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

[lafrisbee]

From the competition is coming department. Hive mind at reddit says they are running commercials just to stop people from buying EVs that are available today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/yht8p1

you really don't know?
The non-aggressive reason is to soften up the ICE-minded viewers. It takes a while. People are sloooow.
And the aggressive angle is that they are trying to make it seem as though if the people considering an EV will just wait, and that any day now they can buy a car from a real car company instead of Polestar ....or Tesla.

 

[Ogre]

Sorry to add to the China discussion … Tesla and China have an unwritten gentleman’s agreement IMHO. Chinese industry gets to observe and yes, copy, all of Tesla advanced manufacturing techniques, and Tesla gets to have a very efficient high volume factory with minimal government interference. Since Tesla innovates so quickly, Tesla is both able to stay ahead of the Chinese copy cat competition, and still continue to provide value to China.

And when I say copy, I don’t mean like an exact replica of a Model S (although smaller companies will do that, but no one cares about them), I mean copy the manufacturing techniques which is far more valuable. The first auto company to try to use gigacasting after Tesla was a Chinese company I believe.

Is this a devil‘s bargain? Not from Tesla‘s perspective since this will indeed accelerate the world towards a sustainable future.

But it's potentially devastating to the other US companies who are trying to wing it on their own and trying desperately to leverage their sunk costs in ICE infrastructure and last generation manufacturing technology. China hasn't been successful in the US, and the IRA legislation might keep them at bay for a few years more, but they are way ahead of US manufacturers.

It's also likely to have some nasty effects on European manufacturers as well. There is a lot less protectionism in Europe and Chinese imports are gaining more traction there. Diess was perhaps their best hope for being able to play catch up and they got rid of him.

 

[insaneoctane]

Yes that’s the reason I sold all my XPEV stock when I learned about the copyright infringement and intellectual property steal. However, the rate of improvement and software development of TSLA is so fast that it’s probably one of the hardest company to copy.

Always being a few steps behind Tesla and cheaper might be good enough for a non-trivial amount of local marketshare.

 

[Ogre]

From the competition is coming department. Hive mind at reddit says they are running commercials just to stop people from buying EVs that are available today.

It's back to the chart I posted Saturday.

Lots of people want an EV and quite a few have said "My next car will be an EV". As GM or Ford, how do you appeal to these people who are currently in the market for a car you can't produce? Equally important, how do you combat the growing perception that Tesla is synonymous with electric cars?

They are perfectly aware of the Super Bowl effect at this point and they understand that advertising EVs helps sell Teslas. But I think they feel it's more important to keeping their brand relevant to the Tesla-never crowd. Possible the Tesla-never will be their primary audience soon.

 

[scaesare]

I have to wonder how long before Bezos gets bored tired of losing with his quest to be a better Elon than Elon. I imagine it's hard to keep engaged in a project when you keep failing to achieve your basic goal year after year. Maybe he's already lost interest and these are just zombie projects. Monkeys on his back that he can't figure out how to shake.

Yes, I expect Amazon will drop Kuiper. Shareholders and the board will start to get restless. Climbing costs combined with an entrenched competitor with a lower cost structure will put their satellite project in the ground.

May I suggest the above re-wording?

 

[Skryll]

It's back to the chart I posted Saturday.

Lots of people want an EV and quite a few have said "My next car will be an EV". As GM or Ford, how do you appeal to these people who are currently in the market for a car you can't produce? Equally important, how do you combat the growing perception that Tesla is synonymous with electric cars?

They are perfectly aware of the Super Bowl effect at this point and they understand that advertising EVs helps sell Teslas. But I think they feel it's more important to keeping their brand relevant to the Tesla-never crowd. Possible the Tesla-never will be their primary audience soon.

Question is, does this make their brand loyalists buy another ICE truck before their EV comes out or does it make them defer the purchase and Osborne the ICE sales ? I pray for the latter

 

[scaesare]

My take is that Bezos is /was an excellent /topnotch entrepreneur with a vision and the oomph to see it through. He saw the opportunity for online shopping, starting with books, which at the time, ca. 1996 were an excellent business proposition: list price was 40% above purchasing price for retailers, AND retailers had the right at any time to return books for a refund.

Growing by acquisitions Amazon found itself in a computing systems mess as each new acquisition had a different IT system.

To Bezos' great credit he imposed ONE standard across all the disparate outfits making up Amazon. This took guts and strong conviction, as this created a huge chaos during that transition.

The interesting /lucky /serendipitous part is that out of this standardization came Amazon's Cloud (AWS) which became the hugely successful cash machine for Amazon.

So, yes Bezos was great in this line, but then he probably suffered that syndrome (called ? - someone refresh my memory) whereby people who become very successful in one enterprise believe they are similarly capable in other fields.

THAT is the main difference between Elon and Jeff Who/ Bezos. Elon has proven that he indeed can /has successfully tackled hugely disparate fields while Bezos is more like a one-melody type guy.

The reason Elon is so different from any other entrepreneur is that he does have a strong physics and generic all around knowledge, and knows to get the best minds on his side, then is able to dig into the new matter at hand, both on his own via readings and with the help of these topnotch specialists.

As both a business and tech manager he is able to make on-the-spot decisions which is highly unusual - normally one needs 2 heads to come up with decisions.

Edit: grammar cleanup

Agree.

Also think that when the motivation is to compete with someone for prominence rather than assessing the actual business value, it's downhill from there....

