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

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Is it more difficult/expensive to install Level 2 residential charging at rural or suburbian lots in the UK than the US? I think people are pretty short-sighted to resist spending a bit of money on their personal electrical infrastructure considering the same people will often buy a $3K option for their new car that doesn't consist of much more than aesthetic differences.

Actually its not the cost at all, we even have govt subsidies still AFAIK. The problem is just the space. A vast number of people in the UK have their cars in un-allocated street parking, and nobody can run a charging cable from their house to their car in those circumstances. Actually having 'off-street' parking, is pretty much a middle-class thing here. Our population density is higher than the US.

The reason I don't think its an immediate brake on sales is that there are TONS of mercedes, Audis, Jaguars and BMWs parked in peoples driveways that can be targeted first. The model 3 is probably fine for a few years as its still a pretty darned expensive car to most UK buyers, but any cheaper car will run into the 'how do I charge it?' question.

 

[EVCollies]

$TSLAQ likes to talk about the small M3 inventory Tesla has, so I decided to check some E-tron inventory at the dealers by checking the Audi website in each country how many E-trons are available for immediate delivery:

Netherlands: 269
Belgium: 93
France: 136
Spain: 42
Poland: 28
Germany: 1186 (? I must've made a mistake? But scrolling through the list... ). And 210 used E-trons for sale

If you then check Autoscout24 (largest EU database for new/used cars), it shows 998 results for new /used E-trons already (509 new cars immediately available at dealers waiting)

Seems like very high inventory numbers for a car which had first delivery almost a year ago and is produced in low volume.
You could blame 'no batteries available from LG-chem' or 'Corona' as a reason, but the numbers don't add up.

Conclusion: demand for the E-tron is simply low?

Cars.com lists >1,000 available in the US

 

[jerry33]

Detailed photos of the interior of MY.
Tesla Model Y Interior Pictures and Info

And best of all the interior is grey rather than can't use it or you'll get it dirty white, or heat sink black.

 

[Tslynk67]

...Toronto International Car Show Report 3 (last one)

Honda had the clarity (also available - not really- in a hydrogen variant) and nothing else.View attachment 516828

BMW had the Mini-e displayed prominently and the i3 (which is to be discontinued) but the main booth was particularly void of EVs except tucked at the back was this X3 plug in hybrid. Due next year...
View attachment 516829

Other notables. Mitsubishi had a plug in hybrid. Jeep had nothing (should be in the dinosaur section but they are differentiated by brand). Nissan had a huge wall with 'zero emissions' in huge letters and exactly 1 EV (the Leaf) in the booth. In fairness they have been improving the Leaf incrementally over the years but it was still a sea of ICE vehicles in the booth.

Tesla
Again Tesla was down stairs in the 'Exotica' section surrounded by Alfa Romeo, Lotus and the like.
View attachment 516830 Observations:

• Lowest key booth at the show. They could hardly have tried less.
• Booth was crowded.
• No Model Y! This is amazing seeing as first deliveries will be within a month of the show ending. They are trying really hard NOT to sell the Y. Model 3 anyone?
• Staff was knowledgeable of course but not heavy on the sales.
• Line up to get into the 3.
• Most under 30 know about Tesla. Everyone under 20 does.
• A few families dragged to the booth by their kids.
• X doors still continue to awe people.

Irony moment 1. Physically exactly opposite the Tesla booth was a pair of classic performance cars:
View attachment 516833
Every few hours they would dim the lights, start these cars, and to great fanfare rev the engines (to a plume of smoke despite the ducting) to incredibly loud noise levels. Across the sat the Performance S in silent smug contemplation.

Irony moment 2. Reflecting on the map I could not help but notice disruption Tesla is causing. Check out the show map:
View attachment 516835
I shaded the big 3 in in yellow. As of March 1 the market cap of 'tiny' Tesla was $122B. GM, Chrysler and Ford combined was $87B. Wonder what this map will look like in 5 or 10 years? The market believes it will be different.

Finally this was in the Ford booth:
View attachment 516837
It is still an amazing piece of engineering but just seems ridiculous now.

I believe that one of the next 3 years will see a big change in attitude and focus from the incumbents but there was no sign of it this year. They need to sell what they have I guess. Can they change in time?

Thanks for the reports - was looking for the "sad :-(" button for the previous two.

Looks busy at the Tesla booth, as usual...

