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

[DarkandStormy]

Do you have examples where you believe he was untruthful?

There's a difference between stating what one believes to be truthful and correct, and always being correct.

-Semi convoy technology is something we can do "now" (said in 2017)

-none of the solar roofs at the Solar Roof unveiling event were actually hooked up. To my knowledge, they've only ever manufactured one of the four prototypes.

-Superchargers will be free forever.

Should I go on?

 

[scaesare]

I enjoy being right. That's why I do investing instead of political debates, because your bank account proves whether you're right or wrong. And I've been VERY right compared to everyone here over the last year. I'm here because I've been pointing the delusions on this site since everyone aggressively slammed Wall Street and Gary when they doubted the 20 million number, and we had really moronic predictions from people like The Accountant and Gigapress who take best case scenario assumptions as baseline truths in their models. And people here who were ignoring the signs of the 4680 battery slowdown when even Limiting Factor started turning on it after the first tear downs. Warning against people who took that clown James Duoma seriously about all his FSD praise like 3 years ago (oh look we're 3 years in the future and no robotaxi). Also saying things like how Tesla needs to be end-to-end to have any shot at FSD because hard coding any logic wouldn't work. And people were like "oh you think you know more than Elon?!?!?!" Guess I did. And it's all the effing negativity and inability to have an objective perspective from people like @Krugerrand that have totally poisoned this place. And thus, you're enduring this fall. Except uplike two years ago, it's actually justified this time because Tesla sales are down YoY while BYD is pumping out the car Tesla should've pumped out two years ago.


So now I'm simply here to say "told you so" and to keep planting more flags when I return in the future when my predictions are proven right again.

Now you can be salty at me or heed my words:

Tesla probably gets FSD working in suberban areas at the worst case scenario (they will probably disguise the language by saying they're production constrained and choosing where to saturate a market, but in reality it's because FSD will only work on easy areas). Does that move the stock? Maybe, IDK.

IF FSD is solved in the next decade, probably Tesla who does it first (Waymo can technically be deployed in most major cities but i don't see the path to high valuation with how costly their implementation is).

Tesla gets Optimus working before robotaxis, and depending on how easy it is to train it to do new tasks Tesla makes a bajillion dollars (because Figure AI is a joke if you look at the CEO's background/words on Twitter, Figure's origin, and the FOMO VC money that went into there... and it's wild how stupid/replaceable many jobs are).

Tesla Energy with corporate installations becomes bigger than auto by 2030 (give or take 3 years). Power walls suck and will never compete in retail, but the software reliability for corporate/utility application justifies the "Tesla premium" and that alone makes Tesla a huge huge market. Hedging this statement based on development of zinc, sodium, and other batteries and where Tesla stands on that.

Where you put your money is up to you. Rates can get cut next year with Republican congress and Tesla's valuation runs regardless of fundamentals. I probably think this stock is dead for the next 1-2 years though. I'm riding out the current crypto wave and probably rotating back into Tesla when next bear market happens (funny, so many people shitting on me for the innovative tech in crypto that they don't understand and call a ponzi scheme when Tesla is now in the same boat of cutting edge tech most laugh at them for vs. safe predictable cash flow of unit volume sales). Still have several thousands shares in my taxable accounts, so I'm still in unfortunately. About to put in $50k into xAI as I'm getting class A preferred share access. But enjoy downvoting me and losing money y'all, vs. trying to have objective discussions.

I try and reply to why I disagreed. There's many things here, and I think you are on an involuntary vacation, So I'll pick one:

And I've been VERY right compared to everyone here over the last year

 

[scaesare]

Today was the last day with “my” Model 3 of three weeks that turned into a month

You guys won’t believe how many kWh I used, maybe we do live in a simulation after all

Amazing experience and hope to own one one day, or a Model Y with a custom portal knuckle and air suspension that I started to sketch out and do some napkin math, easily +4” to +6” ground clearance when needed while keeping the factory ride height and handling when on pavement, add some A/T tires and it would be the ultimate stealth off roader

