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

[hobbes]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793488602988744843

 

[CitizenKane]

NVDA is my second largest investment after TSLA. I bought a long time ago and am about 1,000% up on average. I have no complaints.
BUT
NVDA don't make anything. They are like Apple, they design amazing products that they get built somewhere else. There is potential existential risk if China decides to go all grabby about Taiwan.

The reason I don't buy more Nvidia, and one of many reasons I have no Apple, is that they are both dependent on suppliers that lie very very much out of their real geopolitical control.
Tesla is a much safer bet. They are nicely geographically distributed now. Mexico will make it even more so. Plus they make something we will always need: transport. Apple make luxury lifestyle products, Nvidia make super high end expensive tech with potential great future usage.

A massive global recession, or a war in Taiwan would absolutely crater the valuations of both companies, but I suspect Tesla would weather such events way better. This will be even more true once Semi is ramped. Semi is a sensible financial decision, even in recession. In a recession, people will buy cheaper EVs than the 3/Y.

On the other hand, TSLA's future cash flows which are needed to justify its valuation are more dependent on various unknowns, i.e. in that sense higher risk. Musk's "all in, burn the bridges" attitude amplifies concerns about this. A couple of years ago, when the story was primarily about selling more cars at increasing margins, people like Rob Maurer, bullish analysts and others could show that the future was much more predictable and less risky than what the market saw, i.e. it was a fairly safe bet that the stock was undervalued.

 

[stef]

Maybe it's already been written, but if you haven't seen it yet: Voting with Swissquote now DOES work!

Brief instructions:

1. Log in to your Swissquote account
2. Send a message to Swissquote

Suggested content:

Hello

According to the telephone information and subsequent message, it is possible to participate in the Tesla (TSLA) proxy voting by message.

I hereby instruct you to vote my [NUMBER OF SHARES] Tesla shares as follows and to send me a corresponding confirmation:

1. "FOR EACH COMPANY NOMINEE" → YES
A Tesla proposal to elect two Class II directors to serve
for a term of three years, or until their respective "FOR EACH COMPANY successors are duly elected and qualified ("Proposal NOMINEE" One").

2. FOR / YES
A Tesla proposal to approve executive compensation on a non-binding advisory basis (Proposal Two).

3. FOR / YES
A Tesla proposal to approve the redomestication of
Tesla from Delaware to Texas by conversion (Proposal Three).

4. FOR / YES
A Tesla proposal to ratify the 100% performance-based stock option award to Elon Musk that was proposed to and approved by our stockholders in 2018 (Proposal Four).

5. FOR / YES
A Tesla proposal to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Tesla's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2024 (Proposal Five).

6. AGAINST

7. AGAINST

8. AGAINST

Thank you for your quick response and confirmation.

Best regards

thanks much! I just sent the same message, will let you know if/when I get confirmation
EDIT: request aknowledged immediately and vote instructions passed on to their processing bank. Received a ticket number to confirm the processing of my vote, but I'm told I will not receive any further confirmation.

 

[Tony73]

NVDA is my second largest investment after TSLA. I bought a long time ago and am about 1,000% up on average. I have no complaints.
BUT
NVDA don't make anything. They are like Apple, they design amazing products that they get built somewhere else. There is potential existential risk if China decides to go all grabby about Taiwan.

The reason I don't buy more Nvidia, and one of many reasons I have no Apple, is that they are both dependent on suppliers that lie very very much out of their real geopolitical control.
Tesla is a much safer bet. They are nicely geographically distributed now. Mexico will make it even more so. Plus they make something we will always need: transport. Apple make luxury lifestyle products, Nvidia make super high end expensive tech with potential great future usage.

A massive global recession, or a war in Taiwan would absolutely crater the valuations of both companies, but I suspect Tesla would weather such events way better. This will be even more true once Semi is ramped. Semi is a sensible financial decision, even in recession. In a recession, people will buy cheaper EVs than the 3/Y.

Nvidia has less exposure to the Chinese market than Tesla and TSMC is adding capacity outside Taiwan.
In the event of war in Taiwan, I’d worry more about Tesla. Chinese buyers will reject American brands and in 2024, nothing is more American than Tesla.

 

[Thekiwi]

NVDA is my second largest investment after TSLA. I bought a long time ago and am about 1,000% up on average. I have no complaints.
BUT
NVDA don't make anything. They are like Apple, they design amazing products that they get built somewhere else. There is potential existential risk if China decides to go all grabby about Taiwan.

