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

[2daMoon]

Are you joking? You must be joking. The guess was for the actual percentage, not whether the majority of quarters are negative or not. You can easily get the exact number for Tesla from when they IPO'd and SpaceX, Neuralink and others are losing money. SpaceX made a profit in Q1 2023, but that's about it.

Somehow, you cannot just "easily get the exact number" yourself before posting?

You talk crap and expect others to do the work for you. This is nothing more than trolling 101.

 

[unk45]

I doubt this is the reason for the supercharger layoffs, but if it is that's Elon's fault. He signed with GM, Ford and others without requiring investment in the network.

You've read the terms of those agreements? Do we know how Tesla priced equipment and access infrastructure? Methinks there are some critical details missing that the Supercharger teams should ahem considered long ago. Did they?

I cannot sign on to superficial disagreement with a decision. I can ask questions and hope to find good answers. Those answers will be informative. In this and other areas i am personally seeking answers that can materially change my investment posture. Mere speculation may deter finding facts.

 

[sunwarriors]

That's what I think happened here. We already knew Elon was in War Mode with the AI/robotaxi refocus (Demon Mode from the biography, if you will).
We don't know, just more speculation, but given that he sent that warning tweet about all managers needing to cut ~10% of their workforce, I speculate that the Supercharger managers refused or failed to do this. Elon, with that tweet out there and being in war mode, felt he had to make a dramatic response to what could be seen as a challenge to his full executive authority in the company. That sort of challenge, IMO, he can not and will not abide - especially not now that he is in War Mode / Turn the Ship mode. So the managers get tossed, and the team gets tossed to make the point, and the stuff about "redirecting" how the SC team focuses going forward, while true, is largely unrelated to the mass firing.
I am personally still unsettled about this happening. However, I also still remember that Elon has made many unconventional decisions and has had literally world-changing results from his unconventional management.

I don't think we know exactly why this was done, but as you state, it's your total guess/speculation that the managers weren't willing to cut a mere 10% of their staff. I think they were and Elon wanted that whole team gone for another reason and rebuild it from scratch. It's demon mode and anyone not on his priorities is on the chopping block now.

Managers lay people off (it's their job) and I doubt they refused to do that personally. For a manager with probably a family, kids, their own mortgage, expenses, firing 50 is better than losing your own job and why would anyone at his company feel they can challenge Elon of all people?

Sorta interesting/funny that Twitter has 100+ jobs posted.

 

[Usain]

Dozens if not hundreds of studies. Here is one. I didn't need any studies to come up with the idea, Tony's ideas were intriguing and I actually studied them. I didn't think what I saw supported his assertions. In fact every study since has found the same thing. TaaS is not good for sustainability. Will RTs be different? Not initially according to everything we see in CA and Phoenix. In fact, RT may be worse than Uber.

Uber and Lyft drive US gridlock — but not cuts in car ownership

In the United States, ride-share services lure passengers away from public transit instead of luring drivers into giving up their private vehicles.

www.nature.com

You said Tony Seba predicted TaaS would be widely more successful by now than it has been.

Please provide a non-paywalled link to support your assertion.

 

[Singuy]

I doubted the folks who were saying twitter site was going to shutdown/crash and burn as well, but the jury is still out on whether Twitter will be a success. It's one thing to freeze everything and keep a site up and running vs. actually turning around the business and making it profitable/successful.

I don't think it's debatable that Twitter is not worth $44 billion yet so it's still not successful at this time, but Elon is mega rich and he has stated he doesn't care about $$ so he can keep it running forever no matter what happens.

Folks who thought Twitter would instantly shutdown were definitely idiots.

Elon did not have any intiment relationship with the entirely of twitters staff and business before firing 80% of the staff. It's actually very impressive how he can pinpoint the essential employees in a matter of days.

This is why those SC hysteria is funny to me. Elon have been working with the Tesla staff for decades, so letting go 500 people and somehow the sky is falling seems like even a dumber take.

 

[sunwarriors]

Fair enough, I was just paraphrasing what Elon said, I don't feel your contributions are pointless, I was just pointing out with autonomy/FSD there is a larger opportunity. Especially if they are first and then license it out to other manufacturers and increase volume. One scenario is FSD is so good non FSD cars could be forced off the road if they don't have it due to regulations or very high insurance premiums. So think tens of million cars paying $499 a month.

