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

[InTheMiddle]

Why needing SuperChargers? We stay at hotels with L2 Tesla and other chargers and our car is always full when we wake up in the morning even if we arrive late, with low mileage left, and leave way before checkout time.

Maybe we just have a horseshoe up our butts, but we’ve never had an issue of not working or not being able to charge. Of course, we always have a plan B just in case.

@Krugerrand - sounds like you are already living the experience that I dream about for the future! Unfortunately, my experience with destination charging on my travels has been very hit-or-miss, even where I would have expected better:
* Westin La Paloma in Tucson is an amazing property, one of my favorites, highly recommended, but they only have 2 Tesla Wall Connectors for a very large property. Years ago I had a 3-in-4 chance of plugging into one of them overnight, before Teslas became commonplace; in recent trips they have both been in use the entire time I was there. Fortunately, once Tesla opened a Supercharger at the nearby La Encantada that has become the default fallback.
* Monterey Marriott is our family's go-to when stopping in to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and has many destination chargers in the underground parking garage that valet parking handles. Last month during a 2-night stay there, they were able to charge my car, but the prior 1-night stay they simply had too many cars in the queue and mine didn't make it before we headed out the next morning (found a nice Supercharger with a Starbucks that morning and had breakfast there while charging instead of having breakfast at the hotel that trip).
* Paris and Aria resorts on the Las Vegas strip are both great properties to stay at, with EV charging (ChargePoint) in their parking garages. I've stayed at both with exactly a 0% success rate at each despite multiple stays / multiple charging attempts; chargers are too few for the cars parking there and often one or more stalls are not working. Fortunately, the Tesla Supercharger on the strip has both Superchargers and Wall Connectors (my default choice if one of these is open is to charge at a WC slowly, but sometimes even these are filled up and I just plug into one of the SC stalls).

The list goes on, but sufficeth to say, to-date destination charging has been a mixed bag of experiences for me and my typical trips. There have been some consistently good experiences as well (TY to Paradise Point in San Diego for expanding your charging stalls, and there was a small B&B in northern AZ which has a very appreciated Tesla Wall Connector), so that future can and will happen. In the meantime, when my wife and I were just planning our next trip (coastal CA), we narrowed it down to 2 nice properties, called each and learned neither had on-site destination charging (really??? In CA?!?!?!). We nearly went back to looking at other hotel options before seeing that one of them was actually a mile or so from a Supercharger and deciding that would have to be good enough.

TLDR: Anecdotally, my data-point-of-one-person is that on my travels, 3rd party chargers are most common but are very unreliable; Tesla Wall Connectors at hotels are less common and while they are working far more of the time, the 'free electricity' motivates properties to have too few of them; hence predominantly ending up staying at properties that have Superchargers on-site or immediately nearby. Even when we start with other goals ("Let's just plan the most relaxing beach stay", ultimately high confidence charging ends up being the most critical feature of a hotel, and that's usually SCs for the trips I end up on.

 

[PlaidCPA]

How about you explain to me how Tesla's order books went from 4000/week to 40000/week without any advertisement?

Because price collapsed. You can sell 400,000/week for $5,000. How long will you stay in business?

 

[Singuy]

I know you were joking ... but Tesla is talking about more severe accidents with air bag deployments etc.

BTW, its beyond any doubt (from the numbers) that FSD + human is better than just human.

FSDb+human>human
Human paying as much attention as they would have if they are using FSDb> or = FSDb+human

This is probably the logical conclusion because we know FSDb's capabilities is not better than a human who is paying attention, and probably even worst than a human not paying attention. However FSDb forces people to pay attention which is a win for safety.

The true test comes when FSDb becomes so good people stop paying attention. This is when we can attribute life saved to FSDb more than just humans paying extra attention.

 

[Singuy]

Because price collapsed. You can sell 400,000/week for $5,000. How long will you stay in business?

When Tesla had an order book of 4000/week, the Model 3 was actually cheaper than today.

 

[replicant]

Margins are decreasing because Tesla is doing what is needed to keep cars AFFORDABLE for people now that interest rates are higher.

