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

[DaveT]

If you believe that autonomous driving is possible, and likely to happen in the next few years, then you should short or end exposure to the following industries. (no advice, I'm just a random idiot on the internet)

1. Domestic airlines - Why pay 1k for your family to fly to FL when you can get in the car and wake up there for $100 in fuel? Imagine taking a mini-RV or conversion van on a long trip. It would be way nicer than flying.
2. Rental Car companies - same reasons as above. No flights = no rentals. Plus even if you do fly why rent a car when robot taxis are everywhere and cheap?
3. Uber/lyft/taxis (the ones that don't make it to FSD at least)
4. Rail freight. Autonomous semis will be much closer to rail freight costs than semis today (maybe only 30% more), probably enough to make a huge dent in their customer base.
5. Retail stores. Already under pressure, FSD technology will make shipping products even cheaper and faster.

Those industries that may benefit.
1. Energy companies that provide solar, electric utilities, anyone in a space to build out chargers etc.
2. Construction and home building? If commuting is less painful people may not mind living farther away from cities. Road construction may also increase. (I'm mixed on that one, more cars will certainly be driving people around, but we will have fewer accidents so traffic won't be as bad for the same volume)

It's hard to imagine what other industries might arise as part of this, just like before smart phones the idea of "Apps" would not have made sense to anyone.


It will be like the completion of the trans continental railroad. Domestic airlines should be crapping their pants right now.

I think this is an oversimplified assessment.

Question is will more people or less people be flying on domestic flights in 10 years.

My guess is more people will be flying than now.

 

[ZeApelido]

I keep getting recruited to a deep learning autonomous car role for VW. Should I apply?

Worst case I'll find skabooshka's brother there and slap him on the head.

 

[Remus]

My impression is that he is more involved with it now than he was in 2016, but perhaps he was just as involved then.

Overheard from friends (over the years) that he listens to brief from leaders and have hands on engineer present their work, on a weekly basis. He did skip some of the weekly meetings but attended most.

I am not sure how much "more" he can get involved.

 

[S3XY]

Great, now would you care to pick out all of the business deals he has had throughout his life that proved successful?

See, this is why these types of arguments are so clouded. Each opinion can cherry pick the facts that best support their opinion and exploit those to justify their particular view.

Sounds very much like the arguments surrounding Elon and Tesla. We surround ourselves with those that generally share our opinion. Our bias is our fortress. In the end we make our choices based on our own interprutations and any attempts to sway people on the other side are generally fruitless because they have come to their own conclusions that happen to be different from our own. Until they have accepted and embraced a new reality for themselves, their opinion will generally not be swayed by others.

Dan

It would seem to me that the general rules of debate are for each party to bolster their own argument with examples and facts. So I think the onus is on you to dig up such arguments. Given that, I currently score it at FC ~10, DD 0.

 

[TradingInvest]

For a while Tesla got into the habit to use price cut to stimulate quarterly demand. I feel that's not a great way to do business. Stick to your price, even if that means less cars get sold for that quarter. Should have never promised $35k car in the first place. Now we have the $35k car available through phone, effective cost is $26k, the car is amazing, still 50 times more people buy gasoline cars.

I probably will get tons of disagree on this. If I were running Tesla, I would give one week reminder, then remove the $35k version, increase price on every model by $5k, no more sales events. Offer more test drives, explain to people why these are the most compelling cars on the market (probably don't need to explain after test drives). At $45k, the SR+ is a steal. After incentives and gasoline savings it's more like $31k. The autopilot feature alone worth $5k. Those who can't afford today will save up to buy tomorrow.

Don't expand US production capacity until we get a long waiting list of real orders.

On Model S and X side, these are literally the best cars in the world by a wide margin. Charge the price accordingly. To reward existing owners, give them credits for future purchases, but never drop car price or option price.

Tesla shouldn't compete on (low) price, Tesla should be the undisputed best vehicle brand in the world, with reasonable price and image connected to it. If you can afford it, great, if you can't, settle for whatever you can afford, or get a second hand Tesla.

Right now the FSD option is $6k, after purchase $8k, then stick to this. If they drop those prices again, people will not trust their words in the future.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

It would seem to me that the general rules of debate are for each party to bolster their own argument with examples and facts. So I think the onus is on you to dig up such arguments. Given that, I currently score it at FC ~10, DD 0.

Missed the point entirely.

 

[Pras]

Seems there is no love left for TSLA. So weak. Also Elon/TSLA has zero moat being assigned by the market. Fairly counter to the capital raise which was oversubscribed. Not sure how to read this abysmal price performance by the stock.

Elon - some real magic time needed, not just words. Land a rocket or send the roadster flying or anything!!?

Time to shut up all my well wishers (friends/ family) from advising me how I should avoid a sinking ship, blah blah...I have stopped protesting or even communicating.

