Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2015

[TSLAopt]

Let's remember the "TMC law of tweets": The answer is usually the most boring. If so, it is nav improvements that do the range calculations for you and allow you to use the car to plan a complex route. 99% chance of this. This has felt missing for a long time. I have felt it when driving. If you do the math, you can get wherever you need to go, but you do need to do that math. This update will dumb it down and make it easy.

They will add the charging partner network to the nav. 99% chance of this. Hopefully they don't overhype this since most of them are at hotels and are for guests only. So this is nice if you are planning a roadtrip and that hotel works for you, otherwise the charging partners are "meh"
What I HOPE: Announcing a charge partner arrangement with some large company with a widespread footprint: Target, Wendy's, even Mcdonalds or walmart. Starbucks is a lousy choice since many of them have limited parking or don't control their lots since they are renters. 50% of this.

Unfortunately I think above is most realistic and spot on and will be a little bit of a let down for us, but for the public this press coverage is ultimately good as it creates more awareness for Tesla amongst the public.

there is perhaps a small chance in my opinion that there could be some surprise, shorts should be buying OTM short dated calls as a hedge just incase there is some major surprise to go along with this press conference.

 

[virtuesoft]

The market reaction has been weaker than I expected. I thought we would see a move up to $200, instead we're just about beating the NASDAQ today. It seems that expectations for the press conference aren't particularly high. Perhaps this is a good thing...

 

[austinEV]

This is indeed possible folks. I wouldn't put it past Elon.

A charging partner announcement would deserve a press conference. Just sayin'

 

[xhawk101]

This is indeed possible folks. I wouldn't put it past Elon.

Agree...."something else". clock is ticking.
Re model X

 

[breser]

On the "demand" issue I note that Tesla reported that at year end they had 10,000 reservations for Model S and we have seen assigned VIN numbers go from 70,000 to 80,000 since Jan 1.

Be careful making assumptions about VIN sequence numbers right now. There's been a growing number of orders that have had their sequence numbers regenerated to the new 6 digit ones from the 5 digit ones. So it appears that Tesla is discarding some VIN sequence numbers:
Tracking Model S 85D Delivery Thread - Page 56

 

[MartinAustin]

What I HOPE: Announcing a charge partner arrangement with some large company with a widespread footprint: Target, Wendy's, even Mcdonalds or walmart. Starbucks is a lousy choice since many of them have limited parking or don't control their lots since they are renters. 50% of this.

It is a great idea, but it would not really require an OTA update, so I am not sure it's that

I am just frustrated by the amount of time they leave between the tweet and the actual news. This leaves time for all sorts of inaccurate speculation to drive TSLA up or down. When they tweeted "time to reveal the D and something else" we got Trip Chowdhry et. al making all sorts of totally incorrect announcements, which hurt the stock afterwards.

 

[austinEV]

It is a great idea, but it would not really require an OTA update, so I am not sure it's that

I am just frustrated by the amount of time they leave between the tweet and the actual news. This leaves time for all sorts of inaccurate speculation to drive TSLA up or down. When they tweeted "time to reveal the D and something else" we got Trip Chowdhry et. al making all sorts of totally incorrect announcements, which hurt the stock afterwards.

I think it would require an OTA update, since I am also quite sure there will be a nav improvement too. I think they would have to update the nav to show the charging partners. I expect this will happen regardless: they will add the charging partners to the nav, an OTA update. My *speculation* is this will be combined with an expansion of the charging partner network via some big deal.

 

[jhm]

I don't think so. The inverter is already probably 90%+ efficient, a few more points will not be huge.

According to JB, you've got to raise throughput to the third or fifth power to account for multiple passes like regerative breaking. This is why a little coasting between accelerating and regen could be more efficient.

 

[Newb]

The market reaction has been weaker than I expected. I thought we would see a move up to $200, instead we're just about beating the NASDAQ today. It seems that expectations for the press conference aren't particularly high.

Sweet Crude has fallen to six year low. Musk enterprises always suffer most from plummeting oil prices. Reason: stupidly programmed trading bots.

 

[snellenr]

What I HOPE: Announcing a charge partner arrangement with some large company with a widespread footprint: Target, Wendy's, even Mcdonalds or walmart. Starbucks is a lousy choice since many of them have limited parking or don't control their lots since they are renters. 50% of this.

Any chance of it being a charging and/or SuperCharger licensing agreement with one of the mid-significant car manufacturers (e.g, BMW)?

 

[austinEV]

Any chance of it being a charging and/or SuperCharger licensing agreement with one of the mid-significant car manufacturers (e.g, BMW)?

