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

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Considering the last few weeks of news stories, my 2024 prediction is practically guaranteed, so here it goes: Reuters/Bloomberg/CNBC/etc totally take the gloves off in 2024 and reveal “from unnamed sources close to the matter” that Elon Musk is actually Adolf Hitler reincarnated, secretly placed in power by Putin, to disrupt elections worldwide using fascist hacker bots that disseminate fake news on unsuspecting consumers. Additionally, stories of Musk and his Optimus robots killing innocent immigrant women and children will tear the internet to pieces, while images of a shirtless Tesla CEO with a bunch of Russian hookers urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel in which Obama had allegedly slept will crash social media sites globally. Reuters will have an EXCLUSIVE expose revealing how Tesla drivers are nothing more than goose-stepping, sieg heiling racist brainwashed cultish foot soldiers with Neuralink implants who drive ticking time bombs for vehicles and unknowingly do Musk’s diabolical bidding of perpetuating a global race war. Smartphone users with college degrees and an unhealthy fixation on identity politics will crumple into a heap, sobbing uncontrollably as visions of an impending Musk-led holocaust dance in their heads. Unsure of who to condemn, i.e., Tesla drivers or Antifa terrorists, consumers turn to Google and Facebook and Wikipedia for guidance, and are informed that, sadly, for public health and national security reasons, it is time to censor the internet for awhile (but in truth it’s just to prevent the carefully constructed simulation of national sovereignty/democracy/free press from totally unravelling). Markets crash, TSLA subsequently goes to zero (maybe even negative!) this summer or fall, Covid makes a comeback, TMC investor roundtable devolves into a cacophony of howling and gnashing of teeth, and an Age of Darkness envelops the globe for a couple of months, like how that Netflix movie with self-crashing Teslas depicts, with the internet mostly down, but with a few pockets of resistance, like TMC, surviving. But then, out of left field, Uber orders 100K Teslas at the end of October, and miraculously TSLA reaches $850/share by November or December of 2024. TSLA investors rejoice!!! Reuters will publicly announce that “mistakes were made” with regard to the exclusive about Tesla drivers, and that nothing more than a couple of rogue employees slipped the story to the presses. Reuters will express condolences for any harm done, and the CEO will step down in shame. A retraction will quietly be published a few months after the fact.
You're fantasising if you think that Reuters will apologise...
 
On a more serious note and forward looking (I haven’t yet seen these implications being discussed yet).
Tesla bot is coming, no doubt.
But the enormous positive impact it will have on Tesla and TSLA is not the only thing heading towards us.

If Teslabot replaces human factory work at a big scale, it will put a LOT of people out of work, not only at Tesla, but everywhere.
That is going to have serious social consequences and likely negative bias towards Tesla (people always searching where to put the blame).
I think it is important that Tesla will not only look at the technical side, but also at the best way on how this might be prevented.
For people involved this could be a generous arrangement when replaced, depending on the amount of years working at the company.
But that is just a quick thought, there may be many more good and creative solutions.
However, this putting an enormous amount of people out of work will need serious attention.
It will prob put many of us out of work here at TMC as well, however, it will be voluntary because we will be retiring : )
 
Troy is going for less than 3% error. What are the odds that Tesla's guidance from a year ago was also less than 3%?

Maybe just listen to Tesla?
Production of 506k
Deliveries of 479k
That would be a 27k inventory build. I know we had ships in transit but my gut tells me that build is too high.
I think production is below 500k and maybe we see deliveries of 485k for a ~15k build.
Troy has the data so he may be right but I find it hard to see a 27k inventory build while Austin and Berlin were closed for the final week.
 
BYD just announced sales of 526,409 BEVs for Q4.
I’m betting their 2024 BEV sales target is over 2.5M, as BEV sales are growing month on month as a percentage of all auto sales, while PHEV percentage of total is falling.
BYD stopped making ICEVs nearly two years ago.

BYD Group also includes luxury brands Fang Cheng Bao, Yangwang & Denza, selling in price points above Tesla.

