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

[Buckminster]

Warren Redlich interviewing James Douma soon.

 

[samppa]

Refresh S has been pushed to Q1/2022 for europe, plaid in 2022. For new orders.

 

[OrthoSurg]

That’s just accounting. Ford receives no new inflow of money for providing service under warranty. They are paying for labor and parts that they don’t own or produce.

They get to release warranty reserves if they overestimated how much warranty expense they were going to incur (same way they would write up additional expenses if they underestimated it).

That isn’t “real” profit in the sense that you can’t keep your business afloat off of releasing warranty reserves. You need new inflows of cash (from new sales). It’s comparable to deferred revenue (a part of every sale is set aside to satisfy warranty expenses). However, you only realize a “benefit” if your actual warranty expenses come in below the amount you set aside on initial sale. Same way you only realize the deferred revenue once the underlying obligation is fulfilled (similar to recognizing that final chunk of FSD revenue, doing so brings in no new cash to Tesla, they already received the cash up front).

Ford will soon have to increase the selling price of its ICE cars to offset the warranty service cost of EVs they can’t really increase the price to stay cost competitive to Tesla. Unless they don’t have any software update issue on their EVs and they become very reliable.

 

[Baumisch]

Refresh S has been pushed to Q1/2022 for europe, plaid in 2022. For new orders.

Any source for this? This is bad, so many nice EVs coming out and the Model S still not released to beat them all

 

[Drax7]

According to Ray4Tesla this one already is.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1388325947594608643

Tesla was probably on autopilot or fsd, that’s why it stopped on time, moreover its
powerful breaking system works wonders, spread the rumor.

 

[dgodfrey]

Car Fires BMWi 3 name does not even make the headline in our New Zealand paper

It was a fiery end to what should have been a leisurely Sunday drive, after a hybrid vehicle was burnt to the ground alongside the state highway between Nelson and Blenheim.
Occupants' lucky escape as vehicle destroyed in highway blaze

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to someday see that headline read, "Tesla wannabe goes up in flames".

 

[LST]

Speaking for Switzerland, Q1 / 2022 pops up when you configure a new MS. Source www.tesla.com

BTW I reserved one, as of the announcement, but sadly the ETA has gone from the order (in myTESLA)

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Any source for this? This is bad, so many nice EVs coming out and the Model S still not released to beat them all

Thats for Europe, for new orders. That doesn't mean the new S wont be seen in the US< or for that matter Europe for early orders. Maybe they have been caught by surprise on the volume of orders? The S redesign was a long time coming, perhaps a lot of people have been setting aside money waiting to pull the trigger?
I'll be amazed if we don't see the refreshed S on the roads this year.

And TBH, from an investor POV, I don't give a damn about the S/X. Its a bit-player in the grand scheme of Tesla's lineup. Its basically model 3, model Y plus some other minor products.

 

[UncaNed]

The Shanghai motor show is on at the moment and Fully Charged has put out an overview of new models coming out this year. The number of small hatches/crossovers that look like perfectly decent, good value cars is very promising. It has never been more clear that ICE is dead - I don't know who would even want to get a new ICE car in China when you see the variety of good EVs available.

Hopefully we will see the Model 2 there next year.

Sandy Munro is right - Tesla has no competition, but when it does it will be Chinese.

5 minutes in I realized these are just "concept" cars. Yesiree, the Chinese can certainly "concept" with the best of them, VW, Ford, GM... China got THEM beat!

...unless I misunderstood(?)

 

[lascavarian]

Same way you only realize the deferred revenue once the underlying obligation is fulfilled (similar to recognizing that final chunk of FSD revenue, doing so brings in no new cash to Tesla, they already received the cash up front).

Last comment on this. The Gov’t buys a multi-year service contract on a product. Company gets a PO today but the Gov’t only pays in arrears for service. They hold the payments in a form of escrow.

Accounting can book this PO as they please (reserves and all for the liability) Billing against the PO only happens monthly in arrears over the life of the contract. Support is delivered and revenue is released into budgets monthly.

Whether this revenue comes from an escrow account in the Gov’t or a escrow/reserve account in the company is a distinction of no difference.

I will defer from commenting on your position that the final chunk of FSD revenue brings no new cash to Tesla.

 

[samppa]

Any source for this? This is bad, so many nice EVs coming out and the Model S still not released to beat them all

It's in Teslas configurator, take a look.
I don't know about orders that have already been made, that's what you get if ordering today.

 

[Knightshade]

Thats for Europe, for new orders. That doesn't mean the new S wont be seen in the US< or for that matter Europe for early orders. Maybe they have been caught by surprise on the volume of orders? The S redesign was a long time coming, perhaps a lot of people have been setting aside money waiting to pull the trigger?
I'll be amazed if we don't see the refreshed S on the roads this year.

I'd certainly expect to see em in the US this year... I deeply hope to see em this quarter.

That said...