I have one complain, please don’t exile me for it, I miss the lack of audible feedback. I’m not saying I miss the ICE sound, I don’t, even been building and riding small electric vehicles for the past 10 or so years as a hobby and professionally, and all of them have a bit of speed and power dependent noise. The three has, but it’s so quiet that you can barely hear in most situations

Cybertruck videos shows that Tesla did put an effort into that for it, which makes sense with the target demographics

The rest top notch, no comments (maybe the wireless charger not having any cooling and overheating my phone and barely charging it, but I think it’s more of a phone problem than the car)

Already rented for 2 more weeks a month from now for a longer trip


View attachment 1036277

That's a smokin' amount of energy used...

 

[scaesare]

We have this one on our car. We still get the occasional honk.

Oof... Maybe a "Beta AI on board!" yellow diamond window sticker too?

 

[scaesare]

You don't get rid of brakes completely but you get rid of quite a bit of brake weight.

Look at the crazy big brake rotor on a Model S Plaid and the crazy big calipers and the pads even. Now compare those to a Toyota Tercel or a Nissan Sentra or the like.

If you are designing the car for a track like the Nürburgring you need huge break pads, calipers, and rotors. High top speeds, high weight, high braking need.

Now design a car that will never see a racetrack, you can limit it's top speed to 90 mph or maybe even less and it is likely to have half the battery pack weight and a smaller overall body. You can not only reduce the size of the brake components but once you do you can use smaller wheels (again saving weight).

It's a totally different use case so it can absolutely get rid of brake weight. Just use smaller and lighter components. But you still end up with physical brakes.

But he didn't say reduce weight for the application. He described removing friction driving brakes and going instead to a central single parking brake.

 

[scaesare]

In the not-too-distant future all vehicles will be able to communicate, making accidental collisions a thing of the past.

So only deliberate collisions? lol

Seriously, not all collisions are with other items that can communicate.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Oof... Maybe a "Beta AI on board!" yellow diamond window sticker too?

I recall an idea from years ago - there should be an FSD certification sticker on the window so RT passengers know it's not some other imitation FSD like Mobile Eye etc... Eventually the passenger will want to see that sticker before getting in an empty RT. Might even get NTSB on-board with the criteria.

No sticker = Budget ride, slower going
FSD Sticker = Faster and safer

 

[MP3Mike]

In the not-too-distant future all vehicles will be able to communicate, making accidental collisions a thing of the past.

"not-too-distant"? Highly doubtful. Even if in 5 years all new vehicles had communications, that could never be blocked or hacked, it would be decades, if not a century or more, before all the non-communication capable vehicles were off the road. (Not to mention other things like scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, etc.)

 

[scaesare]

-Semi convoy technology is something we can do "now" (said in 2017)

Well, Semi wasn't even released yet. So I think most people would interpret that to mean "Semi convoying is some we can do now (provided we had Semi's to convoy with)". Convoying a lead vehicle is not a particularly difficult task. Also, he said "can" not "are", so not a lie, right?

0 for 1.

-none of the solar roofs at the Solar Roof unveiling event were actually hooked up. To my knowledge, they've only ever manufactured one of the four prototypes.

Did they say they were? Many things are not (fully) functional at unveilings, from lots of manufacturers of different things.

(See also: prototype)

0 for 2

-Superchargers will be free forever.

And for the folks who bought at that time, they are. I'm one of them. Organizations "grandfather" folks in all the time when their business model changes.

0 for 3

Should I go on?

No... this is a disappointing showing.

 

[Mengy]

I thought a lot about the Reuters drama over the weekend. The idea that Tesla could decide to NOT make the consumer Gen3 with manual controls really bothered me, because my gut reaction is this would be a massive mistake for the company.

However, after a period of calming down and really thinking about this possible scenario, coupled with all the many miles I drove around on FSD v12.3.3 this weekend, would it really be a bad decision?

Let's suppose FSD gets to L5 by the time Gen3 goes into production, which is likely EoY 2025. That makes RT's a real possibility, and anyone who has done rough math on TaaS (Transportation as a Service, or Robotaxis) knows how profitable a fleet of EV RT's can be.

