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

[unk45]

Yes, but the problem is that manufacturers can intentionally oversell to dealers to make their books look good for a quarter. It's called channel stuffing.

'Can'? Better to say 'do'. Another popular technique is to deliver to fleet buyers lessees when needing higher sales. VAG brands are famed for that practice whenever they're faced with, say, ID3 surplus. That is a long standing practice with, for example, Alamo Rent-A-Car once taking almost the entire Buick Reatta production. These days the rental companies are a trifle more discreetly supplied although Sixt, Avis, Hertz et al, do tend to receive inventory near key reporting periods for OEMs. Similarly dealers generally receive unordered inventory near reporting period ends. For dealers in the US Automotive News regularly published dealer and consumer incentives that give pretty good clues.

Tesla and Ferrari are the only only ones which seem not to play those tricks. Tesla is transparent which somehow seems controversial, while rebates and dealer 'spiffs' are largely ignored.

 

[hobbes]

Semi driver (accidentally) has lunch where Tesla club meetup takes place, huge crowd acting like kids
Driver told the youtuber his longest drive was 485 miles going from 96% to 12%. 485/(0.96-0.12)=577 miles!
No idea if hwy and how much load though. But real world usage.

 

[unk45]

Isn‘t his how most of the auto industry operates? THey sell to dealerships who sell to consumers.

Essentially every OEM except Tesla operates this way. Country by country there are variations. In Germany, for example, some major dealerships are owned by the OEM, so it is quite easy for Volkswagen, say, to deliver, say, ID3's to their own dealership thus appearing to have quite different results than would appear were the end user delivery to be the sales recognition point.

Tesla, unlike all others, recognized a sale only on full payment and documentation is complete for end user. In some cases Tesla receives payment prior to delivery to the end user, but sales recognition only occurs when all documentation has ben completed and title passes to end user.

In leases the US GAAP forces income recognition over the lease term, but a sale is counted when the lessor completes all documentation. That entire process is described in Tesla financial statements with details in the footnotes.

 

[tslagreen]

Not channel stuffing, which is for OEMs to sell cars to dealers.

My understanding is that this used car dealer is claiming something fishy could be going on with BYD claimed 2022 _insured_ vehicle figures. His evidence is that he bought the fleet of cars with only 40km on the odometer at used car prices (21% off list). The car is "used" because it has already been registered as sold on Dec 30, 2022. This registration allowed BYD to claim Chinese government incentives that expired at end of 2022. If BYD only sold the cars to dealers and the dealers did not sell them to the consumer, then the total 2022 government incentive amount for BYD would have been less, and so would the 2022 "insured" volume.

The question is on the integrity of BYD business practices.

What would Charlie Munger say? Maybe he should dust off his books and switch to Tesla.

 

[ggies07]

BYD possibility channel stuffing their cars.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1628184997839654912

This seems to back that up:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1628188611626799104

Charlie Munger says what?

 

[raffiniert]

Semi driver (accidentally) has lunch where Tesla club meetup takes place, huge crowd acting like kids
Driver told the youtuber his longest drive was 485 miles going from 96% to 12%. 485/(0.96-0.12)=577 miles!
No idea if hwy and how much load though. But real world usage.

The comments of the bystanders...
"looks surprisingly real for that it doesn't exist"
"wow Bill Gates should see this"

 

[FastEddieB]

Dollar cost averaging simply means you buy a shares on a regular basis and don’t worry about the share price.

Not exactly. For example…

Buying 10 shares every month - without worrying about the price - is not dollar cost averaging.

Buying $2,000 worth of shares every month - without worrying about the price - is dollar cost averaging.

Work it out with a spreadsheet and you’ll see with the latter you’ll end up with more shares in any typical market. In the former you’ll have 120 shares in a year. In the latter you’ll almost certainly have more than that, having bought more when the price was low, and fewer when the price was high.

 

[ZeApelido]

Much of the SF bay mid-peninsula has been without power for 18 hrs because of PG&E sucks “wind”. Meanwhile my next door neighbor is the only one with Powerwalls and just rubbing it it with all his lights on in the house at 5:30 AM.

