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

[WADan]

I haven't seen much discussion about greentheonly's reveal of whats involved in HW4.
I think its going to be very hard for Tesla to talk up HW4 without is becoming implicit that HW3 is infgerior, and very likely not capable of full FSD, or even FSD in circumstances outside of wholemars's daily commute...

If Tesla are to admit that HW3 can't do FSD, then they will have a lot of angry HW3 owners, and a lot of very angry FSD purchasers, given then have already said there is no upgrade path.

I think there is a big blindspot among tesla bull investors regarding this issue. The sensible thing would be for Tesla to either knuckle-down and work out how to provide a HW3-HW4 FREE upgrade for people who bought FSD, or to set aside funds to compensate people who very very clearly were sold 'FSD capable' vehicles which may not be. Its also TERRIBLE for PR either way, but worse if they just stick two fingers up to HW3 owners.

I'm a long term Tesla bull who bought an autopilot 1 car, then recently a HW3 model Y with FSD. Currently, my fancy £80,000 car has no parking sensors or equivlanet functionality, cannot autopark, and has trouble knowing when to turn its wipers on and off. Tesla REALLY need to get their act together regarding living up to their promises regarding TeslaVision, its pretty much the worse thing about the company right now...

Said as a long term investor and full supporter of the company for at least 8 years now.

I would be okay with a credit for customers with FSD&HW3 to be used for a new purchase.

 

[Ogre]

I think when those cars were traded in to Tesla, they would remove the original FSD, and if they add FSD again in resale it would carry the new definition.
So, I am actually wondering how many of those OG FSD are still out there never traded in to Tesla, and what would happen to them eventually.

This is what I’ve heard as well. I think Tesla only upgraded a handful of cars to HW3 from HW 2.5. It’s possible they offer a rebate or discount on some future Tesla purchase to smooth it over.

Personally, I think if you dropped $4,000 on FSD 10 years ago, they should give you one fee upgrade on a HW4 car or at least a big discount.

 

[Dutchie]

I haven't seen much discussion about greentheonly's reveal of whats involved in HW4.
I think its going to be very hard for Tesla to talk up HW4 without is becoming implicit that HW3 is infgerior, and very likely not capable of full FSD, or even FSD in circumstances outside of wholemars's daily commute...

If Tesla are to admit that HW3 can't do FSD, then they will have a lot of angry HW3 owners, and a lot of very angry FSD purchasers, given then have already said there is no upgrade path.

I think there is a big blindspot among tesla bull investors regarding this issue. The sensible thing would be for Tesla to either knuckle-down and work out how to provide a HW3-HW4 FREE upgrade for people who bought FSD, or to set aside funds to compensate people who very very clearly were sold 'FSD capable' vehicles which may not be. Its also TERRIBLE for PR either way, but worse if they just stick two fingers up to HW3 owners.

I'm a long term Tesla bull who bought an autopilot 1 car, then recently a HW3 model Y with FSD. Currently, my fancy £80,000 car has no parking sensors or equivlanet functionality, cannot autopark, and has trouble knowing when to turn its wipers on and off. Tesla REALLY need to get their act together regarding living up to their promises regarding TeslaVision, its pretty much the worse thing about the company right now...

Said as a long term investor and full supporter of the company for at least 8 years now.

Here we go again. Stop this. Don’t start spreading rumours. Before you know it articles start popping up, stock price takes a dive etc. Listen to conference call and hear what Elon said about HW3 versus HW4.

I hate when people do this…

 

[rallykeeper]

Do any of you know if Tesla has disclosed the number of full paid FSD options for NA? I hope Tesla is developing a plan for these folks in consideration of the hardware being limited now. What I am worried is they offer better hardware on new cars while charging the same price as the old hardware. This would imply that the value is the same, but HW3 is now going to be discounted for future updates a perceived value. I would hope Tesla gives the option of refunding this if people wanted. I am now glad Tesla has not taken full value of this feature in the earnings so there isn't a huge chargeback if this comes to fruition. Hopefully once announced Tesla also announces that from X date forward all cars have the hardware like HW3 did.

