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

[Oveeus]

That's funny that JP Morgan said this:

View attachment 956559
But their est avg price buy was $123.21

"Listen what we say, don't do what we do."

 

[jerry33]

The biggest issue with the hybrid argument is: they have had their chance, and manufacturers didn't bother to ramp production. That includes Toyota, the biggest hybrid proponent.

Hybrids have been on the global market for over 25 years (Prius in Japan in 1997) and in the US for over 20 years (Prius in 2001), and every manufacturer still produces more basic ICE vehicles than even regular hybrids. The numbers for plug-in hybrids are even more sad.

If my googling is accurate, Toyota sold 2.6 million hybrids globally in 2022. Toyota sold over 10 million vehicles in total in 2022...so after 25 years they are only willing to commit 25% of their production to hybrids. Even Toyota isn't even really trying to push hybrids.

All manufacturers combined was only 2.9 million hybrids, out of 80 million vehicles total sold worldwide in 2022. Under 4%.

Meanwhile, Tesla produced 1.3 million EVs in 2022, will probably hit 1.8-2 million in 2023, and will almost certainly exceed 3 million EVs in 2025.

These numbers should be embarrassing for anybody, especially Toyota, saying hybrids are the solution or that hybrids need more time. Toyota has had 25 years and are only at a 25% hybrid share of their own production. Embarrassing.

Even more cognitively dissonant: Toyota's own materials (their flawed 1:6:90 rule) argue that you can produce 90 hybrids or 6 plug-in hybrids with the batteries required for 1 EV. If that's the case, why didn't or couldn't Toyota secure more battery supply for their hybrids?

Apparently, Toyota's 2.6 million hybrids in 2022 is the equivalent of only 29,000 EV batteries, by their own calculation. Hybridizing the entire Toyota annual production of 10 million cars should only require the battery equivalent of 120,000 EVs, but apparently Toyota can't or won't do it. Tesla puts that many EVs on the road in less than a month.

Continued pushing of hybrids sounds like Toyota admitting either incompetence or a complete lack of caring enough to try.

By Toyota's math, Tesla securing enough batteries for 1.3 million vehicles in 2022 should have been more than enough for every vehicle sold globally to be a hybrid.

I'd be willing to bet that while Tesla grows their EV production 40+% in 2023, Toyota won't grow their hybrid sales by anywhere near those numbers...all while Toyota and the assorted journalists who fall for Toyota's marketing continue to claim hybrids are the solution.

Hybrids *were* the best solution in 2005 or so...but Toyota and everybody else (due to incompetence or by choice) slow rolled it for too long. Now EVs are readily available, desired, and selling in numbers that the hybrid promoters apparently think are impossible.

Toyota's own marketing really is some strong evidence of how much more capable Tesla is....

Agreed. I purchased a Prius in 2001 and a second one in 2004. By 2007 it was obvious that Toyota no longer had any interest in hybrids.

 

[jerry33]

That's funny that JP Morgan said this:

View attachment 956559
But their est avg price buy was $123.21

It's easy. They want more cheap shares, and unlike retail investors they can manipulate.

 

[jerry33]

Hybrids were always going to be a dead end.
Hybridization only improves the fuel efficiency of a given platform by 25%. It’s hard to convince customers to pay a premium for more complexity and only 25% more fuel efficiency. Turning a 30mpg vehicle into a 37.5 mpg vehicle with a hybrid drivetrain is just not worth it to most people

That would be true, but over the eight years and 140,000 miles I kept the 2004 Prius, my average was 60 mpg with ~50% trip miles. I don't doubt that some people only got 37.5 mpg, but it didn't take a lot of effort to increase that.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

this was a few hours before Tesla sent out the picture of the first Cybertruck...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1680334527955193856

 

[Mike Smith]

Elon said Cybertruck will be Tesla's greatest vehicle

He also said Roadster will have a SpaceX option, making it Tesla's greatest vehicle..

..unless Cybertruck also has a SpaceX option

It sure would be easy to fit the SpaceX package in the bed of a truck..

 

[Unpilot]

It's easy. They want more cheap shares, and unlike retail investors they can manipulate.

I wouldn't buy water from JP Morgan if my house was on fire.

 

[SPadival]

I thought of this Tesla Twitter supporter when I saw this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1680173469483278340

He’s wrong on one count though. It’s not just retail investors. It was people like Ross Gerber & Gary Black, the so-called $TSLA institutional investors, who sold during this period (check Whale wisdom).

And I thought Gary was the voice of Wall St, what with him informing us lowly retail investors about what the big Wall St fund managers were thinking about Tesla..

 

[AudubonB]

Gee, a lot of posts that deal with TSLA. That in itself is a bullish enough signal to get me out of self-enforced retirement sitting on my hands.

