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

[Xepa777]

When Tesla starts releasing disengagement rates … we’ll know they are close. Ofcourse before that we’ll know because half a million of us have FSD now.

Wait … need to disengage for this roundabout

Signs Tesla is taking meaningful steps to autonomy (NOT Elon's random Twitter milestones):

1) Tesla starts announcing disengagement rates (instead of the almost-useless "total FSD miles driven" stat)

2) Tesla starts counting "autonomy miles" to send to regulators

3) Tesla tells regulators that FSD (or a subset version of it) is now being considered for L4 and is seeking approval for those testing miles on the road

4) Tesla FSD community tracker goes from 1 critical intervention every 50 miles to every 500, then 5000, then 50,000, then 500,000. Once it gets to 50,000 we MIGHT be able to start pinpointing a timeline.

Note that #4 might get nullified by #1 if there's proof that an overwhelming % of disengagements right now are from people who are just uncomfortable with a certain situation vs. "ya this woulda killed me otherwise." No ideea how to quantify that so not gonna try.

 

[jerry33]

It's not surprising but still rather dumbfounding that all this attention gets paid to Tesla demand when Ford, and pretty much every other auto makers making an EV, is facing a dire situation, especially in the US.

For Mach E sales to be tumbling the way they are even though their total sales to date isn't that high and for gross margins to be getting worse combined with having a price war with a company that has exponential more pricing power/margin cushion should be frightening for all of Tesla's competition. The cherry on top is that government incentives that were clearly trying to help Ford and the other are now giving Tesla further competitive advantages.

Knowing that Tesla is willing to outright say "we will sacrifice margin to run at maximum output" WHILE Tesla is in the final stages of getting 2 new factories up to mass production volume (with a 3rd even larger factory coming next year) has be downright depressing for Tesla's competition.

Even the Chinese EV makers are going through their rude awakening in finding out that Tesla can and will compete with them on price locally while they enjoy zero of the benefits they get locally once they expand overseas. The IRA act already puts them at a significant disadvantage to Tesla in the US but now it looks like Europe is about in institute their own version of the IRA which again, benefits Tesla since Berlin is now at volume production.

How anyone can take Ford and GM's guidance for production and especially margins seriously is laughable.

Never say anything bad about those who pay your salary.

 

[Carl Raymond]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662185599963414533

Now that's what I call leveraging all parts of the business in ways every other auto maker simply can't do.

This has very little margin impact to Tesla, spread out over a year while also getting consumers attached with their utility side of the business.

I don’t get how this works. Here in Australia we have a single meter. How does the electricity provider know if energy is for car charging or some other purpose? If Tesla is getting this data from the car, is that market corruption? A kWh is a kWh. It shouldn’t be price varied by purpose of use? At least, Adam Smith would not approve.

 

[jerry33]

I don’t get how this works. Here in Australia we have a single meter. How does the electricity provider know if energy is for car charging or some other purpose? If Tesla is getting this data from the car, is that market corruption? A kWh is a kWh. It shouldn’t be price varied by purpose of use? At least, Adam Smith would not approve.

Texas has a three tier system. Producers, distributers, and billers. Producers are the solar farms, wind farms, and fossil fuel (a bit of nuclear too). Also producers are battery storage. Distributors are responsible for the infrastructure and routing the electricity from the producers to the consumers (this should include battery storage, but the legislators decided that would aid the consumer rather than the fossil fuel producers so they made battery storage an electricity generator so the distributors couldn't use it). Billers are who you purchase electricity from. Crazy system, but that's how it works. Tesla can tell by the car's information when it's charging and they can match that up with the metre.

 

[Tronguy]

I don’t get how this works. Here in Australia we have a single meter. How does the electricity provider know if energy is for car charging or some other purpose? If Tesla is getting this data from the car, is that market corruption? A kWh is a kWh. It shouldn’t be price varied by purpose of use? At least, Adam Smith would not approve.

Um. It's possible to have more than one meter.