And yet no one with too much liquid wealth around me buy Teslas but prefer "self-recharging" hybrids or ICE vehicles, even though they can easily be replaced with a S, X, Y or 3… only because <enter_dumb_antiev_argument>.

I live in Paris and most of my friends, family and colleagues don't know what to do with their cash except buy expensive houses with one, two or three PHEV or ICE.

They know (far too much) about Elon but very little about EVs and Tesla in particular. And our electricity is (quite) cheap and clean.

It's like Tesla keeps cutting prices to try and sell Teslas only to their fans, people who either

• already own a Tesla
• don't have the money to buy one
• or don't need a car (that's me)

So prices drop and those who already planned to buy Tesla an can afford a high price enjoy the discounts and thank Elon very much… while rich people who don't know about Tesla continue to see them as "not ready / gadgets / short in autonomy / difficult to charge / etc".

As a shareholder and proud bicycle owner, I can wait for ICE makers to finally stop buying ads, found pro-ICE car magazines (those that rich people continue to buy and read on holidays), car shows, and media, and sponsorship, and critics, and politicians, and everything about cars everywhere all the time… until no ICE is for sale and people have no choice but go inform themselves about EV and finally buy one.

Or maybe something can be done to help them switch, other than talk among EV fans.

 

[Hiline]

Again, this topic is so frustrating because whether you’re on one side of it or the other, the attitude is all or nothing. I definitely do not think Tesla should be spending a lot on advertising. But I absolutely think there are strategic ways to advertise outside of things like Twitter to better inform the masses about Tesla’s and especially how low their ASP has gotten

Don't take it personally. Most people aren't interested in an intellectual discussion anyway. The bias towards contemporary positivity in this thread is very strong. Only a few people keep a cool head and try to stay in the middle.

There are 3 camps when it comes to the topic of advertising:

Camp 1: Never ads. People who believe Tesla should never advertise
Camp 2: Whatever Tesla does. People who believe in anything Tesla does at any given point; if Tesla is not advertising today, Tesla should not be advertising today, but if Tesla advertises tomorrow, then Tesla surely should be advertising tomorrow. They don't have, or don't share, independent thoughts
Camp 3: Try ads. People who believe Tesla should try, or probably will soon try, advertising and learn from the experience

I ignore anything coming out of Camp 2. For the sake of intellectual discourse and for my own learning, I'd like to hear arguments from people who actually have an argument to make. 'Have you ever started or run a billion-dollar company' does not count as an argument.

 

[jerry33]

Why needing SuperChargers? We stay at hotels with L2 Tesla and other chargers and our car is always full when we wake up in the morning even if we arrive late, with low mileage left, and leave way before checkout time.

Maybe we just have a horseshoe up our butts, but we’ve never had an issue of not working or not being able to charge. Of course, we always have a plan B just in case.

I try to do use the overnight destination chargers, but sometimes that's not possible (hotels are expensive). In over ten years of Tesla road trips, there have been three instances of Supercharger location unavailability. All were caused by local power outages, not the Supercharger. Once I got lucky because the Supercharger location was blocked by high water a couple of hours before I arrived. All of these could have been non-issues if there were additional Supercharger locations.

 

[Queeg500]

Don't take it personally. Most people aren't interested in an intellectual discussion anyway. The bias towards contemporary positivity in this thread is very strong. Only a few people keep a cool head and try to stay in the middle.

There are 3 camps when it comes to the topic of advertising:

Camp 1: Never ads. People who believe Tesla should never advertise
Camp 2: Whatever Tesla does. People who believe in anything Tesla does at any given point; if Tesla is not advertising today, Tesla should not be advertising today, but if Tesla advertises tomorrow, then Tesla surely should be advertising tomorrow. They don't have, or don't share, independent thoughts
Camp 3: Try ads. People who believe Tesla should try, or probably will soon try, advertising and learn from the experience

I ignore anything coming out of Camp 2. For the sake of intellectual discourse and for my own learning, I'd like to hear arguments from people who actually have an argument to make. 'Have you ever started or run a billion-dollar company' does not count as an argument.

Good summary.
Camp 1 and 3 argue, but nobody changes their opinion.
Feel free to discuss further with the intellectuals in the advertising thread.

