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

[insaneoctane]

FSD Transfer and I'd pull the trigger today (as I bet a lot of people would)!

Slippery slope that they've never indicated they'd budge on yet....BUT, allowing transfer would instantly increase the resale value of FSD vehicles (that didn't have FSD transfered away From). I think Tesla vehicles have struggled to have vehicles with FSD fairly valued. Maybe Tesla really ought to consider transfer and watch the resale value of FSD jump.

 

[AndrewZ]

It's almost a weekly routine for Cruise to do something so stupid to reinforce the benefit of keeping cars as L2 assist as long as possible while working on the FSD kinks.

SF Officials Describe Street Chaos From Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis

Transit officials cited 92 incidents in which wayward robotaxis obstructed travelers or emergency responders.

sfstandard.com

Some of this article is a bit alarmist and doesn't elaborate on important details. This article links to another alarmist article about 140 autonomous vehicle crashes reported in 2022, but there's a big distinction in that all autonomous vehicle accidents are reported under the AV company regardless of the cause.

Go to the DMV page, review the 2022 reports, and the first three I clicked on are autonomous vehicles being hit by other cars (2 Teslas and a Toyota)

Autonomous Vehicle Collision Reports - California DMV

Manufacturers who are testing autonomous vehicles need to report any collision that resulted in property damage, bodily injury, or death within 10 days of the incident.

www.dmv.ca.gov

The firefighter hose situation seems like a true edge case

 

[bkp_duke]

If one of the falcon wing doors is open and you take it out of park you get a very obvious warning and chimes that the door is open and up in red right in front of your face. If you still move the vehicle and damage one of the doors it's your fault. Similar to someone backing out of a garage with one of the doors open. Nobody's fault but your own.

Yep, and with all of that, neighbor's wife still did that. And I would not put it past my wife.

 

[insaneoctane]

It’s nice that they sold so few vehicles that they can afford to do this.

Plus it'll make for a great "excuse" on a future earnings call....

 

[Cosmacelf]

It's almost a weekly routine for Cruise to do something so stupid to reinforce the benefit of keeping cars as L2 assist as long as possible while working on the FSD kinks.

SF Officials Describe Street Chaos From Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis

Transit officials cited 92 incidents in which wayward robotaxis obstructed travelers or emergency responders.

sfstandard.com

I’ve always thought that you need true AGI for level 5 autonomy and this is a perfect example. There are just too many corner cases. At a bare minimum, the car has to be able to understand commands told to it by emergency personnel.

 

[zannman]

Has anyone done profit analysis for SC network? Seems like Supercharger stations need lots of solar and even more batteries to "get off the grid". Just curious how much battery and PV per stall a busy Supercharger station requires and the ROI time frame?

That was a neat math experiment.

A busy supercharger isn't a reasonable expectation to go off-grid. The quantities are just too big. Lets say the average high load is 1MW for a set of 4-8 stalls, you'd want a 4MWh battery bank and probably 1MW of solar to be off grid. That's 2000 - 500w panels, or just over an acre's worth - probably closer to 2 acres to reasonably fit the panels and give room to navigate around them.

A decent battery would still be economical in a more rural Supercharger, you might be able to reduce utility feed to 25kw to feed a 200kWh battery pack for example. This would reduce commercial utility demand charges and the size of all associated equipment. I believe one of the manufacturers specializing in this technology for CCS is Freewire.

 

[Ogre]

It's almost a weekly routine for Cruise to do something so stupid to reinforce the benefit of keeping cars as L2 assist as long as possible while working on the FSD kinks.

SF Officials Describe Street Chaos From Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis

Transit officials cited 92 incidents in which wayward robotaxis obstructed travelers or emergency responders.

sfstandard.com

Saw a video where one tried to drive through a construction site with a 2' wide 4 foot deep trench in the middle.

If FSD were doing this, people would be screaming for legislative intervention.

