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

[LN1_Casey]

Cue bad people who no longer need to recruit a driver to create a VBIED...

Idk, a Tesla is a very expensive car to use. By the time the used market has enough, there will be other autonomous choices. Similarly, Tesla's are notoriously difficult to steal, so it'd doubtful they can just yoink one from the local Whole Foods.

Also, RC cars currently exist already.

 

[AudubonB]

I can't emphasize enough that the Gigafactory Shanghai is not just about Tesla....The Gigafactory Shanghai is a success since the day it's a muddy field...The Chinese Communist Party will not allow things to go wrong...The important thing is that, domestically, you don't go against the will of this government.
You have to be a Chinese to fully grasp this.
Most western journalists reporting on China do not and can not understand.
.

A good post, spoiled by one unfortunate line. NO, you don’t. But you do have to have a good knowledge of world affairs, of world cultures and of world history, most definitely including China’s.

 

[Tslynk67]

So, the market got it's bloody rate cut and then goes more negative because they're not promised more? FFS!

Then, as the disappointment wears-off and the index recovers, in pops shorty/MM to stymie the $TSLA rising in line with Nasdaq. A-holes.

 

[Buckminster]

One thing to note: The ASP has increased ~$500 over Q2 based off of Troy's estimates. Yes, I do believe that is significant, but I just want to make sure that nobody takes 'signficant' to mean that the ASP increased by like $2k+ or something.

Q3:

View attachment 456368

Q2:

View attachment 456369

LR ratio up in Q3 also. Together they should have a significant impact on ASP.

 

[RobStark]

Undoubtedly dollars spent on advertising will generate a positive rate of return. That’s not the question. The question is will they generate a higher rate of return than the investments currently being made from which they’d have to steal the money. Unless anyone can provide numbers and prove that Tesla is doing the wrong thing, I don’t see how the assertion advertising is the smart thing for them to do, can be made.

Tesla is not capital constrained.

The likely constraint is finding good managers and engineers. This is a particular problem in Nevada.

I think it is very reasonable to assert spending $50M in paid advertisements per year is a smarter strategy than all these ****ing discounts. It is encouraging customers to wait till end of quarter for discounts, this will only increase as more people become aware of them. At least for a good long while first Tesla advertisements will be heavily discussed, multiplying the effect. The choice isn't between $0 spent on advertising and a GM like $4B spent on advertising.

 

[Buckminster]

I follow your reasoning but have to disagree: Elon is not trying to prevent other car companies from entering Tesla's markets. The reason of Tesla's existence is to force others to enter the market.

Competitors can't immediately enter the low end market (= low margin, high volume) since they lack the batteries. Entering the market means entering the high margin, low volume luxury market first.

So in my view Musk is saying: ICE's are obsolete, you HAVE to enter the BEV market as soon as possible....but Tesla will always stay ahead.

They have nowhere to hide:
Is Tesla accelerating and decelerating transition to renewables?
If they are clever, they won't waste shareholders money and just cash cow ICEs. The Chinese will take huge swathes of the global market.

 

[Causalien]

Agree with this thought. At first it seemed like Elon/Tesla was ok with having the niche production that was the Halo products of the EV space. But with their aggressive pricing across all models this year while increasing the value/range at the same time, I've sense a notable change in their approach and attitude. They've said screw it with maintaining a high level of profitability, we just need to be positive FCF. Elon has seemed less and less focused on the stock price and/or shorts. They're frustrated with the lack of progression from practically everyone else in the market and are now focusing on taking as much EV marketshare as possible.

After they announce their battery tech breakthroughs and unlock true super mass production of battery cells and packs and have Model 3/Y production to 1-1.5 million/year, I expect them to continue lower the 3/Y/S/X prices. Them lowering 3/Y prices will enter those cars into truly mass appeal price brackets. I definitely see a sub 30k Model 3 version in 2 years.

Edit: I could also see them lowering the S/X prices so much in 2 years that annual production could be 150-200k/year. The announcement from Elon that the Pickup truck will start for under 50k was a definite shot at pickup auto makers that Tesla isn't interested in the huge margins that trucks get right now. GM/Ford/Dodge better be prepared

This smells of a change from selling cars to selling the app ecosystem.
If you look at other EV offers, none of them have the infotainment system that TSLA has. I think we are about to see a big change once in car movie streaming gets going.
With that in mind, the switch in strategy to pushing out as much hardware as possible make sense. Every car sold is one more future app recurring income.

 

[Tslynk67]

Sorry to harp-on, but this is outrageous manipulation now - look tech stocks rising, pretty much in line with Nasdaq, $TSLA being kept flat.

Might be the MM's as MaxPain is $235 again this week. What do you think @Papafox ?

 

[replicant]

This smells of a change from selling cars to selling the app ecosystem.
If you look at other EV offers, none of them have the infotainment system that TSLA has. I think we are about to see a big change once in car movie streaming gets going.
With that in mind, the switch in strategy to pushing out as much hardware as possible make sense. Every car sold is one more future app recurring income.

Be careful not to imagine the car as a place where consumer could do more things (e.g stream a movie, watch an ad, buy a product, play a game), but as a mode of transportation. Any minute spent in the car is a minute that Tesla should have tried harder to save with a vehicle that goes faster to the actual destination, unless slowing down is saving a good deal of energy or making the trip better. I hope Tesla won't be makign consumption boxes, or VR pods.

 

[anthonyj]

Sorry to harp-on, but this is outrageous manipulation now - look tech stocks rising, pretty much in line with Nasdaq, $TSLA being kept flat.

