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

[Musskiah]

Safety would be helpful.

I was looking more at the second statement and no, I don't see it. Everyone needs to leave work at 5pm, for example. Those cars don't all just appear magically. The 1 car that makes the hour commute from downtown LA to Pasadena can't take the other person from downtown LA to Longbeach at 5pm. Maybe someone going for dinner in Pasadena but then it gets complicated. I've looked and looked at the RT/TaaS and I don't see the huge numbers people expect. Most cars are parked most of the day for a reason, we have traffic jams at certain times for a reason. TaaS actually does nothing for these. Most are travelers and people looking to enjoy themselves. Some replacement, surely. Not as much as some hype would suggest. In the transition you'll have RT vehicles wasting huge amounts of time doing what uber drivers (waste time waiting for rides) do but without the labor. This actually will hurt sustainability. What would make a difference is pooled rides but now that does not seem as likely.

You are using a single scenario in the worst city to try to make the argument that RTs will not replace ICE cars meaningfully. I call hogwash...

There are 132M full time employees in the US, only about 35% of the population, many of whom do not go home at 5pm (all you have to do is think of all the professions that work long or odd hours and businesses open til 2, 4, 6pm etc...) - so for starters your scenario does not account for 65% of the population that needs transportation without full time employment.

Furthermore, LA is the exception, not the rule - it will require further ingenuity to solve, obviously. It is the toughest case for sustainability, to be sure. So will DC, NY, Chicago, etc. FACT: ONLY 42M Americans live in the 34 largest (over 500k people) cities. Perhaps another 20M or so commute into them for work or pleasure. MOST OF THESE 34 cities (such as Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati) do NOT experince meaningful rush hour traffic that compares in any way to LA. Your theory does not hold water here in the largest metropolitan areas of Ohio, for example. This is likely true of over half the states.

Aside from these 34 top tier cities, there are literally hundreds of small and middle cities in the US that do not experince the type of traffic, even in the worst hours, that you describe. In these small to mid-sized cities, where over a quarter of the population lives (the rest, aside from the 42M is large cities over 500k, are suburban and rural), RTs will begin to replace ICE cars immediately in the small and middle cities as well as large swaths of suburban and rural America, to be sure. The effect will not be ZERO as you seem to insinuate. We can argue about how huge this effect will be, but we can agree it will be a nonzero amount.

As a result, the world will become more sustainable. As privately owned cars become less common, the infrastructure such as parking lots and parking garages will be replaced. We would hope urban architects and engineers create something more harmonious is their place.

Have you considered that maybe you "don't see" the well-accepted theory that RTs WILL replace millions of ICE vehicles quickly, because you have to think about the whole picture instead of just an exceptional example of a mess of a city with some of the worst traffic on Earth?

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Given ICE cars will be banned in the coming years there is still massive amount of growth to go for EV's. Just because it has not grown as quickly the last years due to interest rates etc doesn't mean it's over.

Yah. Assuming that doesn’t get walked back though. I think in some countries that could/will happen. The US and Canada for sure. A hard right shift is coming for both in the next year or two.

 

[AndrewZ]

If he’s an intelligent person, they will work.

Warren Buffett would say the goal is to give your kids enough so that they can do anything but not so much that they do nothing.

 

[scaesare]

All the talk of Drew and Rohan departing, and the potential that Musk invited them to leave reminds me of two things:

-This quote from him:

The longer you take to fire someone, the longer it's been since you should have fired them.

And this account from Vance's biography of him:

The granddaddy example of Musk’s seemingly callous interoffice style occurred in early 2014 when he fired Mary Beth Brown. To describe her as a loyal executive assistant would be grossly inadequate. Brown often felt like an extension of Musk—the one being who crossed over into all of his worlds. For more than a decade, she gave up her life for Musk, traipsing back and forth between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley every week, while working late into the night and on weekends. Brown went to Musk and asked that she be compensated on par with SpaceX’s top executives, since she was handling so much of Musk’s scheduling across two companies, doing public relations work and often making business decisions. Musk replied that Brown should take a couple of weeks off, and he would take on her duties and gauge how hard they were. When Brown returned, Musk let her know that he didn’t need her anymore, and he asked Shotwell’s assistant to begin scheduling his meetings. Brown, still loyal and hurt, didn’t want to discuss any of this with me. Musk said that she had become too comfortable speaking on his behalf and that, frankly, she needed a life. Other people grumbled that Brown and Riley clashed and that this was the root cause of Brown’s ouster.* (Brown declined to be interviewed for this book, despite several requests.)