BYD’s auto gross margin in Q3 was estimated to be over 25%
 
Not sure if it's been posted here, but Joe Justice has a new video with a current Tesla employee out. Note that half of the video is censored because the employee is saying things that he probably shouldn't be saying in an interview, but I still was able to find qutie a few nuggets. Here's a summary of the interesting points that I found:

1. 12-hour days, 5 days a week for the past 2 months in Austin
2. Breaking records every other day on the Model Y line
3. Stock purchase plan every 6 months to opt-in to participate, and offered to every employee. 15% discount to the lowest price in the 6 months span (unsure of the exact 6-month span)
4. 1 week onboarding, ~400 people participating (Joe Justice surprised; much longer than he expected since his was only 4 hours)
5. When Joe Justice was there, there were these huge monitors everywhere showing all important KPI/statistics relevant to the specific area of the factory you're in. Current employee says those monitors are in Austin too, but are never turned on; he's only seen one of them in his general area.
6. Giga Texas shutdown on weekends since the 5day/12-hr schedule began (not specifiied how it was before 5day/12hr began), employees say this is the hardest they've worked
7. Lots of people quit due to the hard schedule
8. In the video, Joe Justice shows the phone apps that Tesla employees used when he used to work there, but I didn't want to screenshot it since it's his own screenshot from his time as an employee.

Here's the link to the interview:

 
On a more serious note and forward looking (I haven’t yet seen these implications being discussed yet).
Tesla bot is coming, no doubt.
But the enormous positive impact it will have on Tesla and TSLA is not the only thing heading towards us.

If Teslabot replaces human factory work at a big scale, it will put a LOT of people out of work, not only at Tesla, but everywhere.
That is going to have serious social consequences and likely negative bias towards Tesla (people always searching where to put the blame).
I think it is important that Tesla will not only look at the technical side, but also at the best way on how this might be prevented.
For people involved this could be a generous arrangement when replaced, depending on the amount of years working at the company.
But that is just a quick thought, there may be many more good and creative solutions.
However, this putting an enormous amount of people out of work will need serious attention.
Just wondering, will the factory tasks which Optimus2 is assigned be primarily assembly while the displaced humans will be given the repair work? Maybe not, if AI can learn diagnostics and problem-solving. My crystal ball is clouded.
 
Not sure if it's been posted here, but Joe Justice has a new video with a current Tesla employee out. Note that half of the video is censored because the employee is saying things that he probably shouldn't be saying in an interview, but I still was able to find qutie a few nuggets. Here's a summary of the interesting points that I found:

1. 12-hour days, 5 days a week for the past 2 months in Austin
2. Breaking records every other day on the Model Y line
3. Stock purchase plan every 6 months to opt-in to participate, and offered to every employee. 15% discount to the lowest price in the 6 months span (unsure of the exact 6-month span)
4. 1 week onboarding, ~400 people participating (Joe Justice surprised; much longer than he expected since his was only 4 hours)
5. When Joe Justice was there, there were these huge monitors everywhere showing all important KPI/statistics relevant to the specific area of the factory you're in. Current employee says those monitors are in Austin too, but are never turned on; he's only seen one of them in his general area.
6. Giga Texas shutdown on weekends since the 5day/12-hr schedule began (not specifiied how it was before 5day/12hr began), employees say this is the hardest they've worked
7. Lots of people quit due to the hard schedule
8. In the video, Joe Justice shows the phone apps that Tesla employees used when he used to work there, but I didn't want to screenshot it since it's his own screenshot from his time as an employee.

Here's the link to the interview:

On point 3 the stock purchase program in the past was a 15% discount on the lower of the price either at the beginning or end of that 6 month period and not the lowest price during the entire 6 month period
 
On point 3 the stock purchase program in the past was a 15% discount on the lower of the price either at the beginning or end of that 6 month period and not the lowest price during the entire 6 month period

The current Tesla employee seemed very unsure of the exact details of the stock purchase plan, so I'd take what he mentioned with a grain of salt. It's very possible that there has been no change to the stock purchase plan.
 