Regardless of anything else though, that Ford GT40 was one beautiful car and I highly recommend everyone here watches the Ford vs Ferrari film, good stuff, lots of nostalgia and a tear in the eye/lump the throat for racing enthusiasts.

 

[Cosmacelf]

A consistent mispricing can be arbitraged by agents who are better at pricing than the agents currently doing it.

Simple example:
Town A has a group of people estimating the time the sun comes up every day. The group gets paid proportionally to how close they get. Town A is always 30 minutes+ off in either direction.

Town B, same same except they are <10 minutes off every day.

During the weekend sunrise betting is closed in town B. They are free to go into town A and bet vs the people who are always 30+ minutes off.

How do you think Town B ppl spend their weekend when town A sunrise betting is open?

So to arbitrage, I have to guess better than the prediction market? That’s not my definition of arbitrage.

I think the original complaint about this particular prediction market’s predictive power was that there wasn’t much money and not many participants.

Out of curiosity, do they publish historical numbers for each day? Ie. How well did the market do last the 2 weeks?

 

[Highway2Heel]

I got a call from Tesla too asking whether I want to switch to 5 seater. Don't know what to make of that. And they have invited LR/AWD folks to config as well (apart from Perf).

Seven seaters have proven to be more popular. I have a large family, so the 5 seater just wasn’t an option right now.

 

[lklundin]

View attachment 516720

This is where they are parking new Model 3's and loading them on trailers. The low inventory in the parking lot suggests that they have no bottlenecks on the delivery side, they can send all cars they make almost immediately.

The 5 new cars from the previous shot just arrive here - perfect timing of our drone operator hero.

Note that the color variety of the cars has increased, in particular there's now plenty of red cars as well. This suggests that the paint shop is ramping up and can produce more colors without hurting overall throughput.


View attachment 516728

This shot shows high level of delivery activity: 5 new cars arrive from GA in the bottom left corner, a trailer is just leaving with 6 cars, and two new trailers are being loaded right then as well.

I will have to assume that the multiple, short queues of new 3s behind delivery trailers is due to the fact that batches of identical 3 are produced, while each trailer to deliver the cars is earmarked for a specific location.
So each trailer has to wait until six 3s in up to six different variants (i.e. six different production batches) sharing their destination have been produced and can be loaded before the delivery transport can leave GF3.

 

[JustSaying]

It is still an amazing piece of engineering but just seems ridiculous now.

agreed

 

[hobbes]

Latest drone shots from Giga Berlin:

 

[LJS22]

Toronto International Car Show Report (multiple posts)

The Toronto International Car Show is one of the bigger shows in North America and comes early in the year.

Overall Takeaway: This was NOT the year of the EV breakout. There were more EVs and they were more predominately displayed but everyone is still trying to hock ICE vehicles. I continue to be amazed the money that is spent at these shows. Attendance was brisk (temperatures in Toronto were cold that week and, well, what else can one do?). I found the folks manning the booths (who are often not even employees) to be widely unknowledgeable about EVs. Simple questions elicited blank stares or 'go to the website'.

Toronto has a 'Plug and Drive', a not-for-profit facility where consumers can go and test drive most of the EVs for sale in Canada (except Tesla's, who does not participate). Plug and Drive was prominent at the show offering EV test drives (in Toronto traffic).

Notable no-shows: Mercedes and Volvo. No booth for either of these companies. I do wonder about the future of these shows as there are a myriad of other ways to reach potential customers these days.

Dinosaurs (will they become extinct?): Subaru, Mazda, Acura, Lincoln, Infiniti, Lexus, Cadillac. These companies had no pure EVs in their booths and many of them didn't even have a hybrid. A few talked about having a concept car or a prototype...somewhere. 'EVs are not ready for the general public' said the Subaru guy. Subaru spent a ton of money with billboards everywhere even outside their booth.

Best of the rest: Kia, Hyundai. Each had 2(!) pure EVs in their booths. Hyundai even had an 'Electric Avenue'
View attachment 516798
Hyundai IONIQ (This might be the best competitor to the Model 3 for price & range - yes I know, the range...)


