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

[nativewolf]

Ok, maybe 2 uses

https://twitter.com/x/status/1695483765559042215

 

[GhostSkater]

Cybertruck production rate holding up, still pumping them out and loading up trucks. At least 11 in this picture and video of them loading the carrier below that.

View attachment 968451

https://twitter.com/x/status/1695504524058718584

This gives more and more credibility to the "delivering to many service centers in the middle of night and will be delivered simultaneously in many places during the delivery event"

 

[Usain]

Am I the only one getting confused between M3P the Tesla vehicle and M3P the CATL battery that might get used on the M3P Highland?

Until now I wasn't. Now I won't be able to sleep tonight. Thanks a lot.

 

[Dutchie]

Ok, Ok, I have been cynical lately about FSD, but I am on the FSD train again following the live stream and what I read here. Can’t wait for V12 to be downloaded. Exciting times

 

[Paul_SF]

I can, perhaps, address your address conundrum. In Japanese urban areas, once you as a taxi driver, hapless newcomer pedestrian, etc. have worked down to the penultimate or antepenultimate “-chome” (city district) portion of an address….you remain clueless. You still have to determine where the “ban-chi”, or city block is - and that is a function of when the block was registered: it is independent of geography. Once you’ve stumbled upon that, you still have the hurdle of the house number, which is again is not a function of geography but of the time sequence of construction. You cannot expect #8 to be next to 6 and 10,or of 7 and 9.

So, what to do? Absent prior knowledge, which could include that 6-ban is on named street X, or that the AI knowledge universe includes a prior vehicle having stopped at house #3, or computerized access to that region’s development data(!), then there is no option to true mapping, down to the level of each structure (which, by the way, at least in Japan, is based on and de facto the same as the aforementioned development plats).

Summary: at the final level, in such urban areas….mapping it is. I wonder how computerized Tokyo, etc., have embodied such platting.

And a shout-out to @hiroshiy for any further insight and especially corrections. But if he’s from Kyoto that’s not operative, as that city has its own system (as does Sapporo, where sanity reigns. It was a blessèd relief for me to live there after Tokyo).

Years ago I heard and even used what3words a few times. I believed it might make sense in a future where autonomous cars, and bots, will know exactly where to go, on a 1square meter location. I think Google made their own version also. Maybe in the future our addresses will change to accommodate autonomous agents of all kinds. They will be really precise, they will never knock on the wrong/neighbor’s door while they come for you.

 

[TSLA Siempre]

The fact that Tesla had room to cut prices by 22% adds credibility to the estimates of >50% margins for Megapack hardware at the previous prices.

This new starting price is still $375/kWh, with some bulk discounts for larger purchases. Also, there's still the $45/kWh US tax credit, so the actual revenue per kWh is $420/kWh. 25% gross margin on $420/kWh would mean Tesla's cost is $315/kWh. I would bet their actual cost is much lower than that, or at least it will be when mass production matures. Tesla makes car battery packs for far less than $315/kWh, and car batteries should be more expensive than stationary storage batteries because they are smaller and because the engineering requirements are much stricter. I mean, the price of the LFP cells themselves is around $100/kWh. I really doubt the rest of the cost structure adds up to over $200/kWh.

Additionally, the profitability model presented by JPSartre and ZeroSumGame had much of the profit coming after installation from the high-margin services. Have the prices of those services changed?

If we use a more reasonable guess of cost, like $200/kWh, with addition service profit accruing afterwards, then we still yield gross margin >50%.

What's truly exciting, in the bigger picture, is that Megapacks are extremely popular with customers at such a high price point. If it's this easy for utilities to close the business case at these prices, then imagine how easy it'll be when the price is cut in half in the coming years.

It looks like Sawyer indicated that the price reduction was for ordering 1 Megapack at a time. Before the cut, there was already lower cost/megapack when ordering multiple megapacks at a time. Do we know if the price cut affected that too or was this limited to orders at lower quantity? Sorry if this was already answered upstream on the thread. Trying to catch up.

 

[Mike Smith]

This gives more and more credibility to the "delivering to many service centers in the middle of night and will be delivered simultaneously in many places during the delivery event"

This seems really unlikely. First deliveries will be close to home so early problems can be fixed quickly. The Cybertrucks going out across the country are for showrooms to draw foot traffic and generate SXY3 sales.

 

[Christine69420]

...and we have a new drone pilot at Giga Nevada - look for @ZaneglerTeslaSemiStalker-vt3or at YouTube:

 

[MC3OZ]

I'm wondering about the driver input. It doesn't seem like the professional drivers Tesla is using would provide enough data, and a car driven by NN trained by the bozos on the road around me seems unsafe. I suppose the bad driver factor is less with Tesla owners, but still.

I've seen it mentioned that Tesla probably uses the safety score to grade drivers, so FSD needs to assign the driver a safety score and a good safety score put them in the category of being an example to follow. They probably also want examples of what not to do.

For HW4, I think frame rates and image quality can be downgraded to HW3, level, so HW4 cars can initially drive using HW3 NNs.

