TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[KarenRei]

$269 now. I think this band's name sums up my expectations for today's market movement:

 

[lklundin]

I know we're exhausted and morale is fraying somewhat in longland

no

 

[KarenRei]

I know we're exhausted and morale is fraying somewhat in longland

Dunno about you, but I'm still thrilled about the lemur we got yesterday, and even more excited going into the Q3 report, which draws ever nearer

 

[nursebee]

I disagree with many of the comments analyzing TSLA price action. Someone said something about it getting hit hard near open and getting bought up end of day. Yesterday this was not the case.

It is tough to have a believable comment about this stock getting bought up as it hangs out near the lows. It MIGHT have found the lows, but this will not be known until after the fact.

Big picture look at the chart related to averages suggest the market in this stock is weak. I think it could have pain a few more years.

 

[Buckminster]

As of 10 mins ago, he now knows that you can drive across the country and supercharge along the way..... His co-presenter (pro Tesla) advised him that they have chargers at supermarkets etc.
If FUD is history this guy is preFUD!

 

[YasB]

Do you seriously believe all ICE manufacturers could produce a car like the 3 but did not do by purpose, accepting to loose large revenue in the US and their rankings as well?

Right now and in that quantity? No. At least not, if you include the EV part. Building compelling EVs simply wasn't economic, necessary or a priority for them. That changed slowly over the last 2 or 3 years and we should see more results of that change over the next few years. I'm willing to attribute an important role triggering that change to Tesla, since they showed it's possible and EVs sell pretty good. They have proven there is demand. But i think new regulations regarding CO2 limits in the most important markets play an equally important role.

As a software guy i see less of a problem regarding OTA. OTA is available for the infotainment part of the car by most manufacturers. Obviously cars today are patchable, every workshop can do that and i've done some limited patchin to my own car using USB pretty easily. Again i think it's less about capabilities, but willingness to apply the available mechanisms to lower level hardware components. From a security standpoint i can understand why they may hesitate.

Last but not least, from what i've seen from the outside, i'm pretty unimpressed by Teslas autonomy approach, which is probably something most people strongly disagree over here.

Please let's not start to talk about the board formerly known as dashboard, that's mostly a matter of taste and it doesn't fit mine.

Did i miss other important features that make a car 'Model 3 like' and answer your question?

Just a cursory search would have helped you discover various quotes from early "Tesla skeptics" rooted in the ICE automotive industry, all the way back to 2008, fretting about Tesla competitors - which have not materialized in the 10 years since then.

There's also this gem predicting that VW would dominate electric cars, back in early 2010 ...

Now you try to spin random blog posts from some dudes on a blog called "thetruthaboutcars" from 2008 into "10 years of empty promises [by] the traditional ICE automotive industry". Well, maybe it's that quote from the 2010 article by the VW CEO that they " ... want to attain an electric vehicle market share of 3 percent within our entire range of products.". That was indeed refering to the 2018 timeframe, but most probably included hybrids, since they talked about those in the first part of that article. Why am i under the impression, that mostly unquantified long term goals as these are a promise, when they came from other car makers, but are merely motivative stretch goals when they come from Tesla?

What's left is the accusation, that VWs CEO promised to be EV market leader by 2018 and didn't foresee that Tesla would sell 300k or so EVs in 2018. Back in 2010. Now if that is your standard for a broken promise ... maybe check your facts again?

What is your answer?

Please be patient. I'm alone and you guys are many. Also, i'm at work and not obliged in any way to answer everything. From now on it will be even worse, since i'll be gone now for the weekend and prefer to take a break from anything stock market related from friday to monday monring. Have a nice weekend too.

 

[Buckminster]

Nick Clegg - the saviour of Brexit is off to Facebook before we even Brexit!!
Facebook hires Nick Clegg as head of global affairs
That rules him out for Tesla Chairman I guess....

 

[KarenRei]

As of 10 mins ago, he now knows that you can drive across the country and supercharge along the way..... His co-presenter (pro Tesla) advised him that they have chargers at supermarkets etc.
If FUD is history this guy is preFUD!

Is there a clip?

 

[ggies07]

As of 10 mins ago, he now knows that you can drive across the country and supercharge along the way..... His co-presenter (pro Tesla) advised him that they have chargers at supermarkets etc.
If FUD is history this guy is preFUD!

I loathe him so much. Every time I watch a CNBC clip and he is there on the side of the desk, asking stupid questions and acting all smug about it. He is either playing dumb or is way out of his league.