 

[DennisLevitt]

You say that as if it's a bad thing. No one's interest is more aligned with that of Tesla shareholder's than the largest shareholder of them all. And that fact that much of Elon's repeated success in start-ups is attributable to his selection of who to hire and promote shows that there is no one more qualified than Elon.

I was merely stating a fact. His power on the board is pretty complete. Would you disagree?

 

[Unpilot]

Repeat after me .... "FOMC "

Dovish FOMC notes, and the whole market is gonna fly ... else only the Hawk is gonna keep soaring ...

Tesla could have made 3Q the perfect Q, now we need to keep our fingers crossed that there ain't gonna be any Covid shutdowns for another 2 mths.

Feeling a little disappointed with SP direction?

Go outside!

 

[elasalle]

Feeling a little disappointed with SP direction?

Go outside!View attachment 869507

You need to follow your own advice

 

[Ogre]

Question is, does this make their brand loyalists buy another ICE truck before their EV comes out or does it make them defer the purchase and Osborne the ICE sales ? I pray for the latter

I'm sure it depends on why they are shopping for a truck and how onboard with EVs they are. People who need a vehicle for a business or specific need and had their vehicle fail or simply don't have one will be getting a new (to them) vehicle regardless. If they need a truck, that will likely be an ICE truck because they have no choices.

But a huge percentage of new vehicle purchases are made by people who have perfectly functioning vehicles but want something new and shiny. Right now even new ICE vehicles are losing their new/ shiny appeal. So those people will likely hold off until they can get that EV.

The problem is it's probably 5+ years before GM and Ford are producing enough electric trucks to match their current ICE production. Leaves these brand loyalists a conundrum. It's likely in 2-3 years Tesla will be producing 350k trucks per year (or more) and getting on the Cybertruck wait list will be by far the fastest way to get a new electric truck. And... may well be the biggest bang for the buck truck.

 

[Unpilot]

You need to follow your own advice

Well I just took that picture so...

 

[Captkerosene]

Sorry to be a downer here, but delivery of 12 semis on 1 Dec will likely not move the market. At this point this is largely expected and we are where we are. Tesla will need to first show that the semi will contribute materially to the bottom line in the near term and layout a plan for the ramp. WS is not going to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt in a bear market until it first proves that the semi will bring measurable value.

I'm very confused about the semi semi ramp. Aren't they just building a handful out of Reno?

Don't we have to build a whole production facility in Texas? Has it even been started?

This seems more like a concession to the marketing and IR departments at Pepsi and Tesla than start of production. (I'm not criticizing that, If I was Pepsi I'd get a lot of pictures of Pepsla trucks in cool paint jobs on TV as fast as I can.)

Anybody know what's really going on with production?

 

[Mengy]

What a strange market day. Most things are green except for the large cap growth stocks which are all quite red. Including TSLA.



And NKLA is up 12.8%.

 

[Rammstein]

Disagree: TMC'ers expect a semi, but the actual world has no concept of an all electric semi. When it hauls around full loads at range then the economics of operation will be easy to calculate. Price is all ready set based on volume production, and tesla's secret sauce is r&d on manufacture and production. The actual world-- which is all of us all breathe in fumes from cars and trucks, and for me, an EV truck cannot come soon enough. The market is based on projections, and semi EV is a great example of operational expense reduction and sales should easily be projected out to be sold out. Also, huge railroad worker strike coming just to add some spice...

I agree. The semi is something Tesla distractors point to as Elon being a fraud. There are a lot of skepticism about this semi and lots of people think that it’s not mathematically possible. Once this thing comes out I think it will be another nail in the skeptics coffin. Proving Elon is not a fraud. There will be more people that will be convinced that Tesla and Elon are the real deal and that they are changing the world.

 

[elasalle]

because of Shanghai covid news (visitors locked in Shanghai Disney ) , I got out from all my mid-term Calls today ... was initially planning to let it run till Dec, but I have learnt my lessons more than once ...
11K in gains in past 2 weeks .. I'm content
(+ still greedy so used gains to buy some jan 25 500 leaps)

 

[OrthoSurg]

Feeling a little disappointed with SP direction?

Go outside!View attachment 869507

Or sell covered calls!!

 

[Unpilot]

Or sell covered calls!!

Um...no ....like the cat said...I'm done with options.

 

[petit_bateau]

Honestly, I'm happy with an EU-USA trade war. Last time I checked (about a year ago), EU tariffs on US goods were far far higher on average than US-based ones. This alone gives the US a significant negotiating advantage.

For example - auto imports are 2.5% vs. 10% in favor of the EU (except for "trucks" which because of an old provision are 22%).

I'm all for free trade, break down the tariffs on both ends and let the most competitive companies win on their own merits. Protectionism be damned.


EDIT - more can be read in detail here:

Biden could reduce inflation, mitigate a recession, and strengthen democracy with a new EU-US trade agreement | Brookings

Sanjay Patnaik and James Kunhardt discuss the potential economic benefits of a new transatlantic free trade agreement.

www.brookings.edu

Volumes matter as well as percentages.

It is not a good look when USA behaves as a protectionist, though sadly not abnormal.

 

[Ogre]

I agree. The semi is something Tesla distractors point to as Elon being a fraud. There are a lot of skepticism about this semi and lots of people think that it’s not mathematically possible. Once this thing comes out I think it will be another nail in the skeptics coffin. Proving Elon is not a fraud. There will be more people that will be convinced that Tesla and Elon are the real deal and that they are changing the world.

Because shipping a million+ EVs a year when everyone else seems to struggle to ship 10s of thousands isn't enough?

The people who have their heads in the sand aren't going to pull them out because the semi starts shipping.