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

[EVNow]

I know Elon's guidance was still a loss for Q2 back at the Q1 Earnings call (presumably being conservative), but I don't see how this is going to be another quarterly loss if record deliveries happen.

Lower ASP and Margin.

 

[K_Dizzle]

Very bizarre, feels like there is a lot of positive headlines in the past 24 hours, under the warm embrace of my tinfoil hat, it feels like somebody flipped a switch somewhere to precipitate a reversal in the TSLA trend.

Big hands shake the tree, the weak hands let go.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

What's the difference how much you make so long as you can pay cash and don't finance it?

He wasn't, he was financing, at nearly 7%.

 

[EVNow]

It's not an issue at all and these cases will be resolved as the software iterates - exactly as we've seen improvements with every software update for other issues, lane-bouncing being the most obvious - it just doesn't do this any more.

Funny thing is - the jittery steering behavior now is because of trying to keep to the center of the lane even when lanes are merging or widening because of a split.

 

[Sancho]

Barron's this morning.

Tesla Stock in 2019 Looks a Lot Like Netflix Stock in 2011
By
Eddie Yoon
June 4, 2019 5:30 a.m. ET

“...Similarly, Tesla is spot on in their belief that demand for electric vehicles will grow exponentially. In 2018, electric vehicles were 2% of total new cars sold in the U.S. but 20% of Americans want an electric vehicle (per a study by AAA). Electric vehicles already have roughly a 10% market share in California. Tesla accounts for more than 60% of the share of growth of electric cars. The idea that Tesla’s 30,000 dip in deliveries in Q1 2019 versus Q4 of 2018 highlights a fundamental demand problem with either electric vehicles (which could easily number in the millions in the near future) or Tesla itself (since their products are beloved by consumers) seems like a stretch....”

Greed vs fear. As soon as the fear factor starts to diminish (by Tesla demonstrating strong demand) the greed case will be made more often. Articles like this will be commonplace. Everyone loves a good turnaround story.

 

[ZeApelido]

Yeah that's accurate. Sorry. You have to admit it isn’t very rewarding to bring opinions to this forum that are even slightly out of favor of dogma though. Closer you get to truth the more hostility.

I started harping on the effect of the tax credit drop back in 2017 and was laughed at for thinking demand would be affected.

Healthy doses of scepticism. Are needed more and more in this forum to think straight.

 

[MartinAustin]

Rrrgh, I don't have a link, but I am quite sure they've done at least one MCU1 to MCU2 upgrade. It was reported at this forum. It was pretty involved IIRC; they don't want to do them. Now, I think we're on MCU3 or MCU4 now... haven't heard of any upgrades to them.

LOL you've heard of at least ONE upgrade and can't find it? That's 80% of a Speck of information.

I'm waiting for an MCU upgrade myself and have only seen two tweets from Elon to document that it exists. I spoke to an Austin-based FSD engineer who said MCU2 is designed to be a drop-in replacement for MCU1... same connectors and all that. I have a friend whose MCU1 broke and he claims they gave him an MCU2 as part of the warranty fix... but I haven't seen it for myself and don't believe it until I do. I spoke to my local Tesla service folks about the upgrade, and they say MCU2 has issues. Haven't heard anyone talk about MCU3 or 4 except you in that post! I don't think it will happen at all, and will probably have to buy another car with my MCU2 wrapped around it.

 

[Wooloomooloo]

Funny thing is - the jittery steering behavior now is because of trying to keep to the center of the lane even when lanes are merging or widening because of a split.

I haven't experienced it yet because I don't have the update, but how is this different than how NoA has always behaved? When I am on the highway in the right lane, if a lane merges into the right lane from the right, at the point of merge my car would always drive right following the white line of the merging lane, rather than staying left and following the line of the lane I was in. At first I found it unnerving but then just accepted it as part of the AP.

 

[ZeApelido]

While it is a fact that the currently strongest chess engines are using alpha-beta search and not neural networks, this is basically an artifact of history combined with the desire to utilize the hardware the most optimally. It's not a value judgement on AI's ability to play chess:

Deep learning chess playing AI like AlphaZero use neural networks and not tree traversal:

AlphaZero - Wikipedia

"Danish grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen likened AlphaZero's play to that of a superior alien species. Norwegian grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer characterized AlphaZero's play as "insane attacking chess" with profound positional understanding."

"Former world champion Garry Kasparov said it was a pleasure to watch AlphaZero play, especially since it plays in an open and dynamic style, as he does."​

Those characterizations by human chess grandmasters do not suggest that AI has fundamental weakness in static analysis. And note that this was the ultimate NN exercise:

"AlphaZero was trained solely via "self-play" using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks, all in parallel, with no access to opening books or endgame tables. After just four hours of training, DeepMind estimated AlphaZero was playing at a higher Elo rating than Stockfish 8; after 9 hours of training, the algorithm decisively defeated Stockfish 8 in a time-controlled 100-game tournament (28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws). The trained algorithm played on a single machine with four TPUs."​

The AlphaZero paper was published only a few months ago. I expect hybrid engines to emerge - but in the end pure NN's will probably win on a power efficiency level - but for that NN acceleration hardware functionality has to be more widely available, most chess engines strive to be able to run on commonly available computing platforms.