Drivers being paid to driving around and gather FSD training data, may be driving on HW4 that is because there is a lot of HW3 training data and not much HW4 training data.

If Tesla can gather enough HW4 specific training data they can train up and initial HW4 FSD 12 version and run that is shadow mode comparing to HW3. Initially that will probably just help find cases where more HW4 training data is needed, and they can source that from the fleet.

The fleet of HW4 cars will grow rapidly and they will get more HW4 training data, as mentioned above, that can be downgraded to HW3 data.

When there is enough HW4 data, native FSD 12 for HW4 should be viable and will probably slightly outperform HW3.

 

[Krugerrand]

Weekend Moderator Funny:

We went to a county fair yesterday where I encountered a sight - a sign - so perplexing that I truly cannot come up with any cogent explanation other than perhaps its creator wanted me with something to put in my quiver for the next time I need to address certain thread….disturbers. As follows, cross-my-heart-&-hope-to-die absolutely unaltered:
View attachment 968431

Not perplexing at all.

 

[betstarship]

This is so much cooler and more awesome in person

 

[MC3OZ]

I know, we've seen them testing an Air at Freemont

It's just for the comparison I did it doesn't make sense, if we want to figure out how much more efficient a Cybertruck could be than a F150, we compare the Mach-e to the Model Y, not a Lucid with Model S

I've provided a much more detailed answer here. Investor Engineering Discussions

These are the key quotes:-

Drag

The F150 and R1T don't have a slippery shape, the CT should have lower drag particularly with the tonneau cover closed. IMO the difference in this area is greater than the difference between a Model Y and a Mach-e. Ford has at least made some effort to reduce drag for a Mach-e.

What it boils down to is, I have a bias against double-stacked packs, IMO a single-stack structural pack is a better architecture, I can't see how the second stack can make a meaningful contribution to structure, electrical connection and venting are much more problematic.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Ok, Ok, I have been cynical lately about FSD, but I am on the FSD train again following the live stream and what I read here. Can’t wait for V12 to be downloaded. Exciting times

Same old same old. The reason we're making little or no progress on what everybody has is because we're working hard on the next great thing. When the next great thing arrives (you know, a year or so after starting to pump it, like V11), it's not much different. But, but, it's much better under the covers so now it will improve rapidly! Except it doesn't (like V11).

Sure, possibly this time will be different. But there's just so many times I'm will to play Charlie Brown to Elon's Lucy.

I shall maintain very modest expectations.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Would Tesla eliminate poor drivers once marked as Not-a-Good-Driver (low scores)... like AI Evolution? As the pool size expands, there would be better source data to follow.

Eventually, let the AI decide who or what data to source for learning, win the game by maximizing safety. Elon mentioned last night how video selection is still hand coded in Python (as I understood it) so I'd think that would be the next step - give it the skill of learning.

It's almost scary/exciting what is happening - like sailing in really high winds. Let's Go... Hang on Tight!

 

[dhanson865]

This seems really unlikely. First deliveries will be close to home so early problems can be fixed quickly. The Cybertrucks going out across the country are for showrooms to draw foot traffic and generate SXY3 sales.

what if instead of spreading them out to every delivery center they focused on areas with high service center to car ratios (low car to service center ratios) so they have service near by.

We know they've been shipping some to California and We know they have good coverage in Texas. Maybe they start with just those two states, maybe they ship display units to some others along the way (delivery centers between California and Texas) but the vast majority are for selling to customers.

We've also heard that they aren't going by reservation numbers for the first batch. Maybe the influencers and VIPs that get the first ones get the white glove treatment.

 

[Mike Smith]

I was just browsing through the media's coverage of last night's FSD drive which didn't take long because there's none of it.

 

[aronth5]

It certainly appears Elon's V12 FSD drive was very well received by this community. Will be interesting to see how wall street and the "so called" analysts react and what happens to the stock next week. My guess is many will have no clue what V12 means.

 

[dhanson865]

what if instead of spreading them out to every delivery center they focused on areas with high service center to car ratios (low car to service center ratios) so they have service near by.

We know they've been shipping some to California and We know they have good coverage in Texas. Maybe they start with just those two states, maybe they ship display units to some others along the way (delivery centers between California and Texas) but the vast majority are for selling to customers.

We've also heard that they aren't going by reservation numbers for the first batch. Maybe the influencers and VIPs that get the first ones get the white glove treatment.

these were seen today in Goldthwaite, Texas, doesn't seem like it's on the way to anywhere. Anyone with knowledge of Texas enough to guess why this was no where near I-10 or I-20?

Surely this isn't a one truck delivery in the middle of rural Texas?

 

[2daMoon]

This is so much cooler and more awesome in person

View attachment 968479

It could be cooler... with a cowboy hat, and a quick draw holster with a six-shooter.

 

[betstarship]

It could be cooler... with a cowboy hat, and a quick draw holster with a six-shooter.

I'd say its more Buzz Lightyear than Woody in real life if we're making a Toy Story reference.