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

[NicoV]

The statistics are probably that Tesla cars don't have buttons and all European make cars do. Thus Tesla should conform because "reasons". Can't be different, and certainly can't be more efficient, that would be unfair.

Even the newest Teslas have physical controls for the turn signals, wipers, horn and hazard lights. The article is about touch screen controls, so don’t see why this would impact the Tesla NCAP rating.

 

[Todd Burch]

The statistics are probably that Tesla cars don't have buttons and all European make cars do. Thus Tesla should conform because "reasons". Can't be different, and certainly can't be more efficient, that would be unfair.

Thats the part I wasn’t going to say out loud. Feels more like the result of competing car companies lobbying to pull Tesla back than solving a legitimate problem.

Reminds of the reason we have these stupid noisemakers on our Teslas when we back up. Another consequence of a solution in search of a problem.

 

[Todd Burch]

Even the newest Teslas have physical controls for the turn signals, wipers, horn and hazard lights. The article is about touch screen controls, so don’t see why this would impact the Tesla NCAP rating.

I suppose it depends on how they define “physical controls”. The article seems to imply that the lack of stalks will be a problem for Tesla, but I also know better than to trust an article. Does the non-haptic turn signal button in the Highland 3 count as a “separate physical control?” What about the haptic buttons in the S/X?

As for the Giga Berlin incident, I’m wondering if this group isn’t really an environmental activist group but represent “other interests” and are just posing as an environmental group.

I know it seems all conspiracy-theory-like, but I don’t understand how the company whose primary mission is environmental protection is the target of such vitriol from an alleged environmental group. Why not target VW plants after dieselgate? It’s just insane.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Clearly the solution to the recent Berlin issue is MOAR MEGAPACKS. If they have enough to run the plant for a few days without outside power, and provide grid services the rest of the time, then the "activists" will have to go really big or go home.

(/s : Yes, obviously having enough for days is power is highly impractical and implausible...)

 

[Cult Member]

Clearly the solution to the recent Berlin issue is MOAR MEGAPACKS. If they have enough to run the plant for a few days without outside power, and provide grid services the rest of the time, then the "activists" will have to go really big or go home.

(/s : Yes, obviously having enough for days is power is highly impractical and implausible...)

But MEGAPACKS will burn more spectacular /s

 

[Drax7]

Six years ago, Elon’s pay package was to get Tesla to certain production and 650B market cap in 10 years. Repeat, in TEN years. Practically everyone thought that was impossible and that Elon was crazy to accept that package. If we didn’t have the massive overshoot a few years ago, we’d all be ecstatic today.

I don’t know about you all but 6 years ago, I never would have guessed the SP would be even at today’s level. I try to remind myself of this on bad days.

Edit: Perspective with this video:

Its was more of a lottery ticket than a pay package, absurdly out of range.
Would Mary Barry have accepted that package, of course not.

The “friendly “ board was actually negotiating with acute greed,
Offering an absurdly unreal package and no cash compensation for
Years, all while Elon took no salary.

 

[Zero CO2]

picked up 25 shares premarket @ $183.50 ... Tesla /Elon FUD seems to be at all time high " Elon Bad" to the extreme

 

[2daMoon]

Tesla /Elon FUD seems to be at all time high " Elon Bad" to the extreme

I prefer to hold this sentiment as "Elon bad, to the bone" in a George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers kinda way.

 

[unk45]

There is almost no one on this forum claiming Elon is on balance bad for Tesla. At the end of the day, he is still one of the most talented business leaders of the last half century.

…
Lastly, anecdotes are meaningful when they relate to something that should never happen. The CEO’s behavior should never be part of any car buyer’s consideration.

This topic continues to generate major attention among us, retail investors, but perhaps less so than others. We seem to have a tendency to overstate the consequences of Elon’s propensity to share his views on, seemingly, everything. So, perhaps we might quickly review other such cases in business and reflect of consequences:
Henry Ford: notably and notoriously eccentric. Refused homogenized milk, promoted belief in vast Jewish conspiracies, accepted award from Hitler. How much damage to Ford?
John J McCloy: (outside of banking and historians, not a household name. Supported IG Farben in early Nazi years, later still became Chairman of The Chase Manhattan Bank and Assistant Secretary of War. Zero consequences for him! He did oppose Nuclear bomb on Japan, so was a bit nuanced.
Thomas Edison: quote Forbes; Thomas Edison Was A Cranky Dude (And Other Reasons You Should Follow His Lead)

All three and many more were rather warped and odd people. Especially Edison was notably plagaristic, which never really harmed his legacy at all. There are dozens of other examples, from Bill Gates to Wernher von Braun, with greater and/or lesser flaws. Even Albert Einstein was not a paragon of morally pristine behavior.

