TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Fact Checking]

You're way too optimistic here. None of these statements implies FSD is imminent here, for any definition of "Full". My prediction is onramp to offramp will (someday) work reliably with HW3 (in mostly good weather). Beyond that is a huge question mark.

I disagree, but since most of my arguments are speculation and extrapolation from a limited number of data points you could end up being correct.

 

[UncaNed]

How would you propose to recharge a military EV on the battle front?

Interesting question; I wonder how big of a semi-portable solar panel/battery "fuel farm" for military EVs could be transported by the equivalent trucking capacity of a few large loads of diesel or whatever is being currently used to fuel ICE military vehicles? Solar panels themselves are light and bulky... and they don't blow up and burn like a load of fuel for ICE vehicles. I love that if I'm thinking along the right lines, this will help drive the technology for still more efficient solar panels.

 

[humbaba]

How would you propose to recharge a military EV on the battle front?

this seems... way off topic. But to answer your question -- it depends on what kind of battle front you are talking about. Its already normal to have generator walls to support energy needs. In a major push offensive the generators are not going to keep up, but do they need to?

I've gotten rusty on modern warfare mobility, but in a full scale battle, how quickly does a line actually advance? Its hard to conceive that a range of a few hundred miles would not be sufficient.

I think the market action aspect of all of this is how would large military sales affect stock price? Companies get slammed for being too close to militaries (e.g., google and its recent work). So the plausibility of EVs for military operations is only relevant for determining if military sales are even a possibility for driving stock price.

From that perspective there is the aforementioned downward push if a company is perceived as "not evil", but then again there's a lot of money to be made (see military budget) and in general business does not seem overly impacted by evil associations (see Kashioggi, Yemen, etc.) -- so for me I'm not sure what effect Tesla supplying military EVs would have on the stock price. But I think EVs are very much the future, including in military operations.

 

[Fact Checking]

The neural networks are for vision, a necessary component and maybe the vision has gotten "good enough". But even if that is the case, it is not sufficient to enable FSD.

BTW., I think vision is the biggest precondition to FSD, because it has the largest computational cost, by several orders of magnitude.

The 'FSD driving' part is written in deterministic, procedural languages, which is much easier to scope. I'd estimate it to be mostly done already, and it's less than 10% of the overall complexity of FSD - 90% is on the vision neural network side. Despite that "FSD driving" is still a very complex piece of software, but I think a mostly known thing - while the biggest part with the "FSD vision" part is the unknown.

I do think people tend to underestimate the complexities of the 'FSD vision' part, and tend to overestimate the complexity of the 'FSD driving' part.

But yeah, a lot of assumptions and a fair bit of speculation on my part, and it's entirely fair to disagree with my assessment of Tesla's FSD status.

 

[Drumheller]

For those looking for market action discussion only, please use this thread:

TSLA Market Action Only

 

[Artful Dodger]

EVERY OFF-TOPIC POST GETS A DISAGREE.

Take it to the proper thread. This is Market Action

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

For those looking for market action discussion only, please use this thread:

TSLA Market Action Only

If it’s not a sticky and doesn’t get moderated, it will not be the solution you are looking for. The thread we are in now simply needs more moderation, so that anything not relevant to Tesla gets deleted. Tired of reading about US politics, modern warfare and the size of parking spaces in Brussels.

 

[tivoboy]

Again, and about half a dozen people tried to explain this to you as well, a customer deciding to buy an E-Tron instead of buying a Model S is not "taking" sales from Tesla and is not reducing Tesla sales as long as Tesla has higher demand than supply.

So your original statement of "it'll take some of the Tesla S sales for sure and it won't be 1-3%" is an active misconstruing of the underlying mechanism.

There's a huge difference between the E-Tron and Tesla splitting up demand among themselves and still not being able to supply enough units and still not being demand constrained, versus demand constrained competitors taking sales from each other in a zero-sum competitive environment.

This isn't a difficult concept, will you finally concede this very simple argument?

you're right. I'm wrong. happy now? probably.

 

[RobStark]

It makes no sense to delay the debut if they intend to release it. Most consumers have no idea or care and it is a lost opportunity. Seems more like another stalling tactic. Let's see when that car is available for delivery in mass.

Nissan cares about the automotive press treatment of the LEAF debut vis-a-vis the Ghosn arrest not that the general public cares that much about the Ghosn arrest.

In effect that they would not report on it very much or just mostly talk about the Ghosn arrest instead of the car.

 

[UncaNed]

EVERY OFF-TOPIC POST GETS A DISAGREE.