I’ve always thought that you need true AGI for level 5 autonomy and this is a perfect example. There are just too many corner cases. At a bare minimum, the car has to be able to understand commands told to it by emergency personnel.

I feel the same. Robotaxi has a lot of weird edge cases to work on. Sometimes the only solution to a problem is to back up the way you came from and find another route.

 

[insaneoctane]

All we have is on 1-2 occasions that Elon on quarterly calls has said that after the "all in" costs, the Supercharger network is ~10% profit margin.

I guess my thought is at $0.60+/kWh, there's usually a decent ROI to be made if you can use PV/battery as source. Long-term PV kWh costs for residential are WAY below this and have significant opportunity IMO. Superchargers needs are unique and likely different, so I'm wondering if Tesla could build out some massive stations that are fully self powered and ultimately reduce pricing over the long term as other charging networks have to continue to raise rates with the power companies?

 

[Noble Ninja]

Ford's price cut of the Mustang Mach-E won't really help them much in the long run, as it will only make it even harder for them scale up their production. Tesla pretty much forced their hands on this by their recent price cut, as not doing anything at all would be worse.

In a capitalist environment, the companies with uncompetitive products and negative margins will run the risk of furthering the possibility of closing shop. In a fast moving industry and in economic instability, the phrase "adapt or die" becomes very real. But for the likes of Ford and GM, this still means there is a choice to be made. I hope they choose wisely and adapt.

To also quote Matt Damon's character from The Martian movie (who was trapped on Mars): "At some point, everything's gonna go south on you ... everything's going to go south and you're going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work."

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

Haha, Tesla employee is now using Joes videos to collect job referrals. Pretty smart.

 

[MC3OZ]

This is my thoughts on why March 1 is potentially different to battery Day and the AI days.

1) Relevance - the presentation is literally about expanding the company, growing revenues, making more EVs, and making EVs more affordable. The purpose isn't hard to understand and it should be relevant to investors and markets. (Perhaps some clarity about the 50% growth rate here).

2) Comprehensive - the plan is likely to be outlined in detail, what they will do and how they will do it.

I expect that to include most of the following:-

• 4680 ramp progress and future plans
• Lithium processing and raw materials sourcing.
• Factory expansions / new factories.
• Model 3 Highland and Gen3 cars
• Ramp of Megapack.

3) Achievable, (percentages are my approximate guesses - ballpark only)

• 70% of the plan is probably things Tesla are already doing, Tesla has done, or others have done.
• 20% of the plan is probably things that are a simple extension of what Tesla is doing and don't require any significant new technologies.
• 10% of the plan many involve some new technologies but Tesla may have already prototyped/tested/proven these in advance e.g. 4680 LFP.

As per usual predicting short term stock price movements is impossible IMO, and I expect the FUD to fly thick and fast, in hope mixed in with a lot of desperation. But my point is that FUD should be less effective after this particular investor day.

If what is revealed on March 1 is anything like I expect, I do expect some panic at other carmakers and perhaps more early retirements, reshuffles, new strategies and realignments.

Long term I can't stress enough how significant and important I think March 1 will be. The fundamentals of what March 1 represents will play out.

It's the end of the ICE age folks. Hat tip to Henry Ford who showed the way to make transportation affordable at Highland Park.

 

[UncaNed]

I am really thinking of giving up.

We bought our car in 2017 And we love driving it. because of our experience we bought TSLA which appreciated like crazy so much so that at one time we earned as much that we drove the car for free. My mistake last year is not cashing out on TSLA

We were sold on the out Model X with FSD being an appreciating asset. Soon we could deploy it as a Robotaxi so Elon told us. Our car has free unlimited supercharging and the future looked bright.

Last year the issues came. the stock price went down so we were not as rich as we thought we would be. We had some major repair bills on our Model X mounting to over $10,000 (front suspension. Lower and under arms etc). We thought it was a one of thing and that this year would be better. Last month we found out that we needed new front calipers, brake disks and pad. Again more than $3,000 repair bill.

