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

[unk45]

Carwow, Autogehful and other youtubers all driving the same Plaid w/ Track Pack at the Circuit De Paul Ricard on the same day? That is MARKETING and obviously Tesla must be doing that, at some tangible cost to the company. However it is not ADVERTISING. Hope we now see the difference

To be specific it is a component of Promotion, as is advertising, I suppose it becomes pedantic to try to make both precisando accurate descriptions of the P’s components. It seems important to me, especially when so many people do not understand the roles of Price, which cause such consternation here. It’s sad to see Tesla itself in some markets forgetting the basics, sometimes in response to misguided urging by fans.

 

[Skryll]

[caution, electrek article] Watch how Range Energy turns a semi-truck electric just by adding a trailer sounds like an interesting concept, use battery powered trailer on legacy semi tractors. Of course I would prefer pure BEV tractors instead, but an interesting angle non-the-less.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Dear MM's,

Thank you for leaving the interns in charge for the 2nd half of the trading day.

What do you mean, "interns"? TSLA was capped hard at $170 from 1:37 p.m. There's no mistaking the $170 "Call Wall" and today's $170.06 Close. This was another Masterclass in loss managment today by MMs.

Meanwhle, US Tech Macros (QQQ) continued to rise, then trailed off into the Close all the while TSLA was capped at $170. Today is precisely what manipulation by the MMs looks like.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Andrew [racing his Plaid S for years] stated that he's done over 1K race runs and the maintenance he's done - wiper change.

Not quite true. Andrew from the Tesla Plaid Channel on Youtube needed his brake pads replaced a few months back (after 100s of 150 mph+ Qtr Mile runs). The Tesla Service Center had to back order them, said they had never replaced a set before. Turns out, there was also no spares inventory in the system (first time anybody needed brake pads). Andrew eventually got his pads when the factory grabbed some from production line inventory and sent them to his Service Center.

 

[Krugerrand]

Nah, I'll stay invested till my prices are reached, and stay here to annoy the cultists. You know where that ignore button is...

You’re such a wonderful human being.

 

[Fred42]

[caution, electrek article] Watch how Range Energy turns a semi-truck electric just by adding a trailer sounds like an interesting concept, use battery powered trailer on legacy semi tractors. Of course I would prefer pure BEV tractors instead, but an interesting angle non-the-less.

A PHEV semi might have niche appeal, but what's needed is for Tesla (and Freightliner) to ramp electric semi production in a big way, and the installation of a lot of truck chargers. If trucking companies see electric semis working well for them in CA, that might be the kick-start that's needed. I hope CA wisely spends the $3 billion it has allocated to subsidize truck chargers and electric truck purchases.

 

[Ogre]

Umm.. Ford is now selling the F150 Lightning with no pre orders, just order and pick it up.

Their 2 year pre-order list has vanished.

Rivian’s 2 year wait list vanished.

GM is already limping a new trim, that “Freshness“ Farley was talking about I guess.

Dare I suggest that maybe demand for $90k+ electric trucks isn’t as high as people thought?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1654609745381142529

 

[AndrewZ]

I really just hope the Cybertruck isn’t way up there in price but the more details that emerge, the more likely it seems it will be

Alcantara lining, multiple motors, wind turbine blade for a wiper, none of that will be cheap!

 

[cusetownusa]

I really just hope the Cybertruck isn’t way up there in price but the more details that emerge, the more likely it seems it will be

Alcantara lining, multiple motors, wind turbine blade for a wiper, none of that will be cheap!

4 wheel steering, air suspension, powered frunk, etc.

Hoping for the same but sounding unlikely. The only thing that does give me hope, besides the original quoted pricing, is Elons desire to make EVs affordable and how he relentantly focuses on cost reductions. Then I remember the 6 row Model X costs $110,000.

 

[GhostSkater]

I was gonna say I’m losing hope for Cybertruck event early in Q3 or even in Q3

But one of the AIDA presses finally got moved inside after months just chilling outside the factory

Substation is also nearing completion, might be needed to bring more equipment online

@ 9:00

 

[dhanson865]

The only way I'm personally getting a cybertruck is if it has all the features the Model Y has and is somehow cheaper than a Model Y.

But I'm happy for all you that will be willing to pay for a cybertruck that costs more than a Model Y.

 

[Robertj]

In weekend new ex Spacex /Starlink

https://twitter.com/x/status/1654673695007457280

June,22. 500k subs
Dec,22. 1.0 m subs
May,23. 1.5 m subs

 

[AndrewZ]

4 wheel steering, air suspension, powered frunk, etc.

Hoping for the same but sounding unlikely. The only thing that does give me hope, besides the original quoted pricing, is Elons desire to make EVs affordable and how he relentantly focuses on cost reductions. Then I remember the 6 row Model X costs $110,000.

The price cuts have given me hope as well, before them I would have said there is zero chance it will be remotely affordable using the existing lineup pricing at the time of initial announcement + price increases since then as a proxy. After the cuts back down, at least there’s some hope.

 

[Beltsbear]

4 wheel steering, air suspension, powered frunk, etc.

Hoping for the same but sounding unlikely. The only thing that does give me hope, besides the original quoted pricing, is Elons desire to make EVs affordable and how he relentantly focuses on cost reductions. Then I remember the 6 row Model X costs $110,000.

I really don’t want 4 wheel steering. I hope that is an option or not available at all. I mostly don’t want to pay for it, but also the increased complexity and risk of failure are troubling. I am hoping 2 motor versions start around $60k Or less.

 

[wipster]

[caution, electrek article] Watch how Range Energy turns a semi-truck electric just by adding a trailer sounds like an interesting concept, use battery powered trailer on legacy semi tractors. Of course I would prefer pure BEV tractors instead, but an interesting angle non-the-less.