 

[DocZ]

So any positive catalysts coming up? Insane that we are down $150 from all time highs.

 

[DocZ]

Seems there is no love left for TSLA. So weak. Also Elon/TSLA has zero moat being assigned by the market. Fairly counter to the capital raise which was oversubscribed. Not sure how to read this abysmal price performance by the stock.

Elon - some real magic time needed, not just words. Land a rocket or send the roadster flying or anything!!?

Time to shut up all my well wishers (friends/ family) from advising me how I should avoid a sinking ship, blah blah...I have stopped protesting or even communicating.

Been incredibly painful and frustrating. Hope he figures out how to turn it around soon.

 

[Buddyroe]

So don't.

Why not just go to a political forum to discuss politics? But, it's typical of the tolerant types to not give a d@mn about what anyone else thinks.

 

[LJS22]

It's bananas that anyone has the cajones to even say such a thing. Tesla's peers Mercedes, BMW, Audi all have cars at the same price points. Did the base 3 series or C class destroy BMW and Mercedes?

Only difference is the “cheap” Tesla isn’t sacrificing as much the “cheap” Mercedes or BMW. The model 3 is an extremely good car in that price point and that should be what is talked about more. Writing articles like that is insane. Besides everyone is making fun of Tesla’s self ordering parts now and the comments are mainly “if you own a Tesla you don’t look at your bank account” so the perception is still that Tesla is too rich for common people.

As far as Elon taking over autopilot team...seems like he is tired of being told his robotaxi thing is an idea for the next decade not next year. I think he’s going to push this to get robotaxi going in some form in 2020.

The markets don’t seem to account for Musk’s determination.

 

[TradingInvest]

Seems there is no love left for TSLA. So weak. Also Elon/TSLA has zero moat being assigned by the market. Fairly counter to the capital raise which was oversubscribed. Not sure how to read this abysmal price performance by the stock.

Elon - some real magic time needed, not just words. Land a rocket or send the roadster flying or anything!!?

Time to shut up all my well wishers (friends/ family) from advising me how I should avoid a sinking ship, blah blah...I have stopped protesting or even communicating.

Probably the convertible bond got oversubscribed, not the shares. The convertible bond has great value because buyers essentially get a hedge so they can trade (manipulate) the stock to generate a lot of trading profits. Some bond buyers like it because it has significant upside potential, not the same risk as shares.

Don't push Elon to do things to lift the stock, last few times the outcome was not so good. The stock will be where it wants to be, he should focus on solid business moves. Investors should follow sound investment rules, don't do leveraged speculation.

 

[Singuy]

It's bananas that anyone has the cajones to even say such a thing. Tesla's peers Mercedes, BMW, Audi all have cars at the same price points. Did the base 3 series or C class destroy BMW and Mercedes?

Destroy? Mercedes and BMW depends on the C and 3 series to survive! These are their bread and butter cars. It's also the reason why luxury companies are introducing more and more mainstream priced cars like the Jaguar XE or the CLA vs going the other way around. Morgan Stanley is the epitome of retards.

As mainstream brands like Mazda and Toyota becomes more expensive, luxury brands are desperately trying to take their market share by saying "hey you can ride in a Beamer for the same price as a loaded Camry!". 35k is the point where all cars converge and seems like every brand except the high high end offers a car at this price point. It's also the average price of all new car purchases statistically. Elon didn't aim for 35k for sh*its and giggles.

Another example are Michael Kors and Coach. Have they diluted their brand? Yes..are Michael Kors bags selling 3:1 vs the next highest luxury brand? Yes. Companies like to make money Morgan Stanley...it's called doing business.

 

[Jovian]

These are some of the key people in the Autopilot team according to The Information last year. I’d guess some more of these now also report directly to Elon, perhaps Frank, Mark and Drew.