Fundamentally it seems that great accomplishments invariably bring also great pressures. Elon Musk has had those in intensity, from total dismissal from President Biden, intense scrutiny from SpaceX and Tesla competitors and many others. We all know that. Still, for some arcane reason we all expect him to be superhuman emotionally and to ignore false accusations , discriminatory treatment and personal attacks. He, who developed the core technology to allow Google Maps to function and, at 12 years old, a video game (Blastar) before he did Reusable rockets and electric cars.

We expect him to be normal ? Frankly, impossible. In my opinion, the final tipping point for him was the forced closure of Fremont during COVID-19 early waves when :
“The tweets came a day after health officials from Alameda County told Tesla that it was not yet allowed to resume production of electric vehicles in Fremont because of fears that the coronavirus could spread among the company’s workers. Manufacturers have been allowed to restart work in other parts of the state that have had less severe outbreaks of the virus.”
Should he have ignored that discriminatory treatment when local rules were highly varied and exceptions common at the time? Remember Tesla was just ramping Model 3 and beginning Model Y at the time.

Then consider the White House conference on Electric Vehicles that left out the only major BEV maker of near 100% US content, by far the largest BEV producer. How can anyone imagine a rational calm tranquil response to a fundamentally obvious blunder, purportedly because Tesla was not unionized but who knows for certain exactly why such an egregious thing happened?

Then top all this off with a nonsensical order repudiating the action nearly all of us approved, knowing the prospect that was very unlikely, but in actuality delivered >1000% gains to many of us and many billions for Elon Musk. I still remember: “Nearly impossible, but just imagine!”, and it happened!! Miraculous. Oh, that was too, too, much. He’s rich anyway!

 

[ggies07]

Apparently there has been an explosion at a power substation feeding Giga Berlin, foul play is assumed

https://twitter.com/x/status/1764923761499705853

https://twitter.com/x/status/1764927094474035550

I'm so confused...Tesla has billions in cash, so why does every factory not have enough solar/battery storage for outages like this?

 

[Huskyf]

I'm so confused...Tesla has billions in cash, so why does every factory not have enough solar/battery storage for outages like this?

Because they install it when Giga is finished like Giga Texas that's now received powerpack

 

[Cult Member]

This is from the group that is currently camping in the forest near Giga Berlin-Brandenburg. They understand that it wouldn't be a good idea to destroy the infrastructure, maybe bring people into danger and have the local citizens' initiative against them.

Statement from ROBIN WOOD on media reports about the power outage at Tesla​

March 05, 2024
MOBILITY
PRESS RELEASE

ROBIN WOOD learned from the media this morning that there was apparently a power outage in the Erkner area in the Oder-Spree district in the early hours of the morning. According to the police, unknown persons set fire to a high-voltage pylon between Steinfurt and Hartmannsdorf. The fire damaged the high-voltage line to such an extent that the power supply to the surrounding villages and the nearby Tesla plant was cut off.

As there is currently a forest occupation near the Tesla factory in protest against its expansion, in which ROBIN WOOD activists are also participating, the ROBIN WOOD press office also received questions from the media about the incident today. We would therefore like to make it clear that we have no information about the reasons for the power outage. We firmly reject any connection with the activities of ROBIN WOOD.

ROBIN WOOD is a non-violent action group for nature and the environment that has been fighting for the preservation of our natural resources for over four decades.

ROBIN WOOD activists, together with local residents in Grünheide and other initiatives, are taking part in a variety of local protests such as forest walks, demonstrations and forest occupations in order to stand up together against the expansion of the Tesla factory and for a climate-friendly mobility transition with better public transport.

 

[phantasms]

I'm so confused...Tesla has billions in cash, so why does every factory not have enough solar/battery storage for outages like this?

In some places it's hard to find a Powerwall installer. "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

 

[wtlloyd]

Sortof sorry I brought up the algae thing. In my defense, I did call it a long shot that I remembered being hyped a bit 10+ years ago .

