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

[MD70]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782281419407970715

Now this is actual helpful news.

IF this agreement is signed and supply does start next year this is the biggest sign that a new vehicle is planned to start mass production next year.

I hope it’s the smaller/cheaper vehicle.

 

[loquitur]

Uber's cost structure includes not only driver wages but also:

• ICEV operating costs and vehicle longevity
• Poor occupancy factor (on average, I'd guess maybe 1.5-2 seats per car are occupied by paying customers)
• Insurance costs commensurate with the risk of human driving
• Third-party maintenance and poor economies of scale due to individual drivers managing a single vehicle
• No convenient ability to exploit cheap midday solar power for charging

For these reasons, I think an AEV network comprised of dedicated electric vehicle designs could reduce cost by almost 10x relative to Uber. Pretty much the only cost component you can't majorly improve upon is the cost of tires.

Remember also that if you have a computer, broadband internet and an investment brokerage account and you live in the US, you're rich AF compared to most people in the world. If you're in NYC or SF, even more so. The biggest market opportunities are in places like India, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Indonesia because they're middle-income, largely urbanized countries with huge populations (so huge that just these few I've listed contain almost half of all people alive today). These countries are filled with cities suffocating under horrible air pollution and have populations that are poor relative to Americans but affluent enough to afford fare prices like $0.10/km.

OK then, robotaxis for the relatively poor make sense if economics dictate. Meanwhile, China has reached "peak gasoline" due to shift to EVs, and their BEV buses help greatly for even less cost per passenger. India is a natural market for BEV
transition, particularly for mopeds which I saw carrying families of four in Bangalore, gas-powered auto rickshaws etc. Driver costs remain cheap for the "landed gentry" who have drivers for private cars, but it'll be super when even that minimal cost
succumbs to droids.

The EV transition itself is amazing without robotaxi driving. Even in the relatively rich milieu of San Francisco, the uptake
of 25%+ registrations of new cars being EVs has reduced SF Bay Area C02 by almost 2% a year, per:

EVs are lowering Bay Area's carbon footprint

A UC Berkeley monitoring network recorded a small yearly decrease in CO2 emissions that they ascribe to the adoption of electric vehicles.

news.berkeley.edu

So a cheaper compact EV from Tesla (7.5K is immediate with the IRA) should be encouraged just as
much as the Robotaxi. Tesla can walk and chew gum at the same time, thankfully, so it's not either/or.

 

[MartinAustin]

What happened to that Model 3 Performance reveal that everyone was so confident about?

 

[Ellec]

About robotaxis, I've wanted to comment on this opportunity for Tesla, though I'm not particularly
qualified to opine on this compared to others here who have really thought about it all more,
from 'nativewolf' to 'discoducky'. I will express my personal biases below, but first...

... I see a lot of "napkin math" about FSD take rates, COGS for robotaxis themselves, attempts
to quantify huge opportunity if drivers are not in the loop, the Tesla Network percentage take in these
situations, etc.

However, since much of it is about the disintermediation of Uber, I think "top-down" napkin math
regarding such seems just as valuable as the "bottom-up" analysis of what Tesla could realize
if the market was unlimited.

I submit that the ride hailing market is not unlimited. Uber has 70%+ share in the US and 25%
ROW (rest-of-world). Their market cap is ~$150B right now, with a forward P/E of ~35.
Google search, and a Musk comment, shows that they take about 1/2 the fare.
If this disappeared in a puff of smoke (or by Tesla's [and no other's] magic wand), what would
the market cap for the TAM (total addressable market) become, say double, or triple? Same
order-of-magnitude as TSLA's market cap now, but not trillions.

Would 1/2 fare make for many extra Uber/Waymo/Tesla Network rides in seemingly saturated areas such
as my home town San Francisco, or NYC?

Now, here is my personal bias. I own a HW3-equipped, FSD-enabled Tesla as an apartment dweller in SF.
We don't even have 110V plug in the (fortunately covered) parking space in an old building not
proactively serviced, so it is Supercharged only, but that's OK! I'm retired, so don't commute, don't
have much in the way of urgent appointments, etc. So, having *never* needed to take an Uber,
do I drive the Tesla to most places in town? No! Like Manhattan, this is a walking town where there is
decent public transportation, so I'm taking the BART subway and Muni buses all the time to fill in the gaps.
For cost alone public transit beats even 1/2 a taxi fare.

That said, the Tesla is great to drive to family in the suburbs, go out-of-town to the redwoods,
the beaches and the mountains, to LA or to Oregon wine country or solar eclipses or wherever!
And the Level 2 is increasingly stress-reducing even on city streets here with v12.