@Papafox‘s post was clear enough to me.

1. BlackRock is bullish and is hunting around for cheap shares - those that can be obtained by picking up calls they persuaded another to write. The writer gets the premium of selling calls at some level higher than the current price; BRock expects the price rises further than that strike price so it reels in the underlying shares come expiry time.

2. $10MM refers to the value of shares, not the calls. It’s straightforward in the post’s wording.

3. $10MM of anything hardly shows up in their system, but this was just a datum of one. BRock operates by shaking a lot of branches, and if it can get some from you, some from me, some from that fellow behind that tree….it becomes significant.

Now back to contemplating all the new snow we’ve gotten out of this non-stop 72-hour storm.

Continuing the slow return to my thread, after a nice respite and a critically-needed focusing on family matters -

There have been, understandably, a lot of suggestions as to why this recent spectacular rise of TSLA began. I agree with a good fraction of those - that is, I think there has been a concatenation of reasons - but out of courtesy to each I am not going to enumerate the ones which I feel bear more weight than others.

Rather, I am going to return to the one which mirrored best my own beliefs and which also was the proximal cause for my resuming posting. That is the post of Papafox’s that described an unnamed individual investor suggesting that his having been contacted by BlackRock was a five-alarm BUY! signal - that at least one arm of that inconceivably immense organization (between 9 and 11 trillion dollars under management) was about to or had started accumulating TSLA.

That occurred on 24 May, when TSLA was at $184.29. Eleven trading days, $62.40 and 33.9% ago. Helluva start to a good run. And can you imagine how horrible that investor would now be feeling had he taken the bait of the premium to those covered calls at that time?

I’m not going to benefit it by providing a link, but activist and self-described deserving of a Tesla board seat Ross Gerber credits himself for this rally, citing his actions have caused Mr Musk to spend more time with our company.

And here it was I’ve been thinking it was due to revealing starting the rumor that BlackRock was piling its chips on the TSLA square.

Continuing the slow return to my thread, after a nice respite and a critically-needed focusing on family matters -

There have been, understandably, a lot of suggestions as to why this recent spectacular rise of TSLA began. I agree with a good fraction of those - that is, I think there has been a concatenation of reasons - but out of courtesy to each I am not going to enumerate the ones which I feel bear more weight than others.

Rather, I am going to return to the one which mirrored best my own beliefs and which also was the proximal cause for my resuming posting. That is the post of Papafox’s that described an unnamed individual investor suggesting that his having been contacted by BlackRock was a five-alarm BUY! signal - that at least one arm of that inconceivably immense organization (between 9 and 11 trillion dollars under management) was about to or had started accumulating TSLA.

That occurred on 24 May, when TSLA was at $184.29. Eleven trading days, $62.40 and 33.9% ago. Helluva start to a good run. And can you imagine how horrible that investor would now be feeling had he taken the bait of the premium to those covered calls at that time?

I remain single-mindedly focused on one Market situation, as in the above from the May 24 - June 8 period. The next 13F deadline is August 14 (so long from now!); that is when we will learn the extent to which BlackRock has or hasn't increased its TSLA position. For the record, as of March 31, they held 178.66MM shares, #2 amongst Institutional Investors after Vanguard's 220.62MM. I'll wager they may have surpassed Vanguard by the end of last quarter.

I thought of this Tesla Twitter supporter when I saw this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1680173469483278340

Remarkably early for 2Q's 13Fs to come out. Could this be for 1Q? There is no way I can see of accumulating 75MM shares at an average of $165 during the past quarter.

The horse I've been backing, BlackRock, is barely in the running, showing an increase of just 0.93MM at the impossibly low average of $92.74....more reason to suspect these data show 1Q's 13Fs, not 2Q's.

 

[heltok]

Hybrids were always going to be a dead end.
Hybridization only improves the fuel efficiency of a given platform by 25%. It’s hard to convince customers to pay a premium for more complexity and only 25% more fuel efficiency. Turning a 30mpg vehicle into a 37.5 mpg vehicle with a hybrid drivetrain is just not worth it to most people

One of the biggest myths about the Prius is that it’s selling hybrid technology. The selling point of the Prius is extreme efficiency and the hybrid drivetrain was just a part of that. A Prius without hybrid drivetrain would still get over 40mpg.
Before EVs became a thing, it was the way to show you cared about the environment.

Yeah. Imagine a alternative world with 100% EV where someone wants to introduce a hybrid ICE. Not just the engine, transmission, exhaust, cooling etc, you have to build an maintain the entire network of fuelling with mining and refining in far away countries. For what? Poising the cities, changing the atmosphere, noisy, vibration, worse performance, higher cost for driving, more points of failure etc. It's just stupid, that it comes from status quo doesn't make it less stupid than if it was a new technology.

