2daMoon
Mostly Harmless
You're just trying to mussel in on the humor, aren't you?
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
You're just trying to mussel in on the humor, aren't you?
Words of HABIT
Active Member
I receive a weekly investment news letter from a major financial institution (top 25 in the World). For the past seven months they have included in their weekly summary words of uncertainty, caution, sitting on the sidelines, defensive plays, utility, dividend paying stocks. All while the S&P 500 gained 20% and the Nasdaq gained 40%. Last Friday for the first weekly report this year they wrote of resilience, time to position for a market recovery, attractive markets.
I'm thinking the inverse. That the entire market (TSLA included) drifts sideways to lower for the 2nd half of 2023 as valuations have gotten ahead of their companies. War on Ukraine is in its 18th month and shows no signs of slowing down, civil unrest in central Africa, looming US political showdown, global boiling with countries burning and others flooding due to climate change accelerated by burning of fossil fuels, higher inflation (gas prices, food prices and real estate on the rise again in Canada), higher interest rates projected for longer period of time, too much froth and speculation in the market such as recent run up of EV start-up stocks (Fisker, Canoo, Nikola).
For TSLA the next major catalyst is the production ramp-up of Cybertruck. Although I expect Cybertruck to commence selling in Q4 2023, the ramp up to >1000 vehicles per week is unlikely to occur until Q2 or Q3 2024, S-curve and all. The shut down of Fremont for retooling is in its seven day. The longer the shutdown, the less likely Tesla will far exceed its target of 1.8M vehicles for 2023. This is a good buying opportunity before the rapid spike up in share price expected for 2024 with Cybertruck, Project Highland, Semi along with the continue growth of Model S, X and Y, and Tesla Energy, and hopefully improving macro conditions. The future looks green. Patient investors will be rewarded. I pity the day traders.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but what this tells me is that Tesla is throwing away 300K+ lines of code that has been tested for months, and replacing it with 3K lines of code, along with a huge neural net, that has not been tested. This makes me think they are still a long ways from finishing FSD. I'll believe FSD is imminent when reports of interventions are rare.
FSD will eventually get solved, and I think it will be a cash cow, but I'm not expecting that in the next few years. Even if they can go weeks between interventions, it will take a while before regulators approve FSD without a human driver (eg FSD drives while you take a nap).
I haven’t watched the video yet but we don’t even know what “licensing FSD“ means. Seems many people think it’s licensing Autosteer on City Streets and act like it will generate $15k revenue per OEM vehicle sold with it.
Mobileye and NVIDIA have already been doing this for a long time, the former being in a huge number of vehicles around the world and previously partnered with Tesla back in the AP1 days. The Average System Price for the ADAS sold by a company like Mobileye was $53.90 (not a typo, that’s fifty three dollars and ninety cents per system shipped) in 1Q23 and they bring in like $500million revenue per quarter.
Regulatory approval isn’t the roadblock, Tesla assuming liability for the driving task is what prevents this from happening.
Training is testing
Releases are then tested virtually against real and simulated situations
Then they go to internal real world testers
Then to a small set of public testers
Then widely
The original 300k lines of code were tested... but weren't passing with high enough marks.
Sandy Munro talks to RJ Scaringe mainly about their new drive unit:
Interesting that RJ says that having a rear motor disconnect increases efficiency by about 5%. I don't know how much the disconnect costs, but it seems like Tesla should look at adding that if it could add ~5% more range on the dual motor vehicles. (We know they think it is worth doing it on the Semi.) Or they could keep range the same and reduce the number of cells used. (I would go with adding range vs. reducing cell count.)
Interesting that RJ says that having a rear motor disconnect increases efficiency by about 5%. I don't know how much the disconnect costs, but it seems like Tesla should look at adding that if it could add ~5% more range on the dual motor vehicles. (We know they think it is worth doing it on the Semi.) Or they could keep range the same and reduce the number of cells used. (I would go with adding range vs. reducing cell count.)
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
So I 100% agree with this right up until here:
This.
Is.
Not.
A.
Thing.
Tesla could release FSD without a human driver today if they actually had a working system that did that in enough US states to cover roughly 1/3rd of the US population (at last check, might be higher by now).
Many US states already allow self driving cars with no "approval of regulators" needed.
Typically the MOST you need to do is submit a form to the state saying some form of "Our cars self drive- trust us bro" and have the state acknowledge they got it.
For example here's the form in Nevada:
Outside of stuff like identification info (who your company is, what model of car you're talking about) there's ONE page to fill out, where you check a few boxes to self-certify that you have insurance, the car can follow all rules/laws, and then a couple extra boxes depending on if it's L3 (needs a human) or L4/L5 (does not need a human).
how much time is elapsed for each "then"? That's what my point was about why I think they are still a long ways away.