The reason I don't buy more Nvidia, and one of many reasons I have no Apple, is that they are both dependent on suppliers that lie very very much out of their real geopolitical control.
Tesla is a much safer bet. They are nicely geographically distributed now. Mexico will make it even more so. Plus they make something we will always need: transport. Apple make luxury lifestyle products, Nvidia make super high end expensive tech with potential great future usage.

A massive global recession, or a war in Taiwan would absolutely crater the valuations of both companies, but I suspect Tesla would weather such events way better. This will be even more true once Semi is ramped. Semi is a sensible financial decision, even in recession. In a recession, people will buy cheaper EVs than the 3/Y.

You are right that Nvidia would be screwed if they got cut off from China & Taiwan.

Apple though is at an annual run rate of $70 Billion gross profit from its services business alone - most of it from outside China, and has been slowly but steadily spent the last decade duplicating its supply chain and manufacturing capacity outside of China. If China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, Apple would still be a Trillion dollar company based on its services profits alone, and could coast for years on minimal hardware sales while the chip industry is rebalanced out of Taiwan & China.

Tesla however would lose its biggest factory, its 2nd biggest market, and has little non-auto revenue to fall back on while it attempted to source chips etc from elsewhere for all of its supply chain parts. It would make the post-pandemic chip shortage issues look like a walk in the park.

(Of course the other mega caps with near zero exposure to China & Taiwan would be in much better shape: Microsoft, Google, Meta etc)

Intel would probably be a good bet in that environment, just from its US fab capacity.

 

[advocate8]

Autopilot Safety:

Punchline: 1150% Safer than average humans in average cars, 750% safer than human-driven Tesla cars

"In Q1 2024, Tesla recorded one crash for every 7.63 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology, a new safety record and a 16% improvement vs the previous all-time best. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, Tesla recorded one crash for every 955,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the US there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles."

FSD safety data has got to be crushing it beyond this. Aug 8 will be very interesting indeed. Do we require 2000% safer than a human? 3000%? Does FSD have to drive more than 20M miles between crashes? How long do we let humans kill other humans with cars?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793439210457747806

View attachment 1049739

These charts remain hugely deceptive. The "US average" does not even faintly reflect the road mix Autopilot is used on.

 

[elasalle]

Tesla FSD getting some love from Jensen Huang...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793489954225676437

Does he not know it’s just L2.

 

[willow_hiller]

These charts remain hugely deceptive. The "US average" does not even faintly reflect the road mix Autopilot is used on.

You can, however, compare Autopilot to Autopilot over time to show that it's getting safer, while other category crash rates have remained constant:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793451798507950093

From one crash every 3.35 million miles in Q3 2018 to one every 7.63 million miles in Q1 2024. More than twice as safe as when they first started reporting the figure.

 

[advocate8]

You can, however, compare Autopilot to Autopilot over time to show that it's getting safer, while other category crash rates have remained constant:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793451798507950093

From one crash every 3.35 million miles in Q3 2018 to one every 7.63 million miles in Q1 2024. More than twice as safe as when they first started reporting the figure.

The fact it’s getting safer is important, although not surprising. But the constant, clickbait claim here and elsewhere is that it is safer than human drivers. The available data doesn’t show that.

 

[Mengy]

Tesla FSD getting some love from Jensen Huang...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793489954225676437

No surprise there, Tesla is a huge customer of Nvidia.

 

[DarkandStormy]

Autopilot Safety:

Punchline: 1150% Safer than average humans in average cars, 750% safer than human-driven Tesla cars

"In Q1 2024, Tesla recorded one crash for every 7.63 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology, a new safety record and a 16% improvement vs the previous all-time best. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, Tesla recorded one crash for every 955,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2022) shows that in the US there was an automobile crash approximately every 670,000 miles."

FSD safety data has got to be crushing it beyond this. Aug 8 will be very interesting indeed. Do we require 2000% safer than a human? 3000%? Does FSD have to drive more than 20M miles between crashes? How long do we let humans kill other humans with cars?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793439210457747806

View attachment 1049739

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793411670066503834

Fred on Tesla's selective timing of when to share data and lack of transparency.

 

[Usain]

On the other hand, TSLA's future cash flows which are needed to justify its valuation are more dependent on various unknowns, i.e. in that sense higher risk. Musk's "all in, burn the bridges" attitude amplifies concerns about this. A couple of years ago, when the story was primarily about selling more cars at increasing margins, people like Rob Maurer, bullish analysts and others could show that the future was much more predictable and less risky than what the market saw, i.e. it was a fairly safe bet that the stock was undervalued.

If you are investing in $TSLA right now, you are betting that some unproven technology will work. And you are betting it will start producing big profits in, say, 5 years instead of 15 years.

That's OK with me, but it's not for everybody.