So, I'm like the 50% of Manhattan dwellers who "don't need a car" for tooling around town, but
own one anyway to make a proper escape. I don't think robotaxis can supplant cars for these
purposes, though I might be just plain weird for choosing public over private transport for
local efficiency.

RT won't just replace Uber, it will replace most cars. Imagine every car on the road was you own private Uber with no driver and cheap. So Tesla gets the profit from the car sale and income from every mile the car does. That's why, if executed properly, we are talking tens of trillions in Market Cap, this doesn't account for Energy, other services, Tesla bot etc.

 

[SOULPEDL]

I was pretend to have conversations in my car with Grok with FSD + Camera + Phone integration. Just exploring the possibilities and consumer value. I'm assuming that's why we're soon getting X.ai installed? I have a funny hunch it's in the next release. If so, lots could change.

First off, a majority of the screen interactions might be unnecessary except to visualize navigation, status, videos, tools, games... All the settings might be there to view, but there might be no need to physically interact with any vehicle settings beyond voice using natural language.

Now what if we could tell Grok to create features that don't exist? Custom stuff, user specific even. Use the camera data as source info to look for things on simple voice commands. New smart controls as your own settings.

"Hey, crack the left side windows from 2-4 PM as long as it doesn't rain."
"Park my car exactly in this spot next time in my garage."
"The map is retarded, remember this road next time."
"Oh, look at that view! Grok, stitch together a panoramic where I'm looking now, and send it to my phone."
"Can you see Bandit anywhere?" or "Identify any packages that appear suspicious or unattended."

I believe this could happen someday, I just don't understand Grok integration well enough to know when, and whether personalization is something it can bring to the table soon. Chat has some generic settings to set rules and interests for example. I'm hoping for an Personal Agent in car. Maybe we get a glimpse in a day or two.

 

[stef]

What happened to that Model 3 Performance reveal that everyone was so confident about?

I really really hope they are not thinking to release it around the time ER comes out to distract ... that would just confirm they have nothing else to show investors about the new company direction other than "trust us, we'll be the biggest company in the world". I know that will be the last straw for me personally.

 

[MartinAustin]

I really really hope they are not thinking to release it around the time ER comes out to distract ... that would just confirm they have nothing else to show investors about the new company direction other than "trust us, we'll be the biggest company in the world". I know that will be the last straw for me personally.

The Model 3 Performance will not work as a distraction. Business news will ignore it. The stock market will ignore it.

 

[stef]

The Model 3 Performance will not work as a distraction. Business news will ignore it. The stock market will ignore it.

Exactly my point.
But such attempt will highlight the disconnect between what management focuses on and what investors want to see.
Edit: Nobody will fall for it, and just sell the stock into oblivion.

 

[Ellec]

I really really hope they are not thinking to release it around the time ER comes out to distract ... that would just confirm they have nothing else to show investors about the new company direction other than "trust us, we'll be the biggest company in the world". I know that will be the last straw for me personally.

If I had your attitude towards a company I wouldn't be invested, better for you to sell all you shares now and step away from the forum. (I'll buy your shares, thank you)

 

[Ellec]

I was pretend to have conversations in my car with Grok with FSD + Camera + Phone integration. Just exploring the possibilities and consumer value. I'm assuming that's why we're soon getting X.ai installed? I have a funny hunch it's in the next release. If so, lots could change.

First off, a majority of the screen interactions might be unnecessary except to visualize navigation, status, videos, tools, games... All the settings might be there to view, but there might be no need to physically interact with any vehicle settings beyond voice using natural language.

Now what if we could tell Grok to create features that don't exist? Custom stuff, user specific even. Use the camera data as source info to look for things on simple voice commands. New smart controls as your own settings.

"Hey, crack the left side windows from 2-4 PM as long as it doesn't rain."
"Park my car exactly in this spot next time in my garage."
"The map is retarded, remember this road next time."
"Oh, look at that view! Grok, stitch together a panoramic where I'm looking now, and send it to my phone."
"Can you see Bandit anywhere?" or "Identify any packages that appear suspicious or unattended."

I believe this could happen someday, I just don't understand Grok integration well enough to know when, and whether personalization is something it can bring to the table soon. Chat has some generic settings to set rules and interests for example. I'm hoping for an Personal Agent in car. Maybe we get a glimpse in a day or two.

I think this will happen, also things like. "Take me to my mums but stop off at a store so I can buy flowers on the way, use my Chase account to buy them, some blue ones' then you sit back and continue your Novel.

