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

[hobbes]

Note 80mph is the wind generated by the tent thing, the vortexes created by the wiper break the speed of sound.

Says who?

 

[2daMoon]

Says who?

I believe he was euphemistically referring to the limiting factor on wind turbine and helicopter blade length being the tip speed exceeding the speed of sound.

That is a big honkin' wiper blade. But, it gets the job done until Tesla figures out how to bend the laws of physics and practicality with another method, like having tiny sharks with laser beams on their heads attached to the hood and zapping offending raindrops and bugs. (yes, I know about Tesla's patent, sans sharks)

 

[Ogre]

Both with H/W 4.0
Neither will employ the unboxed manufacturing methodology

We know based on investor day that Cybertruck's production is "Just Like" Unboxed. It's in the video. That means it's not actually unboxed, but essentially a predecessor, or perhaps just tweaked to accommodate massive chunks of steel.

No idea on Highland. I think they will pull in what they can. Hard to say if it's there yet.

I don't know if they have the chips for HW4 yet.

Otherwise....

 

[Ogre]

Says who?

Forgive me, elsewhere we've been joking about the wiper blade's prowess. It was a bit sarcastic.

 

[cliff harris]

The trouble with advertising is that it wears off, it needs constantly refilling. Price cuts, made possible by scale or efficiencies, are a permanent change,.

 

[insaneoctane]

Although it's not a particularly green day, the VIX hasn't been below 18, like it is today (except one day on February 1, 2022), since 2021!

 

[ggies07]

Elon will be on Tucker Carlson's show. Good luck to the brand image. We all understand what Tucker is, right? As far as I'm concerned as an investor, Elon can leave Tesla now. After the latest presentation, there are enough people at Tesla to keep the vision going. I'd like Drew in place of Elon. Thank you.

 

[EverettRuess]

Elon will be on Tucker Carlson's show. Good luck to the brand image. We all understand what Tucker is, right? As far as I'm concerned as an investor, Elon can leave Tesla now. After the latest presentation, there are enough people at Tesla to keep the vision going. I'd like Drew in place of Elon. Thank you.

A liar.

 

[growler23]

New GHG Emissions Standards For Vehicles — The Push For EVs Is On

This from the national news, as reiterated in CleanTechnica. The EPA is proposing massively increasing fuel economy standards, such that by 2032, the only realistic way to meet them is to be selling 66% of your fleet as EVs.

Undoubtedly, legacy OEM's will again scream "slow down", but again, the Biden administration does something right by the planet, by the economy, by EVs, and by Tesla. And yes, without particularly saying "Tesla" (as if that matters anymore).

• The first requires automakers to slash GHG emissions from passenger cars and light-duty trucks.
• The second mandates emissions reductions from heavy duty vehicles such as delivery trucks and school buses.

The GHG emissions standards usher in 2 Biden-Harris administration goals:

• decarbonization, or cutting carbon emissions to combat climate change
• deglobalization, or reducing America’s reliance on foreign countries for EV battery components

The administration said the new standards would save the economy $850 billion to $1.6 trillion between 2027 and 2055, avoid about 20 billion barrels in oil imports, and save the average buyer of a car or light-duty truck $12,000 over the vehicle’s lifetime.

As those of us who have perused Master Plan Part 3 have noted, switching transport to electric will save us tons of cash directly, as noted in the final lines above, while offsetting (hopefully) tons of climate related damage. Not to mention all the currently 'unavoidable' deaths and illness due to fine particulate and NOx air pollution from our current transport.

The article talks about this as a Phase 2 of the Biden plan. Phase 1 was the carrot (IRA subsidies). Phase 2 is the stick (regulatory limits).

Let us not overlook this, please, in the run-up, broken-record arguments, and speculation over earnings. This, should it survive political football as it moves forward, is a massive turnabout of the Titanic US economy. May we yet avoid the iceberg looming in front of all of us on the planet.

I loved this in the article, which does not talk (a lot) about Tesla specifically until the clincher at the end:

At least one American automaker, Tesla, is poised to emerge as an out-and-out winner under the new rules because it produces only EVs.

Cheers to the longs! (Tip of the Hat to @Artful Dodger )

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

The trouble with advertising is that it wears off, it needs constantly refilling. Price cuts, made possible by scale or efficiencies, are a permanent change,.

Who needs to advertise when every single price drops becomes hot news all over the world? The usual suspects from Reuters, CNBC, Business Insider, Bloomberg, etc. think they are doing Tesla a disservice by spreading what is meant to be clickbait FUD, which gets picked up by thousands of media outlets. But what they do is give Tesla's lower prices free worldwide attention worth hundreds of millions.

 

[Congo Line]

The trouble with advertising is that it wears off, it needs constantly refilling. Price cuts, made possible by scale or efficiencies, are a permanent change,.

My 2cents is that currently there is still a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there about EVs, which will persist for a while until greater adoption occurs and more people either own one or know someone who owns one. In the meantime, advertising could help bridge that gap in perception faster, and help speed up the process of public understanding catching up to reality (as well as boost sales).

 

[Tony73]

It depends on what they talk about. If it's AI like the note suggest that's ok, reaching a wider audience is good.

If he decides to roll around in the muck then yeah, not so great.

Fox News is not the place to discuss AI.

