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

[Mengy]

I am suspending judgment on the delivery numbers until the report and call. Too many possible factors at play, and not enough information.

My fear is Tesla won't give much guidance in the ER. A further lack of info after these numbers could breed fear and doubt in the market which could drive TSLA down even further.

It's certainly going to be an interesting ER this month, no two ways about it.

 

[Usain]

I'm very skeptical many people will use their car as a robotaxi even if it is capable of doing so.

Most robotaxis will be Gen 3, owned by Tesla or by another dedicated robotaxi company.

As for privately owned Gen 2 vehicles, if any are used as robotaxis it will mostly be after they were sold to one of those companies.

 

[indysurfer]

IRT - Elon's politics and demand.

I guess the question is - is there a larger market of disgruntled Liberals who are willing to buy inferior (and more expensive?) EV's to spite Elon than there is an untapped market of EV skeptical Conservatives who like Elon's politics? There are no doubt some very wealthy folks who can afford to virtue signal, but most can't.

I live in a pretty big liberal bubble and EV Mecca, but travel the country frequently for work (Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada) - and have personally gotten several extremely Conservative acquaintances to buy or consider Tesla's because they now like Elon and have a better understanding how "American" and how good the product is.

I think the Cybertruck is a great gateway drug to get Conservative EV skeptics to begin considering EV's over ICE. Don't think a cheaper Model 2 or fancier Roadster would have the same cultural impact of converting the biggest EV skeptics we have in America.

 

[Gigapress]

If you assume that there's a very limited number of companies with AVs then they can potentially have high margins by having prices lower than Uber.
But the more competition, the more margins my be squeezed.
That's why I think Tesla pursued low cost AV, and why I think in the end you'd have private cars with AV, privately-owned AV taxis, and company-owned AV taxis.

That’s the biggest question in my opinion. How many companies figure out autonomy in the first place? Zero? Tesla only? Five?

Even if there are competitors with viable autonomous driving technology, they still would need to compete on cost, service value, and speed of scaling in the early years. Tesla will probably win on every important category:

• Cost to manufacture
• Cost to service
• Vehicle reliability and longevity
• Vehicle manufacturing volume
• Vehicle energy efficiency

Competition is most likely in urban cores. In suburbs, rural areas, and small cities and towns, economies of scale will probably push the market to a winner-take-all dynamic. In any local market, whoever has the biggest network will have the most efficient network, if only because that means less driving time and distance between the endpoint of one payload trip and the starting point of the next. There’s also a winner-take-all effect with the leading TaaS provider being the default option for most people who don’t want to spend time and effort opening multiple apps to shop around. We already see this with Uber having about triple the market share as Lyft.

 

[uscbucsfan]

I think the Cybertruck is a great gateway drug to get Conservative EV skeptics to begin considering EV's over ICE. Don't think a cheaper Model 2 or fancier Roadster would have the same cultural impact of converting the biggest EV skeptics we have in America.

$100K+ vehicles aren't going to attract EV skeptics en masse.

 

[SarahsDad]

Nice positive summary from Teslaconomics over on X for those of us who may be losing hope. I agree with all his statements.

Do the Q1 delivery numbers worry me? Yes absolutely. Am I selling? Nope. I have a 5-10 year investing timeframe and am willing to weather the short term storms to enjoy the (crossed fingers) long term gains.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1775192586329997362

 

[sunwarriors]

If robotaxi's eventually replace a large number of drivers in cities, would drivers/cities/government's block/lobby against this hard due to job losses? We see how things like solar gets killed due to utilities/politics/special interests/etc (course, they didn't care of the solar job cuts).

 

[Musskiah]

I always have a question:
if Robotaxi becomes so successful, wouldn't that mean a great decline in personal-owned car sales? Wouldn't that hurt Tesla's delivery number?
How could that be good to TESLA in the future? (Though we all know that Q1 delivery is not good and Q2 cannot be expected too much...)

These are critical questions to which I do not claim to know the answer. There is no doubt personal-owned car sales will certainly decrease in a robotaxi world. There is also no doubt that, in that world, it will be the other non-autonomous (OEM) vehicle sales will suffer far more than Tesla. Lastly, by that time, the Automotive Revenue will truly not hold a candle to the Autonomy (or Energy) Revenue. Tesla will no longer be an Auto company as much as an AI and Energy company. I suspect we are talking around 2030 here.

 

[Singuy]

This probably won’t get a warm reception here but it might be relevant for investors.

I’m driving my second Tesla now and will not buy another, specifically because of Elon Musk. He’s turned my car into a MAGA hat and I want to be as far away from the brand as possible.

The moment that FSD allows the sale of my car to break even, I’m out, though his nonsense in that regard probably means I’ll take a bath on this car.