I just don't see how folks are able/willing to shell out so much $$ for FSD. Insurance for most people I assume is cheaper than your $499/month estimate ($6k a year). If the price is too cheap, there will be/are little/low profits. Too high, and it makes little/no sense financially for the majority of people. I've always felt Uber/Lyft/RT were the cheap/poor labor jobs that no one with any actual skills will ever do.

A car without FSD can still be used and as many state here, one will still need a car for longer trips since no one takes a Taxi for long journeys due to cost, and driver has to come back (and a RT has to as well if they are driving to the boonies, not to mention, will have to be recharged).

 

[Ellec]

I just don't see how folks are able/willing to shell out so much $$ for FSD. Insurance for most people I assume is cheaper than your $499/month estimate ($6k a year). If the price is too cheap, there will be/are little/low profits. Too high, and it makes little/no sense financially for the majority of people. I've always felt Uber/Lyft/RT were the cheap/poor labor jobs that no one with any actual skills will ever do.

A car without FSD can still be used and as many state here, one will still need a car for longer trips since no one takes a Taxi for long journeys due to cost, and driver has to come back (and a RT has to as well if they are driving to the boonies, not to mention, will have to be recharged).

Not now, but imagine FSD becomes 10x safer (proven by data) than manual driving. Insurance will drop and Tesla will likely offer very cheap insurance or included with FSD. The $499 number could include insurance, connectivity, services etc on a sub 30k car, that could be added to the CyberCab network and make the money back.

 

[unk45]

...





You will always get what you inspect more often than you will get what you expect.

This is a crucial point, one which immediately brings up 'span of control' issues. Elon is so very detail oriented but so very time constrained that span of control is a key impediment to his continuing success as he ages. He needs more 'Gwynne Shotwells' who possess extraordinary grasp of detail and an equally extraordinary ability to understand how to navigate difficult shoals of conflicting priorities. Such ability to handle regulatory, client, executive and operational priorities smoothly is nearly unprecedented. But, regularly underestimated.

Her clone could produce continuing magic for Tesla, were such a person to exist. Could Neuralink help?/in jest of course.

 

[2daMoon]

99*12=1188 USD per year and user gives 2.4 billion USD in additional revenues per year if we count on 2 million subscribers

26,000 sold cars per month * 12 * 40,000 (approximate average selling price) would give 12.5 billion USD in additional annual revenues.

Or am I missing something?

Yes.

You missed the word "profits" in the post you replied to, and then referenced "revenue" in your response.

These are not the same, are they?

 

[Tony73]

Is this what is happening though? I interpreted the quarterly call such that Tesla will remain a car company and produce more models. FSD will be an important part of the offer but not the sole focus. Maybe I misunderstood.

I am also not sure I understand the "high reward" part of FSD. If it is - as an example only - 2 million Tesla car owners paying 99 USD per month, it doesn't strike me as a huge deal. So I guess the high reward must be the Robotaxi business. Uber's revenues are something like 30% of Tesla's. Will Robotaxi revenues be greater than Uber? When? And with what margins? Robotaxi still seems too much of a "pie in the sky" to me, a bit like when Musk said X would become the "everything app". Or maybe the more easily calculated advantages would be that buyers will prefer Tesla because of the FSD feature and/or license the tech to other car makers.

The starting point in any comparative analysis of robotaxi vs Uber should be gross bookings not revenue. Uber gross bookings from mobility were $19B last quarter. Mobility revenue was $5.5B. About two-thirds of gross bookings were from North America.
The gross bookings break down almost equally between Uber revenue, driver compensation and driver expenses.

Imagine what Uber’s finances would look like if you could add driver compensation and 50% of driver expenses to its existing mobility bottom line.

 

[alexxs88]

Somehow, you cannot just "easily get the exact number" yourself before posting?

You talk crap and expect others to do the work for you. This is nothing more than trolling 101.

Oh, man, just let it go. Is it actually relevant to the idea that someone is a great XYZ if he failed for 82% at XYZ or if it was actually 74.5%? Can you not think for yourselves and try to understand whether the underlying point is correct or not?

But here you go, the actual ratio from what I calculated is 86.8%. 86.8% of the quarters Musk has led a company were while said company was losing money. So it's FACTUALLY proven he hasn't led profitable companies.

 

[dhrivnak]

If you think about it, it might make more sense for employees at the nearest service center to pick the sites since they are local.

Not sure this will work, as Alabama for example has none, 0, service centers. And that is a reasonably large state.

