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

[StealthP3D]

What did I bring up that's irrelevant?

That the term "Osborne" had an origin that does not accurately reflect how the term is used today.

It would be like taking issue with saying a certain car is "Sky Blue" because the sky is rarely that color.

 

[Off Shore]

Revenue and profit from EV robot-taxis are so astoundingly huge that the cost of setting up and running service and cleaning centers and routing robotaxis to be cleaned either periodically - and/or based on negative reviews will be trivial.

2021-2024 Autonomous vehicle cleaning service startups.
2024 - ==> Robotic autonomous vehicle cleaning service startups.

 

[StealthP3D]

This exactly! Friends and relatives of mine opened 3 more Brokerage accounts at my prodding last week. One particularly bright enthusiastic couple - he's familiar with game theory (been looking fruitlessly for a game board graphic designer) - will most certainly trade their way up to Model Y ownership.

How bright can he be if finding a graphic designer for his game board in the world of the Internet is a difficult assignment?

 

[Knightshade]

We'd better stop talking about Tesla this way if we don't want governments to start breaking up Tesla as a monopoly (cf. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States). I'm surprised Musk didn't think of the risk earlier.

As previously discussed- Tesla's nowhere near a monopoly in the legal sense even with everything they project they'll accomplish in the next 10 years- and on top of that simply being one isn't, itself, illegal either.

You have to BOTH have monopoly power (which Tesla doesn't and won't- their most optimistic auto projections are 25% market share in 2030) AND you must illegally abuse said power (which again there'd be no reason t think Tesla would even if they had it).

I expect the success of FSD testing to be stymied by regulations (too slow to approve its wide-scale use), so the stock price may not price that in yet. So the spike and follow-up volatility should last into the new year. That's what I'm trading on.

It's like a greatest hits of red herrings previously debunked here today

The current FSD beta is L2- so no regulation approval required.

And even once they're confident enough to release it to some people as L3 or higher- that's also already legal in like half a dozen US states with no further regulatory approval needed.

So this isn't really an obstacle to wider rollout of the L2 system, nor to rollout of the higher level system in multiple US states to prove it works.

And once you have lots of real world data showing it works safely in multiple US states it's easy enough to push for the others to approve it as well.

2021-2024 Autonomous vehicle cleaning service startups.
2024 - ==> Robotic autonomous vehicle cleaning service startups.

One idea I've seen floated is since those snake chargers are gonna be a while, initially Tesla would hire an "attendant" at superchargers who would plug in the RTs as they come in- and also clean them while they're charging.

 

[Nocturnal]

Before I became a Tesla investor I actually enjoyed weekends.

 

[ZsoZso]

So where does Ford- which is only making 50,000 Mach-Es in the first year due to lack of batteries- magically get enough to replace the roughly 3 million ICE cars that would be half their sales?
...[snip]...

Over at GM- ...
Enough for about 300,000 cars.
GM would need 12 times that to electrify half their annual sales
Where do they get the rest?

Let me point out one huge mistake in your reasoning. You are assuming Ford and GM will keep their current total production numbers so calculate that 50% of today's production need to be electric. However, Tesla with 20 million sales will take away those sales from the incumbents. Ford will not be selling 6 million cars total, they will be happy if they can sell 1 million. Same with GM, who stated plans to sell about 1 million EVs by 2030 -- that ambition may account for more than 50% of their total sales at that point (assuming they are alive, saved from bankruptcy by the taxpayers again).

 

[Knightshade]

Let me point out one huge mistake in your reasoning. You are assuming Ford and GM will keep their current total production numbers so calculate that 50% of today's production need to be electric. However, Tesla with 20 million sales will take away those sales from the incumbents. Ford will not be selling 6 million cars total, they will be happy if they can sell 1 million. Same with GM, who stated plans to sell about 1 million EVs by 2030 -- that ambition may account for more than 50% of their total sales at that point (assuming they are alive, saved from bankruptcy by the taxpayers again).

That's not really a mistake in anything- it's an example not tied to the brand.

If your premise is it won't be Ford selling those EVs- that doesn't change what I posted at all.

Who DOES produce them?

You need somebody that is not Tesla to produce over 20 million EVs in 2030 to get 50% of the entire new car market on EVs...

Because Teslas own 20 million by 2030 is only 20-25% of new cars sales in a year.

So who is it producing the other 20 million or so EVs?

Where are they getting their batteries?

 

[traxila]

WSJ News Exclusive | GM Plans to Seek Banking Charter to Grow Auto-Lending Business

Madness! 2008 all over again! GM must be in bad shape indeed if it wants to try and make money off of auto loans. Timing could not be worse! All those ICE loans ending up under water again. Definition of insanity?