Whatever the case, the optics of the situation were terrible. Tony Stark doesn’t fire Pepper Potts. He adores her and takes care of her for life. She’s the only person he can really trust—the one who has been there through everything. That Musk was willing to let Brown go and in such an unceremonious fashion struck people inside SpaceX and Tesla as scandalous and as the ultimate confirmation of his cruel stoicism. The tale of Brown’s departure became part of the lore around Musk’s lack of empathy. It got bundled up into the stories of Musk dressing employees down in legendary fashion with vicious barb after vicious barb. People also linked this type of behavior to Musk’s other quirky traits. He’s been known to obsess over typos in e-mails to the point that he could not see past the errors and read the actual content of the messages. Even in social settings, Musk might get up from the dinner table without a word of explanation to head outside and look at the stars, simply because he’s not willing to suffer fools or small talk. After adding up this behavior, dozens of people expressed to me their conclusion that Musk sits somewhere on the autism spectrum and that he has trouble considering other people’s emotions and caring about their well-being.

There’s a tendency, especially in Silicon Valley, to label people who are a bit different or quirky as autistic or afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome. It’s armchair psychology for conditions that can be inherently funky to diagnose or even codify. To slap this label on Musk feels ill-informed and too easy.

Did they underperform recently (4680 ramp, etc...) despite previous excellence? Maybe. I suspect Musk sees difficult housecleaning as a necessary pragmatism.

 

[FreqFlyer]

I dont know why it would be “interesting” that everyone would want a car which can drive itself - that’s not “intersting” it’s crazy obvious. The major automakers are now one more release like v13 away from taking a *sugar* the size of the titanic! There is no amount of cheap design crap you can put in a car to compete with a similar car that can drive itself.

Since that would mean ten years at least of tsla bring able to sell every single car it makes - it could be like ford, just make them all black with no options - if they drive themselves you don’t need any other options.

that would fund a robotaxi plan. i have yet to see they super cheap pricing (like 50 cents a mile) one would need to give up your own car which is like $1 a mile. current taxis are like $3 a mile and the use is limited as one would expect.

well we will see. one possibility is that robotaxis do not affect legacy auto enough, that would make me sad

This is where I think there is a serious disconnect. I don't care to use a RoboTaxi, I live in the burbs. I drive, I like to drive, and I love cranking my music. And I am not using my car I just spent two hours cleaning as an Uber. Many here think it's the future, I have my doubts, especially since no one here has answered the liability question yet, just wait till a Robotaxi T bones a school bus, we will find out soon enough.

We will have to wait till the earnings call, shareholders meeting, and 8/8 debut to see if the $25K car is truly dead or "postponed." If it is dead, then it will be the first time I have seen Tesla acknowledge they cannot compete. That sigh of relief you heard are the competing automakers.

If Tesla is serious about this pivot, and the execs leaving "may" show that they are, then more changes are coming down the pike. S/X cancellation? Roadster? LOL, Fremont shut down, why not?

Or this could be our imagination running wild and nothing has changed, despite some high profile execs leaving. And Elon is drinking his coffee this morning reading our posts laughing.

 

[Usain]

So they start in a state that does not exist. Because as I noted every state I'm aware of that allows deployment of self driving cars requires compliance with J3016. Usually directly citing to the document in the law and using J3016 exact wording for their foundational definitions of things.


So your plan keeps getting worse.





I have. Many times. I cited the 3 specific, foundational, things FSD as it exists today is missing like 3 posts (of mine) ago maybe an hour ago. They are not things "they just need to train more" on- they are fundamental things that don't currently exist in the software.

L4 is not "L2 that is really good". There's specific functionality that one has and the other does not beyond just how "good" it seems to drive.

Each time you refuse to try and understand it and simply dismiss J3016 requirements as "silly"

You still refuse to give a single concrete example of something Waymo can do but Tesla FSD could not be trained to do in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[unk45]

J3016 doesn't matter. Documents don't matter. We just fundamentally disagree on this.

The only thing that really matters is if it can reliably do the job with better safety than a human. Tesla could start a limited robotaxi service with human safety drivers. For what I was describing, it would even have a very limited, repeatable, route. Tesla would simply work on perfecting that route.

As long as the service works safely and reliably, no silly document is going to stop it.

Since J3016 is a focus of debate every time it might be wise to clarify that SAE itself, the author of J3016 is not inherently regulatory. Those are standards, to be sure, but sometimes things with no status under SAE at all become practical standards and thus spawn seemingly 'retroactive' standards.
SAE International Announces Standard for NACS Connector, Charging PKI and Infrastructure Reliability
I quote this one because it is an example of a Tesla product creating a 'retroactive' SAE standard in order to facilitate adoption that had already happened.
Is it not possible that Tesla conceivably do something to permit classification inclusion in J3016 or even a new standard?

I am not arguing for or against some future version of FSD. It is a trifle facile, though, to credit non-compliance with an existing SAEstandard if the product involved is a 'better mousetrap'.

 

[Ellec]

Yah. Assuming that doesn’t get walked back though. I think I’m done countries that could/will happen. The US and Canada for sure. A hard right shift is coming for both in the next year or two.

