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

[CyberDutchie]

Of course it is possible the SP went down because of this:

GM says it is 'almost there' on million-mile electric vehicle battery

Lolololololo....

There goes Tesla’s competitive advantage, I’m selling...

 

[Krugerrand]

EPA staff warned that mileage rollbacks had flaws. Trump officials ignored them.


Well s*&t my pants. I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...2056ba-960f-11ea-91d7-cf4423d47683_story.html

“In the rush to finalize this rule — and in the middle of a pandemic, no less — they broke just about every rule in the book,” said Carper, who on Monday asked the EPA inspector general to investigate. “The result is a policy that fails to protect public health, fails to save money, fails to result in safer vehicles and will, ultimately and undoubtedly, fail in court.”

In his letter, Carper argued that EPA violated federal rules by failing to enter all relevant documents into the public record, changing the rule after it was signed and not meeting its obligation to write its part of the mileage rule.

Jeff Lagda, a spokesman for the EPA inspector general, said in an email that he and his staff are reviewing Carper’s letter.​

Is there no one, no company, no organization, no government body on this planet with any integrity left?!

Yes. Yes, there is. Tweet to your heart’s content because at least it’s the truth of what you think and feel in the moment compared to all these other bandits.

 

[Krugerrand]

Sigh... is that what ended up happening? Blaming everything on Engineers?

I’m happy to blame a lot more people, but the engineers are going to have to take their fair share. They were free to quit at anytime and tell authorities what was going on.

 

[ggr]

EPA staff warned that mileage rollbacks had flaws. Trump officials ignored them.


Well s*&t my pants. I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/clim...2056ba-960f-11ea-91d7-cf4423d47683_story.html

“In the rush to finalize this rule — and in the middle of a pandemic, no less — they broke just about every rule in the book,” said Carper, who on Monday asked the EPA inspector general to investigate. “The result is a policy that fails to protect public health, fails to save money, fails to result in safer vehicles and will, ultimately and undoubtedly, fail in court.”

In his letter, Carper argued that EPA violated federal rules by failing to enter all relevant documents into the public record, changing the rule after it was signed and not meeting its obligation to write its part of the mileage rule.

Jeff Lagda, a spokesman for the EPA inspector general, said in an email that he and his staff are reviewing Carper’s letter.​

Another Inspector General to be fired on Friday evening...

 

[Prunesquallor]

So, is there a perfect European storm brewing?

1.
VW.Status=Status.Fail;
while VW.Status==Status.Fail
{VW.Status=Status.Fail;}
end while;

2. No VAT on EVs
3. Giga Berlin piledriving.

 

[Krugerrand]

You don't look so lifted.

Did you just call me fat?

 

[mtndrew1]

I really loved the 'almost ready'... guess we'll have to start calling it "Mary time."

Hopefully GM is installing this battery into the “18 new BEVs by 2020” they promised in 2018.

Any day now.

 

[Krugerrand]

I saw an article this morning on my feed that North Carolina was going to fly a banner over Tesla today asking for Tesla to locate their factory there. A friend just texted me that they saw it while driving by.

Edit: They said it said: Tesla come to NC we want you @something - they couldn’t make out the rest.

 

[Unpilot]

Did you just call me fat?

Well...let's just say a little ...lumpy.

Plenty of home workout's on YouTube to help with that.

 

[ruralectric]

I saw an article this morning on my feed that North Carolina was going to fly a banner over Tesla today asking for Tesla to locate their factory there. A friend just texted me that they saw it while driving by.

Edit: They said it said: Tesla come to NC we want you @something - they couldn’t make out the rest.

Triad business leaders fly banner over Tesla headquarters to lure company to the Greensboro Randolph megasite

 

[ZeApelido]

Poor Jim Chanos is losing it

Diogenes on Twitter

 

[Artful Dodger]

Sigh... is that what ended up happening? Blaming everything on Engineers?

Martin Winterkorn (ex-CEO of VW) is an engineer.

 

[Prunesquallor]

I knew I could count on you to lift my spirits.

Speaking of lifting spirits...

My favorite Tex-Mex is back in business!

 

[ZeApelido]

Tulsa is the best. Can we at least give them a MegaFactory?

Mike Collier on Twitter

 

[Papafox]

Here's how Stat pulled off this market-moving event this afternoon...

* Yesterday's big climb of the macros was due to positive indications of a Phase 1 study of Moderna's COVID19 vaccine. The DOW closed up nearly 4% on Monday, with the NASDAQ up nearly 2.5%

* About an hour before market close, Stat released this article about Moderna's reporting under the heading
Vaccine experts say Moderna didn’t produce data critical to assessing Covid-19 vaccine

* The article quotes unnamed "experts" saying that although Moderna's 45 test subjects reportedly produced antibodies, only 8 of them had the all-important "neutralizing" antibodies. The experts didn't know if only 8 developed the neutralizing antibodies or if only 8 had gone through the significant test for neutralizing antibodies at a biosecurity level 3 laboratory.

* The article claimed that since the U.S. government's National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (Dr. Fauci's unit) was a partner on this clinical trial and since we haven't heard anything yet from NAIAI yet, maybe there's some bad news in there somewhere

* If test subjects ranged in age from 18 to 55, maybe only the youngest have developed neutralizing antibodies

So, the bottom line is that an hour before market close Stat published an article that set off alarm bells but was based purely on speculation. It's important to note that a Phase 1 trial is all about safety, not about effectiveness of the vaccine, so this vaccine is moving to Phase 2, as expected. Nonetheless, anyone tipped off by Stat that this article was coming out at the critical one hour before market close timeline could have made a lot of money today. Hmmm.