View attachment 516799
Hyundai Kona Electric on 'Electric Avenue'

View attachment 516800
Kia Soul EV (these sell decently well in Canada)

View attachment 516802
Kia Niro (Plug in Hybrid shown here)

Kia loses 1 point however for having a ICE SUV vehicle next to their 'electric vehicles' sign :
View attachment 516803

Ford was trying to sell trucks but did have a big mach-e display with an interesting(?) wireframe mustang:
View attachment 516805
View attachment 516806

Audi had the E-tron which is fine looking car in a sea of ICE cars.
View attachment 516808

The Chevy Bolt was much less prominent that last year. As far as I could see no mention of any other electrification plans from Chevy.
View attachment 516814

...continued to 2

as far as trucks not making a presence in the electric field I think Elon and Tesla are keeping many of the benefits of the Cybertruck under wraps. As far as other auto makers know it’s just a fast electric truck with some strange looks. But Elon was quiet on features of the CT that would make it even more unique and beneficial to drive electric. I expect more to be revealed about it when production is imminent.

At that point it would be late in the game to catch up to what Tesla is building and they could lose the race before it starts! But we’ll see. Hopefully electrification can show up big in this field.

Great pictures though! I hope there are more compelling options in the electric field going forward. Competition will validate Tesla’s mission and normalize that transition, as people transition they will gravitate towards the best option which will likely be Tesla. And to tie it all back to investing. That is Stonks

 

[EVMeister]

And best of all the interior is grey rather than can't use it or you'll get it dirty white, or heat sink black.

Pretty sure it's black, the image is just flooded due to the camera and high brightness levels. Use the black steering wheel for reference. Why would they add the extra complexity of a medium grey instead of black options for seats and other parts that should be shared with the Model 3?

 

[ZeApelido]

The bigger the grill the bigger the...?

Pen is smaller.

 

[tinm]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/27/tesla-sentry-mode/

WaPo article on Sentry Mode. Mostly positive (writer's Model 3 helped identify hit-and-run), with some privacy concerns toward the end.

By far the most important thing I got out of this Washington Post article is the news that a Washington Post employee now owns a Tesla Model 3.

Why is this significant?

Because, as we all know, coverage of Tesla and EVs in major media has not been very good in the past ten years, and I’ve argued that one reason for that could simply be that the editors and reporters in the major media have little to no first-hand, day-in, day-out ownership experience with Tesla cars. One of the best things that could happen to journalism’s coverage of Tesla and EVs is for more and more journalists to own them.

This one guy is a tiny single data point but still, it gives me hope for the future of media coverage of EVs and Tesla: if nothing else it means there’s a Tesla in the parking lot at the Post and maybe he takes folks out to lunch from time to time, or talks up the car and encourages colleagues to get one. It’s all good.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Tesla
Again Tesla was down stairs in the 'Exotica' section surrounded by Alfa Romeo, Lotus and the like.
View attachment 516830 Observations:

• Lowest key booth at the show. They could hardly have tried less.
• Booth was crowded.
• No Model Y! This is amazing seeing as first deliveries will be within a month of the show ending. They are trying really hard NOT to sell the Y. Model 3 anyone?
• Staff was knowledgeable of course but not heavy on the sales.
• Line up to get into the 3.
• Most under 30 know about Tesla. Everyone under 20 does.
• A few families dragged to the booth by their kids.
• X doors still continue to awe people.

I love how this image, of all of them, is clearly the most crowded. People crawling all over the cars, and huddled around.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

By far the most important thing I got out of this Washington Post article is the news that a Washington Post employee now owns a Tesla Model 3.

Why is this significant?

Because, as we all know, coverage of Tesla and EVs in major media has not been very good in the past ten years, and I’ve argued that one reason for that could simply be that the editors and reporters in the major media have little to no first-hand, day-in, day-out ownership experience with Tesla cars. One of the best things that could happen to journalism’s coverage of Tesla and EVs is for more and more journalists to own them.

This one guy is a tiny single data point but still, it gives me hope for the future of media coverage of EVs and Tesla: if nothing else it means there’s a Tesla in the parking lot at the Post and maybe he takes folks out to lunch from time to time, or talks up the car and encourages colleagues to get one. It’s all good.

I don't think this is really it at all. The mainstream media in the US is blatantly biased and forced to say what their corporate masters and advertisers demand them to say. Whether they personally believe the trash they print is largely irrelevant, the result is always the same. There is no reason after decades of their bias, agenda setting, narrative control, and total lack of objectivity to pretend that it's sheer incompetence anymore. It's pure malice and it's destroying the cultural fabric of the nation because no one believes anything the media says is true anymore which creates a whole host of problems at every level of our society.