 

[rentierparasit]

I'm guessing you ordered Foundation AWD?
Cyberbeast started with a mid-late 2024 delivery date.
I configured in Dec, shareholder acceleration, and have no estimate on delivery.



The bulk of Tesla's fleet has been young and in warranty until recently. With minimal maintenance requirements, how would service have made a profit?

Hi, Mongo --

There may be a longer conversation about this, to me, really unimportant point. I don't know if I'll engage it in due to software limitations, e.g., lack of threading. What I mean by that is: I don't know how to track replies to a post. I'm responding to this at a particular point in time. This may well have 100% thrashed out by others before I got around to responding. But I'm here now and not going to wade through 10 or 20 or however many pages of to see if the topic is of interest to others. Also, note that this is unimportant pedantry that does not impact the bottom line.

There are two points here:

> The bulk of Tesla's fleet has been young

Tesla gives you fleet growth & service center growth in in their investor notes. Eyeballing those -- fleet growth is much > than SC growth -- supports the anecdotes about Tesla service being really, really busy. Look at P&S margins from dealers. I'd expect a busy service station to be profitable at a station level. I'd expect that those profits would roll up.

>and in warranty until recently.

This is in the direction of what I'm getting at by "flattering auto gross margins." The way I think things should work, is that warranty work should be accounted for as an intercompany transfer. Put it like this: Dinosaur OEM sells a car for $50k with a 1k warranty reserve. As warranty claims come through, they debit the warranty reserve at what the dealer charges them, including dealer margin. Tesla does the bulk (all?) of the warranty work in-house. I think Tesla is at least shifting "dealer margin" from services & other to auto cost of goods.

I'm not accusing Tesla of any wrongdoing. GAAP accounting requires management judgement. That means you can jigger things to make the investment case look better. In the early days, auto GM was probably the single most important metric, so let's flatter auto GM. Maybe things change so people are more interested in the annuity-like parts & service revenue stream. In that case, let's flatter service & other.

Note that I've done no real digging here, this is all just speculation on my part about why a segment that I speculate should be very profitable on a gross margin basis hasn't been.

Yours,
RP

 

[rentierparasit]

“Too lazy to double check” makes some gigantic errors. I won’t bother to give detail because you absolutely will not really learn without doing the work to understand yourself. As a hint: auto dealers in most countries, including the US, do not make the majority of their profits from the stated margin between ‘dealer cost’ and ‘MSRP’. In fact ‘dealer cost’ is seldom actual cost of a vehicle to a dealer.

This gets worse. You post n a subject about which you obviously know nothing, Accounting.

Hi, Unk45 --

> You post n a subject about which you obviously know nothing, Accounting.

Thanks for setting me straight! I'm certainly not an accountant. What I'm hearing is that when trying to understand dealership finances, I shouldn't look at the "Cost of Goods" line? Is this revealed someplace else?

Yours,
RP

 

[Robertj]

Grok to Tesla’s

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782209844109537311

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782312840772096033

 

[CitizenKane]

If I had your attitude towards a company I wouldn't be invested, better for you to sell all you shares now and step away from the forum. (I'll buy your shares, thank you)

If I had your conviction I would sell everything I own, leverage max and go all in on Tesla. But really, this kind of posts are ridiculous. This is a forum for anybody interested in Tesla as an investment, right? I don't think it's supposed to be a fan club only. Also, if you are a long time holder and interested in increasing your investment in Tesla, you should be happy that people are selling at prices you feel are low, not angry.

 

[GatorMeat]

FIFY, who says they "cannot"?
Goodbye #5...

show me the Tesla driverless Tesla robotaxi

 

[SOULPEDL]

Grok to Tesla’s

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782209844109537311

https://twitter.com/x/status/1782312840772096033

That was a coincidence as I never saw this post before posting mine a couple hours ago. And we both said "pretend we're running the software" lol.
Good stuff's "Coming", me thinks.

 

[Artful Dodger]

What happened to that Model 3 Performance reveal that everyone was so confident about?

Wot, 4/20? That was a meme made up by somebody on social media for Lol's. Plenty of folks willing to push unverified dates online however especially TSLAQ. Any fail's a win, amirite?

Instead, remind yourself when we saw that large Model 3 Highland batch lined up on the dock in Shanghai, ready to be shipped to Europe. Then, ask yourself how long it takes for car carrier ship to arrive in Zeebrugge. Do the date math, and you'll arrive at a reasonable 'not-earlier-than' date estimate for 1st deliveries.

Let us know what you get.

