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

[AudubonB]

It looks like a spacecraft will be the first to use Tesla Plaid motors

"Direct drive using several Tesla Plaid motors in parallel for SN1. Simpler, lighter & more fault tolerant."
Elon Musk on Twitter

To me, this represents significantly more than just a "Heugh! That's pretty cool" moment. I think it represents a large - although not the first - step in the integration of the seemingly barely distantly related automotive and rocketry sectors.

We already have had cross-pollination occur in the form of alloys developed at SpaceX becoming used in the Models X, CT and - I believe - 3, Y, and Semi. But to have motors as well make the jump - this should be considered yet another demonstration of the juggernaut that the Musk industrial universe is on its way to becoming.

 

[Chocochip]

I just saw this thing:
Tesla delivers its first cars made in its Chinese Gigafactory

Haven't heard of this Rebecca Lindland lady until now. She seems convinced Tesla is only assembling Model 3s at the GF3, receiving kits from the US. Sounds exactly like what Dana Hull was claiming on twitter last night with the CKD stuff. Yet I specifically remember seeing photos of the stamping press, the body shop and the paint shop at the GF3 in the Q3 update letter.

It's good to know anybody can now just offer an opinion on Tesla on a widely distributed platform and never be challenged as to what their sources are...

 

[Maitri982]

Tesla is not going to do geofenced, period. I don't know why you'd be hoping for that. It's not a Tesla's way to solve problems.

Cause its the only way they will get FSD in any form in the nearer term and I would love to have highway driving taken care of for me. Who wouldnt??

So that is why I wish for it. If you want to wait 10+ years for *any* form of self driving thats fine.

...and I'm not sure you know the "Tesla way" on this either. There is no "tesla way" on FSD cause they have not done it. If you are referring to general culture approach, I can't agree with that either. They didn't create the everything car right outta the gate (it even lacked proper cup holders early on)...they iterated on it.

Musk in some conversation did indicate some geofencing to locale would be likely for the first cut. I am not gonna be able to dig up the source, but it was not ambiguous.

In fact I would wager that is how first version will be done.

 

[Fact Checking]

Haven't heard of this Rebecca Lindland lady until now. She seems convinced Tesla is only assembling Model 3s at the GF3, receiving kits from the US. Sounds exactly like what Dana Hull was claiming on twitter last night with the CKD stuff. Yet I specifically remember seeing photos of the stamping press, the body shop and the paint shop at the GF3 in the Q3 update letter.

Yep, that Completely-Knocked-Down Kit angle pushed by Dana Hull is a lie.

GF3 receives raw metal and stamps them, welds them into a chassis and body and paints the body and then does final assembly of all parts, all locally:

A CKD kit would be shipped in from somewhere else - which never happens and never happened here.

The power train and seats are shipped in from elsewhere (from the U.S.) - like it is done for 99% of ICE vehicles manufactured - but even the powertrain and seat manufacturing will move to a local building in about 3 months, in March 2020.

These are readily available pieces of public information that Dana Hull should be aware of, Bloomberg's Dana Hull is coming very close to actionable securities crimes there IMHO.

 

[Maitri982]

That passage was about highways, making it work perfectly at least somewhere.
Geofencing means maintaining maps and relying on them being 100% correct. Tesla will not do that. That's Waymo's way.

Yes...of course not going to use maps. Geofencing is not that although they use a "map" to determine where the car is able to drive on its own. In my hope that would be most major highways in US.

 

[Curt Renz]

Electrek - an hour ago: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/12/30/tesla-delays-us-deliveries-end-of-year-rush/

My follow-up on that article:

People buy new cars when their current ones develop problems or the mileage becomes excessive. I doubt that whether there is still an $1875 tax credit is much of a factor in choosing a new car. I suspect that almost everyone being told that delivery cannot be made this year will not choose to cancel.

