the value of FSD does not happen until it is fully autonomous and, even then, it will take a while for the general public to accept its superior safety, I think most of the value will be recognized and capitalized on in a more gradual manner, over a longer period of time, not in a singular "aha" moment. FSD is already contributing to auto margins and that will gradually accelerate with increasing levels of adoption, increasing levels of revenue recognition and, eventually, greatly increasing prices and real-world, profitable applications. But it will be a gradual process, overall, and there is no one defining moment at which it is perfected. That is what the "march of 9's" is. A long, gradual process.

I do have some hope that Dojo will greatly accelerate the "march of 9's", hopefully starting later this year, but that doesn't mean it will be a fast thing, simply that Tesla has increasingly powerful tools for a very difficult job. That said, people who think full autonomy will take until 2030 or beyond are just out in left field without sufficient imagination to see that the foundations have been laid for full success, well before this decade lapses.
Skeptics are backed up pretty well by history, the previous 6-7+ years that have not come to fruition. Much of this stuff has been repeatedly touted as right around the corner, and yet here we are.

What I believe will take until 2030+ is SAE Level 4-5, which is what will unlock what I think most people perceive as "full autonomy": being able to sleep while your car drives, robotaxis out driving themselves around and generating revenue while you're sleeping or at work, massively increased utilization, and all those benefits.

I think it'll be many years before companies are considering taking ownership of the DDT in a generalized consumer robotaxi. What Tesla is working to achieve is almost all-or-nothing, the various risks need to be massaged down to such a low level before being able to accept liability for what potentially millions of vehicles are doing in an unfenced generalized autonomous vehicle.

If we're talking "full autonomy" that is Level 2 and requires your constant vigilance with eyeballs pointed through the windshield, that's mostly already achieved but it's a long way from unlocking robotaxis and the associated benefits/revenue/profits.
 
Since I am a novice maybe I'll stick to buy and hold.

Smart man.

What about diversification? TSLA is a great company and represents a great opportunity for investors. Why not go "all in" on TSLA? I completely understand the limit to downsides, etc., but seriously, what other company has as much upside as TSLA? {deleted stuff}

I think this depends on your investment goals and needs. If you need consistent cash to live on, consider some dividend stocks or buy and hold bonds.

Apart from that, diversifying away from one growth stock isn't a bad idea, the trick is to find other companies with similar growth potential at similar low risk profiles (most people here see some risk in Tesla, but it appears to be quite manageable, and moreover they have a track record of managing it). For instance, I bought {deleted for fairness's sake} biotech stocks since I researched that segment and realized these three companies have potentially huge blockbuster therapies in their very early stage pipeline. BUT this is biotech - human biology, FDA approvals, etc. Meaning they are very risky. Classic high risk/high reward potential (or 0 potential). So, not really the same kind of stock as Tesla now due to the risk, but on the other hand, those stocks could easily be 10x returns (so like investing in Tesla 8 years ago).

Again I go back to research. The only way to stay sane with growth stocks is to research the heck out of the company so that you KNOW, absent WW3, how it is going to play out. There are indeed mostly sure things in the stock market, you just have to find them, and research them well enough so that when a macro event occurs and the stock loses 70% of its value, you know enough to not panic and sell.
 
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anybody know the cab to bed ratio for the cybertruck?

saw this infographic and though of the cybertruck and also thought about the crazy grill size posts. Some cars will be all grill eventually and I guess some trucks will be all cab eventually.

HS-News-Brief_2023-01-27T011008.562Z.png
Since the overall dimensions are likely similar and, at least when it was unveiled, indications were it also had a 6.5' bed (same as F-150), I would guess the Cybertruck will have similar ratios. I eyeballed (read: lazily used the selection tool to count horizontal pixels in GIMP) the image on Tesla's site with the side view of the body sans doors and wheels, and I came up with 66/34 split, but it could go either way a few percentage points depending on how much of the bumper overhangs are where you consider the bed split to be.