At my house in NJ, for various kinds of subsidies involving solar power, I have two. One meter is on the outside of the house and has, on one side, city power; on the other side, two sets of wires bolted on top of one another. One set goes to the solar power inverters; the other set goes to the electrical circuit breaker box.

However, the leg that goes to the inverters has another meter in series with it, so I can report to the appropriate people just how much electrical energy the solar panels are generating. It's a utility-grade meter, too, with fairly high accuracy.

Finally, there are some subsidies in the State of New Jersey that have special rates for power used to charge electrical vehicles. That would call for a third meter, this one in series with the Tesla Wall Connector. Haven't bothered to do that, in large part because I'd have to buy a different Wall Connector than Tesla's that could report back to the Power Company's Mothership how much energy the car was sucking down, and the payback time for that wall connector vs. the savings I'd get for electrical car charging would be 'way too long.

Presumably the Texas plan involves multiple meters, at least one of which sees how much energy the car is using.

 

[JRP3]

Mario’s twitter space

Looks as if he was wrong.

 

[jerry33]

Presumably the Texas plan involves multiple meters, at least one of which sees how much energy the car is using.

Multiple meters shouldn't be necessary because Tesla knows when the car is charging at home and how much electricity is drawn. The could match this information up with the metre, but they will likely rely on the car and only use the metre reading for auditing.

 

[Thekiwi]

On the Ford / Tesla supercharger deal:

I think it’s worth remembering that there is still a relatively large contingent of retail investors, advisors & Wall Street professionals that on various levels consider Tesla a fraud, or highly risky, or a fad. For these people Ford was supposed to eventually be one of the “Tesla killers” - not a tesla partner. Ford embracing the Tesla network, and its CEO being very gracious and enthusiastic about Tesla will have turned quite a few peoples heads with the realization that “oh *sugar*, Tesla is here to stay”. Ford has added massive legitimacy to Tesla (and TSLA) in those peoples minds.

Also, the thought that tesla might become the defacto car charging network in the USA is now a real possibility. The ramifications of that possibility are not small.

 

[FastEddieB]

Based on a 190 call wall, I'm guessing this baby closes at 189.99 today…

There’s something called “remembering the hits and forgetting the misses“.

It’s just as important to point out the misses as it is to boast about the hits.

Clear miss on this “guess”.

 

[Thekiwi]

If you will forgive a post purely about markets (the SPY ETF to be exact):

 

[navguy12]

About this inflation thing: The european natural gas price is recently touching a new low of 23 euro/MWh, a level not seen since months before the war. This is less than one tenth of the peak of last august.

…and if you expand the chart for 10 years…

…other than the COVID era induced drop in price in 2020 and 2021, it essentially “back to normal”.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662226586194804736

The time between deployment to a few internal workers to all workers to then customers continue to be faster than it has in the past. Everyone who has FSD beta here should see if they got it already.

 

[navguy12]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662185599963414533

Now that's what I call leveraging all parts of the business in ways every other auto maker simply can't do.

This has very little margin impact to Tesla, spread out over a year while also getting consumers attached with their utility side of the business.

“…little margin impact…”

It’s nice when there is no incremental cost to Tesla for the energy they are offering to customers for free; Tony Seba would appreciate this.

 

[Curt Renz]

On the Ford / Tesla supercharger deal:

I think it’s worth remembering that there is still a relatively large contingent of retail investors, advisors & Wall Street professionals that on various levels consider Tesla a fraud, or highly risky, or a fad. For these people Ford was supposed to eventually be one of the “Tesla killers” - not a tesla partner. Ford embracing the Tesla network, and its CEO being very gracious and enthusiastic about Tesla will have turned quite a few peoples heads with the realization that “oh *sugar*, Tesla is here to stay”. Ford has added massive legitimacy to Tesla (and TSLA) in those peoples minds.

Also, the thought that tesla might become the defacto car charging network in the USA is now a real possibility. The ramifications of that possibility are not small.

Will Tesla eventually buy Ford?