 

[CorneliusXX]

About robotaxis, I've wanted to comment on this opportunity for Tesla, though I'm not particularly
qualified to opine on this compared to others here who have really thought about it all more,
from 'nativewolf' to 'discoducky'. I will express my personal biases below, but first...

... I see a lot of "napkin math" about FSD take rates, COGS for robotaxis themselves, attempts
to quantify huge opportunity if drivers are not in the loop, the Tesla Network percentage take in these
situations, etc.

However, since much of it is about the disintermediation of Uber, I think "top-down" napkin math
regarding such seems just as valuable as the "bottom-up" analysis of what Tesla could realize
if the market was unlimited.

I submit that the ride hailing market is not unlimited. Uber has 70%+ share in the US and 25%
ROW (rest-of-world). Their market cap is ~$150B right now, with a forward P/E of ~35.
Google search, and a Musk comment, shows that they take about 1/2 the fare.
If this disappeared in a puff of smoke (or by Tesla's [and no other's] magic wand), what would
the market cap for the TAM (total addressable market) become, say double, or triple? Same
order-of-magnitude as TSLA's market cap now, but not trillions.

Would 1/2 fare make for many extra Uber/Waymo/Tesla Network rides in seemingly saturated areas such
as my home town San Francisco, or NYC?

Now, here is my personal bias. I own a HW3-equipped, FSD-enabled Tesla as an apartment dweller in SF.
We don't even have 110V plug in the (fortunately covered) parking space in an old building not
proactively serviced, so it is Supercharged only, but that's OK! I'm retired, so don't commute, don't
have much in the way of urgent appointments, etc. So, having *never* needed to take an Uber,
do I drive the Tesla to most places in town? No! Like Manhattan, this is a walking town where there is
decent public transportation, so I'm taking the BART subway and Muni buses all the time to fill in the gaps.
For cost alone public transit beats even 1/2 a taxi fare.

That said, the Tesla is great to drive to family in the suburbs, go out-of-town to the redwoods,
the beaches and the mountains, to LA or to Oregon wine country or solar eclipses or wherever!
And the Level 2 is increasingly stress-reducing even on city streets here with v12.

So, I'm like the 50% of Manhattan dwellers who "don't need a car" for tooling around town, but
own one anyway to make a proper escape. I don't think robotaxis can supplant cars for these
purposes, though I might be just plain weird for choosing public over private transport for
local efficiency.

Some of these points resonate with me but I think there's quite a few items that will change with a cheap, ubiquitous RoboTaxi, should FSD be solved:

• Uber is just a proxy for shorthand comparison. The value of all ride hailing Co's, taxis, private hire companies, etc is likely getting into the $T order of magnitude.
• I live in London and get the tube to work for ~£5 day total. To Uber the 4.5 miles one way costs ~£22 each way. So it's around 9x the cost to commute via Uber. If RT was avaliable for £10-£20 a day I'd take it in a second even if I had to get up early to beat the worst of the traffic. That still provides excellent RT margins and value to me.
• London is a walkable city but squeezing in wth every flu distributor in the city on public transport is no fun.
• Lower cost ubiquitous transport is likely to change the way people think about transport in general. I'd compare it (very losely) to broadcast tv vs streaming. You start being focused on the events you want to see rather than scheduling how to get there as the cost/timing of transport becomes less significant.
• Total miles travelled will explode as price comes down. How many things have you decided to not do because of the hassle of getting around?
• I mostly just use my Model Y to cart my dog around and for trips out of the city. It wouldn't take much for me to get rid of it if there are dog friendly robotaxis or long distance travellers like overnight carriages on trains.
• Will people choose different lifestyles? Why pay big $ for a house in the centre of town when you get more for your money further out and have a stress free commute to the city?

I could go on, but cheap reliable transport will be transformative to society in my opinion and greatly expanded total travel.

 

[Ellec]

If I had your conviction I would sell everything I own, leverage max and go all in on Tesla. But really, this kind of posts are ridiculous. This is a forum for anybody interested in Tesla as an investment, right? I don't think it's supposed to be a fan club only. Also, if you are a long time holder and interested in increasing your investment in Tesla, you should be happy that people are selling at prices you feel are low, not angry.

That would be stupid as owning a stock of a company I have little confidence in executing.

I expect you know how leverage works, and the fact I need a place to live etc, but it's not a good idea to be leveraged in a stock like Tesla for obvious reasons. I am happy people are selling that's why I said I would buy his shares and yours if your confidence is shaky.

I welcome valid criticism of Tesla, but if the OP's post was very far from that.

 

[Stormy24]

Looks like TSLA is going to get more of a kicking today. Only pre market but 130s look on for today and that’s with futures green. If they turn red…..