 

[Surfer of Life]

My .02 on Supercharging on our April 6th solar eclipse road trip from L.A. to TX in our Long Range Model Y
Our first day plan is to get to Deming, NM, about 700 miles


Left home at 6AM at 100%,
First charge stop is at Morongo just off the 10 freeway
250 kw Chargers located near the 24hr convenience store
No waiting, and near all the gas pumps, so u can grab windshield washer if u need it.

That gives us enough charge to get us up the hill and along to the CA/AZ border.


Next stop Quartzsite, AZ

We plugged in at the solar canopy covered 80 250kw stalls, and there is another 20 something stalls less than a quarter mile away.


Grabbed a coffee at the “Terribles” convenience store, walked around the chargers for some exercise, then after about 25 minutes we’re on our way.

Next charge stop is Buckeye, AZ just before Phoenix
These are 150kw, and this where things start to slow down, the chargers are all in use, and our charger gives us 34kw.

We walk around the mall area twice, and stop inside some of the big box stores.

After about 35 minutes we have enough charge to get us to Casa Grande, AZ

Casa Grande is another 150kw, and only 6 stalls, same slow charge as at Buckeye.

We have lunch at Culver’s restaurant next to the chargers, and since it is slow charging we decided to continue to the next charging stop at Tucson

The Tucson West River Road 250kw Superchargers we go to are about 3 miles off the freeway, which adds time.
After charging in Tucson, we have enough charge to get to the 150kw Superchargers at Wilcox, AZ, so off we go.

Now, this is where the in-vehicle UI fails us.

The Supercharger UI in our vehicle shows 8 stalls at Wilcox, and all stalls available, so we drive past the Superchargers south of Tucson at the Pilot station, and continue to Wilcox. Approximately 30 miles outside of Wilcox, the UI says, no stalls available and greater than 25 minute wait! If we had known this we could have charged at the last Superchargers just past Tucson, and made it to Deming, NM.
As we pull into the Superchargers in Wilcox, there is a long line of around 20 Teslas. At least two of the stalls are non-working.

There is a friendly vibe among the Tesla folk, and one guy informs us it will be about 2 hours from where we are in line to get to a charger.
It was about 3 hours later when we leave Wilcox, and we get to Deming, NM at 10pm.









The rest of the trip was mostly smooth, luckily a new 250 kw Supercharger had just opened in Ozona, TX, and we did bypass a 2 hour wait at the Superchargers in Fort Stockton, TX on the way back.

The Supercharger Network got stress tested in many States during the eclipse, and it had quite a few points of failure

My thoughts; Yes, the permitting process for new Superchargers is slow, so the first order of business would be to upgrade all 150kw to 250kw

And also, fix the UI to actually show the reality of what is happening at all Superchargers, so that anyone road tripping can know exactly what the situation is.

A disaster if this was a potential Tesla buyer’s first experience with a rental Tesla.

What’s the best way to suggest needed charging deserts that Tesla needs to fix?

 

[NicoV]

In a sense yes. But roadtripping in Europe to other countries and trying to use other than Tesla chargers is a nightmare.
I drove last summer through Sweden to Denmark, tried to charge a couple times at a different fast charger and it was just impossible. Process:

1. Download some danish app, thats completely in Danish, which I try to make sense with google translate
2. Try to enter a my Finnish credit card details, then 2FA through my finnish bank, which the app for some reason did not accept
3. finally it accepted the card after a few tries
4. charger cannot be started with the app but requires a rfid tag for some reason
5. Give up and drive to nearest Tesla SuC

Hah also Lidl chargers would not work with my Finnish lidl account, and lidl app would not let me register a danish account because it defaulted to the finnish account

Finlands ABC service station chain has quite an extensive charger network, price is 0,33€/kwh so quite ok. I can guarantee if you want to use their app for charging as a foreigner, its gonna be another nightmare

Yes, I also had similar experiences a couple of years ago in France. Which is why I have a wallet full of charging cards. And use local apps and try out prepayment at home before leaving on holiday.

With the recent EU regulation to accept any credit or debit card just like a gas station I would expect this to be a thing of the past very soon.

 

[nativewolf]

You've read the terms of those agreements? Do we know how Tesla priced equipment and access infrastructure? Methinks there are some critical details missing that the Supercharger teams should ahem considered long ago. Did they?

I cannot sign on to superficial disagreement with a decision. I can ask questions and hope to find good answers. Those answers will be informative. In this and other areas i am personally seeking answers that can materially change my investment posture. Mere speculation may deter finding facts.