 

[jerry33]

Not that advertising disagreements aren't fun, but what I see as the next chess move from Tesla that can truly move the needle is to release something on the under-the-radar thus far stock buyback. While I'm not a huge fan, to me this is the one thing that would catch WS unaware and that WS absolutely loves. So, if or when the buybacks start, it could really reverse the relentlessly negative press. That and - if Elon's prediction that the market is likely to be down for the next year - a series of buybacks starting now (or maybe already started in Feb'ish) would be a solid perceived share value producer. Just a thought since we have heard crickets on that in the past several months.

Buyback is clearly the wrong thing to do in this macro environment. What would really kill the shorts is a fifty cent dividend. Shorts would have to pay that.

 

[Optimeer]

I don't know why you keep getting this wrong. Again, tabless can only mitigate what would otherwise be a slower charge rate in the larger cell.

According to the Battery Day presentation, the tabless design enables to increase the diameter of the cell from 21 mm to 48 mm without impacting supercharging times. This enables cost savings for the cells of approximately 18 % compared to 2170 cells and a range increase of approximately 7 % (if all other parameters are considered as equal).





The tabless design is patented by Tesla. So competitors and suppliers can only get these benefits by cooperating with Tesla. I think it is also clear that the cylindrical design is superior compared to pouch cells or cubic design, with one major exception: CATL LFP (since BYD had battery fires).

I think we should generally not assume sandbagging by Tesla unless there are clear indications.

 

[aubreymcfato]

In these years, I've often discussed with a friend of mine, a "petrol-head", who drives a Taxi for a living (in Italy).
Of course, his demands for a car are quite high, and he always had a lot of things to say against Tesla cars. Not a fanboy, to say the least.

Today, in a Facebook discussion in my page, he posted this (sorry but it's google translate):

«Model Y sells because Tesla has finally made a credible car, which summarizes the characteristics suitable for the market. It's not the best performing in their lineup, the most iconic or the most efficient, but it's a balanced mix of everything needed: it's not huge, it has excellent interior space, excellent trunks, a tailgate.
Aesthetically it vaguely reminds me of the beetle, it's ungracefully nice, it's not mean like the 3, it's not exaggerated like the S, it's not atrocious like the X. Mechanically refined, it has the best EV powertrain on the market, and Tesla is the top in that sector. You buy something without compromises, at prices even much lower than the competition. Furthermore, and I say this as a mad detractor, it is now close in cost to even the most direct competitors (I have always seen the comparisons with premium brands badly, I think it is at least one step below but also two, in any case, here you are below 50k, sometimes even by a lot, and in my opinion the Y is the benchmark for EVs today): some medium-sized cars do better in terms of fittings and finishes, but this one eats them up in every respect. It does enough kms, has the best performance and efficiency on the market, the best management system, the best charging network, and a capillary buying and selling system. Tesla website makes you want to buy them, you see everything, prompt delivery, used, with price, work done, where they are, all over the country. If you open any other automotive sites, they are walking bugs, they refer to hundreds of dealers, on whom you depend for everything.
Then, the Y enters the most dynamic market segment, the C-SUV segment, and its traditional rivals flounder in a regulatory frenzy that certainly benefits those who smell of the future. It is true that it requires accustomisation, a change in habits, and that in certain areas it is still a gamble, but it is a credible car, indeed, I believe that today it is the benchmark for everyone».

 

[InDaClub]

Has anyone received Tesla Shareholders Meeting invitation yet?
Should be going out any day now...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1650926110342004736

 

[Moon Buggy]

So if 936k mouths generated 1.3M orders the next year, what will 930k+1.3M mouths generate for 2023?

It just doesn't work like that. People aren't all exactly the same and they aren't all interconnected to each other to the same degree. That's going to have diminishing returns.

 

[EVNow]

It just doesn't work like that. People aren't all exactly the same and they aren't all interconnected to each other to the same degree. That's going to have diminishing returns.

I've been trying to "sell" EVs for over a decade now. Participated in every EV / car related event in Seattle for a few years. (ps : I'm saying this to note that I've a lot of experiencing selling EVs to people who aren't convinced EVs are a good idea).