 

[Tronguy]

Multiple meters shouldn't be necessary because Tesla knows when the car is charging at home and how much electricity is drawn. The could match this information up with the metre, but they will likely rely on the car and only use the metre reading for auditing.

No real argument, but I'll quibble with definitions just because I can .

Reading the "Power consumption of the car" equates to "Using the car as an energy meter."

The problem in NJ with this using this as a method to determine car consumption is that the car's internal energy meter is unlikely to meet the standards of a utility grade meter. There appear to be different ANSI standards, but the one for "revenue" seems to be +-0.2%.

Apropos of nothing, at one time I used the kW-hr lifetime generated readings displayed by the two solar power inverters in the garage to get this subsidy (SRECs) which could be traded in for Real Money. The state Public Utilities Commission found out that these inverter-based readings weren't particularly accurate (I dug into it and discovered that the inverters were +/-5%!) and, if anybody wanted to keep on getting SRECs, one had to use a utility-grade meter. Which I then went out, bought, and installed, little bitty toroidal transformers and all. These things come with a certificate and are purported to keep their accuracy for a very long time.

I suspect that with Tesla in Texas.. I dunno, it's possible that the car's accurate to +-0.2%, but I wouldn't bet on it. But if there's a program, money changes hands, and Tesla runs it with the approval of the appropriate authorities, then who am I to argue?

 

[EVNow]

Sentiment on FB FSD group changed greatly after v11. Before then people were generally making fun of how their car is trying to kill them.

To me 10.69 was the big change - adding the creep wall and CULT (Chuck's ULT) made a big difference. I knew I could trust FSD in certain scenarios I used to just disengage.

But - why would 11.4.2 in particular make a big impact ? IMO for Wall St to notice something concrete needs to happen - either in terms of quantitative data or analysts being able to do difficult routes confidently in their own car.

 

[Singuy]

To me 10.69 was the big change - adding the creep wall and CULT (Chuck's ULT) made a big difference. I knew I could trust FSD in certain scenarios I used to just disengage.

But - why would 11.4.2 in particular make a big impact ? IMO for Wall St to notice something concrete needs to happen - either in terms of quantitative data or analysts being able to do difficult routes confidently in their own car.

11.4.0 and .1 had significant upgrades and we need a few revisions to tune those upgrades.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662257873395539968

 

[jerry33]

No real argument, but I'll quibble with definitions just because I can .

Reading the "Power consumption of the car" equates to "Using the car as an energy meter."

The problem in NJ with this using this as a method to determine car consumption is that the car's internal energy meter is unlikely to meet the standards of a utility grade meter. There appear to be different ANSI standards, but the one for "revenue" seems to be +-0.2%.

Apropos of nothing, at one time I used the kW-hr lifetime generated readings displayed by the two solar power inverters in the garage to get this subsidy (SRECs) which could be traded in for Real Money. The state Public Utilities Commission found out that these inverter-based readings weren't particularly accurate (I dug into it and discovered that the inverters were +/-5%!) and, if anybody wanted to keep on getting SRECs, one had to use a utility-grade meter. Which I then went out, bought, and installed, little bitty toroidal transformers and all. These things come with a certificate and are purported to keep their accuracy for a very long time.

I suspect that with Tesla in Texas.. I dunno, it's possible that the car's accurate to +-0.2%, but I wouldn't bet on it. But if there's a program, money changes hands, and Tesla runs it with the approval of the appropriate authorities, then who am I to argue?

Tesla is giving it out of their pocket so I doubt if the government cares.

 

[GhostSkater]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662244780460617729

 

[TrendTrader007]

Strong close except for MM bringing TSLA down toward the end
As best as I can read tea leaves, I’m expecting very fast and furious rally lasting into September 2023 with TSLA doubling or tripling possibly. Then a few weeks pullback and then off to races again with 10 to 20X within 3 to 5 years
Not financial advice. Don’t ever take my predictions seriously. It’s all wild wild technical speculation prone to errors