There are several battery powered trailer manufacturers in Europe. Will be interesting to see one coupled to a Semi, even if it's just for extra battery storage.

 

[EQC_]

I really don’t want 4 wheel steering. I hope that is an option or not available at all. I mostly don’t want to pay for it, but also the increased complexity and risk of failure are troubling. I am hoping 2 motor versions start around $60k Or less.

I think (hope!) your hope will be reached.

When the Cybertruck was first revealed, the target price for the dual-motor 300+ mile version was roughly or $49.9K

What stood out to me at the time was that was actually less (I think) than the then-current price of the dual-motor 300+ mile Model Y. So, at least at the time, there was some thought within Tesla that the design had significant cost savings -- it would be a bigger, heavier vehicle, with 6 seats, with more battery for a lower price than the Y.

In the years between then and now, the Model Y went way up in price...but then came back down to around the same level again.

Perhaps unplanned features have been added, making the truck a bit more expensive...and of course it will likely be the more expensive versions produced first...and Tesla's price variations to match demand...but I still cling to the idea that at some future time, prices for Cybertruck and Model Y will at least be similar for similar range and motor count.

And one of Elon's statements back then was something like: "we should be able to make a really great truck for $49K". Given that the base model at the time was targeted at $39.9K, I hope at least some version of the truck can be had for close to that $49K target.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

What do you mean, "interns"? TSLA was capped hard at $170 from 1:37 p.m. There's no mistaking the $170 "Call Wall" and today's $170.06 Close. This was another Masterclass in loss managment today by MMs.

View attachment 934992

Meanwhle, US Tech Macros (QQQ) continued to rise, then trailed off into the Close all the while TSLA was capped at $170. Today is precisely what manipulation by the MMs looks like.

View attachment 934993

Lets all take a moment and be grateful it closed at $170 and not $160

 

[Artful Dodger]

Lets all take a moment and be grateful it closed at $170 and not $160

Where does the term 'Stockholm syndrome' come from? deseret.com (2023-01-28)

hth.

 

[hobbes]

Imo It seems like FSD is severely underestimated by the market right now. From the latest reviews and tweets it seems that 11.3.x was massive improvement and it sounds like 11.4.x also will be a massive improvement to the point that many people are reporting majority zero intervention drives and not only in California. Mainly it proves the point that Tesla has a method of improving the system rapidly that is not hitting any walls yet. So 11.5 etc will likely keep bringing improvements to the point that it's getting hard to laugh at FSD anymore and the talk will quickly go from "Robotaxi will never work" to "Robotaxi easy to do, competition is coming to eat Tesla's lunch" lol.

Tesla has said that they intend to 10x their NN compute in 2023 and another 10x in 2024 And it's not like they were starting from a small capacity, they had one of the largest Nvidia clusters in the world in 2022. In 2024 they will have a the equivalent of 100 of them. How can this be ignored by the market?

It sounds like Europe might get FSD around Q1 2024 and they taking steps at expanding it to China. And Europe will not start from US2021 FSD, no it will pretty much be as good as US 2024 FSD after a few months. Even though they don't drive with FSD in Europe, you can bet they are running it in shadow mode collecting would been failures. The first quarter it's enable in Europe will be a rather large pure profit post as decent percent of their European fleet will enable it at once.

Still market seems to give FSD a value of ~0. Imo there are different scenarios with different estimated likelihoods and values. Some of the higher value ones such as robotaxi we can disagree on, but just the expensive addon "autopilot on city streets" is starting to look very likely and should be plenty valuable in itself. Let's say this can add another 5% margins(15k option, 15% take rate, 50k ASP ->~5% margins), imo that's pretty huge. 30% take rate and it's 10% margins. If not $15k then monthly and monthly is even higher margins but requires Wall Street to think so it will take longer to show in the valuation but the value is still there. This seems like a decent floor for the value of FSD, not to mention insurance gains etc. Robotaxi may or may not be far away, but even ignoring robotaxi FSD should be included in the calculation.

Then there is the question of the value of Dojo as a Service. If Dojo is indeed 6x cheaper than A100, Tesla can charge 50% of the price of A100 and still have 50%+ margins. And the market for this is clearly very large. Twitter and X.ai seems pretty locked in to be customers and Tesla can divert some of their nVidia expenses to Dojo expenses which in the end is the same as being a customer. And the market is starved for compute right now, like Elon said startups have to buy the chips from back alley dealers. Dojo as a service is not completely unlike AWS that's carrying Amazon right now and not completely unlike nVidia which has a higher value that Tesla. And AI seems to take over more and more so clearly this market is not negligible as Wall Street seems to think.

Looking at individual FSD videos, I don´t know what to think because some are really good, some not so much. I like to have more statistics put together before judging, and this is the best I think we have so far: Home According to the data there, 11.3/single stack was not much of an improvement yet, seems more like distance to disengagements has been plateauing for a while. Hope this is due to all the new software that still has to be fine tuned/trained more and we will actually see a jump ahead with the next versions.

 

[lascavarian]

Looking at individual FSD videos, I don´t know what to think because some are really good, some not so much. I like to have more statistics put together before judging, and this is the best I think we have so far: Home According to the data there, 11.3/single stack was not much of an improvement yet, seems more like distance to disengagements has been plateauing for a while. Hope this is due to all the new software that still has to be fine tuned/trained more and we will actually see a jump ahead with the next versions.

I love FSD. Just yesterday I saw it render a golf cart for the first time.

OTOH, until it invokes reverse mode, there is a ways to go. The recent mention of emergency stopping in reverse is a hopeful note however.