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

[TheTalkingMule]

4) Elon might the human I love & respect the most out of all 7 billion on this planet, but I don't take every single word he says literally. Just like I didn't take "FSD as safe as a human by mid 2020" literally when they were about to raise capital, I didn't take "Energy will be bigger than Automotive long term" literally. I took it as Elon wanting to convey that TE is being severely undervalued by the analysts and the market, and has way more potential than they were (and still are) giving it credit for at the time. I've been able to confirm this with data, logic, and reasoning, but I have thus far been unable to confirm the TE opportunity is bigger than Tesla's Automotive opportunity (excluding autonomy). I acknowledge I could be wrong, and will change my mind when presented with more evidence, although even then I don't think TE could ever come close to competing with Automotive + Autonomy + AMaaS in size of the respective opportunities.

What makes more money now....the automotive industry or the fuel that makes them go?

 

[EVNow]

that would be me deciding whether to buy calls or puts going into earnings.

Whichever Way a Stock Moves, A Strangle Can Squeeze Out a Profit

 

[MC3OZ]

Tesla's battery tech advantage is pretty huge even now, can't imagine how big their lead will be after battery/drivetrain day. The number of times a battery can be fully cycled, the rate it can be charged/discharged, thermal sensitivity amount other things are very very important. Every month theres some story about a kid at a science fair who built a battery that can be charged fully in minutes or something these days. Being able to check all the boxes is the difference. Tesla is absolutely killing it in the battery moat department,

What I am most interested to see is if/when Tesla will be employing the following patents / acquisitions..

1. Manufacture of battery modules, as per a patent
2. 20 year - 1 million mile battery, as per a patent.
3. Maxwell Dry Cathodes...

if they are somehow deploying 1+2+3 as a single solution, then there is a good chance they can scale module.pack production quickly in a capital efficient manner...

So we can't even guess Tesla's lead before battery and drive-train day and we can't guess what that lead translates to in terms of prices, margins and volumes.

But it is very likely they have something very significant to share... which I hope is 1+2+3 or some portion of it.

 

[AZRI11]

I'm sure if private owners rent out their cars to the fleet they can also subscribe to services that for a flat fee cleans it when necessary, and after last user before it's sent back to you. There would probably be the choice of what charge level it should be at before sending it back as well.

As for kiddie seats, dog cages etc every car would just be rated for what it has and even if only 1/20 cars lets you bring your animal that should be more than enough.

What number of households actually have kids 0-10 years old anyway? 20%

There's been some speculation about FSD prices going to be $200k or something since it'll be so valuable for renting. I'm sure if the production is big enough to actually have cars available to sell to non-renters there will be a FSD version not allowed to join the fleet that cost something similar to now. So commercial FSD $200k, personal FSD $7k

Actually I'm pretty sure soon after FSD is released you will only be able to subscribe to FSD anyway. Again, very different prices for commercial/private.

All of those things will be quickly figured out once FSD actually works. So we'll be debating this for awhile

Expect a large tax on fsd. Up to 25%. Governor's are desperate as far as funding mass transit is concerned. Boring company could be the next big disrupter after Tesla and SpaceX. Irony is boring tunnels being funded with tax on Tesla Network

 

[Curt Renz]

Solving The Money Problem - today:

 

[Words of HABIT]

Wow, VW's ID.3 debacle seems to be getting worse:

VW Again ! Delayed The Long Waiting ID.3 to Spring 2021
​

Note: the report is based on a single email sent to a customer and is unconfirmed.

What I don't understand is that the VW advertising material has an image of their ID.3 (IMHO I love the design) as per below.

Yet all the photos I've seen (including the article you attached) of the parked ID.3s look like this (IMHO ghastly), with small front grill, gaping bottom lip, and front corner two part window mullions that will be horrible for visibility when turning. Did they really turn a stunning EV beauty of a prototype into a plain jane ICE looking car?

VW, What have you done?!

 

[AZRI11]

It was one of the reasons I hesitated on sharing my thoughts regarding Deferred Taxes.
I did not want to get people's expectations up prior to earnings only to have a let down.
As I mentioned, it could be a Big Nothing Burger.
I finally decided to share it because a similar topic on early S&P inclusion was posted this weekend...
.... and I thought, even if the upside has low probability, the impact could be material. I did not want to keep potential
material information quiet from our members even if likelihood is low.

My recommendation to all is to stop the discussion on Deferred Taxes.
We covered all that there is to cover.
Let's stay quiet and see what's reported on Jan 29th.

This is already all over Twitter. And lora at CNBC knows. Will she write an article? Better to focus on guidance. That will be the catalyst for a short squeeze, hopefully.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Stop the PressShortzes !!!