Even if Elon is gone it’ll be a while before the stink is off the brand. I’m willing to accept a (moderately) inferior car to be away from Tesla and I’m willing to lose money to do so. Anecdotally I have a friend who is a surgeon and a friend who is a prominent TV producer and both have moved on from their Teslas for this reason.

Anyway, flame away.

You sure Tesla is not a Temu knock off "MAGGA" hat? Trump have been trashing Tesla every chance he gets.

 

[Musskiah]

I'm coming around to the idea that FSD will eventually start to drive sales because, "Who wants a car that you have to drive manually?"

It will be like manual versus automatic transmissions. Almost everyone wants automatic.

this

 

[aubreymcfato]

You sure Tesla is not a Temu knock off "MAGGA" hat? Trump have been trashing Tesla every chance he gets.

This is very true. It could also mean that the very liberal people who follow some MSM and/or Elon on X now disagree vehemently with him, and he still hasn't gotten hold of the real MAGAs. Lose-Lose

 

[mtndrew1]

You sure Tesla is not a Temu knock off "MAGGA" hat? Trump have been trashing Tesla every chance he gets.

That’s funny but I probably should have just said “political” hat.

I’m a liberal but I wouldn’t want a Biden hat as a car either. I’m under no illusion that the CEOs of other carmakers aren’t also distasteful in this regard, I just don’t want the giant blue shiny object in which I spent a third of each day to project any political association.

 

[Gigapress]

My fear is Tesla won't give much guidance in the ER. A further lack of info after these numbers could breed fear and doubt in the market which could drive TSLA down even further.

It's certainly going to be an interesting ER this month, no two ways about it.

In any case I just want more info. This quarter everyone’s estimates were off by a huge margin. This indicates that nobody outside the company has a good understanding of what happened in Q1. I see no good reason to assume why the same people would have a better understanding today than they did yesterday just because the headline numbers were released.

 

[Musskiah]

If there’s heavy dew on mine, some of the cameras will be blocked. Also, at night, if a car pulls next to me at a stoplight or passes, it causes some of the cameras to go blind.

Does this lead to forced disengagement?

 

[NicoV]

I heard from Tesla employees that for this Q, the problem in Europe was of total demand and not logistics.

Well, deliveries in Norway seem to continue swiftly in the new quarter, which is very unusual and points to a logistics issue to get these delivered in Q1:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1775204074222227604

 

[Gigapress]

If robotaxi's eventually replace a large number of drivers in cities, would drivers/cities/government's block/lobby against this hard due to job losses? We see how things like solar gets killed due to utilities/politics/special interests/etc (course, they didn't care of the solar job cuts).

They can try and it might work in the short term. But the markets that allow it will reap enormous benefits and eventually the transition will be unstoppable if only due to competitive pressures and desire for economic growth.

 

[GhostSkater]

Yo, some good news

Finally got the Matrix Headlights updated, can't wait to test it once it's dark

 

[Usain]

$100K+ vehicles aren't going to attract EV skeptics en masse.

A whole lot of truck buyers plunk down 70K or more. Cybertruck will play nicely in that market.

 

[Singuy]

That’s funny but I probably should have just said “political” hat.

I’m a liberal but I wouldn’t want a Biden hat as a car either. I’m under no illusion that the CEOs of other carmakers aren’t also distasteful in this regard, I just don’t want the giant blue shiny object in which I spent a third of each day to project any political association.

Well any EV which is against the norm already inherently has political association until Evs become the norm. You kind of knew this going in....

Like the CEO of ford is not political but a F150 with two gigantic pipes that blow smoke is. So it's more about how you use the product. Have a snarky gas shaming license plate and there's nothing Elon can do to make that Tesla less politically obnoxious to the opossing party.

 

[AndrewZ]

Nice positive summary from Teslaconomics over on X for those of us who may be losing hope. I agree with all his statements.

Do the Q1 delivery numbers worry me? Yes absolutely. Am I selling? Nope. I have a 5-10 year investing timeframe and am willing to weather the short term storms to enjoy the (crossed fingers) long term gains.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1775192586329997362

As a general rule, red days are for buying and green days are for selling not the other way around.

Problems can emerge when people refuse to accept reality, however, or even consider viewpoints that conflict with their core beliefs and this can be disastrous when combined with risky investing (or perhaps more aptly trading/gambling) strategies.

If things are going to be bad for whatever reason, it would be prudent to acknowledge it, set expectations thusly, and act accordingly. People shouldn’t just believe everything will always be hunky-dory, or there’s a risk of missing opportunities or worse.

I guarantee Tesla’s leaders don’t always think things will be great, and that’s how Kimbal dumped massive amounts of stock at almost the absolute peak.