Meanwhile, in 2020 folks' current cars will continue to develop problems or become overused and need to be replaced. That's when they'll shop for new cars, and many of them will finally discover the benefits of owning Teslas.

 

[KarenRei]

Man, annoying that I was asleep early today (I was travelling home last night). I've been deleveraging during the rise and would gladly have releveraged some at $410 :Þ $420 isn't tempting enough.

 

[Maitri982]

Great post, thanks.

Comments on this bit:


1. As an investor, I want to see some city driving features rolled out soon, to recognize some of the FSD revenue. I believe this can be done in an iterative way that increases safety AND increases value of FSD to a purchasing decision. Consider for example (just a hypothetical, the point is that it can be iterative) that it could start as an extension to adaptive cruise control. The ability to stop for traffic lights and stop signs while on cruise control could be added without engaging AP navigation, which I would love. As it stands I can use cruise on city streets and it will stop and go as long as there is a car in front of me that stops for the traffic signal. If you have seen the new visualization features in the latest software release (my wife has it in her model 3), it really makes you want the car to start using some of that stuff. So it will help with demand and competitiveness, and I maintain with an iterative feature release it can immediately increase fleet safety, not reduce it.

2. A lot of folks here will argue with you about geofencing, and I think for good reason. GPS data is never going to be up-to-date enough to trust over eyeballs, whether on highways or city streets. So the argument goes that it just is a bad idea to go down that path at all, period.

See my post on geofencing...I didn't realize people here don't always understand that term.

I do agree with stopping at lights and stop signs...I would like that for sure. But its not FSD either.

 

[MABMAB]

Man, annoying that I was asleep early today (I was travelling home last night). I've been deleveraging during the rise and would gladly have releveraged some at $410 :Þ $420 isn't tempting enough.

Didn't you have your arse handed to you earlier in the year through the use of leverage?

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Electrek - an hour ago: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/12/30/tesla-delays-us-deliveries-end-of-year-rush/

My follow-up on that article:

People buy new cars when their current ones develops problems or the mileage becomes excessive. I doubt that whether there is still an $1875 tax credit is much of a factor in choosing a new car. I suspect that almost everyone being told that delivery cannot be made this year will not choose to cancel.

Meanwhile, in 2020 folks' current cars will continue to develop problems or become overused and need to be replaced. That's when they'll shop for new cars, and many of them will finally discover the benefits of owning Teslas.

The fact that Tesla is not willing to refund them the $1875 back and is instead saying they have the option of picking up in early Jan or cancelling their order tells me Tesla has a lot of orders on the books to take their spot. Combine this with the fact that there's been zero end of year discounting and that prices were actually raised throughout Q4, and there's pretty strong evidence that Q1 demand is going to just fine.

 

[X Fan]

Cowen barely made money last quarter on $252M of revenues: http://investor.cowen.com/static-files/81a6a41c-3d69-4bfe-86ca-c321a7a1f196

A constant short with a price target at 1/2 of our current price can't be believed.....

 

[EVNow]

Electrek - an hour ago: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/12/30/tesla-delays-us-deliveries-end-of-year-rush/

My follow-up on that article:

People buy new cars when their current ones develops problems or the mileage becomes excessive. I doubt that whether there is still an $1875 tax credit is much of a factor in choosing a new car. I suspect that almost everyone being told that delivery cannot be made this year will not choose to cancel.

Meanwhile, in 2020 folks' current cars will continue to develop problems or become overused and need to be replaced. That's when they'll shop for new cars, and many of them will finally discover the benefits of owning Teslas.

Interesting bit ...

The only choice they were given is to take delivery early next year, without access to the $1,875 federal tax credit, or cancel their order.
​

Last quarter Tesla gave incentives so that people could switch to a different configuration. Looks like they have enough buyers for all configurations now - question is whether they can actually deliver everything they have. Sounds like production constrained rather than logistics issue of matching configurations to orders locally.

