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

[Wooloomooloo]

I asked:

There have been rumors in the media about a complete Model S/X interior & exterior refresh coming in September. This could hurt Q2 sales as some buyers decide to wait (the Osborn effect). If this is a false rumor, why doesn’t Tesla make a public statement?

The standard answer of any corporation is “we don’t respond to rumors”, but Elon has debunked rumors many times in the past. So maybe he’ll answer and shed some light on this. After-all, the rumor is said to have come from a Tesla employee.

And if it's true they put a nail in sales by confirming it, or by simply not denying it. That's why they don't comment.

 

[Hock1]

I think most likely they switched position, maybe closed Puts at the recent low?

During the recent "invitation only investor call", AJ made some comments like: Tesla is a distress and restructuring situation; Don't expect Apple and Amazon to buy Tesla; nobody wants to take the risk that may burn down buildings; worst case is $10 next year... Seems to me his intention for that call was to break down the stock at a critical point. The stock indeed dropped a lot in that week and went below $180.

I don't know how exactly he profits from that manipulation, I have no doubt his recent call was to manipulate the stock, not to give fair analysis.

I don't know if he actually profits from his manipulation. But being one of the larger lenders of stock to short sellers, MS profits from their lending fees and their clients profit from the tanking of the stock, and AJ keeps his job.

 

[Sparky4life]

Ready for shareholders! Sad that they need metal detectors, but that's par for the course I guess...

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Has Shanghai battery provider been 100% locked in yet? If not, an announcement of things being back on track with Panasonic would be huge news to me. Panny drama is the issue rather than demand, correct?

 

[Electroman]

Can someone respond to Jake Fisher at Consumer reports. He claims that the downgrade of Model 3 is nothing to do with cosmetic issues like paint and panel gaps, and it is all due to the poor driving reliability of the car.

We all know that they published around 10 parameters and Model 3 got stellar rating in all but the paint and panel gaps. I can't seem to locate that, but I guess @KarenRei or @Reciprocity or @Lycanthrope might have it.

There is a huge disconnect in what Mr. Fisher is saying and what CR data says.

Can someone respond to him on Twitter? Jake Fisher on Twitter

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I've only seen a few Waymo rider reports on freeways, including one night video. Merges are cautious. Excessively so, IMHO. Aggressiveness is a clear Tesla advantage, because you learn more from wrecks (and near misses). Of course it's a two-edged sword.

Yeah, I see your issue now. I did not intend to claim Waymo will never be data limited. I said:

Self-driving teams today are not limited by data.​

Once Waymo and others solve all the common cases, for which they have ample data, then lack of edge case data may become a show stopper. Or maybe they'll use another approach for rare edge cases. We won't know until they solve all the common cases. So far no one has.

My question is how will Tesla solve these common cases? The answer is not "more data".

​

That's the least of their worries. They first run new s/w on 15 million fully recorded "old" miles, then on billions of 'fuzzed' old miles, then on a few million new miles with safety drivers. They'll always have a thousand (or more?) trained drivers testing new s/w, mapping new territories, etc. A thousand trained drivers doing 200 miles per shift is a million miles per week. It's a huge expense, relatively speaking, when you only have 500 cars. It's a rounding error when you have 500,000.

You still seem to be under the impression that 15 million miles is sufficient data for training/validation/testing. I’m not sure what gives you that impression.

 

[Boomer19]

Has Shanghai battery provider been 100% locked in yet? If not, an announcement of things being back on track with Panasonic would be huge news to me. Panny drama is the issue rather than demand, correct?

whether the drama is bc pan dropped ball at retooling those 3 lines at gf late last year or whether it started prior to that, or because pana wasn’t involved in shanghai GF (yet)

i’m not sure which caused what first...

 

[Boomer19]

I don't know if he actually profits from his manipulation. But being one of the larger lenders of stock to short sellers, MS profits from their lending fees and their clients profit from the tanking of the stock, and AJ keeps his job.

yep
state street no slouch either, about 5% of the 10bb lending market revenue (my slb contact told me)

 

[Boomer19]

Can someone respond to Jake Fisher at Consumer reports. He claims that the downgrade of Model 3 is nothing to do with cosmetic issues like paint and panel gaps, and it is all due to the poor driving reliability of the car.