Tesla launching the RT fleet and foregoing the consumer Gen3 entirely has some interesting concepts around it:

1) Completely avoids Osbourning the M3 and MY with the Gen3 consumer car.
2) Focuses Gen3 production completely on RT's, which would greatly speed up deploying the RT fleet.
3) No one else would be able to compete with Tesla in the new RT market by 2025. Sure Waymo, Mobileye, and Cruise would have some market share but its likely to be in the single digits combined compared to Tesla's scalability with FSD.
4) Avoids the razor thin competitive margins of the car selling market. Let all the other OEMs fight for tiny margins on compact affordable EVs, while the majority of Teslas production focuses on the unchallenged new market of RT's.
5) We all know TaaS will over time eat away at auto market sales. People will stop buying cars as TaaS becomes more widespread due to TaaS being more economically affordable than car ownership.

A decision to go all in on RT production and forego the consumer Gen3 completely would basically be Tesla giving up on the traditional (dying) auto market to focus completely on the new burgeoning RT market instead. From a pure looking forward point of view, this kind of makes some sense honestly.

I still don't know what is actually going on, will Tesla make a consumer manual control Gen3 or not? We'll find out in time, but if they decide NOT to then maybe it isn't the huge mistake so many of us initially thought it would be.

 

[wtlloyd]

"not-too-distant"? Highly doubtful. Even if in 5 years all new vehicles had communications, that could never be blocked or hacked, it would be decades, if not a century or more, before all the non-communication capable vehicles were off the road. (Not to mention other things like scooters, bicycles, pedestrians, etc.)

"Beater" vehicles favored by low income drivers will become uneconomical as fuel and insurance cost rocket up in step with increased BEV and FSD use. This is different than how it has been for a hundred years. An entire global supply chain of manufacturing and distributing is going to get wacked in the next 20 years. Only the well-heeled enthusiasts will be running "fumers" in the sooner-than-you-think future.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Well, Semi wasn't even released yet. So I think most people would interpret that to mean "Semi convoying is some we can do now (provided we had Semi's to convoy with)". Convoying a lead vehicle is not a particularly difficult task. Also, he said "can" not "are", so not a lie, right?

0 for 1.



Did they say they were? Many things are not (fully) functional at unveilings, from lots of manufacturers of different things.

(See also: prototype)

0 for 2



And for the folks who bought at that time, they are. I'm one of them. Organizations "grandfather" folks in all the time when their business model changes.

0 for 3



No... this is a disappointing showing.

They have Semis now. Why are we not hearing about the convoy technology? Hint - because they can't do it.

Perhaps you forgot what was said at the Solar Roof unveiling. I get it, it's been 7.5 years.

It would appear you, like Musk, don't seem to quite comprehend the word "forever" like the rest of society. I thought all Superchargers were going to be powered by the sun? How's that going?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1078010341651492865

Look, if you want to bury your head in the sand on how Elon has misled customers and investors, that's your prerogative. I'll stand on the side of truth.

 

[MP3Mike]

5) We all know TaaS will over time eat away at auto market sales. People will stop buying cars as TaaS becomes more widespread due to TaaS being more economically affordable than car ownership.

It may eat away a small portion of the auto market, but I don't think it will be significant at least not in the next decade. There are just too many people that require owning a vehicle for whatever reason.

I will likely never give up owning a personal vehicle, even if I could no longer drive myself, I would want a car with FSD to drive for me. (Partially for the same reason I don't use any food delivery services, I would rather go get it myself. The "convenience" just isn't worth the costs and risks to me.)

I don't want Tesla to just give the small car market to the competitors for no good reason.

 

[Knightshade]

I thought a lot about the Reuters drama over the weekend. The idea that Tesla could decide to NOT make the consumer Gen3 with manual controls really bothered me, because my gut reaction is this would be a massive mistake for the company.

However, after a period of calming down and really thinking about this possible scenario, coupled with all the many miles I drove around on FSD v12.3.3 this weekend, would it really be a bad decision?