Don't underestimate the impact here, this time is different because the end state is that ALL labor is replaced (IMHO). The trainers will be around for a while, but then that's it. 🤷‍♂️
Agree large impact.
It will be interesting though to see how many humans are needed to support Optimus both in the short term and long term not defined as "labor"? At least in the beginning there will likely be more logistical support then many think in addition to trainers you mentioned. Plus lots of humans needed for the factory that builds Optimus.
 
No. Never have more bots in your possession than people in the household. Have we learnt nothing!? One will suffice.

Oddly, this reminded me of watching the new season of Reacher, where Robert Patrick plays a bad guy.

He is told a couple of names of aliases used by folks related to the plot, one of which is Sarah Conner. 🤓


So, yeah, with movies like Terminator in mind, maybe you have a good point about bot/people ratio there.

Still, one bot per person at home, plus all the factory worker bots, should help boost the SP nicely.
 
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Considering the last few weeks of news stories, my 2024 prediction is practically guaranteed, so here it goes: Reuters/Bloomberg/CNBC/etc totally take the gloves off in 2024 and reveal “from unnamed sources close to the matter” that Elon Musk is actually Adolf Hitler reincarnated, secretly placed in power by Putin, to disrupt elections worldwide using fascist hacker bots that disseminate fake news on unsuspecting consumers. Additionally, stories of Musk and his Optimus robots killing innocent immigrant women and children will tear the internet to pieces, while images of a shirtless Tesla CEO with a bunch of Russian hookers urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel in which Obama had allegedly slept will crash social media sites globally. Reuters will have an EXCLUSIVE expose revealing how Tesla drivers are nothing more than goose-stepping, sieg heiling racist brainwashed cultish foot soldiers with Neuralink implants who drive ticking time bombs for vehicles and unknowingly do Musk’s diabolical bidding of perpetuating a global race war. Smartphone users with college degrees and an unhealthy fixation on identity politics will crumple into a heap, sobbing uncontrollably as visions of an impending Musk-led holocaust dance in their heads. Unsure of who to condemn, i.e., Tesla drivers or Antifa terrorists, consumers turn to Google and Facebook and Wikipedia for guidance, and are informed that, sadly, for public health and national security reasons, it is time to censor the internet for awhile (but in truth it’s just to prevent the carefully constructed simulation of national sovereignty/democracy/free press from totally unravelling). Markets crash, TSLA subsequently goes to zero (maybe even negative!) this summer or fall, Covid makes a comeback, TMC investor roundtable devolves into a cacophony of howling and gnashing of teeth, and an Age of Darkness envelops the globe for a couple of months, like how that Netflix movie with self-crashing Teslas depicts, with the internet mostly down, but with a few pockets of resistance, like TMC, surviving. But then, out of left field, Uber orders 100K Teslas at the end of October, and miraculously TSLA reaches $850/share by November or December of 2024. TSLA investors rejoice!!! Reuters will publicly announce that “mistakes were made” with regard to the exclusive about Tesla drivers, and that nothing more than a couple of rogue employees slipped the story to the presses. Reuters will express condolences for any harm done, and the CEO will step down in shame. A retraction will quietly be published a few months after the fact.
Your prediction was totally believable until the last 2 sentences... The CEO might apologize publicly (Reuters won't - "he acted independently" at best), but then live out his days on a private island bought for buy his Black Rock/Vanguard masters for his service, and their ninja edits will refer to "some sources familiar with the company said" (aka "we never made any claims, just reporting on what we were told") and state that other sources may contradict the original sources, but it's okay because Musk is still evil. 😎
 
Not so far-fetched after all. Look at this for misinformation!

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If Teslabot replaces human factory work at a big scale, it will put a LOT of people out of work, not only at Tesla, but everywhere.
One possible approach to minimizing employment disruption at Tesla would be as follows.

Apply Optimus to new lines of production such as 4680 where the rate of increase is exploding and the line is well defined by the development teams. Optimus can excel at mind numbing consistency for endless soul crushing hours.

Let the meats deal with more variable and nuanced tasks more prone to exceptions.