Might be the MM's as MaxPain is $235 again this week. What do you think @Papafox ?

View attachment 456382

When everything was TANKING on high volume during Powell’s speech, Tesla remained flat with unchanged volume. It’s just noise. Honestly feels like someone accumulated most of the float and market makers are somehow able to hold Tesla in this low $200 range

 

[Bobfitz1]

Externally it's a huge advertisement, if you want to build a large project, China will make it happen. However I think it's gone a step further since then as it is a signal that China is open for business without forcing technology transfers, which undermines one of Trump's arguments in the trade war.

China is no longer cares that much for negotiated technology transfers from western companies eager to manufacture in China.
They are quite skilled at stealing IP from these companies in their home countries. It will be far easier to do the same and better when the intellectual assets are also used in factories in China.

 

[Papafox]

Sorry to harp-on, but this is outrageous manipulation now - look tech stocks rising, pretty much in line with Nasdaq, $TSLA being kept flat.

Might be the MM's as MaxPain is $235 again this week. What do you think @Papafox ?

View attachment 456382

Yep, it sure looks like manipulations to me. You see two types of manipulations most frequently these days. The first is the dip on steroids, where short-selling is used to enhance a dip from macros or FUD. The second is to dampen or cap climbs, and this is what we've seen this afternoon. There was no specific TSLA news out there, yet TSLA cruised level while every other stock was climbing with the macros.

With 54% of selling tagged to shorts for past two days, there's plenty of manipulation afoot at the moment. My thinking is that with Friday being a particularly large expiration of options day (20K calls expiring between 240 and 250 (inclusive) alone, hedge funds that haven't delta-hedged are taking no chances and are hard at work.

The good news is when there is substantial positive TSLA news, volume of buying picks up and manipulations go by the wayside. It's low volume, low certainty of what's going on times like right now when the manipulations are effective.

 

[KarenRei]

Man, the Porsche fans and Tesla haters just won't give up with the "Tesla couldn't have actually gotten a time that fast fairly!" conspiracy theories. They keep ripping into Robb Holland (hardly a Musk fanboy - he wrote the "Musk's Bull***" article on Jalopnik) for confirming the time and confirming that it's for a full lap.

Robb Holland on Twitter

As if this guy doesn't know how the track works:

Robb Holland - Wikipedia

 

[hobbes]

New video from Nürburgring by engineer taking part in the industry pool sessions, filmed during his ice cream break - looks seriously fast. This could be the real thing, IIRC today Tesla got the track to itself. Some informative comments on genereal situation there:
I bet your Model S can’t do this... Nürburgring earlier. : teslamotors

Some more info here, looks like IRC and they attempted to get faster but just repeated the same time of 7:23 again: Modded Tesla Model S Beats Porsche Taycan by 20 Seconds at Nurburgring

 

[JusRelax]

Some more info here, looks like IRC and they attempted to get faster but just repeated the same time of 7:23 again: Modded Tesla Model S Beats Porsche Taycan by 20 Seconds at Nurburgring

Red is now confirmed as a faster color than blue.

 

[Causalien]

Be careful not to imagine the car as a place where consumer could do more things (e.g stream a movie, watch an ad, buy a product, play a game), but as a mode of transportation. Any minute spent in the car is a minute that Tesla should have tried harder to save with a vehicle that goes faster to the actual destination, unless slowing down is saving a good deal of energy or making the trip better. I hope Tesla won't be makign consumption boxes, or VR pods.

My guess is that the cheaper slower ev versions will have bigger screen suitable for consumption (model 3's horizontal screens). I am still convinced that in the future when FSD eliminates the need to park the vehicle at one place, people will just use the car as their living space while going from one place to another or even forgo buying a home and just live in the car at night and have it drive around.

 

[Svetlin]

Red is now confirmed as a faster color than blue.

It's the same car, it just appears blue when it's approaching the observer and red when it's speeding away.

 

[204EV]

Stripped-Out Tesla Model S Beats 'Stripped-Out' Porsche Taycan by 20 Seconds at Nurburgring
Eyewitnesses have timed the heavily-modified Model S lapping the 'Ring at 7:23 in traffic, roughly 20 seconds faster than Porsche's Heavily-modified prototype electric performance sedan.

FTFT

 

[HG Wells]

It's the same car, it just appears blue when it's approaching the observer and red when it's speeding away.

As an exercise for the student, calculate the change in angstroms the color changes when the vehicle passes your position.

Extra credit for those using a slide rule.

 

[kbM3]

New video from Nürburgring by engineer taking part in the industry pool sessions, filmed during his ice cream break - looks seriously fast. This could be the real thing, IIRC today Tesla got the track to itself. Some informative comments on genereal situation there:
I bet your Model S can’t do this... Nürburgring earlier. : teslamotors

Some more info here, looks like IRC and they attempted to get faster but just repeated the same time of 7:23 again: Modded Tesla Model S Beats Porsche Taycan by 20 Seconds at Nurburgring

Stripped-Out Tesla Model S Beats 'Stripped-Out' Porsche Taycan by 20 Seconds at Nurburgring
Eyewitnesses have timed the heavily-modified Model S lapping the 'Ring at 7:23 in traffic, roughly 20 seconds faster than Porsche's Heavily-modified prototype electric performance sedan.

FTFT

The stripped out interior is a bummer, if true. The rest of the modifications could be made for sale, but stripping the interior seems extreme.