Cars Are Going Digital, But Detroit Has a Long Road Ahead

Tesla mentioned only in passing to take a shot at FSD. Last line of article: “Detroit can move neither far nor fast.” LOL.

Message is to ignore noise about evolving business models in auto industry, it is all hype.

Is it any wonder why Tesla just keeps winning?!

 

[StealthP3D]

I think some of these points won't sink in until they are tried. People will be adamant they need their own car until they see one of their friends doing the same thing without one and then they'll give it a go.

Oh no! This could be a climate disaster in the making.

What if families use the savings from not needing a car anymore to take Hawaiian vacations?

 

[traxila]

That's not really a mistake in anything- it's an example not tied to the brand.

If your premise is it won't be Ford selling those extra cars- that doesn't change what I posted at all.

Who DOES produce them?

You need somebody that is not Tesla to produce over 20 million EVs in 2030 to get 50% of the entire new car market on EVs...

Because Teslas own 20 million by 2030 is only 20-25% of new cars sales in a year.

So who is it producing the other 20 million or so EVs?

Where are they getting their batteries?

Your point is valid but ten years is a long time and come 2025 all resources are going to be poured exclusively into BEVs. Disruption can move very fast once tipping points left behind.

 

[Knightshade]

Your point is valid but ten years is a long time and come 2025 all resources are going to be poured exclusively into BEVs. Disruption can move very fast once tipping points left behind.

The thing is- we've seen first hand that all the other players aren't capable of moving quickly.

VW told us in 2013 they plan to be the leader in EV sales by 2018.

Now they're "hoping" to catch Tesla in another 5-10 years out from 2020.

Virtually every halfway OK ev legacy has produced has ended up heavily constrained by lack of batteries and slow to no construction on fixing that.

Audi etron had production cut from lack of batteries.

Mach e production is quite low from lack of batteries.

Kia/Hyundai has repeatedly said they'd sell a TON more of their EVs if only they had someplace to get batteries.

Tesla meanwhile is likely going to have multiple entire vehicle AND battery factories capable of large output all up and running before GM finishes their one battery only plant that won't produce as much as GF1 in Nevada already did before Roadrunner even came along.

Even Deiss- who absolutely "gets it"- keeps being held back heavily by the more conservative/slow elements at VW


VW chief defies sceptics with ambitious plans to overtake Tesla

Its unique ownership structure, in which the Porsche and Piech families indirectly own a majority stake, and the state of Lower Saxony has a blocking minority, prevents the company from rushing through seismic shifts in strategy. The strength of the unions on its supervisory board also makes radically reducing VW’s 300,000-strong German workforce almost impossible.

and

In a week that saw the production of Audi’s electric e-tron model grind to a halt due to battery supply shortages, Mr Diess added he was confident that the company had identified enough lithium-ion cell supply to see it through to the end of 2023, by which point it hopes to have produced 1m emissions-free vehicles

So by end of 2023 they hope to have made as many EVs as Tesla has already made (and will make the same # again likely in 2021)

And lack of batteries is largely the holdup for them.



That's without getting into their oft discussed software issues, and the fact they seem to think just throwing thousands of bodies at software can fix it.

 

[StealthP3D]

Car seats are definitely a question I have around robotaxi. That's one of the reasons I don't see private ownership going away anytime soon.

I'm sure the app you use to call a Robotaxi will have boxes you check to insure a properly equipped Robotaxi shows up.

But, yeah, families with young children and good jobs will be the least likely to be carless. Many of them will have one family car and Robotaxi's for everything else. It's not an "all or nothing" proposition.

 

[lafrisbee]

Volumes low, none of the big players are purchasing yet apparently. Are they waiting for the S&P announcement on Monday, Nov-30?
I am going by the point made by many here that big players are yet to start purchasing the shares.
Could it be that they prefer to wait for the S&P announcement before buying, just in case S&P throws surprises on Monday?