 

[SPadival]

Remarkably early for 2Q's 13Fs to come out. Could this be for 1Q? There is no way I can see of accumulating 75MM shares at an average of $165 during the past quarter.

The horse I've been backing, BlackRock, is barely in the running, showing an increase of just 0.93MM at the impossibly low average of $92.74....more reason to suspect these data show 1Q's 13Fs, not 2Q's.

No idea at this time. SEC website doesn’t show any Q2 13F filing by Blackrock

 

[JRP3]

Curios to see how that'll hold up, and looks like the middle front row seat was a casualty already on that front.

That may have been a casualty of needing an airbag where the center screen is.

 

[Tony73]

That would be true, but over the eight years and 140,000 miles I kept the 2004 Prius, my average was 60 mpg with ~50% trip miles. I don't doubt that some people only got 37.5 mpg, but it didn't take a lot of effort to increase that.

I was not implying that the Prius got 37.5mpg. I was just giving that as an example of what adding a hybrid drivetrain would do to the typical car that had not been designed from the ground up for extreme efficiency like the Prius.

 

[CorneliusXX]

That's funny that JP Morgan said this:

View attachment 956559
But their est avg price buy was $123.21

Presumably it's the JPMorgan trustee services buying shares on behalf of their customers (i.e. JPMorgan not making the decision to buy and not using their money) as opposed to prop trading which is mostly banned now. The price target is from their equity analysts which are basically just sales people providing marketing for their own agenda.

 

[2daMoon]

It's possible for the folded steel structure of teh exterior to create a stronger truck AND still not be considered an "exoskeleton." Your aggressive post is bordering cult-ish, blind defense when we don't even know anything about what final Cybertruck specs + price are.

One of the big advantages of an exoskeleton was that it was supposed to make the interior much more spacious. Curios to see how that'll hold up, and looks like the middle front row seat was a casualty already on that front.

Also, all this talk of the Cybertruck structure bing made to save money ("omg no paint shop!!!") but if it comes out at like $79,900 and at like 15% margins for the 350 mile range AWD version then does it really matter?

My opinion of the Cybertruck at those specs will be much different than if it were being sold at like $60,000. We'll see. Until then I have no strong opinion one way or the other, just going to remain cautiously pessemistic (again, all of Elon's gloomy refernces to the cybertruck being "hard to produce cheaply" and comments on it being a relatively niche product in the Tesla portfolio with projected sales of only 250k vs. the Cybertruck reveal where they sounded like they wanted to destroy the whole industry. If you don't see bad news coming you're a blind optimist). Sounds like to me they're going to try and jack up the margins for it as much as they can for the early adopters (while still remaining under the $80k IRA threshhold) and maximize volume sales with the mid-tier version of the truck. Similar to Model 3 pre-SR+.

Happy it has a Lightning-style frunk. Crossing my fingers for home battery backup as a day 1 reservation holder.

Cult-ISH? I'm a card-carrying member of the HODLorians. No ISH about it.

Only pointing out the facts to counter the question of whether or not the CT construction is basically the same as on the Y. It isn't.

Some insects are considered as having exoskeletons and still have internal bracing. Why is it assumed that because there are castings and stamped parts this somehow excludes the exterior cladding from being a significant structural part of the skeleton if designed to be that way?

The castings reduce parts count, just like on the 3 and Y. The stamped parts make it much easier to attach doors and their seals, and provide for the battery pack to easily attach using the structural pack technology developed since the CT reveal, which further speeds up production and reduces costs. Eventually, I could see the CT production going "unboxed" on new lines that are built if needed to accommodate demand.

The interior looks very spacious to me. YMMV

As for the pricing, of course the early adopters are going to pay more. That is what early adopters do, isn't it?

Tesla isn't "jacking up the margins" at all. They simply aren't going to sell any new product for a loss. Pricing will start high and come down as production ramps and the cost of production comes down with volume. This is part of the reason I waited a year after the reveal before making my reservation. I didn't want to be at the front of the line before the economy of scale brings a lower price. That, and I wanted to give my chairs more time to grow before selling them to fund a CT.

There is no need to consider "maximizing sales" until they are able to maximize production. I would take a SWAG for the ramp to reach 500K/year in late 2025 or even well into 2026. The mid-tier might be made available earlier than this, but it would be unlikely to affect "sales" because, as it is, the CT will be only feeding the reservation list for the next few years before any new orders are filled. Though it would be okay to be wrong. I like those kind of surprises.

