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

[ZeApelido]

...and on the seventh day, he rested.

Dan

Well Saturday was spent taking the family in the 3 to Santa Cruz area for Passover, giving relatives test-drives. But I was able to rest some Sunday . Thankfully I can keep up during the week while training my deep learning algorithms.

 

[M3Rider]

This is an odd report given Panasonic's Suminoe factory in Osaka already produces 18650 batteries for Tesla. Possibly Tesla has just signed a new long term supply agreement for 18650s after expiry of the previous contract. Or possibly this is referring to a new agreement to supply 2170 cells from Japan. I guess we will hear more information soon.

Why would they want to incur transportation expenses for 2170 if they can make them at GF1? And they said they won't invest more until the output reaches the advertised capacity.

Unless this is targeted for GF3 consumption.

 

[EVNow]

OT :

Baby seats man, not booster seats. I agree it only covers one age band. For the non-walking phase of development,

Usually there is one for infant/baby stage (until 2 years) - and then one from 2 to 6 or so. Then you have booster seats.

Many seats cover more than one of the above 3 stages. Most people want a seat that doubles as a carrier in the infant stage.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

Just a thought, to raise cash, Tesla should sell supercharging range (10k mile charging) upfront or in batches.

The can sell at 30-40% discount or be able to sell say at $0.15/mile (e.g.). So a 10k charging would fetch $1500 upfront. Make it more discount when bought at the car purchase and less if later.

Except that charging rates are still loss leader for Tesla. I.e. they lose money on it already, at full price.

If you want to compare with residential electricity prices, better add on-demand charges, depreciation of equipment, maintenance, installation costs etc.

Charge rates in the future will need to follow 'boil the frog' strategy. And I'm sure they will, in order to discourage 'convenience charging', once their marketing value isn't as required, and they become utility for road trips and renters with no charging infrastructure.

 

[Nocturnal]

Honestly, I didn't sign up for this, I thought I as just supporting a great company and helping advance the cause

Yeah, I need to know if TSLA is going to let me retire 10 years early or 5 years late. The suspense is killing me.

OT :

Usually there is one for infant/baby stage (until 2 years) - and then one from 2 to 6 or so. Then you have booster seats.

Many seats cover more than one of the above 3 stages. Most people want a seat that doubles as a carrier in the infant stage.

It all depends. We had a baby carrier/seat with the semi-fixed base that would fit into our stroller. That style doesn't last past 2 or so. Then we had a full standard car seat, recently moved to booster seats with full backs (backs can be removed when they get older). ​

 

[adiggs]

I sure hope that suspension update can be done OTA to the existing fleet. I'd love for Hugo to learn some new software inspired suspension tricks, even if the performance range would require a new Model X - the even better handling and ride from better active suspension would be welcome.

 

[bdy0627]

yeah i just can’t get my mind off of that 235-250 range. i think we’ll see it.
although past charts indicate a big bounce after such consolidation.
what i haven’t done was track specific events to those bounces, but there’s always some catalyst(s)...which are worthy of such a bounce this time? rather than continuing the downward trend, or holding steady in the mid 1/3 of 200s ?

a few are mentioned, but are they it? we’ll see

In terms of the catalysts, remember that a big factor in this long downward wedge is the huge selling by TRP, and steadily increasing shares held short again. The TRP selling is basically done since they have perhaps 10% of what they held in Q3 2018. The short interest may grow higher but by itself that probably won't be enough to drop it through the bottom of the current range. It's already up quite high again. If a big buyer shows up, or even a couple, there is no way shorts can hold it down here. That could happen at any time, which is why the stock could inexplicably just start to strongly move up. Shorts covering would amplify it. That's just the way this stock tends to trade. I think whenever there have been big legs up, we have later found out a big buyer came in. So, when's the next big buyer coming in?

 

[Unpilot]

Hey, I have 508 shares too! Except my average buy-in is $186.80, so no stress, yet...

Sorry that makes you a weak long....gotta have average share price around 300 to be a long and strong long

 

[Pras]

Not sure if this is posted already.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-was-right-cheap-cameras-could-replace-lidar-1834266742

 

[ReflexFunds]

Why would they want to incur transportation expenses for 2170 if they can make them at GF1? And they said they won't invest more until the output reaches the advertised capacity.

Unless this is targeted for GF3 consumption.

It only really makes sense to produce 2170 in Japan if Tesla is planning to switch S/X from 18650 to 2170. If this is the case Panasonic will be left with a cylindrical cell factory and staff in Japan with no customers (few competitors using cylindrical cells in their cars because they don't know how to affordably assemble them into packs). Panasonic would likely offer Tesla a good deal on Japan 2170s to keep this factory in production. I'd guess these would be mostly for GF3 though.
Still skeptical of the report though.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

I am such an idiot. Deleveraged yesterday in advance of earnings. Yesterday morning, during that low. And now they do the refresh unveil before earnings? UGH. Market is going to jump today. This is an event I really wanted to be in for!