 

[MC3OZ]

If all motors come from Nevada, and Nevada was shutdown for six weeks, there must be a period of time when Shanghai exhausted their inventory and had to either halt production completely or slow it down as they foresaw supply running out.

Could that be the reason for the dismal April China sales?

Chinese sources explained April deliveries as follows:-

• Chinese customers waiting because they knew price drops were coming.
• cars being shipped to inland cities first month of the quarter.

Tesla China issued a statement saying the plant shutdown was routine, and there was no parts issue.

I don't think we 100% know what is going on in China, but these are the best sources we have and Tesla doesn't seem at all concerned.

If any part of GF1 remained operational the whole time if may have been motor production..

For Q2 my primary concerns are shipments to Europe arriving in time, and the direct cost of the shutdown.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Triad business leaders fly banner over Tesla headquarters to lure company to the Greensboro Randolph megasite

Stinks of desperation. Jk. Counting down to Giga Austin announcement.

Actually I would be disappointed if GF5 turned out to be somewhere else, but in reality another Giga is all that matters.

 

[MC3OZ]

This is the most interesting presentation I have seen since the original Hornsdale.
Although this was very, very high level conceptual architecture the impact of carefully selected linguistic and functional functions yielded enormous scalability, reliability and resilience. They make the assertion that making their own hardware was a crucial factor, just as it has proven to be with Autopilot.

Logically this makes me think that the genuine moat of Tesla is shared with SpaceX and the other Musk-defined organizations is quite different than any we have been discussing. We speak of battery longevity and energy density, Supercharger networks, reusable rocket components and clever continuous updates. The more mechanically included marvel over new materials and gigantic castings of BIW pieces.
Those are all marvels, but they are results of the moat, not the moat itself.


The moat is not even the ability of Musk-led firms to attract the brightest and most excited people, nearly all of whom are obsessively wanting to learn new things. It is, rather, the ability to get such people to actually work together. That produces magic and perpetuates magic. That also allows Tesla, SpaceX et al to openly share their patents and describe their approach. Virtually nobody can actually do that.

Side effects include rapid turnover due to burnout, for collaboration is intensely compelling, so much so that all other parts of life fade in importance. Elon Musk has kept several organizations simultaneously producing so many major innovations that we rarely attempt to even list them all.

In the early 1980's I spent several years in an organization that was devoted to that thesis. It was a magical time, but burnt itself off because of lack of magical leadership. Still, every major accomplishment of my life came from that weak effort. What we did was usually arcane, rarely publicly visible and almost never attributable. On the other hand, the results had lasting consequences for major parts of the world. A few years from now many invisible Musk alumni will persist in being thrilled that they actually changed the world for the better. Most of them will, as I did, sacrifice financially to do that. Probably most of them will, as I did, discover to our amazement that we end out becoming quite well off financially as a side benefit.

For me, I shall invest an allegedly unhealthy part of my assets in Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, The Boring Company and others, as they become available one way or another.

My experience is similar, I would sum up my career as follows:-

• Interesting work with talented people - 15%
• Routine work in a weak or average team - 85%

I'm not sure I could have sustained working with intensity too long, but in hindsight I wish I took a few more opportunities, and worked a bit harder when the peak opportunity existed.

What is great about the strong team was:- Good Strategy, small team, smart, Hard Working and interesting people, learn and lot achieve a lot.

In contrast the weak team often has :- Poor Strategy, large team of average or below average talent, Lazy People hard work barely moves the needle.

In the weak team scenario Poor Strategy is very annoying, but the most annoying part is Lazy People.

It often seemed like I was playing goal keeper in the worlds worst soccer team.. I need to work harder just to cover the laziness of others.

In terms of interesting work with talented people, Tesla and SpaceX are a good as it gets.

if I was younger, a 1% chance of landing a interesting job with Tesla would be sufficient for me to pay my airfare to the US.
I'm sure many young people feel the same, it is very apparent where the interesting work is happening, and where the talented people are.



.

 

[dc_h]

A local guy here flew his Piper Cherokee over the area yesterday (May 18) and took this photo of the proposed area (credit: L Tropiano).

View attachment 543021

This is essentially looking West, towards Hutto at the mid-top of the picture. The rail yard construction (described here) is at lower right next to the water tower. The property clearly still has an agricultural crop on it and there seem to be 4 or 5 active residences on the property. There is a tiny historical cemetery on the property as well. It is not clear how these things would be dealt with.

The road and railway at upper left to mid right is Highway US-79 and joint ownership Union Pacific/BNSF railway. The Reddit info here says that the property is 1480 acres. One of the items about UP is curious:

"After Tesla bought Fremont, UP refused to negotiate on pricing to ship cars from Fremont or ship batteries from Nevada. Tesla responded by ripping up the rail spur at Fremont(It is unclear when this happened, some time in or before 2017).

Based on this, I don't think UP would agree to let Tesla connect a spur to their line at this site in Texas. There is bad blood between UP leadership and Tesla, and they have a convenient excuse in that the communities along the line are already upset with UP about the number of trains that run along it. If they aren't allowed to build a spur, it doesn't matter that BNSF has rights to use the line, and would be willing to service the new factory."​

At this point in time, this is all still speculation but the facts seem to line up with Tesla buying the property and doing something with it.

Great post. I never knew the background on UP and the rail line, it never made sense to ship cars to Richmond and rail from there.

Don't poke Elon in the nose, ever!

 

[Singuy]

Poor Jim Chanos is losing it

Diogenes on Twitter

So Green mingle with TslaQs now? He posted about how back feeding to the grid using your car will void the warranty. I don't know how this is useful information besides to stir up the conspiracy that Tesla really just wants to void your warranty using the feature (that doesn't even exist yet).