We all know that they published around 10 parameters and Model 3 got stellar rating in all but the paint and panel gaps. I can't seem to locate that, but I guess @KarenRei or @Reciprocity or @Lycanthrope might have it.

There is a huge disconnect in what Mr. Fisher is saying and what CR data says.

Can someone respond to him on Twitter? Jake Fisher on Twitter

he is part of the the hit parade.
he set up a fat pitch for himself by baiting people into believing he had something to say about how the media reported on his CR review, and then got on cnbc.
but basically reversed course and instead implied the cars AP is dangerous, just like the media twisted his review in the first place.
someone broke down the video of him reviewing AP, kinda laughable

 

[Artful Dodger]

Sorry you feel this way. Many here will disagree with your synopsis of both he and his companies, me included. I guess it is all in how you perceive him. You see him as a control freak, others see him as an active hands on manager. You see him as a bad actor, others see him as genuine and vulnerable. You see him as weird...well ok maybe he is at that but many would characterize it eccentric and genuine. You see him as tiresome, others would see him as refreshing. You say he needs a backhand and a gag order, others feel his visionary attitude and free thinking are the root cause of his companies success and progress.

So...I guess you make your personal decisions based on your perceptions and the rest of us will do the same. Have a great day.

Dan

Lol, he's grinding on Jonas, not Elon.

Cheers!

 

[Tslynk67]

Can someone respond to Jake Fisher at Consumer reports. He claims that the downgrade of Model 3 is nothing to do with cosmetic issues like paint and panel gaps, and it is all due to the poor driving reliability of the car.

We all know that they published around 10 parameters and Model 3 got stellar rating in all but the paint and panel gaps. I can't seem to locate that, but I guess @KarenRei or @Reciprocity or @Lycanthrope might have it.

There is a huge disconnect in what Mr. Fisher is saying and what CR data says.

Can someone respond to him on Twitter? Jake Fisher on Twitter

Done - and here's the CR article: Tesla Model 3 Loses CR Recommendation Over Reliability Issues

 

[M3Rider]

OT: cool vid from Bjorn

And some analytics to go with that:
2019-06-11-ionity-nyland-ionity-charging

M3 gains more range in the same time, but still I was impressed that Etron charging speed does not fall as much after 80%. Would be nice if Tesla matched it

 

[Compton]

OT: cool vid from Bjorn

And some analytics to go with that:
2019-06-11-ionity-nyland-ionity-charging

M3 gains more range in the same time, but still I was impressed that Etron charging speed does not fall as much after 80%. Would be nice if Tesla matched it

Due to unused/hidden reserve battery capacity if I have understood correctly. Tesla could achieve the same thing in one OTA update if they made ~15% of the battery capacity unusable and unvisible. It's another thing how desirable that would be.

 

[SO16]

M3 gains more range in the same time, but still I was impressed that Etron charging speed does not fall as much after 80%. Would be nice if Tesla matched it

Not if it’s at the expense of the eTrons battery life.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Does anyone still doubt that analysts are just monkey's throwing darts at the wall?

Only if he keeps those d@rts in his @ss.

 

[EVNow]

I've only seen a few Waymo rider reports on freeways, including one night video. Merges are cautious. Excessively so, IMHO. Aggressiveness is a clear Tesla advantage, because you learn more from wrecks (and near misses). Of course it's a two-edged sword.

I think Waymo will have a problem with being too conservative (they have too much money they want to protect). That will make them nearly inoperable in high traffic markets of east & west coast. If you are not suitably aggressive, you can't make the needed turns, merges, lane changes. May be that's the reason why it sits at the intersection waiting to turn left too.

ps : This is a problem all the big profitable companies will have. They will be better off spinning off Waymo and keeping minority 49% interest.

 

[KarenRei]

OT: cool vid from Bjorn

And some analytics to go with that:
2019-06-11-ionity-nyland-ionity-charging

M3 gains more range in the same time, but still I was impressed that Etron charging speed does not fall as much after 80%. Would be nice if Tesla matched it

Do the math:

* Convert the percents into EPA miles
* Skip ahead on the Audi because since they both start at 10%, the Audi needs to catch up to the Model 3's initial number of miles remaining (e.g. Model 3 starts with 32,5mi, E-tron with 20,5mi; 32,5mi is 15,9% in the E-tron). So with 32,5mi as the starting point, that's an offset of 2 minutes into the charge for the Audi, so we'll subtract 2 minutes from the Audi's times.