But now - I can't really sell a Tesla to anyone I know. They all either have Teslas or have told me they will consider for their next car. My circle of acquaintances is saturated with Teslas.

BTW - I know one definite way to increase the demand. Let us carry over FSD to our next Tesla. A LOT of us would upgrade.

 

[Moon Buggy]

It’s called a recession, which Elon has been warning us about for almost a year. ”selling cars below the margins they told us they wanted to sell them at” is exactly what a good company would do when facing changing economic conditions. This whole “Elon said X two years ago, so why’s he changing his tune now” is a BS argument for anything.

It wasn't 2 years ago, it was during the 2022 Q4 earnings just over 3 months ago.

They wouldn't be doing it if they weren't having at least a little trouble moving inventory. It can also be true that this is what a good company would do. We're not disagreeing about any of that.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

Lol love the overreactions to my post.

Nowhere did I sensationalize the inventory levels as a crisis. I’m simply saying there’s an obvious issue with the relation of how quickly inventory is moving.

As @Moon Buggy said above me. There are limits to how Tesla has generated interest in their cars. Word of mouth has limitations. And as he said, it always best to be ahead of the game instead of reactionary to things.

Again, this topic is so frustrating because whether you’re on one side of it or the other, the attitude is all or nothing. I definitely do not think Tesla should be spending a lot on advertising. But I absolutely think there are strategic ways to advertise outside of things like Twitter to better inform the masses about Tesla’s and especially how low their ASP has gotten

Some degree of inventory is a good thing. The last thing you want is for a potential buyer to go into a delivery center, test drive a Tesla and decide they love it and are ready to buy, only to be told that they need to go home, log on Tesla.com, order the car, and sometime between 1 week and 6 months it will show up and they have 2 days to come and pick it up. First-they might go on home, the enthusiasm dies down as the consider other financial pressures (aka potential recession) and decide to hold off. Or worse, they drive by a Kia dealership on the way, and drive out with an EV6 off the lot. So some degree of product on the lot, ready to sell, is a very good thing. Obviously-too much isn't. I think Tesla has the smarts to manage that. As production ramps up at Austin, costs drop, boosting margins, and giving Tesla room to cut costs further.

 

[Krugerrand]

Not that advertising disagreements aren't fun, but what I see as the next chess move from Tesla that can truly move the needle is to release something on the under-the-radar thus far stock buyback. While I'm not a huge fan, to me this is the one thing that would catch WS unaware and that WS absolutely loves. So, if or when the buybacks start, it could really reverse the relentlessly negative press. That and - if Elon's prediction that the market is likely to be down for the next year - a series of buybacks starting now (or maybe already started in Feb'ish) would be a solid perceived share value producer. Just a thought since we have heard crickets on that in the past several months.

So is it more important for Tesla to surprise WS to goose the SP or simply to keep their heads down as they have over the last decade plus and drive the mission?

It seems for many people here it’s all a out the SP regardless of their refutations, otherwise they’d remember what was said on the ER just last week. Let me paraphrase for like the third time:

Tesla will continue to lower vehicle pricing and accept lower gross margins to drive the mission forward as fast as they can. Unless there’s a force majeure

@Krugerrand - sounds like you are already living the experience that I dream about for the future! Unfortunately, my experience with destination charging on my travels has been very hit-or-miss, even where I would have expected better:
* Westin La Paloma in Tucson is an amazing property, one of my favorites, highly recommended, but they only have 2 Tesla Wall Connectors for a very large property. Years ago I had a 3-in-4 chance of plugging into one of them overnight, before Teslas became commonplace; in recent trips they have both been in use the entire time I was there. Fortunately, once Tesla opened a Supercharger at the nearby La Encantada that has become the default fallback.
* Monterey Marriott is our family's go-to when stopping in to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and has many destination chargers in the underground parking garage that valet parking handles. Last month during a 2-night stay there, they were able to charge my car, but the prior 1-night stay they simply had too many cars in the queue and mine didn't make it before we headed out the next morning (found a nice Supercharger with a Starbucks that morning and had breakfast there while charging instead of having breakfast at the hotel that trip).
* Paris and Aria resorts on the Las Vegas strip are both great properties to stay at, with EV charging (ChargePoint) in their parking garages. I've stayed at both with exactly a 0% success rate at each despite multiple stays / multiple charging attempts; chargers are too few for the cars parking there and often one or more stalls are not working. Fortunately, the Tesla Supercharger on the strip has both Superchargers and Wall Connectors (my default choice if one of these is open is to charge at a WC slowly, but sometimes even these are filled up and I just plug into one of the SC stalls).