 

[jerry33]

Where would you find hints of ICE sales being impacted by Tesla recent price cuts? I still don't see any panic (ex:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1645396893436919809

)

There was no panic in the tire industry when radial tires came in until they had almost taken over--then all but one North American tire maker went bankrupt. Some still exist as brands but not as independent companies. We're not quite at that stage yet, but give it two or three years.

 

[Gigapress]

... With only 2 mass produced models, Tesla has covered a vast percentage of use cases. Performance of the base versions is already more than the years of previous ICE vehicles. There are body styles that are not represented, but other than that, where lies product differentiation?

Tesla optimized the heck out of the 3/Y. What content can they remove at this point? There are no removable subsystems, cross platform commonality runs rampant. The only options are to scale back performance or range, neither of which are huge cost savers; especially if one still wants a useful end product. Nerf for nerfs sake?

The Tesla version of a four seater econobox would be a down market step (other than FSD only) that has both purpose (low passenger count commuter) and engineering advantage (lighter, lower crossection) and enough delta size to matter. This is possibly what Mexico will produce.

...

The 3 and Y are still premium cars with many features and comforts that could be removed or modified for a more affordable Gen 3 vehicle. For example:

• Seats
  • Cloth upholstery instead of premium leatherette
  • No seat warmers
  • Simpler stitching pattern
  • Manual position adjustment instead of motors
• Powertrain
  • Smaller motor with less than 208 kW of power
  • Simpler, less capable suspension
• Traditional sheet metal roof instead of glass
• Wheels: 17 inches instead of 18
• Sound system: basic instead of 14 premium speakers
• Side mirrors that don't have motors for folding in and out (or no mirrors at all)
• Basic rearview mirror instead of electrochromic mirror (or no mirror at all)
• Manual steering column adjustment instead of motorized
• Smaller console screen

I guess these changes could cut a few thousand bucks from the cost.

 

[jerry33]

My 2cents is that currently there is still a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there about EVs, which will persist for a while until greater adoption occurs and more people either own one or know someone who owns one. In the meantime, advertising could help bridge that gap in perception faster, and help speed up the process of public understanding catching up to reality (as well as boost sales).

There is but advertising is not going to help as those who still watch MSM just ignore or fast forward. Those that watch, know that ads are basically lies.

 

[BigDawgz]

Elon will be on Tucker Carlson's show. Good luck to the brand image. We all understand what Tucker is, right? As far as I'm concerned as an investor, Elon can leave Tesla now. After the latest presentation, there are enough people at Tesla to keep the vision going. I'd like Drew in place of Elon. Thank you.

Yeah it's majorly disappointing to see him call out and criticize the left over everything little thing, which I'm not at all opposed to but then to turn around and just be all chummy with Murdoch, Tucker et al and ignore their blatant lies, convenient misrepresentation of facts, and dog whistle rhetoric is just gross and very hypocritical.

 

[WMTribe90]

A liar.

Very disappointing. Elon going further and further down the rabbit hole of the extreme right-wing it seems. I'm always amazed when otherwise brilliant, compassionate, and successful people are taken in by and subscribe to this world view. Does this all go back to the Fremont COVID shut-down drama or Biden’s refusal to recognize Tesla’s leading role in the EV transition? Whatever brought on this change in Elon it seems recent (last couple years). I’m guessing he always had libertarian tendencies, but it's frankly taken an ugly turn as of late. I’ve been an investor and holdler since 2013. I wouldn’t divest simply because I disagree with Elon’s political views, but some of what he putting out there has me questioning his judgement and ability to rationalize. Brillance is not an inoculation against propaganda and indoctrination unfortunately.

 

[betstarship]

I think at least the first section of this is required listening on Artificial Intelligence:

The impact on investing in tech is going to be huge. Made me think 2 things:
1) We are invested in tech that cannot so easily be disrupted
2) I should be buying NVDA / TSMC again maybe - discuss here What other tech stock to consider?
Hopefully others are thinking the same!

My opinion: the internet economy is saturated (you can see it with how many options people have for products/services through the internet and how cheaply it is to create these services/products), it's being commoditized in place of a new mode of getting goods/services through the Internet.

 

[jerry33]

From the linked article:

"As I found out the hard way, when you're build a paradigm shifting electric car from the ground up, you decided to take the hidden diagnostic connector route. My initial tests using a Beaglebone Black and TI's SN65HVD Series CAN transceivers ended in lots of colorful language and much head scratching, in short Tesla ain't putting out, at least on this connector. Onward and upward!"​

The author was unable to find a CANBUS signal on the Model S at the expected pins of the OBD connector.


The most likely way to achieve sweeping improvements on existing models would be to retire their production and replace them with a product designed from the ground up with those improvements. This, rather than make those changes to an existing production line and disrupt the production rate. Remember the revamp of S and X?

I'd like to see new models and factory come on line with fresh replacements for the high end vehicles, then retire the existing ones. This isn't likely to happen as the focus is now on higher production of lower cost models, as well as new models for other market segments Tesla hasn't addressed (Vans, Pickups, Semis, Robotaxis).

The ODB connector is only there because some jurisdictions require it. It hasn't ever given any valuable information.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

No no no, we're not going to turn the thread into a toxic political slugfest again. Read the TMC rules: "TeslaMotorsClub.com is not the place for debate on religion, sex, politics, or other such controversial posts."

If you read this after responding to the two posts by the infrequent posters (who were probably not aware of this rule), please self-moderate and remove your post.