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

[Linkmeup]

Tesla Has Built a Charging Business to Be Taken Seriously

BloombergNEF estimates the company could generate $7.4 billion in revenue and around $740 million in profit by 2030.

www.bloomberg.com

"BNEF estimates that annual worldwide public-charging revenue will rise to $127 billion by 2030, with probably the most familiar company — Tesla — on track to mop up $7.4 billion, or around 6%, of all that business."

 

[Mengy]

L2 FSD, I agree.

L4 FSD gives time back to people. That will be worth more.

To whom though?

Business people who do work on their phones and laptops probably, but certainly not most people like nurses, electricians, machine operators, plumbers, etc. Most people would simply watch Netflix or play games while their car drives them around, or even sleep, and for those people I doubt having a virtual chauffer is worth $12K or more.

Now, would it be worth $99/mo? Or even $49/mo? Probably,

Now don't get me wrong, FSD is going to make Tesla lots of money. I just don't think its going to be anywhere near as super lucrative as most TSLA bulls seem to want.

 

[Linkmeup]

To whom though?

Business people who do work on their phones and laptops probably, but certainly not most people like nurses, electricians, machine operators, plumbers, etc. Most people would simply watch Netflix or play games while their car drives them around, or even sleep, and for those people I doubt having a virtual chauffer is worth $12K or more.

Now don't get me wrong, FSD is going to make Tesla lots of money. I just don't think its going to be anywhere near as super lucrative as most TSLA bulls seem to want.

I would say the alternative data products created due to the data intake from FSD will be the bigger cash cow

 

[Krugerrand]

I don’t know how it would unfold, but I wouldn’t count on that angle being a big profit centre.

Have you heard Elon talk about an accident in 2018 with Barrett Riley and how it spurred him to improve safety?

The company won’t care about profiteering, they’ll care about saving lives — that I believe.

Elon has been about safety long before 2018. He stopped delivering the Model S in early days because the new seat designed didn’t garner a 5* rating. Elon did this during a time Tesla needed those sales. To prevent further issues in this area, not only did Tesla design their own seats for the S, but they took the whole thing in house from that point forward.

Absolutely, Tesla’s goal isn’t meant to be a profit center but neither is it a charity. Tesla MUST make money to further the mission of saving the planet. WE, everyone of us, MUST PAY the price to save ourselves. Some of us will pay more than others and it won’t all necessarily be monetary.

What is quite likely to happen as it has been telegraphed by Elon, is that Tesla will sell the car for close to cost so that EVERYONE can own an EV for environment sake and the software will be the option purchase and the profit. UNTIL! Until such time as people driving their own cars is no longer a thing because either it’s too dangerous, insurance to do your own driving is inexorably expensive, or, or, or. But don’t worry, you’ll be dead when that happens.

 

[UncaNed]

Tesla Has Built a Charging Business to Be Taken Seriously

BloombergNEF estimates the company could generate $7.4 billion in revenue and around $740 million in profit by 2030.

www.bloomberg.com

"BNEF estimates that annual worldwide public-charging revenue will rise to $127 billion by 2030, with probably the most familiar company — Tesla — on track to mop up $7.4 billion, or around 6%, of all that business."

6% only? Who is getting the other 94% of all that business?

 

[Krugerrand]

The real question is would one be willing to get into a vehicle controlled by the present software to take you to your destination safely, and accept the liability?

The guy who just had a heart attack would.

 

[AndrewZ]

Maybe you’ll want to start by talking to government at all levels and organizations and companies and financial institutions and media that already put people’s lives at risk every single day, not to mention all that have at least tried to slow Tesla, if not outright end Tesla.

After they all step forward and stop their shenanigans, do what’s best for people, then we can talk about out how Tesla should simply give away billions of dollars of investment into FSD for free. Next you’ll be suggesting they give the cars away for free too because they have the highest safety ratings and people tend not to die them.

I’ve been trying to think of a company that locks critical public safety features behind a software toggle and monthly subscription but am not having any luck, can you think of something comparable?