 

[EVDRVN]

On that point. I once was in a meeting with board members of a major auto maker discussing EV development and their future products. They were nervous about investing in EVs and had full scale prototypes of their ICE models and others. After much back and forth I came to realize not one ever drove in an EV ever. We immediately insisted on break we go to the parking lot and drive one of our EVs and after that moment they started to get it. Unfortunately not enough and they now have a production EV that is ridiculed often on this thread. Some companies and groups take a long time to "get it".

 

[JustMe]

I love how this image, of all of them, is clearly the most crowded. People crawling all over the cars, and huddled around.

This is usually a wonderful thing.. I just hope none of them were sick, if you get my drift.

“Tesla’s over the top sex appeal is drawing crowds and promoting pandemics”

 

[The Accountant]

...Toronto International Car Show Report 3 (last one)

Honda had the clarity (also available - not really- in a hydrogen variant) and nothing else.View attachment 516828

BMW had the Mini-e displayed prominently and the i3 (which is to be discontinued) but the main booth was particularly void of EVs except tucked at the back was this X3 plug in hybrid. Due next year...
View attachment 516829

Other notables. Mitsubishi had a plug in hybrid. Jeep had nothing (should be in the dinosaur section but they are differentiated by brand). Nissan had a huge wall with 'zero emissions' in huge letters and exactly 1 EV (the Leaf) in the booth. In fairness they have been improving the Leaf incrementally over the years but it was still a sea of ICE vehicles in the booth.

Tesla
Again Tesla was down stairs in the 'Exotica' section surrounded by Alfa Romeo, Lotus and the like.
View attachment 516830 Observations:

• Lowest key booth at the show. They could hardly have tried less.
• Booth was crowded.
• No Model Y! This is amazing seeing as first deliveries will be within a month of the show ending. They are trying really hard NOT to sell the Y. Model 3 anyone?
• Staff was knowledgeable of course but not heavy on the sales.
• Line up to get into the 3.
• Most under 30 know about Tesla. Everyone under 20 does.
• A few families dragged to the booth by their kids.
• X doors still continue to awe people.

Irony moment 1. Physically exactly opposite the Tesla booth was a pair of classic performance cars:
View attachment 516833
Every few hours they would dim the lights, start these cars, and to great fanfare rev the engines (to a plume of smoke despite the ducting) to incredibly loud noise levels. Across the sat the Performance S in silent smug contemplation.

Irony moment 2. Reflecting on the map I could not help but notice disruption Tesla is causing. Check out the show map:
View attachment 516835
I shaded the big 3 in in yellow. As of March 1 the market cap of 'tiny' Tesla was $122B. GM, Chrysler and Ford combined was $87B. Wonder what this map will look like in 5 or 10 years? The market believes it will be different.

Finally this was in the Ford booth:
View attachment 516837
It is still an amazing piece of engineering but just seems ridiculous now.

I believe that one of the next 3 years will see a big change in attitude and focus from the incumbents but there was no sign of it this year. They need to sell what they have I guess. Can they change in time?

Thanks for the multiple posts on the Toronto Car Show.
I couldn't help noticing the stark contrast of the crowd around the Tesla cars vs. the other auto makers where often not one person was in sight of their cars.

 

[Singuy]

By far the most important thing I got out of this Washington Post article is the news that a Washington Post employee now owns a Tesla Model 3.

Why is this significant?

Because, as we all know, coverage of Tesla and EVs in major media has not been very good in the past ten years, and I’ve argued that one reason for that could simply be that the editors and reporters in the major media have little to no first-hand, day-in, day-out ownership experience with Tesla cars. One of the best things that could happen to journalism’s coverage of Tesla and EVs is for more and more journalists to own them.

This one guy is a tiny single data point but still, it gives me hope for the future of media coverage of EVs and Tesla: if nothing else it means there’s a Tesla in the parking lot at the Post and maybe he takes folks out to lunch from time to time, or talks up the car and encourages colleagues to get one. It’s all good.

Also gives someone a chance to blast Tesla with one unpleasant experience with service or the car with an anecdote. These are entitled pricks who feels like they should be the VIP of the place because they weld a pen.

 

[AlMc]

Groundbreaking in a couple weeks in Germany? @GF4Tesla..️️.build #GigaBerlin. on Twitter