This doesn't matter. What matters is those reinforcement algorithms play the real game billions of times to master, there is no self driving equivalent. No simulated driving game equates to real driving, so the benefit will be more limited.

 

[JusRelax]

Lower ASP and Margin.

Plus an actual increase in number of cars produced and not delivered, not decrease.

 

[VValleyEV]

This is probably a transitional thing, IMO; I suspect a licensing-free garage door opener system designed by Tesla will arrive in a future version of Model 3...

This seems like a big win.

Pretty annoying that the current system cannot tell if the door is open or closed, all it can do is send a signal that will open the door if closed, or closed it if opened. Or is there some upgrade to my garage door system that will allow the Homelink support in my MS to get more intelligent?

 

[RoadsterPlease]

fantastic open today, I think we saw the bottom yesterday at 177. I didn't have any dry powder to buy more, but if $tsla moves back above 200 I will be out of the bagholding zone, looking forward to that.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

Well, I just bought more so it's probably not the bottom but I hope I'm wrong (or right for buying more!)

 

[urarthur]

looks like automative stocks are taking off. If SP moves above 200, pace of short coverage will increase rapidly.

 

[Joe F]

I drive a lot, perhaps more than most of you, at least 15K a year, but I come upon these incidents ALL THE TIME! Just two days ago I had to veer around some asphalt paving. There was a flagman telling me to take a wide circle around the paving machine. (FYI, I live in one of the most affluent areas in my state). Also I travel a lot. Do you know how many times I encounter a flagman for closed lanes? Every year! Every single year. And none of this...well, if you don't see a problem with FSD Tesla robottaxis refusing to obey cops or flagmen or whoever directing traffic, then Houston, we have a problem.

Why are you making the assumption that a properly trained NN can't handle the situations you cite?

 

[Silentk]

Everyone loves a good turnaround story.

Not this guy!

Tesla's going to have to restructure, says Blaine Capital

Apologies for posting a cnbc link, but this is actually incredulous that he could spout this nonsense without being called out for trying to crash the stock. I hope he tries to take it all the way to zero and suffers the consequences...

 

[Tslynk67]

I think a key point of difference is that SpaceX is a privet company. Thus, the whims of the shorts can't affect it, and their prices don't crash if one of their rockets explode. They also are less at the whims of the mass market, as a rule.

Oh, I thought they built rockets, now you're telling me they're a hedge fund?

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Bought 10 more this morning, expect it to drop again.

 

[EVNow]

Plus an actual increase in number of cars produced and not delivered, not decrease.

That difference affects cash flow - not P&L.

 

[Krugerrand]

Hi. I'm a new TMC member and have had some lingering questions for a while. If I get something wrong, please correct me.

I currently do not own a Tesla nor do I have any positions, and although I do like EV I have some reservations about Tesla's promises. Maybe because I am not as educated as many of you, but reading and listening to Elon's promises there are some things I do not understand.

Let' start with robotaxis. Am I to believe that there will be driverless taxis? In my investigation of Tesla I have been extremely impressed with Tesla's auto-pilot. True, there's some major glitches, but Tesla is pretty good. In any type f auto-pilot scenario, the driver can take over if something abnormal is up ahead. How does that work with FSD and driverless taxis?

What happens if a stop light is out? What happens if a stop light is out and a cop is directing traffic? What happens if there is a traffic accident and a cop is directing traffic? What happens if there is an event and a cop is forcing people to turn right when the AP route says to go straight? What happens if there is road construction and you have a stop/go sign-man off to the side? I could think of many more scenarios that happen every day and a single misstep could cripple the entire company. Am I missing something?

For those interested, I love performance cars. I currently drive a Corvette, but my bet is I was driving EVs before any of you were. I was driving an EV-1 back in the 1990's. How many of you were driving EVs back then? I actually have a picture of me back then.

Anyway, sorry to make my first post a somewhat negative one, but that is what drove me to sign up and post. Thanks for your consideration.

Dan

Dan, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt for a few posts but my Spidy senses are already tingling.

There are a number of people here who not only were driving an EV before you, but also built their own EV long before you were driving one.

What happens in all those what if scenarios is what has always happened to this point, Tesla gathers the data to improve their product and somebody comes up with another list of what ifs to try and illicit fear.

Welcome to the forum. Carry on, but I got my eyes on you.

P.S. Elon doesn’t make ‘promises’. He does make optimistic and/or aggressive timelines and best forward looking guesses and estimations.