To be honest I think the public has a stake in all this, because what’s being done with FSD today wouldn’t be possible without all the data coming in from drivers, from the infrastructure, even from non-Tesla drivers on the road who are interacting with the vehicles. Data collection in vehicles will probably become a much bigger topic in coming years.

But I don’t think arguing about this really matters because I genuinely believe the company’s leadership wouldn’t lock safety critical stuff out like this, and I don’t believe Elon would do that. And if/when the leadership did just include it by default, people will flip and herald it as a great move anyways lol

 

[Krugerrand]

Do you really think people are going to engage their brains? Have you met people?

I'm not saying that Tesla should raise their battery warranty to 200,000 miles out of the goodness of their hearts. I'm saying they should do it because they can. They should do it because it will sell more cars and put the competition in a very tough spot.

No. I absolutely don’t think people will engage their brains. And for that reason I don’t think Tesla raising their warranty will do squat for sales. See what I did there?

 

[Linkmeup]

6% only? Who is getting the other 94% of all that business?

I'm not sure and that's why I reacted as helpful. If there's any sign out there right now, it's probably related to 3rd-party charging networks buying Tesla superchargers and deploying them with their own brand right now.

 

[jschwefel]

It’s all in the book, Innovators Dilemma. Clayton Christiansen.

Yes. That’s a great book! I need to read it again; however here’s a quote from it that might be applicable.

…there is great value in coming to grips with “the way the world works,” and in managing innovative efforts in ways that accommodate such forces.

The automotive industry (and yes I see Tesla being much more than a car company, but bear with me) spends $ billions on advertising in the US to capture the hearts and minds of consumers. Notice how car commercials are rarely about vehicle specs; they are mostly about creating a feeling or an experience the consumer can relate to. Advertising is an investment for them, because without it, they lose market share of the ~15 million cars sold each year in the US.

I don’t fault Tesla for not advertising on MSM. I despise car commercials. I think they’re a waste of time, and besides…Tesla produced the best selling car in the world last year with virtually no advertising! HOWEVER, the auto industry relies on advertising to sway buyers to chose their brand over another. It’s largely emotional, and rarely technical as evidenced by the ads and the hundreds of thousands of inferior ICE products still being sold. Simply put…what got us here (1.8 million annual sales), MAY not get us there (20 million annual sales).

I say “MAY” because Tesla’s sales slump could turn around on a dime. MSM could start reporting how revolutionary the Cybertruck is or how great FSD (supervised) is. Positive press coupled with revolutionary and affordable products would likely convince that next wave of car buyers to switch. Frankly, I don’t see this happening given the political climate and the current MSM, but that merely prolongs the inevitable, which is electric, autonomous vehicles will be a HUGE part of mobility in the future. and Tesla has never been closer to making that a reality. Tesla will get there, and while I’m disappointed in Q1 deliveries, I know they adjust as they see fit. That may not be what I would do, but that’s okay and probably a good thing in the end.

Owning a Cybertruck and experiencing FSD on my Model Y prove to me Tesla is incredible, these are amazing times, and I’m grateful to be a part of it all.

 

[CitizenKane]

6% only? Who is getting the other 94% of all that business?

Don't know about the US and the rest of the world but in Sweden I doubt that Tesla has more than a few percent of all charging revenue. Sweden has about 4,700 public charging stations and 35,000 charging points (Laddinfrastruktur i Sverige) whereas Tesla has about 90 superchargers (https://www.tesla.com/en_US/findus/list/superchargers/Sweden) Most charging stations here are run by the large electricity companies

 

[Krugerrand]

I’ve been trying to think of a company that locks critical public safety features behind a software toggle and monthly subscription but am not having any luck, can you think of something comparable?

To be honest I think the public has a stake in all this, because what’s being done with FSD today wouldn’t be possible without all the data coming in from drivers, from the infrastructure, even from non-Tesla drivers on the road who are interacting with the vehicles. Data collection in vehicles will probably become a much bigger topic in coming years.

But I don’t think arguing about this really matters because I genuinely believe the company’s leadership wouldn’t lock safety critical stuff out like this, and I don’t believe Elon would do that. And if/when the leadership did just include it by default, people will flip and herald it as a great move anyways lol

Tesla already includes safety software with their cars. Or have you forgotten that? On top of the cars themselves exceeding physical safety standards.