 

[KarenRei]

As a software guy i see less of a problem regarding OTA. OTA is available for the infotainment part of the car by most manufacturers

Except that the infotainment system in most cars is nothing more than an infotainment system. If that - sometimes there's even multiple disjoint components that make it up! It's easy to focus on specific things that Tesla is doing different - for example, "electric cars" or "OTA updates" - but lose sight of the big picture, which is they're disrupting almost everything that's ripe for disruption. And one of those is core to how cars are built: system unification.

Automakers today are generally outsourcers. They buy their functionality from tier 1 suppliers as a series of "boxes" that each provide a narrow featureset. Each "box" contains its own motherboard(s), processors, memory, power handling, networking capabilities, sometimes graphics support, sometimes screens, etc etc, and is a disjoint component that has to be wired to everything that it interacts with. The number of these "boxes" has continually grown as vehicles have gotten more complicated. This has been adding weight, not just from the components themselves, but their ever-growing wiring harnesses (which are also expensive to connect). It's also the reason why car alternators have kept growing, in order to keep up.

Tesla, instead, has created a unified compute and interface platform. Rather than a series of disjoint boxes that each handle their own functionality, almost all components function as "dumb terminals" that only have a minimal amount of capability on their own. This has massive advantages in cost savings (both part and installation), weight savings, energy efficiency, and - yes - OTA updatability. And Tesla designs its hardware to correspond to this paradigm - for example, not using buttons/switches/levers/internal components that physically "lock into" particular states, but rather are simple emulators and thus can have their functionality entirely reprogrammed in updates.

Don't just look at the superficial differences between vehicles; you need to look under the hood, so to speak. This is no trivial difference; in order to do what Tesla has done, they need to basically trash the whole way they build cars and recreate what Tesla has done from scratch.

 

[lklundin]

That's your take away?... You seemed to have skipped the first paragraph:

Porsche fears that Germany's slow roll out of fifth-generation mobile phone technology could threaten the domestic auto industry's competitiveness and profitability in the next decade.

Unlike e.g. Italians, German's don't mind choosing functionality over beauty.

So maybe for their car's connectivity they go for pizza-box sized antennas that can use what someone is currently building, called something like ... Starlink?

 

[anthonyj]

This stock feels broken... I hope Tesla releases earnings early

 

[mongo]

As a software guy i see less of a problem regarding OTA. OTA is available for the infotainment part of the car by most manufacturers. Obviously cars today are patchable, every workshop can do that and i've done some limited patchin to my own car using USB pretty easily. Again i think it's less about capabilities, but willingness to apply the available mechanisms to lower level hardware components. From a security standpoint i can understand why they may hesitate.

In the US, the same laws that prevent Tesla from have self-owned dealerships prevent OEMs from repairing their cars. So OTA fixes are not an option for them.

Edit, addendum:

Don't just look at the superficial differences between vehicles; you need to look under the hood, so to speak. This is no trivial difference; in order to do what Tesla has done, they need to basically trash the whole way they build cars and recreate what Tesla has done from scratch.

Most automotive modules are updatable via CAN through the OBD connector. With only a Cellullar/WiFi to CAN node in the car, modules could be reflashed remotely. (See Chrysler remote vulnerability when the Infotainment unit left a port open Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It)

 

[KarenRei]

This stock feels broken... I hope Tesla releases earnings early

Macros are broken. NASDAQ is down 7,5% from its recent highs. I guess that's why NASDA went bankrupt...

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Except that the infotainment system in most cars is nothing more than an infotainment system. If that - sometimes there's even multiple disjoint components that make it up! It's easy to focus on specific things that Tesla is doing different - for example, "electric cars" or "OTA updates" - but lose sight of the big picture, which is they're disrupting almost everything that's ripe for disruption. And one of those is core to how cars are built: system unification.

Automakers today are generally outsourcers. They buy their functionality from tier 1 suppliers as a series of "boxes" that each provide a narrow featureset. Each "box" contains its own motherboard(s), processors, memory, power handling, networking capabilities, sometimes graphics support, sometimes screens, etc etc, and is a disjoint component that has to be wired to everything that it interacts with. The number of these "boxes" has continually grown as vehicles have gotten more complicated. This has been adding weight, not just from the components themselves, but their ever-growing wiring harnesses (which are also expensive to connect). It's also the reason why car alternators have kept growing, in order to keep up.

Tesla, instead, has created a unified compute and interface platform. Rather than a series of disjoint boxes that each handle their own functionality, almost all components function as "dumb terminals" that only have a minimal amount of capability on their own. This has massive advantages in cost savings (both part and installation), weight savings, energy efficiency, and - yes - OTA updatability. And Tesla designs its hardware to correspond to this paradigm - for example, not using buttons/switches/levers/internal components that physically "lock into" particular states, but rather are simple emulators and thus can have their functionality entirely reprogrammed in updates.