I've posted my thoughts on this already but...
From what I can figure out without knowing anything about "big players" in the stock market, I have come to understand the saying "The Market does not like uncertainty." The rise in SP over the last few days certainly bears that out.
However the S&P 500 Committee kept some "uncertainty" in the addition of TSLA by stating the "Tranches" idea.
It is only my thought without any outside influence, but I think that the "big players" immediately started running simulations on the three scenarios to determine any advantage they may get when it comes to the THREE timelines for admittance as soon as the "announcement" was made...if not sooner.
I would also entertain that the S&P 500 Committee had some understanding of the "uncertain" they were keeping in play when they told the world that TSLA would be admitted, but that timeline had some variance/uncertainty still in it.
I am NOT of the opinion that "big players" are not already strongly impacting the SP by buying the stock for some reason I can not identify or understand. Even to the point that they are purchasing the stock now just so it is available when the time comes so as to keep the SP from becoming a larger magnitude of irrational.
So short answer, Yeah. The Big Boys haven't been inactive. They have already figured their strategy for acquiring the needed amount of stcok based on the three timelines that under consideration. And they may be backdoor buying it not so they can just transfer it over from one account to another because I have read in more than one place if/when they do this the account that is purchasing has to acquire it at the market price at the time. However if enough can be rat-holed away, that action will help dampen the surge during the time The Big Boys are supposed to buy. Which in turn may lessen the SP drop after the buying period, which is good for the Longs.

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

Just had a sudden realization about robototaxis.

As someone who doesn't really need the extra income, and lives somewhere rural (not exactly an uber service in all these fields) I had always assumed that robotaxi would be useless for me, and people like me, who live in super-low density locations/.
But no.
EVERYONE in my village drives, as we have one bus per day (so yeah...there is ONE guy who uses it, he is the only one), and we all have cars. But actually, there are probably quite a few people using their car maybe once or twice a week maximum. Many are retired, and a lot of us get shopping delivered anyway. So unlike a city where our cars are 90% not being used, here its more like 99% unused...

If I could allow my robotaxi to be used only by a pre-selected list of people, I'd likely do it as a community service. Some old lady who lives a few doors from me and needs the car twice a week to pop to the nearby town to meet her friends... I'm fine with that. Why not?

Everyone focuses on the city-scenario where owning a car is inconvenient and robotaxi is the new uber. Thats true, but robotaxi could also be the new rural-car-club.

A whitelisting feature makes a lot of sense. I recall Elon mentioned a similar scenario at some point, paraphrasing: "You can restrict your FSD car to friends and family". If that is so for your own car, then the FSD-tech-stack will support that at some point. Only question will be if you can 'rent' a network robotaxi and then 'sub-lease' it out?
If not, then in a few years if/when robotaxis are deployed widely, you should float this idea again with emphais on the community service angle. Maybe some TMC'er with clout takes it up, and it reaches Elons ear.
(Maybe abstract whitelists can be made to work: "Any residents in a) this city and b) within a given age bracket". That would perhaps fit your community service usecase. Perhaps the FSD-stack will support differentiated pricing [free| low cost|standard fare] also)

 

[lafrisbee]

Just had a sudden realization about robototaxis.

As someone who doesn't really need the extra income, and lives somewhere rural (not exactly an uber service in all these fields) I had always assumed that robotaxi would be useless for me, and people like me, who live in super-low density locations/.
But no.
EVERYONE in my village drives, as we have one bus per day (so yeah...there is ONE guy who uses it, he is the only one), and we all have cars. But actually, there are probably quite a few people using their car maybe once or twice a week maximum. Many are retired, and a lot of us get shopping delivered anyway. So unlike a city where our cars are 90% not being used, here its more like 99% unused...

If I could allow my robotaxi to be used only by a pre-selected list of people, I'd likely do it as a community service. Some old lady who lives a few doors from me and needs the car twice a week to pop to the nearby town to meet her friends... I'm fine with that. Why not?

Everyone focuses on the city-scenario where owning a car is inconvenient and robotaxi is the new uber. Thats true, but robotaxi could also be the new rural-car-club.

I like the "Preferred Client" based model as well. So would the clients as many have a phobia about getting in a Taxi and sitting on....

 

[vikings123]

Referring to this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/truth_tesla/status/1332613785572532224?s=21

It’s been funny to watch Gary Black’s tweets the last few weeks.

When S&P inclusion announcement came, he was pumping TSLA and calling an expected top around $550.

This seemed quite low to me, and it seemed obvious that we would go higher, even though his experience and knowledge of Wall Street far surpasses mine. (I am expecting $700-800, but what do I know? At least I admit I have no idea where this beast is headed, lol).

Just a few days later, his tune has changed again, drifting like a fart in the wind now that he has taken a position against the stock’s further rise.

He also doesn’t see how the stock could rise nonlinearly when you remove a big chunk of the float?

A basic economic principle is Price Elasticity of Demand. Cost on the supply/demand curve is nonlinear.

Stock prices tend to be price elastic. That is, as increase in the demand and decrease in supply of a stock occurs, the price tends to rise more quickly. This is because stock can be sold back for a profit, therefore it is an investment. Other things such as groceries tend to be price inelastic, because they are not investments and alternatives can be found. For example, if the price of beef goes up, you can just buy chicken instead. If the price of Tesla goes up, there tends to be MORE demand for TSLA as it rises, because investors can sell shares back at a later time for a profit. Investors want to ride that train.

