2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[AlMc]

Anecdotally, I was at the San Diego service center on Friday. I didn't see much of any delivery activity even though it was 2 days before the end of quarter. Not sure what to make of that but it could just be the time I was there.

Curious. Were there a number of 'to be delivered Ss and Xs there?

 

[neroden]

Oh, and I heard a rumor that B4 the end of this year if I wait too long even the S & X models will be excessively long lines, not due to slow production, but demand.

I recently read a survey that 60% of people in the US still didn't know that electric cars *existed*. Every Tesla on the road has the ability to spread that word of mouth and increase demand. So this is a possiblity...

 

[AlMc]

But how does jumping that hoop improve the thread?! What are we trying to accomplish? I'll attempt to do some analysis using first principles. The useful discussions (bull or bear) are what makes this thread useful . What is the main problem? IMO it's not the 15-20 useless posts speculating on when the numbers will be released, or informing us what the current SP is, because those are so brief that they easy to skip (that said the forum should have the current SP displayed in red or green, in the forum header.). So far we've eliminated the "useless" posts about the numbers and the happy New Years posts from the other thread. Does anyone think that's a substantial improvement? The main problem is the long useless discussions, precipitated either by trolls or bulls reacting emotionally to a perceived problem. Did anyone benefit from all of the pages of discussion about the SCTY merger, triggered by the sky is falling posts?

The only thing that these threads can add to issue of the Q4 numbers the is the discussion about them. Who is going to check in in a few days and need to be caught up on the actual numbers? It sounds like we are trying to put one of these sites into a thread; Tesla News or Electrek.

What's the point?! The only way to substantially improve the quality of this thread is to fix the major problems. Which means to improve the quality and conciseness of the discussions. So that except for censorship or self discipline which I don't don't believe will ever happen, the only possible ways to substantially improve the quality of this thread are to limit posts by known trolls, and or move long discussions to dedicated threads.

Self moderation is impossible. There is no perfect solution.

I do believe that if the moderator can eliminate (cull) responses to links on the other thread and leave this a more 'wild west' thread then investors wishing to see 'quick info' gleaned by other serious investors and posted as 'links only' could be a way to have two threads that would cater to whether you want quick info OR longer discussions.

 

[Krugerrand]

Thoughts on what this type of marketing psychology would be called?

I believe the technical term is: Get it while it's hot. Also sometimes known as, Blue Light Special.

 

[neroden]

Tesla is extending unlimited Supercharging for cars ordered in the next 2 weeks

I wonder what the motivation behind that may be?

I've heard three plausible suggestions:
(1) People who wanted to buy before end-of-year were unable to complete their purchases at end of year because of bank holidays and Tesla didn't want to disappoint them.
(2) Tesla is coordinating this with a hardware upgrade, so that everyone who gets the "old" hardware gets free Supercharging (as a consolation prize), and the hardware upgrade was delayed slightly.
(3) Suck more buyers out of the Model 3 queue into buying Model S/X today (we know they're trying to do that) The Free Supercharging Ends Soon promotion worked so well last month, try it again for Q1 2017.

 

[NOLA_Mike]

I've heard three plausible suggestions:
(1) People who wanted to buy before end-of-year were unable to complete their purchases at end of year because of bank holidays and Tesla didn't want to disappoint them.
(2) Tesla is coordinating this with a hardware upgrade, so that everyone who gets the "old" hardware gets free Supercharging (as a consolation prize), and the hardware upgrade was delayed slightly.
(3) Suck more buyers out of the Model 3 queue into buying Model S/X today (we know they're trying to do that) The Free Supercharging Ends Soon promotion worked so well last month, try it again for Q1 2017.

(4) They are "drunk on orders" and need another fix.

I'm guessing that when they pulled that lever the amount of orders that came in exceeded even their wildest expectations.

 

[neroden]

I don't think existing packs could take the over 350kW V 3 SC which Elon refers to. Maybe the new 100 packs with the improved cooling architecture, but probably not for very long since that's going to be more than 3.5C charging rate.

I read an analysis somewhere which suggested that the existing packs could go faster than the current Superchargers but not as fast as Musk is suggesting for the new Superchargers. Of course if you have an A pack you can't even do that.

 

[neroden]

Wow, I can't really believe that. I guess the general population is just dumber than I thought.

Not dumber per se. Just less *curious*. You'd be amazed how many people never look up anything outside their most narrow interests. And some don't even have any curiosity about anything.

It's easy to be ignorant if you never bother to look up anything. A lot of people are in that position.

 

[3Victoria]

(2) Tesla is coordinating this with a hardware upgrade, so that everyone who gets the "old" hardware gets free Supercharging (as a consolation prize), and the hardware upgrade was delayed slightly.

Or inversely, the upgrade is delayed and they want to fill the gap.

 

[neroden]

Will definitely only be available on cars with newer batteries. I would be very surprised if Tesla cells, in the next 3 years, are able to charge at >3C (which >350kW implies) without sacrificing energy density. If Tesla has cells in the lab that will charge at >3C without a sacrifice in energy density... that would be amazing, it would constitute an enormous breakthrough.

Tesla could have raised the voltage, you know. Probably easier.

 

[neroden]

Thanks for this.