Take it to the proper thread. This is Market Action

Seriously, if there was an easy way to tag/hide individual posts on the big forum as irrelevant, with the number of tags displayed on each post, so we could elect not to view anything with more than a base number of disregards, then the problem would fixed for all of us!!

 

[Artful Dodger]

Seriously, if there was an easy way to tag/hide individual posts on the big forum as irrelevant, with the number of tags displayed on each post, we could elect not to view anything with more than a base number of disregards - and the problem is fixed for all of us!!

I wish there was a "Like+Helpful" button to respond to your idea.

Cheers!

 

[lklundin]

Additionally, transport of fuel is one of the most dangerous duties in battle. The logistical requirements for fuel are quite substantial and costly in life and treasure.

Right.

So I expect opposition to military BEVs from Halliburton...

 

[homer214]

The issue should be about union's priorities; are they looking out for themselves (what's good for unions) - or are they looking out for the actual WORKERS (unions, IMHO, often DO NOT). Those who disagree need only use the Googles to learn of pensions dissappeared at the hands of union management, workers trampled on by unions in so many ways... Not saying unions aren't needed in some cases, just that I see no use for unions in their present form in the US. I'm told that unions are very different in countries like Germany, that kind of union wouldn't hurt Tesla so much, but I don't believe that's the kind of union we'd have anywhere in the US.

The best unions are member-driven. Workers collectively bargain and work cooperatively with management to make a better product or whatever. We have effective unions in the US, lots of them in higher wage states. Germany, of course, has a highly unionized workforce, as do many other developed nations in the EU and elsewhere.

Good workplaces exist with and without unions. The last thing Tesla needs is to be labeled “anti union”. I’m not saying it is, but let’s be careful not to depict unions unfairly.

 

[Cherry Wine]

If it’s not a sticky and doesn’t get moderated, it will not be the solution you are looking for. The thread we are in now simply needs more moderation, so that anything not relevant to Tesla gets deleted. Tired of reading about US politics, modern warfare and the size of parking spaces in Brussels.

This thread could do with some self-moderation.

 

[KD2018]

Here's what will happen re: Audi etron IMHO.

Tesla Model S will take some more sales from Audi
Audi etron may take some sales from Tesla
Audi etron willl take lots of sales from Audi ICE lineup

net effect: little on overall Audi sales, even more pressure on their declining ICE lineup, Tesla still sells enough to be production constrained.

Bottom line here is Audi will have to expense two production lines to produce same or slightly more volume of ICE and EV while Tesla cost is streamlined with a production line for EV. I see huge cost disadvantage for ICE/EV manufactures.

 

[UncaNed]

This thread could do with some self-moderation.

YEAH!! Exactly what I proposed in my suggestion:

Seriously, if there was an easy way to tag/hide individual posts on the big forum as irrelevant, with the number of tags displayed on each post, so we could elect not to view anything with more than a base number of disregards, then the problem would fixed for all of us!!

 

[jhm]

Additionally, transport of fuel is one of the most dangerous duties in battle. The logistical requirements for fuel are quite substantial and costly in life and treasure.

Anyone who wants to follow this discussion can do so at Shorting Oil, Hedging Tesla

 

[Joe F]

This thread could do with some self-moderation.

Very simple: Report all off-topic post as such. 3 infractions get a mandatory timeout.

More work for under appreciated MODS, but it is clear we can't help ourselves.

My Christmas wish.

 

[mblakele]

This thread could do with some self-moderation.

That's the human-nature side of the problem. Quite a few folks simply can't disregard off-topic posts, and are too lazy to start a new thread to respond. Something closer to omnipresent moderation might change that culture through fear of bans, but we don't have that.

Seriously, if there was an easy way to tag/hide individual posts on the big forum as irrelevant, with the number of tags displayed on each post, so we could elect not to view anything with more than a base number of disregards, then the problem would fixed for all of us!!

If you think about that for a moment, I think you'll see that it'll be gamed. Folks will abuse that "irrelevant" tag to bury opinions they don't like, even when they're relevant. You could add a "relevant" tag to counter that, and only hide posts when the irrelevant count is much greater than the relevant count. But people will abuse those tags to mean like and dislike, and now we've reinvented reddit.

Keeping this thread on-topic would require 24-hour moderation. Instead we have part-time moderation, and whole days can go by without any visible moderation.

Of course by posting about this here, I'm now part of the problem. Mods, please take action.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

@tivoboy I've come to rely on your daily read of SP mvmt. What do you read in the last 3 days weakness of TSLA?