 

[ABCTG]

The battery decade: How energy storage could revolutionize industries in the next 10 years

Totally agree, the twenties will be the decade of the battery.

I'm expecting The State of California to do some big battery buying the next few years...

Requiring all first responder locations to have standalone battery backup etc...

By the way, isn't it nice to be able to say; "The Twenties" instead of whatever the last 2 decades were named;
the aughts, the zeros, the 10s, the teens...?

 

[Fact Checking]

Interesting bit ...

The only choice they were given is to take delivery early next year, without access to the $1,875 federal tax credit, or cancel their order.
​

Last quarter Tesla gave incentives so that people could switch to a different configuration. Looks like they have enough buyers for all configurations now - question is whether they can actually deliver everything they have. Sounds like production constrained rather than logistics issue of matching configurations to orders locally.

My take on this is, and I've seen several anecdotal reports confirming this, that Tesla slightly over-subscribed their end of year order book in the U.S., and they are draining inventory on a first-come basis. In some cases they went so far as to unassign already assigned VINs if another, closer customer was willing to take delivery a couple of days sooner.

This sucks for those customers that missed out on the tax credit - and despite their assurances I think there's a chance that Tesla will slightly lower U.S. Model 3 prices early next year to compensate for the tax credit, so maybe the resulting customer unhappiness will be temporary.

I.e. it's not primarily production constraints (the new cars coming out of Fremont are a given), but a very aggressive Q4 inventory flush, much more aggressive than anything I've seen from them before, at the risk of customer satisfaction in some cases.

I really hope they'll be able to stop doing that in 2020, but clearly Wall Street is still dictating this kind of inventory push.

 

[Cherry Wine]

given the fact there seem to be no incentives being offered to buyers currently, I'm fairly confidant we will hit 360+ for the year.

A word on discounts as I’ve been watching X inventory very closely (came sooo close to pulling the trigger, but decided to hold out until later this year). I have seen very little discounting in the online inventory - the most common discount is “free” FSD, and even that is relatively uncommon. Pretty much all California X inventory gets snatched up within 1-2 days. Inventory at other locations seems to sit for longer.

 

[HG Wells]

Seem to be sliding back down.
Time to buy more.

 

[kengchang]

Taiwan has more than 1000 of Model 3 delivery in December, approximately 2500 for the year as of 12/27/19

 

[Fact Checking]

A word on discounts as I’ve been watching X inventory very closely (came sooo close to pulling the trigger, but decided to hold out until later this year).

So still about 30 hours left for you to buy a Model X?

Sorry about that, I'll show myself out.​

 

[The Accountant]

I just saw this thing:
Tesla delivers its first cars made in its Chinese Gigafactory

Haven't heard of this Rebecca Lindland lady until now. She seems convinced Tesla is only assembling Model 3s at the GF3, receiving kits from the US. Sounds exactly like what Dana Hull was claiming on twitter last night with the CKD stuff. Yet I specifically remember seeing photos of the stamping press, the body shop and the paint shop at the GF3 in the Q3 update letter.

It's good to know anybody can now just offer an opinion on Tesla on a widely distributed platform and never be challenged as to what their sources are...

As Rebecca Lindland spoke throughout this interview, her credibility continued to drop with each sentence.
In the final minute, all credibility was lost once she made this statement,
"Originally they had talked about already producing 2-3 thousand model 3s – at this point they delivered 15 – they're actually not starting to really do more mass assembly until about another 6 months or so".

How in the world do these people get air time?

 

[KarenRei]

Didn't you have your arse handed to you earlier in the year through the use of leverage?

And handed back during this rise. So your point? I gained a ton on options recently, and converted a good chunk of it back to stock.

I could go into a lot more detail, but is there really a point here? Different people on this forum use different amounts of leverage. You're choosing a fixed leverage of 1:1. If you think anything over 1:1 is scary, then why aren't you using leverage of less than 1:1? Is it purely coincidence that precisely 1:1 happens to be just right for you?