Yes.

Let's suppose FSD gets to L5 by the time Gen3 goes into production, which is likely EoY 2025. That makes RT's a real possibility, and anyone who has done rough math on TaaS (Transportation as a Service, or Robotaxis) knows how profitable a fleet of EV RT's can be.

Sure. But if it's not L5 (and Tesla has been years-wrong on when it will be, since at least 2016), then the company is in a very very bad position.

Or to put it another way:

Plan A:
Engineer a next-gen vehicle that consumers can buy with controls, and can also be a robotaxi.

Plan B:
Only design a robotaxi, betting on wide L4 if not L5 by end of 2025.


In plan A- if there's no L4 end of 2025, Tesla will still have a #1 selling new vehicle to sell millions of driving volume, revenue, profit, and the mission in large amounts. If there IS L4 end of 2025... they STILL will... plus those vehicles can be RTs immediately at an only slightly-less-than-optimal-but-still-high profit on the RT portion. While they take a year to mod it into a full RT-only design. Not much lost either way.

In plan B-If there IS L4 end of 2025, great! But if there's no L4 end of 2025, the company is now still stuck with the same existing models and an RT they can't actually sell because it can't self drive. Volume stays in the 2.x million range (or they slash 3/Y pricing so deep, without corresponding COGs reduction, to maybe get to 3M?). Either way it's years before they can fix this.



Tesla isn't a desperate verge-of-broke company anymore-- there's no reason they need to make a bet-the-company bet here with no backup plan.

 

[Drumheller]

How does Max Pain look for this week?

 

[willow_hiller]

Look, if you want to bury your head in the sand on how Elon has misled customers and investors, that's your prerogative. I'll stand on the side of truth.

You're arguing that Elon is saying one thing and secretly believing another. You haven't yet produced any evidence of that. It's on you to prove that he didn't believe they could do semi-convoying in 2017, or that they would make four styles of solar tile, or that supercharging would be free forever.

Nobody's arguing that Elon's never been wrong. He's made bold predictions and missed the mark multiple times. But it's entirely possible that he believes his predictions when he's making them.

 

[Todd Burch]

The difference between making a RT and a consumer Model 2 will not be significant. They are designed to be built simultaneously on the same line. Tesla will almost certainly (99.99999% probability) do both. But if FSD is solved and approved by regulators by the time it comes out (it won't be in general but may be in VERY limited locales) then Tesla may prioritize production of the RT first. That will take a few days of production (seriously) until that limited market is saturated, then they will proceed with consumer vehicles.

Over time, more regions will get approval and Tesla will prioritize RT over consumer vehicles when they can, but it will be quite awhile before all of the production capacity could be consumed by Robotaxis alone.

Tesla is not stupid. They will make both. Not even sure why we or anyone else is even considering this, it's silly.

 

[Usain]

They have Semis now. Why are we not hearing about the convoy technology? Hint - because they can't do it.

Convoy technology isn't available because it doesn't make sense to work on it yet. It would be a waste of resources needed to advance FSD and robotaxi. It has nothing to do with whether or not Tesla can do it.

 

[Krugerrand]

-Semi convoy technology is something we can do "now" (said in 2017)

Tesla actually did it (demonstration) with some of their semis between Fremont and GigaNevada. They may still be doing it as they move items back and forth between factories. They’d have a driver in each vehicle, but it would be easy to have the lead vehicle, you know, leading another with both (or more) vehicles on FSD.

-none of the solar roofs at the Solar Roof unveiling event were actually hooked up. To my knowledge, they've only ever manufactured one of the four prototypes.

They’re like on V3 or V4 and they’ve most definitely got them on roofs. I spoke face to face to a home owner that had them installed a number of years ago. He showed me around his home, including his PowerWall set up at the time.

-Superchargers will be free forever.

They are for some people.

Should I go on?

Absolutely. I’m all eyes and ears wanting to soak up all your honest discussion about Tesla as a long term investment.

 

[Krugerrand]

How does Max Pain look for this week?

I believe it was $170 at the start of today.