• Guangzhi Cao, who previously worked on iPhone cameras at Apple, develops software to process image data that comes from cameras on Tesla’s cars.
• Frank Havlak is one of the clear leaders of Autopilot. He is in charge of controls, which make sure the vehicle’s steering, braking and acceleration respond correctly to the Autopilot software decisions.
• Ashok Elluswamy, who was trained in robotics and learned about computer vision on the job at Tesla and is now effectively the senior most neural network researcher under Mr. Karpathy. Mr. Elluswamy helped develop the automatic lane change feature for the original launch of Autopilot.
• Mark McClelland works on the path planner, which determines the path the vehicle will travel based on what the Autopilot perception system “sees” on the road. He has been hard at work preparing for the recent update that allows a driver to type an address and let Autopilot take over the driving to follow the navigation instructions when the vehicle is on a highway.
• CJ Moore runs the “integration” team, which acts as the liaison between Autopilot and the rest of Tesla. He makes sure, for instance, that Tesla’s user-interface team, which designs the digital displays of information in the Tesla vehicles, including those about Autopilot, gets the correct measurements from the Autopilot system in real time. He also is responsible for quality control to identify and assign fixes to bugs discovered by the company’s test-track drivers and, later, by “alpha testers,” or real customers who get early access to Autopilot software before updates are pushed to all customers. And those discovered by Mr. Musk, of course.
• Zeljko Popovic, who works for Mr. Bowers, was a liaison between Tesla and Mobileye early in the life of Autlopilot, said a person briefed about it. He recently had been running a team that helped bring together data from cameras, radars and ultrasonics, known as sensor fusion, so that Tesla’s Autopilot software algorithms could use that data and decide how the car should drive.
• Drew Steedly is responsible for “geometric vision and perception.” That means he tries to make sure the sensors are calibrated correctly and provide useful data. Mr. Steedly is based in Seattle, and while the employee list does not reflect it, he appears to be overseeing Mr. Popovic’s work, according to a colleague.

Guangzhi Cao is no longer at Tesla according to his Linkedin as of Jan 2019, he is working for XPENG motors. Rest seem to still be on board.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Why not just go to a political forum to discuss politics? But, it's typical of the tolerant types to not give a d@mn about what anyone else thinks.

Holy carp, guys. We get it. Move on.

 

[JRP3]

Why not just go to a political forum to discuss politics? But, it's typical of the tolerant types to not give a d@mn about what anyone else thinks.

When it has an effect on the stock it's relevant to discuss. Typical of you not to understand the basics.

 

[EVMeister]

Tesla Twitter has dogs on the brain.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Seems there is no love left for TSLA. So weak. Also Elon/TSLA has zero moat being assigned by the market. Fairly counter to the capital raise which was oversubscribed. Not sure how to read this abysmal price performance by the stock.

Elon - some real magic time needed, not just words. Land a rocket or send the roadster flying or anything!!?

Time to shut up all my well wishers (friends/ family) from advising me how I should avoid a sinking ship, blah blah...I have stopped protesting or even communicating.

...are you serious? The entire stock market has been in a nosedive. AAPL is down more than Tesla as of this typing.

 

[mikevbf]

For a while Tesla got into the habit to use price cut to stimulate quarterly demand. I feel that's not a great way to do business. Stick to your price, even if that means less cars get sold for that quarter. Should have never promised $35k car in the first place. Now we have the $35k car available through phone, effective cost is $26k, the car is amazing, still 50 times more people buy gasoline cars.

I probably will get tons of disagree on this. If I were running Tesla, I would give one week reminder, then remove the $35k version, increase price on every model by $5k, no more sales events. Offer more test drives, explain to people why these are the most compelling cars on the market (probably don't need to explain after test drives). At $45k, the SR+ is a steal. After incentives and gasoline savings it's more like $31k. The autopilot feature alone worth $5k. Those who can't afford today will save up to buy tomorrow.

Don't expand US production capacity until we get a long waiting list of real orders.

On Model S and X side, these are literally the best cars in the world by a wide margin. Charge the price accordingly. To reward existing owners, give them credits for future purchases, but never drop car price or option price.

Tesla shouldn't compete on (low) price, Tesla should be the undisputed best vehicle brand in the world, with reasonable price and image connected to it. If you can afford it, great, if you can't, settle for whatever you can afford, or get a second hand Tesla.

Right now the FSD option is $6k, after purchase $8k, then stick to this. If they drop those prices again, people will not trust their words in the future.

I get your sentiment, but think Elon Musk is looking much further down board to the day at a flip of switch any FSD Tesla has the potential to join the robo taxi fleet. I believe the business model really changes at that point whenever it occurs. Although, he has been more quiet about this since the investor autonomy day, I remember hearing him say he wanted to maximize the number of Teslas on the road while essentially holding the company as close to cash flow neutral as possible. I am surprised how few picked up on this; it is a dramatic shift from capital and manufacturing efficiency to create positive cash flow every possible future quarter because that is what mature companies do. If I had to guess, Elon now thinks of that plan as more of a hedge and what he has to pitch until FSD is realized.

 

[Spacemanspliff]

Seems there is no love left for TSLA. So weak. Also Elon/TSLA has zero moat being assigned by the market. Fairly counter to the capital raise which was oversubscribed. Not sure how to read this abysmal price performance by the stock.

Elon - some real magic time needed, not just words. Land a rocket or send the roadster flying or anything!!?

Time to shut up all my well wishers (friends/ family) from advising me how I should avoid a sinking ship, blah blah...I have stopped protesting or even communicating.

There will be no major upwards movement until Q2 numbers, that’s it.

Increased deliveries of 3 and S&X are the only thing that will turn the stock.

That’s it.