It's too late, no one is going to buy a new ICE vehicle anywhere near the year they are banned as there price will drop so much. Also most companies will have shifted to EV's and with FSD and all the other benefits not present in ICE will mean the market will do the talking regardless of any walk back.

 

[Rotte]

Could be Elon preparing a shorty burn with surprise good earnings.

Has Tesla ever done that before? No.

 

[Mengy]

Yes. Exactly.

And as I've been saying, geofencing is the only realistic way to get started. To start a robotaxi service, you need a high concentration of vehicles and maintenance infrastructure such as charging and cleaning. There is no way you could start by launching nationwide.

It's an interesting concept, and it would be the logical way for Tesla to start the RT fleet. They could even hard focus AI training in the areas they want to "geofence" into in order to train the FSD to handle the area competently and without issue.

Tesla would have to build the RT production line first, and if the Gen3 consumer car is indeed scrapped then its probable the Gen3 line slated to go into Austin next year could now be solely an RT production line, even possibly starting RT production late next year in place of what would have been Gen3 consumer. So the earliest they could implement something like this is realistically early 2026, but likely later than that.

I wish 8/8 was closer than it is, lol.

 

[2daMoon]

Yes. Exactly.

And as I've been saying, geofencing is the only realistic way to get started. To start a robotaxi service, you need a high concentration of vehicles and maintenance infrastructure such as charging and cleaning. There is no way you could start by launching nationwide.

You and the folks at Ark are fully in this camp. But, realistically, it is not the only way, though it is one way to get started.

It was the Waymo and Cruise way to get the product out there before it is really ready, just to show that the product is in the running. I don't think Tesla is the least bit concerned with such posturing, and it doesn't figure into their deployment strategy. Despite how it might frustrate some people who want to see Robotaxis on the playing field as soon as possible.

Elon and Tesla have had this idea presented to them for years now and have never publicly acknowledged it one way or another. I'm left with the impression that they have considered it, and have decided that pursuing this strategy would slow the achievement of the greater goal of autonomy.

As good as it may seem to you, chances are that there's something they know that you haven't considered which makes this proposition either untenable, or, it is just not ready for prime time now.

One thing to consider which would have to be a key part of the service is the software behind managing the interface with the rider as well as coordination of the vehicles. Keeping tabs on hot spots and timing to have adequate taxis nearby will be a great application for AI. They will need to be thinking of how best to gather and collate this data well before the service is taking orders for rides.

Another is the physical infrastructure necessary for cleaning, charging, and performing maintenance on the RT fleet. This will require a tremendous application of resources to set this up. Time, people, materials, equipment, training, etc. must be deployed prior to making the service available. Adding supervisors riding in the car further complicates things with all the employee-related factors.

Sure, it could be a way to begin gathering data now, but there is a lot of stuff to have in place first. Once those pieces of this puzzle are in place FSD might have reached the point where having a supervisor in the car isn't necessary.

No need to put the cart before the horse when the goal is to remove the horse from the equation anyway.

Patience is warranted on our part. Let it unfold and see what results from Tesla's strategy. They seem to have developed a knack for this sort of thinking.

 

[XPEL FTW]

. The Gen3 consumer car was a logical next step, to abandon it now would seem....insane to me.

Maybe we should give Musk credit for realizing the Gen 3 car wouldn't be profitable, given slowing EV demand, competition, etc. He had no choice but to pivot, and sell the hell out of the robotaxi vision. Stopping the Gen 3 car will probably make a lot of sense in retrospect (whether or not robo works out).

 

[aubreymcfato]

Safety would be helpful.

I was looking more at the second statement and no, I don't see it. Everyone needs to leave work at 5pm, for example. Those cars don't all just appear magically. The 1 car that makes the hour commute from downtown LA to Pasadena can't take the other person from downtown LA to Longbeach at 5pm. Maybe someone going for dinner in Pasadena but then it gets complicated. I've looked and looked at the RT/TaaS and I don't see the huge numbers people expect. Most cars are parked most of the day for a reason, we have traffic jams at certain times for a reason. TaaS actually does nothing for these. Most are travelers and people looking to enjoy themselves. Some replacement, surely. Not as much as some hype would suggest. In the transition you'll have RT vehicles wasting huge amounts of time doing what uber drivers (waste time waiting for rides) do but without the labor. This actually will hurt sustainability. What would make a difference is pooled rides but now that does not seem as likely.