Sorry, but he doesn’t seem to be any more prophetic than a typical retail investor. I posted as much here a few days ago, and it boggles my mind that a guy with an engineering degree and a total of 2 college economics courses under his belt (me) can understand this whereas a big-time Wall Street guy doesn’t.

Most of these Wall Street types, as well as the “vocal” traders on Twitter such as Squawksquare, Valueanalyst, etc. don’t have any more of a clue where the price is going than the average Robinhood investor. They can just “speak the language” which makes them look like they know what will happen.

The people who REALLY seem to know what’s happening, such as @DaveT, Rob Mauer, Truth_Tesla, Artful Dodger, and Nafnlaus spend far less time talking Wall Street nonsense such as P/E ratios to value the stock and far more time talking about the core businesses of Tesla itself.

I’ve taken note of this and my investment strategy is following accordingly.

I couldn’t agree with you more. I remember the day when S&P snubbed TSLA back in September. The tone of his tweet had me concerned that the guy would something to himself. It was pretty funny to see him go from pumping S&P inclusion to acting like the world was coming to an end.

While I appreciate the Wall Street lingo and his experience I think we have people on twitter and here who probably understand the TSLA dynamics way better than a guy who for all you know is working on behalf of his friends on Wall Street to shake some shares loose. Just speculating.

I’m not saying the guy is wrong. I’m just saying don’t go make decisions based on what this guy is saying. Short term bets are risky as always and people should make those bets accordingly based on their risk tolerance.

Squawksquare is another guy who is probably good at day trading and swing trading. And that is fine and all but when people like him start talking about how TSLA is overvalued based on how many cars they have sold so far they are completely missing the point. Just stick to what you do best; day trading. Leave the fundamentals to some of the more seasoned long term investors.

I was chatting up with my brother(yeah the same brother who said TSLA is overvalued back when we were trading at 800$ pre split) and refused to put some money as an investment. Now he is asking if hedge funds and institutional investors will start dumping Tesla as the index squeeze is happening or better yet if new institutional investors will start a TSLA position. Of course I don’t know the answer to that but told him this is just noise and he is focusing on the wrong things.

I’m in it for the long term and expect it to 10X again in the next ten years. The product roadmap and macro environment is so exciting that anybody that does not see this is just not thinking about this in the right way.

 

[jbcarioca]

Somehow I cannot resist pointing out the folly of conventional thinking. Just consider the following:

Parts of the 'Nifty 50'. Today
Xerox Amazon
Polaroid Tesla
Eastman Kodak Apple

I was active during the 'Nifty 50'. The three Nifty 50 for all practical purposes do not exist although all three have the names existing and somebody sells things with the brands. Investors in all three were wiped out through bankruptcy (Kodak 2012), takeovers and/or reorganizations. A quick review of the Wiki's and corporate histories reveals how lauded they were. Indeed, Xerox was hugely influential in GUI, mouse and other innovations, but complacency led to stagnation. All three of those had near-dominance in their fields and all three rested on their accomplishments, which were indeed dominant.

Today the three all share a paranoia that they could be left behind so they all three relentlessly innovate. All three know they exist and thrive in a kind of "infinite improbability drive" (Sorry, Douglas Adams , just not the upcoming SpaceX kind). In the heydays of the 1970's the heros of the day stagnated.

I gave no numbers intentionally. When assessing value in a very high growth environment the inevitable necessity of constant innovation and reinvention.

Xerox, for example, innovated very well, but they still stayed with the 914 long after the sell-by date. Kodak totally missed the digital photography evolution. Polaroid thought quick development would survive and thrive, making the same mistake Kodak did.

Now think of all three today again. Tesla Model S looks just like the 2012 version but is vastly more capable and becoming less expensive. Amazon knows their advantages are in logistics and information management so consistently reinvent merchandising. (whoever thought Italians would shop online?). Apple had near-death experience then kept redefining markets and inventing services.

None of the 'nifty 50' really thought they needed to reinvent themselves; they thought they could thrive with doing what somebody else invented.

I have been stupid as an investor quite a few times. I thought AMZN, AAPL and TSLA were different. So far they still are. If one day they show signs of complacency I hope I see it soon enough to sell. I really don't think any of them will have that happen anytime soon. From my view I think they'll survive the eventual absence of Bezos and Musk, just as Jobs demise led to greater successes.

As I was giving thanks these thoughts came to me.