I think we may have found this number out today with the recall of FSD Beta.

They recalled 362,758 cars in the United States that had access to FSD Beta.

Since I believe FSD Beta is only available for fully-paid FSD purchasers, that may be the right number or close to it. (At the very least, it may represent the outer-bound.)

Does that make sense? Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[JRP3]

This concerns me.

Our society has normalized over-the-speed-limit driving. Seems like NHTSA is slowly making FSD unappealing by legal nannying it to death.

I've always wondered about the liability of programming a vehicle to break existing laws. For now it's the driver responsibility but when FSD is fully realized what happens then?

 

[GrandEnigma]

I think we may have found this number out today with the recall of FSD Beta.

They recalled 362,758 cars in the United States that had access to FSD Beta.

Since I believe FSD Beta is only available for fully-paid FSD purchasers, that may be the right number or close to it. (At the very least, it may represent the outer-bound.)

Does that make sense? Anyone have any thoughts?

Tesla has said about 400k in their Q4 and Full Year 2022 deck, so the numbers line up.

"We have now released FSD Beta to nearly all customers in the US and Canada who bought FSD (approximately 400,000). This is an important milestone for our company. Every customer in the US and Canada can now access FSD Beta functionality upon purchase/subscription and start experiencing the evolution of AI-powered autonomy."

 

[Stretch2727]

Congratz Elon!!

View attachment 907856

Well that was short lived.

 

[AndrewZ]

I think this recall presents more of a risk in further litigation than anything tied to it being remedied through an OTA update. FSD basically in its entirety is an OTA update, but this provides ammunition for parties taking further FSD-related action.

This is one of the biggest risks for the company right now in my eyes, this whole thing since 2016 is just… not good.

 

[willow_hiller]

I think this recall presents more of a risk in further litigation than anything tied to it being remedied through an OTA update. FSD basically in its entirety is an OTA update, but this provides ammunition for parties taking further FSD-related action.

This is one of the biggest risks for the company right now in my eyes, this whole thing since 2016 is just… not good.

It's only a recall in so far as any other Tesla Firmware update is a recall. They're not removing FSD Beta. Here's the full Recall Safety Report from the NHTSA: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCLRPT-23V085-3451.PDF

"Description of Remedy Program : Tesla will deploy an over-the-air (“OTA”) software update at no cost to the customer. The OTA update, which we expect to deploy in the coming weeks, will improve how FSD Beta negotiates certain driving maneuvers during the conditions described above."

 

[StapleGun]

I've always wondered about the liability of programming a vehicle to break existing laws. For now it's the driver responsibility but when FSD is fully realized what happens then?

Initially when Tesla is assuming the liability I would expect them to obey the posted speed limits. Isn't this what Cruise and Waymo already do? Once autonomous vehicles become extremely common then I think you'll start to hear talk of increasing the speed limit by 5-10 mph if it proves to be just as safe.

As for this "recall" what I want to know is whether FSD Beta can exceed the speed set by the driver in some circumstances. If it is then this would be an acceptable request by NHTSA. But if it's merely going the speed that the driver told it to go then they'd better be recalling every other cruise control system as well.

 

[Stormy24]

Hard to know if this is an initial 'shot over the bow' from NHTSA's engineering review or just a simple and minor tweak to the software to resolve a particular identified issue.

Edit: Some more details here. Looks like a software tweak to FSD beta.

So.. they have to do an update on something that has likely changed since they looked at it? How old was the software they looked at? What version?

 

[Knightshade]

This is not a fact, though?

It is.... Tesla ran out of compute on a single node on HW3 over 2 years ago now and has been forced to use the compute of both nodes for a single instance of the full stack since then- no redundancy if either node crashes.