True, but bear with me in my dream scenario.
People get out at 5pm but know that in a 100m radius and a 10 minutes window there will be cars that pools people based on real-time data and an algorithm that maximize efficiency. Variable fares are established taking into account a lot of parameters: willing to pool with others, male/female, hour of the day, total distance covered, willing to swap cars (like changing a line in the tube...), last-time decision or booked trip, etc.
If everything goes well, you actually take thousands of cars out of the road, and it's more efficient than Taxi (people still go 1 by 1 in the same freaking places... because there is no incentive to pool). Tesla could have more than one type of vehicle (2-seat, 5-seat, 16-people both seated and standing), and the algorithm would be too difficult if especially people book their trips.

 

[Krugerrand]

Yeah, I, uh, wouldn't use Twitter as a prime example considering Musk has run its value into the ground, around ~$10bn at last valuation, per Fidelity.

Anyway, in my latest post I noted two executives left on the same day. That's highly unusual and implies this was not the usual "trimming dead weight." Service center employees were cut. Sales people were cut. Folks claiming to work on highly important pieces of CT were cut.

You are so disingenuous it’s become hysterical. There’s as much honesty in you as I have respect for you. To be clear, that’s less than zero.

Twitter lost much of its valuation BEFORE Elon bought it. It’s pretty easy to go back and see what happened market wide. That loss in value was one of the reasons people were all twisted sideways - he had to buy it at its peak market value; a clear overpay.

 

[Knightshade]

You still refuse to give a single concrete example of something Waymo can do but Tesla FSD could not be trained to do in a reasonable amount of time.

I've given many.

You simply refuse to learn enough about self driving laws and foundational definitions to understand them.

I can explain it to you, I can't understand it for you.

Notice too how when reminded of this you're moving goalposts from "they could start RT today" to "they could train it to be an RT in some reasonable amount of time"

Seeming to realize FSD today isn't actually good enough for RT legally, even if you won't take the time to read up on why

Also waiting for you to tell me where, specifically, it is Tesla can ignore SAE J3016 and start an RT business anyway as you claimed they could.

 

[unk45]

Since it's today an L2 system lacking at least 3 definitional things required for a driverless car-(a complete OEDR, a DDT fallback ability, and a defined L4 ODD) no, it's really not.

Attempt number 398 to ask you to actually read and understand J3016 so you stop getting this so fundamentally wrong.

In another post I point out that at least one Tesla innovation resulted in a new SAE standard. Please look at the NACS standard before you blithely state that compliance with any SAE standard renders an innovation impossible. Therefore not necessarily "fundamentally wrong".
I make no comment on likelihood or not. I'm not qualified to do that. I can and do understand the SAE standards process and it's limitations. They are NOT regulations, even though some do become enshrined in regulations.

Please understand the difference. You're far too competent to not know this.

 

[sunwarriors]

So why post all that here, the Tesla Investors thread? That is Not a suggestion to stop critical thinking. It is a suggestion that people who are not Tesla investors are not our role.

People without $$ at stake are possibly less bias since they have no actual $$ to gain/lose. If someone has 10000 shares of Tesla, obviously they are bullish and anything they say is through an owner's mindset to practically will it higher because they have been making good $ the last 10 years.

It's also a concern to most everyone here that bulls here aren't that open to any other opinions or comments. When everyone in a discussion has only one thought, be cautious because everyone around you seems to only think the same way. It's almost like any social media channel/news outlet now. This is obviously a Tesla investment forum, but any other counter opinions here (from what I've noticed) is massively drowned or insulted out. Anyone and you can take my comments for whatever they are worth (it's free so near worthless as well), and like Twitter, we'll see what ultimately happens in a few years (5+ is fair) to Tesla stock and to all the real investors here, but if folks here only care about bullish comments and shutdown the rest, be cautious since it all looks like cheerleading ultimately.

We'll see where the stock is ultimately in a few years.

 

[Thumper]

We don't have FSD yet and we don't know how much compute and data it will take to achieve it. If it is like trying to achieve the speed of light, then the energy need approaches infinite as you get closer to the goal. Maybe we can get enough 9s and maybe we can't get them economically. If Elon's judgements in all areas of life were sound, it would be easier to trust him on this. Alas this is not the case.

 

[unk45]

Yes. Exactly.

And as I've been saying, geofencing is the only realistic way to get started. To start a robotaxi service, you need a high concentration of vehicles and maintenance infrastructure such as charging and cleaning. There is no way you could start by launching nationwide.

Many agree, including me. Still, that will be a major departure from present day FSD positioning.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It's too late, no one is going to buy a new ICE vehicle anywhere near the year they are banned as there price will drop so much. Also most companies will have shifted to EV's and with FSD and all the other benefits not present in ICE will mean the market will do the talking regardless of any walk back.

It's too late, no one is going to buy a new ICE vehicle anywhere near the year they are banned as there price will drop so much. Also most companies will have shifted to EV's and with FSD and all the other benefits not present in ICE will mean the market will do the talking regardless of any walk back.

Countries aren't banning ICEVs. States aren't banning ICEVs.

And AVs could easily be PHEVs. Don't need BEV.