While such a deal might happen someday, there is no way Elon would characterize that as an end to range anxiety. The theory that is sometimes trotted out is BMW dealers will install superchargers or something. That is a lousy solution given that dealerships lock up at night, might not be on a useful route, there is nothing to do during long charges and they would try to sell you a BMW.

 

[pGo]

Someone pointed out and I now strongly feel that this recent video goes along with Elon's tweet.

Tesla Amsterdam March 2015 - Jerome Guillen - YouTube

So, a firmware upgrade to all cars will boost range (say ~5%), how will the stock move? Someone also mentioned that they already have this upgrade through ranger and they are seeing lower consumption.

 

[SteveG3]

I'd agree far smarter range estimation is almost a sure thing Thursday, and more likely than not the only improvement to the car Elon will announce (though I do think modest range gain with new software is possible Thursday). While this will be a yawn to the market, I've come to realize it's a pretty substantial improvement.

Not really worth a press conference, except if you consider,

1) a large target of "idiot" proof range estimation would be the subset of potential buyers for whom even the mention of any more thought involved in using a Tesla than what they are used to with an ICE is a deal breaker. This press conference could be free advertising to that group of potential buyers.

2) In my view Elon is keenly aware of criticisms of the stock and the company. I've observed him repeatedly use the quarterly earnings calls to slip into marginally related answers what are clearly previously thought through rebuttals (some of them fairly extensive) to recent criticisms whenever there's any kind of opening in the Q&A to do so. Outside of the quarterly calls, Tesla is reluctant to address criticisms out of a concern that it will appear thin-skinned, defensive.... That's what investor relations told me anyhow, and it seems to be the general case (Ward's auto data confusion being an exception). So, I think reason #2 for the call is to give Elon a platform to address several items recently spun by bears. Doing so in response to press questions could mitigate the risk of appearing thin-skinned, defensive, etc. I would love it if he mentions the expectation that Tesla's battery costs will go under $100/kWh by 2020. I'm sure Andrea James did not simply make that up.

 

[ev-enthusiast]

SP > $195.00 again.

 

[Gerardf]

Another tweet from Elon, actually about TSLA share...

Twitter

 

[Gerasimental]

Agree...."something else". clock is ticking.
Re model X

Bit out of the loop, what is the "something else" referring to?

 

[chickensevil]

1) a large target of "idiot" proof range estimation would be the subset of potential buyers for whom even the mention of any more thought involved in using a Tesla than what they are used to with an ICE is a deal breaker. This press conference could be free advertising to that group of potential buyers.

Which is itself silly because people put more thought into their ICE than they realize. It is just that they are so used to it that it is second nature.

Consider that noone alive today grew up *before cars* and specifically the dominance of ICE is the only thing in most people's minds unless you are 90+ you wouldn't even know anything else existed previously. So what you have is 99.9% of people who drive grew up riding in ICE vehicles for a good 15-20 years before *EVER* getting behind the wheel. And grew up around the ecosystem of ICE and how everything functions. So knowing where all the gas stations are and how fuel gets into your car and the timing of things for range... you don't have range anxiety in gas, because you are used to it. Even with a very imprecise fuel gauge that says F - E... it was never really an issue. You would plan your trip around fuel stops without realizing how much thought you were putting into it.

So the fact that you don't even have to think about your energy in 99% of your driving in an EV like the Model S because it handles your daily range in those situations and yet that isn't good enough for people, because it is "new" and they are "worried" about running out of energy for that .1% of their hypothetical road trip? It baffles me. And the range worries that people had 5 years ago with finding places to charge are nothing compared to 2 years ago, and those are nothing compared to today. In 2017, charging will likely be so ubiquitous in many locations that it won't even be a thought on people's minds (or shouldn't be). I just don't understand the problem here, and perhaps... I never will.

 

[EnergyMax]

Bit out of the loop, what is the "something else" referring to?

The October announcement style Elon used
Twitter

 

[chickensevil]

Bit out of the loop, what is the "something else" referring to?

I don't know, because he addressed the "something else" in the D event. "About to unveil the D and something else". The D was for the P85D and the something else was autopilot.

 

[NigelM]

No "something else", no X reveal coming either. Honestly a firmware inspired range increase above a few miles is physically impossible so that is not a likely scenario to end range anxiety. It's pretty clear that a software update to end range anxiety is going to involve nav maps and charging locations; that could play out in different ways including partnership with Plugshare and/or others but it would be foolish to bet money on any sort of range increase.