The list goes on, but sufficeth to say, to-date destination charging has been a mixed bag of experiences for me and my typical trips. There have been some consistently good experiences as well (TY to Paradise Point in San Diego for expanding your charging stalls, and there was a small B&B in northern AZ which has a very appreciated Tesla Wall Connector), so that future can and will happen. In the meantime, when my wife and I were just planning our next trip (coastal CA), we narrowed it down to 2 nice properties, called each and learned neither had on-site destination charging (really??? In CA?!?!?!). We nearly went back to looking at other hotel options before seeing that one of them was actually a mile or so from a Supercharger and deciding that would have to be good enough.

TLDR: Anecdotally, my data-point-of-one-person is that on my travels, 3rd party chargers are most common but are very unreliable; Tesla Wall Connectors at hotels are less common and while they are working far more of the time, the 'free electricity' motivates properties to have too few of them; hence predominantly ending up staying at properties that have Superchargers on-site or immediately nearby. Even when we start with other goals ("Let's just plan the most relaxing beach stay", ultimately high confidence charging ends up being the most critical feature of a hotel, and that's usually SCs for the trips I end up on.

I know your issue; you want to travel to places that people congregate; I like to travel where nobody wants to be.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. Hopefully some of these destinations will think it’s worthwhile to add more L2 charging. I know I’d not hesitant to tell a hotel manager that my future business depends on being able to fuel my car and that I’d absolutely be ok paying a reasonable fee. On the other hand, it’s not practical to have a parking lot full of chargers - or is it? How about a solar canapy over parking and chargers?

 

[Mengy]

I'd like to see Tesla start advertising at some point. They already make very compelling marketing videos on YouTube/Twitter/social media and clearly Tesla employs very skilled people to make those, why not use that talent to broaden the customer base and educate & reach new potential customers?

I feel "word of mouth" marketing won't suffice much longer as Tesla production continues to ramp and accelerate. It has worked great so far, but 2+million cars per year is a LOT more than we were making just one year ago. We clearly are seeing some form of demand issues right now with inventory levels fluctuating even as Tesla keeps dropping prices and reducing margins. This demand issue could just be due to the current economic situation, or it could be due to other factors too, but it could also be due to an uninformed populace. Potential customers who simply aren't aware how compelling buying a new Tesla truly is. Advertising is certainly one way to reach new people.

I think as Tesla revenues, profits, and cash reserves continue to increase, spending some of that cash on at least some minimal advertising could be a very positive investment for the company.

 

[GhostSkater]

I don't know why you keep getting this wrong. Again, tabless can only mitigate what would otherwise be a slower charge rate in the larger cell.

I can post the data I have later

But lowering the resistance allows for more current for the same voltage rise, which is one of the limiting factor here

Yes, the diffusion is the limitation, what do you do to increase the diffusion? You increase the force against it, which is more voltage which results in higher current, and thus more ion diffusion

Look at any of Bjorn videos where he shows current and voltage during charging

At 50% the pack is pretty much at its maximum voltage, so you can’t charge faster without pushing the whole pack voltage over the maximum, which makes a speed run of degradation

On Tesla packs, as soon as the power starts going down, it’s because the pack is at close to or at full pack voltage, so even if Tesla wanted faster charging, they barely have any room to spare

The tables electrode will reduce the voltage rise on the jelly roll by changing the average distance of any given point in the electrode from 250 mm to 40 mm

The papers I posted quite a few pages ago agree on that, not taking this from nowhere

 

[JRP3]

es, the diffusion is the limitation, what do you do to increase the diffusion? You increase the force against it, which is more voltage which results in higher current, and thus more ion diffusion

No you don't because that causes undesirable side reactions which cause electrode plating. Again, this has been covered. Also Tesla themselves does not show faster charging speeds on their own presentations of the 4680.