Yesterday we drove and our heater stopped working. just got back an estimate of $2,200.

All these costs on top of a huge tax bill because of all the stocks we needed to sell last year.

We looked online about the average repair bill for a Model X and we don’t come near anything that is being said there.

As much as we love driving our Model X, we are seriously considering selling all our stocks and selling the car and start driving a”normal” car again. We never had these kind of repair bills on our old car (I remember most was $1,000 for an air conditioning repair). It is now 2023 and all the nice words of Elon were just that, nice words. He keeps doing that as V11 FSD is also nowhere to be found. I blame myself for not having cashed out when stocks were high. I never in my wildest dreams thought that TSLA would sink as low as it did. I also blame myself to being so gullible in believing Elon and the whole Tesla story.

It really hurts. I love driving the car. There is is nothing else like it, but having a $2,000 repair bill each month is unsustainable especially if there is nothing like a Robotaxi or appreciating TSLA to compensate that. I am sad man.

I wouldn't quit the stock if I was you. Not advice... but I wouldn't quit it.

How many miles on your model X?

I brought in my early 2018 X75D (now has 45,000 miles on it), for something minor about 18 months ago and they replaced a mountain of stuff including air suspension and speakers that I never dreamed had any issues all, plus they upgraded the FSD hardware on warranty. I paid ~$2500-ish for the upgraded display, but the paid repairs have been nothing like what you describe.

 

[bkp_duke]

I guess my thought is at $0.60+/kWh, there's usually a decent ROI to be made if you can use PV/battery as source. Long-term PV kWh costs for residential are WAY below this and have significant opportunity IMO. Superchargers needs are unique and likely different, so I'm wondering if Tesla could build out some massive stations that are fully self powered and ultimately reduce pricing over the long term as other charging networks have to continue to raise rates with the power companies?

The big cost factor on supercharger stations is actually "Demand Power" pricing. If you are not familiar with commercial power pricing, I encourage you to google this and read up, it's quite fascinating how the utilities have found an extra and unique way to screw over commercial power buyers. It's like two cycle billing on credit card interest (you paid the bill with interest, but you keep getting charged interest).

Even if you can't be fully self-sufficient at a supercharger station, solar+stationary storage at the site (or even just stationary storage) can help you cut down on demand charges. In this situation the batteries (or batteries+solar) can pay for themselves in a very VERY short time (1-2 years).

 

[Speedr117]

I don't think the IRA has any funds available for charger installation. (At least I haven't seen any.)

Now, if Tesla makes CCS compatible chargers they could submit proposals to get NEVI funds, from a non-IRA bill, to install/upgrade chargers. But I don't think the V3 infrastructure would currently comply with the federal requirements, and each state applies their own requirements on top of the federal ones.

For example some things:

• in Oregon a site has to have 3) 150kW stalls and 1) 350kW stall, and has to be able to provide 150kW to all 4 at the same time. For Tesla V3 they would have to put half as many stalls per cabinet as normal, and that doesn't address the 350kW problem.)
• in Arizona they require Plug&Charge compatibility
• Sites have to be on, well within 1 mile of, specific federally identified highways, and approximately 50 miles from the next closest NEVI compliant site
• On-site displays and credit card readers, etc.

I expect Tesla to get very little, if any, of the NEVI funding for chargers. And really, we don't need any more publicity of Tesla getting $x millions of federal funding.

But contracts should start being issued in April for NEVI installs/upgrades, so we will likely see how things pan out then. (FYI Arizona is planning to spend all of the first year money upgrading non-NEVI compliant sites to be compliant, no new sites to be installed.)

The funds are in the $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill. One of the requirements to get the money was the charger had had to support more than one manufacturer. This is why I think Tesla formalized their charging plug into a standard, so hopefully one other OEM will adopt it and they can get the funding. The other option is to support CCS, which they can do via magic dock.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

I'm looking at switching from my P100D to a Plaid, but in The Netherlands none are available for a test drive. So I've been trying the LR to get a feel for the new Model S.