And TBH, from an investor POV, I don't give a damn about the S/X. Its a bit-player in the grand scheme of Tesla's lineup. Its basically model 3, model Y plus some other minor products.

I think Q1 results confirm that delaying S/X revenue isn't a huge deal, but I still care quite a bit because an inability to do a timely major refresh of a model suggests SOME problem (or multiple problems) SOMEWHERE.

As an investor I care what that problem, or problems are, and how likely they would be to impact future vehicle ramps or refreshes or not.

There's causes that could be entirely one-off and aren't a big deal, there could be others that'd be a larger concern and impact other products.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

No Model S in Europe for 7 months? Sounds about right. US demand for limited production should be insane.

 

[Nocturnal]

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Personally, I think it would be cool to have a robotic arm bolted to one side of the bed. Or how about a Boston Robotics robotic dog you could train to jump out of the bed, run in circles until you threw a cyber frisbee to fetch. It would have to ride in the open bed and look forward around the cab into the wind as you were driving along. Bonus points if it switches sides of the cab every 15 or 20 seconds.

Good point. I decided to stop being cheap and just went ahead and bought one. I figure if somebody was willing to buy my 6 cent doge at 40 cents then I can buy a $500 flamethrower for $3k.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I think Q1 results confirm that delaying S/X revenue isn't a huge deal, but I still care quite a bit because an inability to do a timely major refresh of a model suggests SOME problem (or multiple problems) SOMEWHERE.

As an investor I care what that problem, or problems are, and how likely they would be to impact future vehicle ramps or refreshes or not.

There's causes that could be entirely one-off and aren't a big deal, there could be others that'd be a larger concern and impact other products.

Yup absolutely. I would say that as an investor I see 3 possibilities:

• Insane demand they cant meet, hence delay for Europe orders (awesome!)
• Technical issues with new batteries or similar tech which needs further work (no biggie, they will get there)
• Some sort of production screw-up / bureaucracy / logistics / supplier delay (bad, but only affecting S/X so meh).

When Tesla bring out a new mold its all cutting edge not-seen-before tech that breaks the mold. Hence delays are annoying but not unlikely or unexpected. A standard 'yearly refresh' by traditional Auto often just means different shape body panels, hence they can always do it on time.

Let them take their time getting the refreshed S/X right, and that will eventually flow through into updated 3 and Y when the tech drops in price and new battery production scales up.

 

[Singuy]

I'd certainly expect to see em in the US this year... I deeply hope to see em this quarter.

That said...



I think Q1 results confirm that delaying S/X revenue isn't a huge deal, but I still care quite a bit because an inability to do a timely major refresh of a model suggests SOME problem (or multiple problems) SOMEWHERE.

As an investor I care what that problem, or problems are, and how likely they would be to impact future vehicle ramps or refreshes or not.

There's causes that could be entirely one-off and aren't a big deal, there could be others that'd be a larger concern and impact other products.

My take is software causing the delay. If this car had a stalk without smart shift, then it would have been released awhile back since you can patch up whatever later. But due to some promises and physically taking controls away to build around those promises, it's now a little stuck.

I don't know why Tesla didn't test out smart shift /smart turn signal with the entire fleet first and see how reliable and how people like it first..plus gives them some data to train on.

 

[kbM3]

Tesla was probably on autopilot or fsd, that’s why it stopped on time, moreover its
powerful breaking system works wonders, spread the rumor.

Better brakes don’t shorten emergency stops. Even the worst brakes are sufficient to drive tires to their traction limits. Better brakes are important for track use where repeated rapid braking events occur.

It is likely the Tesla has higher performance tires than those other cars, or maybe more responsive ABS, which could have been a benefit on top of active safety braking (if that occurred).

 

[Mengy]

Red Monday, wow.

 

[Opus BC fan]

One of these days...

[until then I will slowly continue to accumulate]

 

[StealthP3D]

Better brakes don’t shorten emergency stops. Even the worst brakes are sufficient to drive tires to their traction limits. Better brakes are important for track use where repeated rapid braking events occur.

It is likely the Tesla has higher performance tires than those other cars, or maybe more responsive ABS, which could have been a benefit on top of active safety braking (if that occurred).

Judging by the sound the Audi made during the one stop they showed, I would say the Tesla ABS is tuned to stop faster. But I was troubled that they only did one attempt in the Audi (that they showed anyway).

Of course tires, tire pressure and temperature are big variables that don't get enough attention in these tests. I would like to see braking tests with the tires purposefully mismatched in pressure (left to right) to determine which ABS system (and suspension) deals with such variances most adeptly. Because my experience with measuring tire PSI after a tire shop has serviced the pressures is less than comforting. Stopping distances with mismatched tire pressures would be very relevant real-world data and yet no one does it. Not all ABS is the same. They should also test ABS while the vehicle is rounding a curve. Yes, this introduces more variables but nothing they couldn't handle well enough to return useful results.