I am not amused.

 

[dhrivnak]

Exactly. Every time I hear “Dollar Cost Average” it grates on me like chalk screeching on a board.

Isn’t “Dollar Cost Averaging” just fancy talk for “try and wait to buy some a little cheaper"? (Emphasis on “try”).

No to me dollar cost averaging means we cannot predict the highs and lows so we hedge our bets.

 

[AndrewZ]

No to me dollar cost averaging means we cannot predict the highs and lows so we hedge our bets.

DCA at set intervals makes sense for more passive investors but people here are in a forum specifically for this and spend a good deal of time watching and talking about daily stock price movements

If you put the time in, I don't know why you wouldn't buy on the dips and red days to strive for max value. Not to say don't put money in at set intervals, but you would have gotten a lot more for your $$$ tapping into funds and doubling or tripling down in late Dec early Jan

 

[UncaNed]

Agree. But ever since I dumped my broker, years ago, who had that same attitude, I have, with a little effort, been spectacularly blessed or spectacularly lucky.

I just discovered this discussion... I see you left out "astute", "knowledgeable" or otherwise giving yourself credit for making smart trades.

I likewise love to buy, sell, and often I kid myself that I can do better than just totally holding... It is addictive, and perhaps hasn't cost me too much.

Others discredit you, but perhaps you are seeing a little something others aren't(?). Or perhaps it's just because you left your broker and went mostly all in on TSLA?

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Semi driver (accidentally) has lunch where Tesla club meetup takes place, huge crowd acting like kids
Driver told the youtuber his longest drive was 485 miles going from 96% to 12%. 485/(0.96-0.12)=577 miles!
No idea if hwy and how much load though. But real world usage.

Nice view of the area behind the cab. Looks like plenty of room to make a sleeper version without altering much of anything, if Tesla wants to. Just bump out the cab above the storage lockers into that otherwise generally unused space, and have the bed above the lockers. Use the space between the lockers inside the cab for interior storage/etc. I imagine it would only add a few hundred pounds and not impact range too terribly.

 

[SO16]

I know I’m not voting for Ross.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1628203980185653254

 

[cliff harris]

I think it is more related to the bulk of the dataset being collected in Californian conditions rather than typical muck. Yes I know that the obscured vision dataset exists and is growing, but it is by no means the norm in the publicly observed dataset examples. I really don't know how low-placed cameras are expected to cope in muck. And are we really expected to sponge clean all the cameras every couple of hours to keep going ?

This is a HUGELY underappreciated issue!

Its pretty clear to anybody with a Tesla in the UK, especially in the last few months, that the current suite of sensors is absolutely inadequate to provide FSD, even given an infinite amount of compute. It will probably be absolutely fine for California, I have no doubt, but so far this year, EVERY single day I've driven more than 10 miles in my new model Y, the car ends up with a horribly grimey reverse camera view, and its absolutely constant that I get warnings that autopilot cannot function because a side pillar camera or 'multiple cameras' have their view blocked or blinded.

There is no way this can be fixed by software. They have to have some kind of self-cleaning camera, and TBH its pretty ridiculous that tesla don't realize this. They should relocate the whole autopilot team to a state that gets constant bad weather, because right now, they are massively over-fitting for California sunshine.

The same problem is probably why they think USS can be replaced by vision only, or that USS isn't required to park. Not all weather is Californian. Not all roads are Californian width. I'd love to see Elon try and park a model X with no USS in a UK car parking space.

There are very few advantages other auto firms have over Tesla, but being aware of real world driving conditions is sadly one of them. I genuinely think this is a risk that investors underappreciate.

 

[Unpilot]

I know I’m not voting for Ross.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1628203980185653254

First time I heard Ross G talk .......I thought, man, that guy likes himself... A LOT.

 

[Christine69420]

I have checked with my broker and there is no way I can vote as a stockholder come May. This is because my shares are in an insured account (IKZ) where the shares are held by my broker. And any US shares my broker holds in a similar manner are with an US broker.

And voting rights do not propagate trough this. I don't know where the exact blockage is but after they invented the internet I find this weird and somewhat lazy that I am not allowed to vote.