Today I tried to make an appointment at the closest Tesla store for a test drive in an LR with 19 inch wheels (I drove one with 21 inch last week and want to feel/hear the difference). The guy said that the car with the 19 inch wheels had been transported to another store and that he unfortunately had to hang up the phone. "Too many customers waiting in the store for a Model 3 or Y".

I called the store it was transported to. "Sorry, it's on display and will only be available for test drives near the end of the quarter."

So I called a third store. "Yes, we have an LR, but we can't schedule a test drive. Every spot for the next few weeks is booked with Model Y and Model 3 test drives. We can't plan any further ahead."

So I called a fourth store. They have the right car. No spots this week, but they could fit me in for next week.

I'd say bullish.

 

[Max Plaid]

FSD Transfer and I'd pull the trigger today (as I bet a lot of people would)!

Yeah, this one's a total head-scratcher to me... lots of folks would trade if they could keep their FSD; Even more of the early-adopters are hanging on to their old clunkers for free Supercharging and premium connectivity - if they transferred these to new cars too then the S&X sales would go nuts

I don't get it at all

 

[NicoV]

Even more of the early-adopters are hanging on to their old clunkers for free Supercharging and premium connectivity

Like me.

if they transferred these to new cars too then the S&X sales would go nuts

I don't get it at all

Tesla is just waiting for those cars to go to the junk yard so that they don’t have to fund our travels anymore.
I will some day get tired of waiting and buy the latest Model S.

 

[Max Plaid]

I'm looking at switching from my P100D to a Plaid, but in The Netherlands none are available for a test drive. So I've been trying the LR to get a feel for the new Model S.

Today I tried to make an appointment at the closest Tesla store for a test drive in an LR with 19 inch wheels (I drove one with 21 inch last week and want to feel/hear the difference). The guy said that the car with the 19 inch wheels had been transported to another store and that he unfortunately had to hang up the phone. "Too many customers waiting in the store for a Model 3 or Y".

I called the store it was transported to. "Sorry, it's on display and will only be available for test drives near the end of the quarter."

So I called a third store. "Yes, we have an LR, but we can't schedule a test drive. Every spot for the next few weeks is booked with Model Y and Model 3 test drives. We can't plan any further ahead."

So I called a fourth store. They have the right car. No spots this week, but they could fit me in for next week.

I'd say bullish.

I just got my 20" winter wheels fitted on my MXPlaid, it came delivered with the 22" - I was expecting a cushier ride, but TBH I can't tell the difference, handling is a little less sharp, but that's it. TBH there's much more of a difference fiddling about with the adaptive suspension, just put it in "comfort" and it's much smoother

But, yes, the Tesla sales staff are overwhelmed right now...

 

[bkp_duke]

The funds are in the $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill. One of the requirements to get the money was the charger had had to support more than one manufacturer. This is why I think Tesla formalized their charging plug into a standard, so hopefully one other OEM will adopt it and they can get the funding. The other option is to support CCS, which they can do via magic dock.

Wonder what the details are on that "more than one OEM" requirement. Aptera Motors announced that they would use the Tesla charging connector natively on their cars. Are they big enough to count? (they haven't shipped anything yet, there is that caveat)

 

[bkp_duke]

Yeah, this one's a total head-scratcher to me... lots of folks would trade if they could keep their FSD; Even more of the early-adopters are hanging on to their old clunkers for free Supercharging and premium connectivity - if they transferred these to new cars too then the S&X sales would go nuts

I don't get it at all

It's the same thing they did with FUSC. Not transferrable.

I'm not 100% sure on this, it's been a long time since I had this conversation with my friend, but there are some legal issues about "removing" anything listed on the Munroney sticker in the USA. May have something to do with it, may not.