From the HW4 description they've almost (but not quite) doubled the compute on each node, so presumably they'll be able to fit the whole thing into a single node there if they don't run into a compute-requirement-wall again like they did on HW3.

 

[AndrewZ]

If you follow the Beta program closely and you watch honest testers who post full detailed drives, you’ll see cases where FSD Beta will do things like assign incorrect speed limits to a road and will try to rip down a 35 zone at 50 until you adjust it down. GPS is inaccurate or limits have been changed or what have you, but things like this do happen and the system has long been slow to respond to changes in speed settings or limits.

The slow response to changing speeds is likely a way of smoothing out the experience, but it can lead to risks.

 

[MP3Mike]

As for this "recall" what I want to know is whether FSD Beta can exceed the speed set by the driver in some circumstances. If it is then this would be an acceptable request by NHTSA. But if it's merely going the speed that the driver told it to go then they'd better be recalling every other cruise control system as well.

I think that is clarified in this portion:

In addition, the system may respond insufficiently to changes in posted speed limits or not adequately account for the driver's adjustment of the vehicle's speed to exceed posted speed limits.

It may be partially that it doesn't get down to the new speed limit before it cross the sign.

So.. they have to do an update on something that has likely changed since they looked at it? How old was the software they looked at? What version?

They started talking NHTSA about this on January 25th. So the current version deployed.

 

[Papafox]

January's PPI, released today, was definitely hot

View attachment 907836

I'm been rethinking my "definitely hot" comment about today's PPI numbers. If you average together the last two PPI number, -0.2 and 0.7, you get 0.25. That's a drop from the previous three months and not too far from to the Fed's desired 2% annual inflation rate. Seen in that context, not so bad. It also sets us up for a nice month over month on the next PPI, should January numbers have been an anomaly rather than the start of a trend.

 

[GOVA]

Can Tesla sue NHTSA?

 

[Paracelsus]

Yes, stocks are selling off - but it has nothing to do with TSLA news. It was shortly after this just happened:

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

And there was this yesterday:

Truck spills hazardous material in Tucson, Arizona, shutting down highway

Interstate 10 in Tucson, Arizona, remained closed in both directions Wednesday following a hazardous chemical leak of nitric acid, authorities said.

www.usatoday.com

And this one on February 13th:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1625330415031443458

All after the Ohio derailment that could effect drinking water for up to 5 million people:

Is the Ohio River contaminated? East Palestine train derailment sparks concerns over water

The fiery derailment of a train in East Palestine has prompted concern that the drinking water some five million people rely on could be impacted.

www.dispatch.com

And of course Seymour Hersh's article revealing the US efforts to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline recently came out too. Here is an overview:

Here is How US Secretly Explodes Nord Stream Pipeline to Blam Putin – Sri Lanka Guardian

slguardian.org

Not all Tesla price moves are Tesla-centric. And while Tesla could- and should be back over 300 in a flash after the impending battle coming around 240 in my opinion (that is approximately where TSLA must break through the 6 month resistance), the macro events are escalating in size and scale..........all while we are being asked to watch some balloons. It is a frustrating time for me as a TSLA investor - the company has never been better positioned, while at the same time the world is having the rug pulled out from under it. I very much want to see us blow through this resistance and avoid trading sideways into this Yuuge wedge, but to do that the world might need to become a little less volatile as we approach that upper resistance line.

 

[ggies07]

Can Tesla sue NHTSA?

 

[jerry33]

I think we may have found this number out today with the recall of FSD Beta.

They recalled 362,758 cars in the United States that had access to FSD Beta.

Since I believe FSD Beta is only available for fully-paid FSD purchasers, that may be the right number or close to it. (At the very least, it may represent the outer-bound.)

Does that make sense? Anyone have any thoughts?

It's a software update. Who cares (other than the media that wants to spin negative)?

 

[JRP3]

Tesla offering $5k if you trade in S/X with unlimited supercharging

https://twitter.com/x/status/1626283798936551427