 

[Usain]

Well, we already know from ex-Tesla engineers that they designed Autopilot to disengage one second before an anticipated crash, thus rendering a crash as "no on Autopilot."

Like many things Tesla, be skeptical of what they present at face value given their track record.

As I recall, Tesla said they still count those crashes as a strike against autopilot.

 

[willow_hiller]

As I recall, Tesla said they still count those crashes as a strike against autopilot.

Correct. It takes 30 seconds to read the methodology on the report page, and that FUD still abounds:

Methodology:
We collect the amount of miles traveled by each vehicle with Autopilot active or in manual driving, based on available data we receive from the fleet, and do so without identifying specific vehicles to protect privacy. We also receive a crash alert anytime a crash is reported to us from the fleet, which may include data about whether Autopilot was active at the time of impact. To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact, and we count all crashes in which the incident alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed. (Our crash statistics are not based on sample data sets or estimates.) In practice, this correlates to nearly any crash at about 12 mph (20 kph) or above, depending on the crash forces generated. We do not differentiate based on the type of crash or fault (For example, more than 35% of all Autopilot crashes occur when the Tesla vehicle is rear-ended by another vehicle). In this way, we are confident that the statistics we share unquestionably show the benefits of Autopilot.

Please note that seasonality can affect crash rates from quarter to quarter, particularly in quarters where reduced daylight and inclement or wintry weather conditions are more common. To minimize seasonality as a variable, compare a quarter to the same quarter in prior years.

*Update (January 2023):
We are proud of Autopilot’s performance and its impact on reducing traffic collisions. The benefit and promise of Autopilot is clear from the Vehicle Safety Report data that we have been sharing for 4 years. As part of Tesla’s commitment to continuous improvement, recent analysis led us to identify and implement upgrades to our data reporting. Specifically, we discovered reports of certain events where no airbag or other active restraint deployed, single events that were counted more than once, and reports of invalid or duplicated mileage records. Including these events is inconsistent with our methodology for the Vehicle Safety Report and they will be excluded going forward. These upgrades in data analysis reinforce the positive impact that Autopilot has on vehicle safety. To ensure the accuracy of our reporting, we updated all collision rates historically to account for these upgrades, including the baseline collision rates for the United States based on currently available NHTSA and FHWA data. (Note that for purposes of the baseline collision rates in the United States, an automobile crash is one that involves at least one passenger vehicle, light truck, SUV or van that is 10,000 pounds or less, as classified by available federal data.) The end result is that, when Autopilot is active, the collision rates are even lower than we previously reported.

 

[Stretch2727]

Indonesia Megapacktory still in play. This has seemed likely, and now perhaps not far off, given Indonesia has such vast nickel deposits to offer in return

Nickel-rich Indonesia pitches EV battery plant plan to Elon Musk

Indonesia’s top investment official says the government has proposed building an electric vehicle battery plant to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

apnews.com

Megapacks are using LFP so no nickel. The article talks about vehicle batteries which would make more sense.

 

[Singuy]

Nvidia has less exposure to the Chinese market than Tesla and TSMC is adding capacity outside Taiwan.
In the event of war in Taiwan, I’d worry more about Tesla. Chinese buyers will reject American brands and in 2024, nothing is more American than Tesla.

It takes like a decade to add this capacity outside of Taiwan. It's safe to say everyone is F-ed if there's a war for Taiwan. Good news is China is having a hard time populating themselves so a world war would collapse the country.

 

[Zero CO2]

had CT for almost a week now(yes it is a great vehicle and it garners an insane amount of constant attention... it is an actual celebrity) ... however
not having FSD turned on just plain sucks ... it feels dangerous.... did my 3 hour trip to upstate new york w/o FSD and was exhausted as compared to Model S with FSD ... the micro adjustments and the stress of driving are real
for me there is no turning back ....FSD is required going forward ... No FSD is like not wearing a seatbelt

 

[CHGolferJim]

had CT for almost a week now(yes it is a great vehicle and it garners an insane amount of constant attention... it is an actual celebrity) ... however
not having FSD turned on just plain sucks ... it feels dangerous
for me there is no turning back ....FSD is required going forward ... No FSD is like not wearing a seatbelt

What availability timing are you expecting?

 

[hobbes]

Well, we already know from ex-Tesla engineers that they designed Autopilot to disengage one second before an anticipated crash, thus rendering a crash as "no on Autopilot."

Like many things Tesla, be skeptical of what they present at face value given their track record.

Source?

 

[Zero CO2]

What availability timing are you expecting?

you mean FSD on CT ? i thought Elon mentioned 12.5 for CT