Being right about the motor changes and the lack of battery pack changes are great, but they don't make up for being unleveraged when the changes get unveiled....

Just an observation: this is not the first time that I see you nail the theses (what will happen), but guess market reaction incorrectly.
You are probably aware of it, but sometimes it takes outside observer to point the obvious. I hope my comment is helpful or neutral; it wasn't meant as a criticism.

 

[BBone]

Friday: Announce board downsizing
Monday: Autonomy presentation
Tuesday: S&X updates announced
Wednesday: Q1 earnings released
Thursday: SEC agreement announced
Friday: ZeApelido found passed out with 1,000 TMC tabs open

Ya'll in Silicon Valley boys 'n girls! We'z move faassssst! Seriously the speed of decision making is 3/4 good 1/4 a pain in the ***. But this is why Tesla will out-iterate others from more traditional companies. Who here remembers software R&D before agile? I do and it was friggin painful!

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Exactly.. that's it. A nothing burger.. So S or X true refresh I think it pushing further out. As the numbers fall, they are trying to add some enhancement and features to keep them stable at least. It's not much of an overall profit center at this point, in magnitude, assuming Model 3 continues to power the volume of sales they have. We'll see

A totally redesigned motor system, similarly redesigned suspension and increased charging speed is a “nothing burger”? Pretty much everything involved with moving the actual car was radically changed, and it’s now rated near and real-world past 400 mile range for S and well over 300 for X. Not sure what more you expect them to change.

And I don’t believe for a second that you aren’t smart enough to know they didn’t just suddenly start working on this. Changes of this magnitude are years in the making, not months.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

So, the market in all its wisdom has decided that on ER day, the right price is to oscillate between 263 and 263.50 ?

I think nobody wants to make a bet, one way or the other. On the one hand, report is bound to be bad in absolute terms. On the other, the market clearly already knows that. So nobody knows which direction it’ll move.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I sure hope that suspension update can be done OTA to the existing fleet. I'd love for Hugo to learn some new software inspired suspension tricks, even if the performance range would require a new Model X - the even better handling and ride from better active suspension would be welcome.

Elon said it’s a hardware change.

 

[M3Rider]

Except that charging rates are still loss leader for Tesla. I.e. they lose money on it already, at full price.

If you want to compare with residential electricity prices, better add on-demand charges, depreciation of equipment, maintenance, installation costs etc.

Charge rates in the future will need to follow 'boil the frog' strategy. And I'm sure they will, in order to discourage 'convenience charging', once their marketing value isn't as required, and they become utility for road trips and renters with no charging infrastructure.

Would be interesting to see if solar panels+powerpacks
Tesla on Twitter
Change the profitability equation. That's how all SCs should look like in the future.
Were there any numbers posted on that?

 

[Ad Astra]

Not sure if this is posted already.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-was-right-cheap-cameras-could-replace-lidar-1834266742

You beat me to it! For those interested, you can find the paper directly from Cornell here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.07179.pdf

 

[ZachF]

In terms of the catalysts, remember that a big factor in this long downward wedge is the huge selling by TRP, and steadily increasing shares held short again. The TRP selling is basically done since they have perhaps 10% of what they held in Q3 2018. The short interest may grow higher but by itself that probably won't be enough to drop it through the bottom of the current range. It's already up quite high again. If a big buyer shows up, or even a couple, there is no way shorts can hold it down here. That could happen at any time, which is why the stock could inexplicably just start to strongly move up. Shorts covering would amplify it. That's just the way this stock tends to trade. I think whenever there have been big legs up, we have later found out a big buyer came in. So, when's the next big buyer coming in?

The next big buyer(s) will be funds in anticipation of S&P addition, which is why I think possible Q2 addition is so important to the near/medium term SP.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Not sure if this is posted already.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-was-right-cheap-cameras-could-replace-lidar-1834266742

Huh, it looks like all they had to do was put the cameras up behind the top part of the windshield. WEIRD THAT NOBODY THOUGHT OF DOING THAT.

 

[omarsultan]

lolz. It's not what you are looking for, but a 10% boost in range, much larger than 10% boost in charging mi/hour, and 4-corner suspension ain't nothing. It's further extending Tesla's already-gigantic efficiency/range lead. As someone in the market for an X, this may push me over the edge. I'd like the interior refresh that's been rumored, but these changes are far more important to me as they make a huge difference to the X's ability to road trip effectively away from interstates.



It's more than just a 10% increase in range . It's a 10% increase in range with no corresponding increase to the pack size. In other words, the car is much more efficient, and coupled with the Supercharger max power increase means the effective charge time on road trips is greatly reduced.

Sure, this isn't a full refresh, and I'm not arguing that it should be treated as such. But I think it's more impressive/important than the news and much of the reaction here seems to suggest.

EV range is going to be like CPU speed was a couple of decades ago--easy to market, but fairly meaningless past a certain point. Tesla wins the range anxiety game and competitors either cede that ground to Tesla or a forced to put in bigger packs which either push up selling price or eat into margin.

Those in the know will find the faster charging speed to be the real win with this announcement.