But since it's after hours ...from a cost perspective, algae has the advantage of reproducing on its own, much unlike silicon. On the other hand, humans make mistakes and I can totally imagine those self-replicating algae finding their way to a lake, or an ocean, and just forever producing diesel and destroying entire ecosystems.

Sure, there's probably some way to keep them locked into one area, or prevent them from reproducing without human intervention...but according to a documentary film I recall from back in 1993: "Nature, uh, finds a way."

Let's just move on from talking algae. All the big FF criminals have.

Big oil firms touted algae as climate solution. Now all have pulled funding

Insiders aren’t surprised as ExxonMobil, the last remaining proponent of green algae biofuel, ends research

www.theguardian.com

 

[Artful Dodger]

I'm so confused...Tesla has billions in cash, so why does every factory not have enough solar/battery storage for outages like this?

Seriously? Run the numbers, and tell us how many megapacks they'd need. TIA.

 

[unk45]

It is still early days for Tesla insurance. Is it at all surprising for an upstart company in insurance to show some losses? (I don't know, that's why I ask)

Seems like not too long ago there was a car company facing similar challenges. Then, after several years they reinvented how to build and sell cars profitably, much to the chagrin of the naysayers.

I wonder what could a company like that do with insurance when given time to apply first principles to the challenge?

Insurance underwriters invariably have operating losses in the beginning of operations, primarily because insurance, by definition, deals with loss probabilities, with the ‘law of large numbers’ ruling. Just as production only becomes efficient with scale, so does insurance. As Tesla underwriting scales, overhead grows much more slowly than does premium income. Further, as volume increases so does the variance from expected loss become lower. Those together yield increased profitability.

In short, those losses are a function of startup, not errors in judgement. We should be elated that they’re making disclosures already! I had expected larger losses, especially since they’re testing new underwriting processes.

 

[aubreymcfato]

This topic continues to generate major attention among us, retail investors, but perhaps less so than others. We seem to have a tendency to overstate the consequences of Elon’s propensity to share his views on, seemingly, everything. So, perhaps we might quickly review other such cases in business and reflect of consequences:
Henry Ford: notably and notoriously eccentric. Refused homogenized milk, promoted belief in vast Jewish conspiracies, accepted award from Hitler. How much damage to Ford?
John J McCloy: (outside of banking and historians, not a household name. Supported IG Farben in early Nazi years, later still became Chairman of The Chase Manhattan Bank and Assistant Secretary of War. Zero consequences for him! He did oppose Nuclear bomb on Japan, so was a bit nuanced.
Thomas Edison: quote Forbes; Thomas Edison Was A Cranky Dude (And Other Reasons You Should Follow His Lead)

All three and many more were rather warped and odd people. Especially Edison was notably plagaristic, which never really harmed his legacy at all. There are dozens of other examples, from Bill Gates to Wernher von Braun, with greater and/or lesser flaws. Even Albert Einstein was not a paragon of morally pristine behavior.

Fundamentally it seems that great accomplishments invariably bring also great pressures. Elon Musk has had those in intensity, from total dismissal from President Biden, intense scrutiny from SpaceX and Tesla competitors and many others. We all know that. Still, for some arcane reason we all expect him to be superhuman emotionally and to ignore false accusations , discriminatory treatment and personal attacks. He, who developed the core technology to allow Google Maps to function and, at 12 years old, a video game (Blastar) before he did Reusable rockets and electric cars.

We expect him to be normal ? Frankly, impossible. In my opinion, the final tipping point for him was the forced closure of Fremont during COVID-19 early waves when :
“The tweets came a day after health officials from Alameda County told Tesla that it was not yet allowed to resume production of electric vehicles in Fremont because of fears that the coronavirus could spread among the company’s workers. Manufacturers have been allowed to restart work in other parts of the state that have had less severe outbreaks of the virus.”
Should he have ignored that discriminatory treatment when local rules were highly varied and exceptions common at the time? Remember Tesla was just ramping Model 3 and beginning Model Y at the time.

Then consider the White House conference on Electric Vehicles that left out the only major BEV maker of near 100% US content, by far the largest BEV producer. How can anyone imagine a rational calm tranquil response to a fundamentally obvious blunder, purportedly because Tesla was not unionized but who knows for certain exactly why such an egregious thing happened?

Then top all this off with a nonsensical order repudiating the action nearly all of us approved, knowing the prospect that was very unlikely, but in actuality delivered >1000% gains to many of us and many billions for Elon Musk. I still remember: “Nearly impossible, but just imagine!”, and it happened!! Miraculous. Oh, that was too, too, much. He’s rich anyway!