I can't speak for China but the old Soviet Union wasted resources initially and remained crippled by the labor theory of value for a long time. As Marx understood it along with most economic thinkers of his day, the only thing of value was human labor or its products. The environment had no value because it had no labor content.

Well, they were also crippled by adopting crank theories of biology as doctrine. Most of Soviet science was very good, but their biology was a catastrophe because of this.

 

[Paracelsus]

I've heard three plausible suggestions:
(1) People who wanted to buy before end-of-year were unable to complete their purchases at end of year because of bank holidays and Tesla didn't want to disappoint them.
(2) Tesla is coordinating this with a hardware upgrade, so that everyone who gets the "old" hardware gets free Supercharging (as a consolation prize), and the hardware upgrade was delayed slightly.
(3) Suck more buyers out of the Model 3 queue into buying Model S/X today (we know they're trying to do that) The Free Supercharging Ends Soon promotion worked so well last month, try it again for Q1 2017.

The reason for the extension is simple, because the engineered short squeeze over the next two weeks will reward many of us longs the opportunity to upgrade our Model 3's for X's - thanks Elon!

 

[EnzoXYZ]

Thanks for the anecdote which all but confirms my intuition - gas cars lag in achieving maximum acceleration from erroneous pedal application enables most instances of this type of mistake to be corrected by the driver before a collision occurs (and therefore go unreported).

Somehow using a creative piece of software and the autopilot sensor suite should be able to mitigate this problem. Its certainly a challenging problem for Tesla to solve - the easy solution is code to make the electric motor behave more like a gas one, and limit maximum acceleration - but that also nixes one of the biggest performance boosts. A better solution is to use the sensor suite to identify the surroundings - perhaps the cameras can be used to unambiguously identify the interior of a garage or the face of a building, and limit maximum acceleration only in those conditions, or something.

Thinking more about this - the car probably should do this if it can detect that it is in a parking lot too. Limiting maximum acceleration would probably reduce collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians alike, never mind a building. Then the only problem becomes identifying if i'm in a parking lot, or in an autocross-type event held in a closed parking lot.

While we are at it can we also include big body of water, steep cliffs, moose, etc... would be great!

 

[neroden]

For me the supply and demand measures of value is just a stunt form modern economists which more or less are mouthpieces of the rich and who want of course fight the impression that workers some how add value to something ... workers are just a cost factors ^ ^
As far as I'm concerned the oldtimers like Smith, Eduardo and Marx got it with the labor theory of value. As long as the materials are abandon you can make a product as cheap as you have to pay the workers for dig in the mines, make the transistors, write the software etc.

BTW. The vertical integration goes to the raw cost of labor and cuts the middle man.

Neither the labor theory of value nor the "market theory of value" are correct. I don't think that there is an objective measure of value (meaning, I disagree with you on what's valuable, and my friends disagree with me -- we all have different opinions).

(Perhaps the best we can do is a sort of voting-weighted value: if a million people believe that clean air is worth $1000 to them, and the rest of the people don't care, then dirtying the air for that million people should carry a cost to the polluter of at least $1 billion.)

There *are* good theories of pricing, and they start with supply and demand but are way more complicated than that.

 

[BornToFly]

Less than 48 hours into the new year, no news, and already 10 pages.... (Sigh).

 

[NOLA_Mike]

@danny Viewing this page of posts, post 192 looks like this to me:

So I hit REPLY to make a "cute" reply like "You don't say" and this shows up in Quotes:

The reason for the extension is simple, because the engineered short squeeze over the next two weeks will reward many of us longs the opportunity to upgrade our Model 3's for X's - thanks Elon!

A bug? It looks like a Quoted message with no response yet there appears to be a response that I can't see.

EDIT: Now, some 20 mins. later, I can see the reply in post 192.

 

[neroden]

I agree that 'Goodwill' is a consequence of the extension but I doubt it is the reason.

Orders for TM products are done online so unless their servers collapsed with overwhelming demand people should have been able to place their orders before December 31st if they were doing so to get 'unlimited supercharging'.

Bank closures for the holiday might have caused difficulties for some people who didn't think ahead and didn't have the money in the right account.

 

[LargeHamCollider]

Tesla could have raised the voltage, you know. Probably easier.

Not sure what this means, the charging voltage? The pack voltage?

Meaningfully increasing charging voltage would degrade cycle life. You could rearrange the cells in the pack so that pack voltage was higher but this would not increase an individual cell's max charge rate. What it would do is reduce required conductor mass and increase required insulation mass.

 

[neroden]

If his intentions require very much additional effort or complicated explanations my prediction is that it won't work.

My first prediction for 2017 is that I don't believe it's going to work well. I wish predicting the SP was this easy! The only difference I've noticed so far is that I need to check two threads instead of one. I don't see how that is an improvement.

My theory was that the other thread should be ONLY about near-term stock price movements.

Accordingly, it should contain NOTHING at this time except European stock price quotes and predictions as to how the market will open tomorrow. IT should be more active when the markets are open.

All technical analysis stuff should go there, not here.

 

[1kEE]

Less than 48 hours into the new year, no news, and already 10 pages.... (Sigh).

It'll come eventually.... we all placed our bets already, let's not dwell on it hahha.

Edit: I am of the belief that if they wait longer, and announce closer to opening bell, results will be good. However saying that could be called "jinxing" so I didn't say that.