Yes, indeed. For this discussion, I will not so humbly suggest members read, digest and follow what your Thread Originator, Sr. Moderator, Viewer From Remote Alaska and Wall St. Graybeard has to share in this thread. Here is a repetition of what prompted me to resume posting, beginning about two months ago. Agglomerating those half-dozen subsequent posts of mine to place into this one became a little awkward, but still should be understandable. Plus, below those entries, something new:
Gee, a lot of posts that deal with TSLA. That in itself is a bullish enough signal to get me out of self-enforced
@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
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.
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.
And now for some full disclosure and a whole-hearted, abject, humble apology to @Papafox for using him as my catspaw. I requested that he create a post mentioning what a friend told him. And I do count him as a friend…I just hope he remains one. The truth is, it was I who was approached by BlackRock; that is what got this whole ball rolling. I did believe at the time, however, it was not appropriate to show my hand.
Listen to the few graybeards on this thread and forum. “Time in the market…” and all that.
Phobi
Member
Easy now people, easy…
Let’s keep the shellfish remarks to a minimum here
…and with that, 3 more to call my own, thanks for the discount Reuters!
Ah, I focused on "Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but what this tells me is that Tesla is throwing away 300K+ lines of code that has been tested for months"
as if testing indicates quality.
Tesla FSD Beta miles per day gets higher all the time (fleet size and adoption rate), and the iteration cycles get shorter.
ToTheStars
Member
I get where you're coming from.
If the 300k lines of C++ would be replaced with some other Software 1.0* code, I would agree. But because it's replaced with neutral nets, things could turn out quite differently.
*Source:
Software 2.0
I sometimes see people refer to neural networks as just “another tool in your machine learning toolbox”. They have some pros and cons, they…
karpathy.medium.com
cliff harris
Member
Coder for 42 years here (on and off).
Nothing feels better on a large project than being able to throw away old lines of code. If the new code leads to simplicity, then this is the holy grail. Code tends to just stack, and stack and turn from what was once elegance to... spaghetti, full of bugs and impossible to understand.
As a C++ programmer, the thing I want most to hear is 'we threw away a huge chunk of code and replaced it with this elegant solution that is way simpler'. The very WORST thing imaginable is to brag about how many more lines of code were written by a vast army of coders. Bloated code kills efficiency, and leads to unreliable software.
Tesla is VERY lucky to have an ex programmer as CEO. So many conventional productivity metrics make no sense in the world of programming, but unless the very top brass are coders too, its hard to make that part of the culture.
Nothing feels better on a large project than being able to throw away old lines of code. If the new code leads to simplicity, then this is the holy grail. Code tends to just stack, and stack and turn from what was once elegance to... spaghetti, full of bugs and impossible to understand.
As a C++ programmer, the thing I want most to hear is 'we threw away a huge chunk of code and replaced it with this elegant solution that is way simpler'. The very WORST thing imaginable is to brag about how many more lines of code were written by a vast army of coders. Bloated code kills efficiency, and leads to unreliable software.
Tesla is VERY lucky to have an ex programmer as CEO. So many conventional productivity metrics make no sense in the world of programming, but unless the very top brass are coders too, its hard to make that part of the culture.
Yep. So much depends on where you drive as well. We live in a valley that if you go on a 100 kilometre road trip the conditions closely match EPA test conditions. Speed limits, amount of highway compared to city etc. It’s easy for us to achieve EPA range on that trip which we make quite often.
Jmho.
The answer is that people are stupid. Driving conditions and how you drive impact all vehicles but nobody paid attention when you could just pull into a gas station and fill up. Maybe Tesla uses a slightly more generous EPA method but it's hardly an issue. When I drive like the EPA test I get the rated range. That's good enough for me.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
That must be why FITCH downgraded the US Economy yesterday (you can't make this *sugar* up... oh wait): QQQ down 2% on this made-up "news"? Bah-haha!
- Fitch downgrades U.S. credit rating following spring debt standoff | USAToday
- Fitch downgrades US credit rating from AAA to AA+ | BBC News
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
Randy Kirk "trimmed" this morning, according to his youtube video (wouldn't sell at $300, but now swelling at $255 -- reading too much FITCH news, he said he never heard of them before today, then sold shares...)
Lordy, lordy, time for some Grecian Formula, Randay...
Cheers to the Longs!
I'm thinking about using some of my yearly bills cash to buy some short term TSLA in my fun account. While I don't think we are going to run up anywhere near the ATH this year, I do think we'll end 2023 somewhere between $300-$350, so this price today is extremely tempting for a short term trade.
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