So it's up to all you others to step up and get the issues sorted come May.

 

[AndrewZ]

This is a HUGELY underappreciated issue!

Its pretty clear to anybody with a Tesla in the UK, especially in the last few months, that the current suite of sensors is absolutely inadequate to provide FSD, even given an infinite amount of compute. It will probably be absolutely fine for California, I have no doubt, but so far this year, EVERY single day I've driven more than 10 miles in my new model Y, the car ends up with a horribly grimey reverse camera view, and its absolutely constant that I get warnings that autopilot cannot function because a side pillar camera or 'multiple cameras' have their view blocked or blinded.

There is no way this can be fixed by software. They have to have some kind of self-cleaning camera, and TBH its pretty ridiculous that tesla don't realize this. They should relocate the whole autopilot team to a state that gets constant bad weather, because right now, they are massively over-fitting for California sunshine.

The same problem is probably why they think USS can be replaced by vision only, or that USS isn't required to park. Not all weather is Californian. Not all roads are Californian width. I'd love to see Elon try and park a model X with no USS in a UK car parking space.

There are very few advantages other auto firms have over Tesla, but being aware of real world driving conditions is sadly one of them. I genuinely think this is a risk that investors underappreciate.

Vision-only is fine for FSD on HW3 (and who knows which other iterations) because ownership of the driving task will never be transferred away from the person in the driver's seat. Even in California, this was the plan communicated to the DMV back in 2019-2020: a final release of FSD will remain Level 2, and further iterative processes will follow with the goal of achieving something Level 3+.

Sensor redundancy is required for advancing beyond Level 2 for the reasons you described and others, but the driver is the redundancy in Level 2 and below.

 

[SO16]

This is a HUGELY underappreciated issue!

Its pretty clear to anybody with a Tesla in the UK, especially in the last few months, that the current suite of sensors is absolutely inadequate to provide FSD, even given an infinite amount of compute. It will probably be absolutely fine for California, I have no doubt, but so far this year, EVERY single day I've driven more than 10 miles in my new model Y, the car ends up with a horribly grimey reverse camera view, and its absolutely constant that I get warnings that autopilot cannot function because a side pillar camera or 'multiple cameras' have their view blocked or blinded.

There is no way this can be fixed by software. They have to have some kind of self-cleaning camera, and TBH its pretty ridiculous that tesla don't realize this. They should relocate the whole autopilot team to a state that gets constant bad weather, because right now, they are massively over-fitting for California sunshine.

The same problem is probably why they think USS can be replaced by vision only, or that USS isn't required to park. Not all weather is Californian. Not all roads are Californian width. I'd love to see Elon try and park a model X with no USS in a UK car parking space.

There are very few advantages other auto firms have over Tesla, but being aware of real world driving conditions is sadly one of them. I genuinely think this is a risk that investors underappreciate.

My USS in winter throws errors when covered by snow/ice for a few months a year. So not ideal either.

 

[AndrewZ]

My USS in winter throws errors when covered by snow/ice for a few months a year. So not ideal either.

Sensor fusion is where this comes into play.

Camera dirty? USS can be a fallback (but USS is very short range I think).
USS covered by ice? Camera can be a fallback.
Camera dirty and USS covered by ice? Maybe Lidar, maybe secondary other sensors, who knows. If we knew what this looked like, it would already exist but we don't and it doesn't.

If all sensors fail in Level 3+, or there is a more severe electrical or other failure, the vehicle needs to be capable of executing a minimum-risk maneuver pulling off to the side and parking as safely as possible. If we imagine a car designed to SAE Level 5 and with no steering wheel or pedals, all of this will be absolutely critical -- we're so far away from something like that.

Much of this is specified in UN regulation R157e that Mercedes has built their Level 3 Traffic Jam Assist to.

 

[JoRoMo]

Do you mean the cost of upgrading ~750k no-USS HW3 cars to HW4 is insignificant or do you mean forget about those 750k people that were "unlucky" with the timing of their purchase?

I hope Elon sticks to his word regarding Tesla should always do the right thing.

Anywhich action they may realistically chose.