I'm not gonna dispute the merit, but I'll just say that this is the social media era, where everyone has a computer in his pocket and many platforms to express their opinions, and pretty much all those platform function on dopamine and AI in such a vicious cycle that the more a reaction is immediate and visceral the more viral it will become.
If Henry Ford was alive today you can bet there would be consequences (in either directions) for Ford.
Culture wars are a thing.

 

[unk45]

Another problem with cellular photosynthesis is that about 50% of the primary energy obtained is used for cellular respiration. The advantage of silicon is it doesn't eat or breathe.

Note that there are triple-junction photovoltaic cells, which are build in layers each optimized to absorb a different wavelenght of light (addressing the band gap issue). Better performance and efficiency, but much more expensive. Typically only used in spacecraft, but not economical on Earth where you can just buy 3x the panels for 1/15th of the price.

We might mention bifacial n-class panel now at ~30%, and perovskite, finally becoming ready for production that will be even better. So far these panels are LESS expensive than their predecessors. Batteries still becoming cheaper too.

 

[unk45]

Tesla is the insurance company, not the agent/broker, so no they do not make any commission on the insurance policies - they bear the result of their underwriting.

They lost $30m while writing $387m of premiu, which means they paid out $417m in claims - about 107.7% underwriting loss ratio. This is pretty bad as the industry average is about 75-80%. Even in Las Vegas where auto insurance is out of control due to tourism, drunk driving, and too much lawyering, in the 10+ years I was an agent for a major carrier the typical UW loss ratio was in the 90% range. Don’t forget UW loss ratio is only what you paid out in claims, it doesn’t include your operational costs yet which easily is 20-30% of your premium written. Based on the Tesla insurance’s loss ratio or 127-137%, most carriers will either have to completely revamp their underwriting guideline, fire current customers by raising their rates, fire the people in charge of rating decisions, and sometimes even exit the market completely.

Hopefully Tesla insurance can get their act together. Their rates for Las Vegas is still higher than what I have currently with Safeco. In my experience, their rates are not favorable for customers who are typically targeted by most insurance companies: high credit scores, home ownership, clean driving record, etc. (at least in Las Vegas).

It’s a startup. You’re expecting day one profits. Never happens! It’s at startup! NO insurance underwriting program makes money in startup mode, None! zero! Never%,
PLEASE understand this is a startup, PLEASE!

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

I'm fairly sure we'll see either price or PE compression for TSLA this year, and maybe even in 2025. We'll see some growth for Tesla in 2024 but I suspect much lower than most want. TSLA is going to look very unappealing compared to the rest of the Mag 7, in many ways it's performance compared to those other stocks already shows this.

Now, long term, TSLA will be fine and we'll pass our ATH eventually. I simply don't see any catalysts coming in 2024 (and most of 2025) which would qualify to do that though:

- CT won't contribute to revenues substantially until mid-late 2025.
- Semi volume production is still a year or more away from starting.
- FSD is still in beta and Level 5 is still very much an unknown.
- Gen3 isn't going into production until late 2025 at the earliest.
- Production ramp on M3 and MY will be lower than usual for 2024 (and probably 2025 too).
- Margins are low and though they might rise a bit in 2024 we won't be seeing our old margins back anytime soon.
- Our next factory, Giga Mexico, is still 1-2 years from any kind of production starting up.

The few shining lights on our dim short term road could be:

- Megapacks might scale quicker than most expect and could help the fundamentals.
- Optimus progress seems promising, if the market wakes up to the Tesla Bot's potential it could boost TSLA.
- FSD is v12 now, full learning AI, so progress from here on out might accelerate. Maybe. Possibly.

In short I really do think we are in for a year or two of TSLA trading sideways between $150-$250. Long term TSLA will easily pass our ATH of $415 and probably get up to (or surpass) $1000, probably sometime around 2030 or so I'd think.

TSLA share holders can either hold on for the ride or get off the train. Honestly I can't blame anyone for selling TSLA if they lose confidence, HOLDing through the rough periods isn't easy and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered selling all my TSLA and going all in on NVDA. It's tempting and much more promising in the short term. I still have faith in Tesla's long term vision though, I think it will one day be the largest company by market cap in the world, so I'm HOLDing.

I might come to regret that one day, but I don't think I will.

Would have been nice if you had shared this prophecy with us when the price was closer to $300.