FTFY

 

[Artful Dodger]

Someone I respect immensely recently stated. “faith loves irony”. But let’s not get carried away too much here. Let’s see what comes out of the shoot.

Lol, do you mean Elon? He said "Fate loves Irony."

 

[Mike Smith]

This was from a week ago. They were dead set on not delaying. If the new rumors are true... yikes

VW says software glitches on new ID3 EV will not affect sales launch

'VW Group CEO Herbert Diess has said he will need full availability of the ID3 from launch in order to ensure stringent new European fleet emission targets can be met without the need to pay potentially hundreds of millions, if not billions, of euros in fines.'

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

So if this is true ...

VW were already gonna lose money on every EV they sold.
Now they are gonna have costs to take care of them for a year+ so the batteries don't degrade.
Then they are gonna have to sell them with an even bigger loss after they've been sitting for a year.
On top of that they will now have to either pay the EU fees or buy credits from someone.
Almost forgot, they will almost certainly have to halt production for most of 2020 which will incur huge costs by itself.

If only I wasn't morally opposed to shorting ...

 

[JustMe]

This was from a week ago. They were dead set on not delaying. If the new rumors are true... yikes

VW says software glitches on new ID3 EV will not affect sales launch

'VW Group CEO Herbert Diess has said he will need full availability of the ID3 from launch in order to ensure stringent new European fleet emission targets can be met without the need to pay potentially hundreds of millions, if not billions, of euros in fines.'

How high has the stress level got to be for those poor software engineers? I assume this is related to having to integrate subsystems from multiple suppliers. This is a major advantage of Tesla that is often under appreciated. It doesn’t matter how good the programmers are if the overall architecture is a mess.

Does anyone remember the roll-out of Obamacare when only SIX people were able to actually sign up on the first day? Solving that required tearing the whole thing down and building it again from scratch.

I think that the prospects for VW navigating out of this quagmire really depends on how the management leads and the ratio of teamwork to finger pointing. If T/F >1, they have a solid chance.

 

[gerebgraus]

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特拉风T☰SLA mania on Twitter

@ReflexFunds

So it seems that the production bottleneck in Q1 is battery supply both in Fremont and Shanghai.
Last week there was no sign of production in Wuwa's video that he explained with the Chinese New Year.
On the other hand, there are signs of production in this week's video. Is the explanation that they did no longer had the Panasonic battery cells at that time, and they have received enough supply from LG this week?

 

[bhtooefr]

And lots of other states including Ohio Child Passenger Safety.

Not for taxis:

(A) When any child who is in either or both of the following categories is being transported in a motor vehicle, other than a taxicab or public safety vehicle as defined in section 4511.01 of the Revised Code, that is required by the United States department of transportation to be equipped with seat belts at the time of manufacture or assembly, the operator of the motor vehicle shall have the child properly secured in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions in a child restraint system that meets federal motor vehicle safety standards:

(1) A child who is less than four years of age;

(2) A child who weighs less than forty pounds.

So, taxis are exempt, and anything not required to have seatbelts (like buses) is exempt.

 

[Fred42]

The last article in the final issue of Automobile magazine is a primer on the "inexorable" electric cars. This is a link to the on-line edition. Just FYI.
Learn to Speak EV: Electric Cars Explained for Gearheads - Automobile

 

[Hock1]

It's almost too big of a disaster to believe it's real. I mean, tens of thousands of new cars sitting in the elements (in rented parking lots) for over a year while they wait for adequate software to be developed? I want to believe this is fake.
That's no way to kill Tesla!

Don't they still have 300K+ diesels sitting in parking lots and fields across the US, still waiting for a plan to deal with them? I think it's been around 3 years now.

 

[Mike Smith]

So it seems that the production bottleneck in Q1 is battery supply both in Fremont and Shanghai.
Last week there was no sign of production in Wuwa's video that he explained with the Chinese New Year.
On the other hand, there are signs of production in this week's video. Is the explanation that they did no longer had the Panasonic battery cells at that time, and they have received enough supply from LG this week?

Where do you get the idea that there's a battery bottleneck at Freemont?

 

[Unpilot]

Don't they still have 300K+ diesels sitting in parking lots and fields across the US, still waiting for a plan to deal with them? I think it's been around 3 years now.

Not usually one to enjoy a cup of schadenfreude....but for this company I will make an exception.
Cheating lying bastages that they are.

 

[heltok]

Do we still believe that Q1 production will be less than 2019Q4 production? Given delivery times and GF1 ramp I am beginning to think that Q1 could be higher than Q4.

 

[Zaxxon]

Where do you get the idea that there's a battery bottleneck at Freemont?

You are correct. Highly unlikely that there's a battery shortage in Freemont (which is in Kentucky).