When Tesla becomes the largest company on the planet, worth multiple trillions of dollars, and their automotive business has been dwarfed by their energy business and their robotics division, FSD might simply be a standard feature on all their vehicles like all the safety software currently included.

 

[Unpilot]

Monthly buy of another 54 shares at $172.30, the accumulation continues, such low low prices!

Looks at max-pain...right at 172.50....checks SP....yep...all normal

 

[scaesare]

@Discoducky misspelled your handle

 

[mrmage]

The model gets bigger yes, but does not require lots of computational power on the inference side which is what the fsd computer is doing once the algorithmis trained. It only needs to serve one end user so you can't compare it to cloud based inferencing datacenters which serves million of users simultaneously. 72 TOPs is pretty extensive for only a few output answers (speed, go, brake, left, right, reverse) and only for one car.

What I meant is that datacenters can increase model sizes orders of magnitude larger by simply adding more computers. For edge computing applications like FSD, the model size is limited to available memory without expensive retrofits in the field.

It's worth noting that real time edge models can't batch as well as datacenter LLMs, so some efficiency is lost. However, I assume Tesla is already batching to the extent possible within their latency constraints.

Do you/anyone have estimates on the current model / memory footprint for FSD 12? This would give an idea of how much headroom they have in case their model needs to increase.

 

[scaesare]

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Wall. Of. Pics.

Please consider a summary with links. One screenshot or 2 is ok, but 10 is a bit much.

Also, you can scale pics ya know....

 

[dhrivnak]

How about offering gutted 2-person cargo models for postal/local delivery/camping use?

Even if folded, those rear seats eat up a LOT of extra space.

Yes a Model Y type delivery van would likely sell very well, especially in Europe.

 

[larmor]

To whom though?

Business people who do work on their phones and laptops probably, but certainly not most people like nurses, electricians, machine operators, plumbers, etc. Most people would simply watch Netflix or play games while their car drives them around, or even sleep, and for those people I doubt having a virtual chauffer is worth $12K or more.

Now, would it be worth $99/mo? Or even $49/mo? Probably,

Now don't get me wrong, FSD is going to make Tesla lots of money. I just don't think its going to be anywhere near as super lucrative as most TSLA bulls seem to want.

One of the points of a FSD system was to utilize the car instead of parking it. So a family might not need multiple cars in an FSD world. Can be used to school pickups and kids activities before even thinking about other non family use cases.

On a simpler level, the savings from decreased car accidents should be realized on the insurance side. Even if it is just 50% safer or 50% fewer accidents, this should translate to significant decrease in insurance costs. 50% is less than 1 sigma in improvement.

 

[Singuy]

What I meant is that datacenters can increase model sizes orders of magnitude larger by simply adding more computers. For edge computing applications like FSD, the model size is limited to available memory without expensive retrofits in the field.

It's worth noting that real time edge models can't batch as well as datacenter LLMs, so some efficiency is lost. However, I assume Tesla is already batching to the extent possible within their latency constraints.

Do you/anyone have estimates on the current model / memory footprint for FSD 12? This would give an idea of how much headroom they have in case their model needs to increase.

Headroom is assuming Tesla will only add more and more complex algorithmis which chews up the limited memory avaliable. However we have seen the opposite is happening as Tesla is reducing complexity by taking away all the safety clutches in place because NN wasn't well trained enough years ago. This is just the beginning, lots of software optimization will be happening to improve performance. All the analysts 5 years ago believe the fsd computer will no way be enough to complete intervention free drives in major cities, and yet here we are.

 

[hitchhiker]

Why don’t you just start dialing down your speed sooner so the car arrives at the school zone at the appropriate speed!? That’s all I do now. It’s easy to just give the car more runway so you arrive at the sign at the correct speed.

For sure -- that's what I mostly do... though right now it takes a couple of blocks to slow down from the normal speed limit to the school zone speed limit. It'd be nice if there were a happy medium.