Don't just look at the superficial differences between vehicles; you need to look under the hood, so to speak. This is no trivial difference; in order to do what Tesla has done, they need to basically trash the whole way they build cars and recreate what Tesla has done from scratch.

Oh noes, I feel another big technical discussion is brewing

 

[ValueAnalyst]

My perception is/was - this is a friendly place to get the most accurate and detailed information about all things Elon/Tesla/related. So I wasn't too far off

TMC is to Bulls what SA is to Bears: an echo chamber. It's definitely not the place for "the most accurate" information if there is such a thing. It's best to read about a dozen individuals who have a proven track record while avoiding those who only post in one direction like the plague.

For example, most here are celebrating mid-range, while avoiding to note the margin impact. If it's such great news, why isn't the stock up 10 percent pre-market from a supposed "local low?" The fact is that Tesla lowered the entry price of Model 3 by $4,000, but it's not certain that the cost of producing it dropped by a corresponding amount * (1 - target margin). On the other hand, higher volume will improve fixed asset depreciation and labor cost absorption. The net effect is anybody's guess at this point.

 

[lklundin]

I loathe him so much. Every time I watch a CNBC clip and he is there on the side of the desk, asking stupid questions and acting all smug about it. He is either playing dumb or is way out of his league.

Right!

He is the complete moron who started rambling about CNG halfway during the otherwise pretty good Ron Baron interview:

 

[avoigt]

If they know how to build cars where is their equivalent of the Model 3?

You seem to imply, that everbody not building a Model 3 like car today, is not able to build cars, since the Model 3 is the one to compare everything against. To seriously answer your question, i would have to share that assumption, which is something i do not do.

Right now and in that quantity? No. At least not, if you include the EV part. Building compelling EVs simply wasn't economic, necessary or a priority for them. That changed slowly over the last 2 or 3 years and we should see more results of that change over the next few years. I'm willing to attribute an important role triggering that change to Tesla, since they showed it's possible and EVs sell pretty good. They have proven there is demand. But i think new regulations regarding CO2 limits in the most important markets play an equally important role.

(...)

Did i miss other important features that make a car 'Model 3 like' and answer your question?

[/QUOTE]

To summarize:

You just said large manufacturers know how to build cars but that everybody not building a Model 3 could but No they could not.

 

[humbaba]

But this settlement is really old news; how would it being finalized change anything? Tesla has known it was going to be finalized ever since it was agreed upon, and that hasn't changed anything about how they've positioned FSD. And there's nothing in the agreement that says anything about FSD. So why would it have an effect now?

Sure it isn't directly about FSD, but the premise of the lawsuit is that Tesla mislead about capabilities and timeline. This is 100% just as applicable to FSD as it was to autopilot. The fact that Tesla has always disclaimered it is immaterial to a lawsuit. Notice they settled while strenuously objecting. They would probably "win" such a lawsuit, but Pyrrhic victories are not desired (wasted cost/effort/focus).

As for timing, they are probably just clearing their plate. It may not have been as clear before the SEC nonsense that they needed to avoid distractions like inviting lawsuits. Our legal system has some fair in common with Iceland (at least historical, I'm more knowledgeable about year 1000 than year 2000 in this regard) and the notion of suing anyone for any reason is part of that.

Conjecture about "its around the corner" is senseless -- it isn't like they pulled EAP when it got close to fruition.

Conjecture about "its been delayed" is more sensical -- except that it is being validated with v9 and the new hardware is on the horizon. Optimistically 3/6m IIRC, but unlike FSD capabilities, no real reason to think it could slip meaningfully. This is chip manufacture and is well understood and quite routine. The [chip] design is just specifics and Tesla has competent engineers. [For the FSD software side] it will take some time to get results. Even if somehow their incremental approach is a complete miss it would take time to understand that. This is too soon.

In short, this best fits the facts. Is it known for certain? Well, no, we don't have privileged information. But, as someone else noted, pulling FSD increases confusion and gives the shorts talking points. They didn't do it on a lark. OTOH Tesla is trying to focus on execution and shorts/stock price manipulation is not high in their priorities. Clearing the plate to enable focus is.

[edit for clarity]

 

[Unpilot]

I loathe him so much. Every time I watch a CNBC clip and he is there on the side of the desk, asking stupid questions and acting all smug about it. He is either playing dumb or is way out of his league.

I can answer this one. He is dumb. I hate to throw a statement like that so easily. But my gawd just listen to the man.