 

[JRP3]

So, the only thing that makes me think it will actually succeed is the fact JB is on the board. I don't think there's actually enough information public at this point for anyone to actually make a judgement one way or the other - I am probably wrong about that tho. So, now that kensington capital is quantumscape, I feel like there should be SOME discussion as to how that might effect Teslas share of the energy business. The answer could well be zero, or "a little but the market is the entire world's energy storage needs so at this point it's not a growth competition to tesla" but I think it should be considered in how it could effect the next 10 years.

I'm still a huge bull, but I feel like it's healthy to cast the stone of "what about..." Now and then so we don't become blind to reality like teslaq

If QS does come up with a worthwhile product JB is Tesla's inside man. Who else would QS sell to other than the leading battery producer and consumer?

 

[ZsoZso]

That's not really a mistake in anything- it's an example not tied to the brand.

If your premise is it won't be Ford selling those EVs- that doesn't change what I posted at all.

Who DOES produce them?

You need somebody that is not Tesla to produce over 20 million EVs in 2030 to get 50% of the entire new car market on EVs...

Because Teslas own 20 million by 2030 is only 20-25% of new cars sales in a year.

So who is it producing the other 20 million or so EVs?

Where are they getting their batteries?

The other 20 million comes together from all others chipping in a small portion, GM 1 million, VW upto 3 million, and so on, including some Chinese like Xpeng and NIO and also some of the startup EV companies such as Rivian, Lucid etc.

So not a single giant. Where do they all get the cells ? From the new factories that will be built in the next 10 years. Just as Tesla does not have anywhere near enough cell production for 20 million cars today, only for 1/2 a million, but they are planning to build out the cell capacity, the same way LGchem, Samsung, CATL and some of the car makers who start producing their own cells will all build up new cell production.

 

[lafrisbee]

Me

Even Obsborne didn't actually Osborne themselves- there's a lot of urban legend around how much this actually happens.




Yes- his video has been discussed in this thread numerous times- real world #s are already behind his optimistic predictions- and his claims regarding how fast we moved from horse to car are way way off and seem largely based on 2 100+ year old photos from NYC that have already been largely debunked as informative of the actual speed of change.

(again you can find detailed discussion of this earlier in the thread- no point in rehashing it at length, but TLDR is he showed 2 parade pics about a decade (roughly 1900ish and 1910ish) apart showing almost all horses in the first and virtually all cars in the second suggesting the transition was that fast... when in real life there were still large #s of horses in use in NYC for another decade or two after his second picture...and in more rural areas horses were still in heavy use up through roughly WW2- his "car market share" chart weirdly uses "per mile" instead of "per person" for market share too which is a problem, if you used the normal definition of market share the change takes vastly longer than his chart suggests.)




It does if they need a car.

There's over 80 million new cars sold a year.

Lots of them are crappy even by ICE standards.

Nobody bought a Suzuki Esteem because it was an awesome vehicle with great resale value- but they still produced and sold em for years and SOMEBODY was buying them all those years..

Sometimes you need a car. Lots of sometimes in fact.





100% agree.... totally... which makes your next claim so weird.





Where do the batteries come from?

Not Tesla- they've already said they HOPE to be making enough (including continuing to need to buy them from partners) to replace maybe 20-25% of new car sales by around 2030.

And Teslas plans have them as, by far, the largest producer of batteries in the world in that time period.

So where does Ford- which is only making 50,000 Mach-Es in the first year due to lack of batteries- magically get enough to replace the roughly 3 million ICE cars that would be half their sales?

Over at GM- who some news stories claim is WAY ahead of Ford on this- they're actually building a battery factory.

A battery factory.

That might start making cells end of 2021... and will eventually produce a whole... 30 GWH of cells.

Enough for about 300,000 cars.

GM would need 12 times that to electrify half their annual sales

Where do they get the rest?

Where do all companies who don't even have a battery factory being built get them?




As I say- all of this is awesome news for Tesla investors... the gap is just going to grow the longer everyone else drags their feet- and insures Tesla will easily continue able to sell every car they can possibly make for years and years to come with no problem.


But it makes 50% EV sales by 2030 virtually impossible for the lack of cells if nothing else.

Me and you, and Elon agree.
After the Battery Day Presentation I posted that Elon screwed the pooch by not understanding how focused the audience would be on the "Right now" and the "Vehicle" mindset of the audience.
All the physical limitations are due to "battery constraints. It is so obvious to Elon he didn't spend enough time getting the viewers to fully appreciate the need to develop better battery technology AND QUICKLY PRODUCE THEM.
The world hinges on Battery development and production. Everything in the world hinges on storing energy in batteries. Climate change as well as making me rich.