From X to Y (M3 % / E-Tron %) : M3 min:sec / E-Tron min:sec
* 32,5mi to 50mi (15,4% / 24,3%): 1:40 / 3:20
* 32,5mi to 100mi (30,8% / 48,8%): 5:45 / 12:15
* 32,5mi to 150mi (46,2% / 73,2%): 9:50 / 21:13
* 32,5mi to 200mi (61,5% / 97,6%): 15:22 / ~37:00? (video stops at 96%)

Not remotely in the same league. And note that this was with Model 3 charging at much lower peak powers than it can from V3.

 

[TradingInvest]

Can someone respond to Jake Fisher at Consumer reports. He claims that the downgrade of Model 3 is nothing to do with cosmetic issues like paint and panel gaps, and it is all due to the poor driving reliability of the car.

We all know that they published around 10 parameters and Model 3 got stellar rating in all but the paint and panel gaps. I can't seem to locate that, but I guess @KarenRei or @Reciprocity or @Lycanthrope might have it.

There is a huge disconnect in what Mr. Fisher is saying and what CR data says.

Can someone respond to him on Twitter? Jake Fisher on Twitter

"poor driving reliability of the car (Model 3)" - I think Jake Fisher is being dishonest.

 

[Fact Checking]

That's the least of their worries. They first run new s/w on 15 million fully recorded "old" miles, then on billions of 'fuzzed' old miles, then on a few million new miles with safety drivers.

Yeah, sorry, that's bull-sugar:

• 'fuzzed' old miles are the same open loop non-reactive environment that you used to pooh-pooh Tesla's 'shadow mode' with. Make up your mind: open loop testing is either incredibly useful or it is not the real thing.
• If Waymo's cars are driving approximately 200 miles a day, and Waymo has 1,000 cars, then a "few million new miles" of testing per new iteration takes a "few weeks" per iteration. For software projects that's worse than snail's pace, no wonder they cannot progress with unprotected left turns ...
  
• A few weeks per minor software version is incredibly slow rate of testing, and they'll have to re-test and re-validate every time they do a material change.

"Data" isn't just what is used to construct the training data set, it's also what limits the rate of testing and (ultimately) the rate of innovation, it's what increases the confidence in the end result.

If you are still claiming that Tesla's data advantage is absolutely no advantage, because 'self-driving teams' are not limited by these factors at all but are limited by development power (is that your claim?), then I'd like to ask you to cite sources that support that notion, because what you are saying is a very strong claim.

 

[M3Rider]

Due to unused/hidden reserve battery capacity if I have understood correctly. Tesla could achieve the same thing in one OTA update if they made ~15% of the battery capacity unusable and unvisible.

I've not heard that Audi made a big chunk of battery a reserve/inaccessible.

Not if it’s at the expense of the eTrons battery life.

Sure. Unfortunately, we'll not know the results until many years later.

Do the math:

* Convert the percents into EPA miles
* Skip ahead on the Audi because since they both start at 10%, the Audi needs to catch up to the Model 3's initial number of miles remaining (e.g. Model 3 starts with 32,5mi, E-tron with 20,5mi; 32,5mi is 15,9% in the E-tron). So with 32,5mi as the starting point, that's an offset of 2 minutes into the charge for the Audi, so we'll subtract 2 minutes from the Audi's times.

From X to Y (M3 % / E-Tron %) : M3 min:sec / E-Tron min:sec
* 32,5mi to 50mi (15,4% / 24,3%): 1:40 / 3:20
* 32,5mi to 100mi (30,8% / 48,8%): 5:45 / 12:15
* 32,5mi to 150mi (46,2% / 73,2%): 9:50 / 21:13
* 32,5mi to 200mi (61,5% / 97,6%): 15:22 / ~37:00? (video stops at 96%)

Not remotely in the same league. And note that this was with Model 3 charging at much lower peak powers than it can from V3.

I understand the miles difference.

But if Audi proves that the last 20-30% of the battery can be charged at their speed without a detrimental effect on the battery, I think that'd be a new input to consider.