No doubt something is up, firing while he was out of the country only amplifies my belief that this was actually important. The SC network supposedly created profit. However new SC are not located as advantageously according to many here. Perhaps they don't align with locations needed for RTs? Charging 6000 vehicles in SF, for example, is not trivial. Charging 60k will be an incredibly complex challenge. I believe it is the equivalent of 3gwhs? I am no good with power symbols. Hope I am not screwing that up, it is a huge network challenge. Especially in CA, NYC/NJ/PA/DC or Chicago.

Another thought:

Maybe they did not support the Semi. We know Biden admin turned down Teslas request to have the US Taxpayer fund a purpose built Reno to Austin charger network. Good on Biden admin. $100mln to build something for Tesla, $20billion in the bank. It was a stupid route with very private benefits that would have benefited just 1 company. Silly. I would have fired the SC for that fiasco alone, far better for Pepsi and Walmart to have gone to the Biden admin and asked for help electrifying a route from San Fran to Denver and over to KC and Chicago for instance, then add offshoots down to TX, Georgia, VA and PA. But 1 line from a Tesla factory to a Tesla factory? Talk about corporate welfare.

They'll have to hurry to get any network up and going because the power needs are just tremendous it adds to the challenges. In Virginia, northern Virginia, you could not build a Tesla Semi charger in most industrial locations. The juice is just not there to supply 10 semis charging at once. Our high voltage system is maxed out due to an explosion of data centers. This is not an uncommon phenom, just worse here in the DC area (home to M East and the primary domain server- everybody is co-located here it seems).

Just musings

 

[jerry33]

If you think about it, it might make more sense for employees at the nearest service center to pick the sites since they are local.

As long as you don't want anyone to take trips. And there aren't that many Service Centres so large areas won't have coverage. It's fine to have them make suggestions, but that shouldn't be the majority of picks.

 

[unk45]

...
Other countries may be 1 or 2 years behind in fast charger penetration.

Every large country has huge gaps. Areas with high EV density tend to have high fast charger density. Some of the older areas in each major country seem to have old slow installations too. I have no idea whether the process chosen to rectify such faults is correct, but I am certain that the former processes were deficient, not least by locating Superchargers in quite a few cheap to buy, but unattractive to charge, places with high-risk denizens.

There may well be problems in other respects that have been less obvious, such as slow rollout of solar canopies and BESS. Undoubtedly we'll lean much more fairly quickly.

This may take even more than a couple of years to rectify. For everyone's sake I hope it will be that short.

 

[nativewolf]

Every large country has huge gaps. Areas with high EV density tend to have high fast charger density. Some of the older areas in each major country seem to have old slow installations too. I have no idea whether the process chosen to rectify such faults is correct, but I am certain that the former processes were deficient, not least by locating Superchargers in quite a few cheap to buy, but unattractive to charge, places with high-risk denizens.

There may well be problems in other respects that have been less obvious, such as slow rollout of solar canopies and BESS. Undoubtedly we'll lean much more fairly quickly.

This may take even more than a couple of years to rectify. For everyone's sake I hope it will be that short.

You know it may be that a RT orientation conflicts with a distributed network SC model that supports long distance travel. I don't expect that our current SC sites have great value for a urban centric RT fleet. Not sure.... more musings. What is Waymo doing ???? Now that would be informative. Greely has started importing test RT for Waymo and we know Waymo is targeting dense urban areas. Google is cautious and thoughtful, maybe Tesla could watch and react/modify a strategy rapidly based on this.

 

[SwTslaGrl]

Perhaps future SuC expansion depends on RT. Where RT gets customers there need to be SuC nearby, RT reports through planning software the SuC trips. The future SuC expansion plan could be more software based than today.

 

[advocate8]

Tesla isn't the only game out there and doesn't have to handle all of the charging infrastructure needs.

The pace of NEVI installations by multiple CPOs is starting to pick up.

A bunch, 6, of the OEMs, that are Tesla NACS "partners" are funding a competing network, IONNA. Which may eventually, maybe, start rolling out their own huge, 30k stall, network. (The first stations are supposed to open this summer.) I think they should instead funnel that money to help expand the Supercharger network, maybe branding sites that they help fund. (Maybe their access to the Supercharger network should be put towards the end of the queue since it seems like they want to do it themselves?)

Supercharger system is not a burden to carry. It is a huge and already profitable opportunity to dominate a key part of the EV world.