As things are, I don't expect to see weeks, or months for delivery wait times when new customers can select options to order a CT online. It may very well show delivery time in years.

In fact, I'm counting on it, this way the SP has time to reach a comfortable orbital velocity on the way 2daMoon.

Congrats for ordering on day 1. I sincerely look forward to seeing a photo of your CT posted on TMC when you pick it up.

 

[MartinAustin]

This is amazing news that what I assume to be the first production Cybertruck has just been built. I'm assuming it is no longer a Beta production example. Question is... is it what they'll call a release candidate? Will it be driven around roads in the Austin area for testing purposes? (Driving it round and around the Gigafactory site won't be worth a lot... much better to test it on real roads) Or is some employee actually going to be driving this around on the roads at some point later this year as their own personal truck?

I wonder if the truck Elon tweeted about was this one... and the Tesla tweet was just delayed a few days. Or... did Elon drive a California-assembled example? Or a beta or release candidate? So many questions. Maybe he drove an RC and approved start-of-Production.

It's funny that Joe Tegtmeyer said "this is a rumor... can't verify it... but Tesla employees are working on the Cybertruck production line" - that was 5 days ago

Guaranteed deliveries starting in Q3. Now we can start to speculate if they will bring it forward. They launched Model 3 deliveries with just 30 cars.

Final question... will there be a Cybertruck at Austin's Cars & Coffee tomorrow morning?

 

[Singuy]

It's possible for the folded steel structure of teh exterior to create a stronger truck AND still not be considered an "exoskeleton." Your aggressive post is bordering cult-ish, blind defense when we don't even know anything about what final Cybertruck specs + price are.

One of the big advantages of an exoskeleton was that it was supposed to make the interior much more spacious. Curios to see how that'll hold up, and looks like the middle front row seat was a casualty already on that front.

Also, all this talk of the Cybertruck structure bing made to save money ("omg no paint shop!!!") but if it comes out at like $79,900 and at like 15% margins for the 350 mile range AWD version then does it really matter?

My opinion of the Cybertruck at those specs will be much different than if it were being sold at like $60,000. We'll see. Until then I have no strong opinion one way or the other, just going to remain cautiously pessemistic (again, all of Elon's gloomy refernces to the cybertruck being "hard to produce cheaply" and comments on it being a relatively niche product in the Tesla portfolio with projected sales of only 250k vs. the Cybertruck reveal where they sounded like they wanted to destroy the whole industry. If you don't see bad news coming you're a blind optimist). Sounds like to me they're going to try and jack up the margins for it as much as they can for the early adopters (while still remaining under the $80k IRA threshhold) and maximize volume sales with the mid-tier version of the truck. Similar to Model 3 pre-SR+.

Happy it has a Lightning-style frunk. Crossing my fingers for home battery backup as a day 1 reservation holder.

Btw 250k/year is Elon's definition of volume production as this is 5k/week+downtime. It doesn't really say anything about projected sales. If Tesla is keeping this product at 250k/year while demand far exceeds demand tells me they are projecting a battery shortage in 2 years. So most likely they will cap CT at this volume as it takes a stupid number of batteries and sell high margin version while making the single motor version disappear from the menu.

In 2 years Mexico is suppose to be up and running with the 25k high volume car needing batteries. Megapack is at full ramp by then as well as Semi.

So to me Tesla is projecting a bottle neck in 2 years time. We will see how they maneuver out of the situation. I think they are being conservative with their lithium refinery (which will be done in 2 years) not producing as expect since it's their first time getting into that market.

Everyone needs to remember that when CT was announced, Musk projected that world wide demand for 3/Y would be around 500k/year, not 2M/year. CT was suppose to fill the void to 2M but got pushed way back due to 3/Y demand. When Musk on earnings call said "we will build the same or less cars if we push out our new products due to battery shortage" tells you that his projection of battery usage by 2021 was right on, however not the product mix he predicted.

 

[Dutchie]

Just for weekend OT

This lady has post always very thoughtful videos on a range of scientific and engineering topics. This video is great besides some minor details. Love to read the comments about peoples experiences with a Tesla. Many of them just a few months into their ownership.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Hi folks,

Remember that tweet Tesla sent out late, late overnite Friday? Something, something, "First Cybertruck built at Giga Texas!"

Well, that 'lil tweet got Texas-sized attention: 49.8M Views in the first day, and it's still getting 500K Views per hour right now.

Cheers to the LONGS!

 

[Christine69420]

My understanding is that FSD has always been on its own branch and those firmware releases have only gone out to cars that have paid for FSD.

Nope. My M3 got the 2023.20.8 firmware marked with FSD 11.3.6 on TeslaFi. I did not pay for full Autopilot on the M3. And FSD is not available here in Europe.