Mega Thread for Tesla Investors

That's a perfect excuse to post...

Candidate for a Pullet Surprise
by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.

​

 

Did James Fenimore Cooper write that?

Bob Wilson

 

Eye due knot no...

Altho I can certainly see Natty Bumppo (aka Hawkeye) aiming for a "pullet surprise".

 

I looked at the document you cited, tried several different ways to figure the percentage, never got even reasonably close to your 40% claim. Either my calculator is broken, or you are using a perverse application of math.

At any rate, you certainly have a bee in your bonnet about treating the increasingly inaccurate Bloomberg TM3 production estimator as if it's Gospel! I think you need to try a tinfoil hat; obviously the orbital mind control microwave beam satellites are affecting your thinking.

Here's one of your own posts from yesterday (Sep. 29):

Bloomberg tracker is very close to breaking into the 1000-2000 cars a week range Pictures on twitter showing empty parking lots and empty car carriers at Fremotn factory. Wasn’t there a false twit about some car carrier shortage?
​

You said "...a false twit..." Just another example of how people who make trollish posts are blind to unintentional irony.

 

You mean, you have yet to admit to a single one out of the hundreds or, by now, thousands of false and/or misleading statements you've posted. I count another 11 just in your last post.

 

Calm my friends as we don't want to wake up @Domenick and get lectured on civility:

After all, we are not Senators.

I am sympathetic to @Pushmi-Pullyu because @TeslaInvestors has occasionally omitted inconvenient facts and data that leads to interesting reading. I want to commend @TeslaInvestors for reading the Q2 financials even if nearly the end of Q3 to find "11,166 Model 3 vehicles and 3,892 Model S and X vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of Q2." Combined with the Canadian surge, this is direct evidence of Tesla staying under the 200,000 limit until Q3.

Regardless, we are starting an interesting, four weeks leading to the Q3 financials.

Bob Wilson

 

The larger issue is can they sustain sales with current long range model. One obvious area is exports in the 4th quarter, Netherlands is a prime market given then tax breaks that are going away. They also need to try and push more sales in the US by emphasizing the federal tax incentives for Tesla will phase out. If they maximize sales in 4th quarter due to phasing out of incentives, what happens in the 1st quarter of 2019? Is the market too saturated to absorb more long range Model 3?. As the old saying goes, "one swallow does not make summer". Then the question changes to "how soon can they come out with a mix of models, including the lower priced ones as well as light trucks, heavy trucks etc. that will replace their dependence on incentives and allow them to maximize use of current investment in plant, equipment and people?" So it now becomes an issue of product diversification and execution. There are headwinds for Tesla as well as solutions, so the final outcome will depend upon a number of factors. Tesla is a creative company and they have bright people, they just need to figure out a way forward.

That is why I have been cautioning against reading too much or too little from the third quarter results. I do believe that the third quarter will be a blow out, what I am more interested is knowing how they fare in the 4th quarter of 2018 and 1st quarter of 2019 (when the incentives have been reduced). If the third quarter is bad, obviously the road ahead is a lot tougher. If it is good, it is a very positive sign but it does not mean that they are over the hump. We would have to wait until 2019 to know that.

.
Thank you Domenick. I have been hesitating to post on this thread as the responses are getting personal. When I disagree, I respectfully do that and I hope that any further responses in this thread are driven by reasoned arguments, rather than entrenched positions.

 

My understanding the exclusion of Tesla was reversed but that would not effect the plan to close the program. So I took a quick peek at the Tesla Club thread . . . huge:
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ontario-ev-rebates-cancelled-july-11-2018.117306/page-255

You should be receiving a full refund, however it will take awhile. I requested a refund early July. They put the second payment ($3200) back on my card around early September. And this week I got a cheque from them in the mail for the initial deposit ($1000). Strange thing was that it was a cheque for $1000 USD. I could have sworn the deposit was in CAD. I'll take that as interest.​

Many years ago, I gave a class in Toronto and my opening joke delivered in an enhanced, Southern draw:

"Do you know why Canadians have to spend Yankee dollars in the States but they spend dollars in Canada?"

<deathly silence>

"Because Yankees are too dumb to exchange currency."​

You tell an opening joke to get everyone to understand the instructor's pacing, slow the instructor down to lecture speed, and put everyone in a friendly state. It worked.

Bob Wilson

 

My main issue with TeslaInvestors is that we don't get the whole story and the attempt to make mountains out of mole hills.

For example,@TeslaInvestors states 51 car carriers are empty, but fails to mention that they only hold 5 to 9 cars depending on the nweight of the vehicle. That's only 459 cars at 9 cars per carrier. Clearly, they are going need a lot more if they are producing 4,000, to 6,000 vehicles a week. Plus, we don't know what the owners of these carries are charging for the use of their equipment.

On top of that, the LA Times article never got a response from Tesla. So we never did hear their side of the story. Again, we don't have the whole story.

Well we certainly won't know until we know, but I think Tesla has some advantages still.

For example, they have a dedicated battery factory that can supply a bunch of batteries, and certainly Panasonic isn't setting still in technology improvement and cost reduction. They have been making improvements to auto-pilot. There is the wow factor that folks experience driving a model 3. Folks are telling others how much they like this car. They don't have a dealership network that is hostile to selling EVs in a large amount. On top of that, there are the over-the-air updates, which a like getting a gift from Tesla from time-to-time, that seems to put a smile on the faces of the owners.

At this point in time, I don't see any real competition to the model 3 for a least the next two years. I think any issues in Q4 will be delivery problems and not lack of demand.

The unknown is the Trump tariff tax.

 

That was a shocking display of hyper-partisanship, and I don't mean just by the Republicans, either. That display on both sides of the aisle was so shocking and sickening that I had to shut off the news after awhile.

Every elected official in Washington, and especially in the halls of Congress, needs to be given a good shaking and needs to be reminded that political opponents are not the enemy. We all want what's best for this country... well, everyone except the Orange One, who wants nothing but attention and money, no matter how much he damages this country to get them. But it was the atmosphere of hyper-partisanship that lead to him getting a major party nomination, and then elected; so he's only a symptom of the problem -- not the cause.

I am truly concerned for the future of this country, in a way that I never have been before. On the bright side, historians tell us that we have been this divided in the past, and have recovered from it.

Here's hoping that the next time we go to the ballot box, we will check the box next to the candidate most likely to work with the opposition to achieve real progress -- not the candidate most likely to treat the opposition as an enemy.

​

 

I enjoyed reading your comments, but I respectfully disagree on this point. I think if Tesla were to show a strong Q3 profit, that would mean they are over the hump. But given that Elon sent out a company-wide email last Saturday saying they had not quite achieved profitability, urging employees to greater efforts*, I don't see how Tesla is going to show a strong profit margin. With only a single day to go from red ink to black, I don't think it's possible to have more than a razor-thin profit margin for the quarter.

And if I'm wrong... well then, glory hallelujah!

At any rate, barring a major disaster (Giant meteor hits Fremont! Tesla production destroyed!), I don't see anything keeping Tesla from regular profitability going forward, at least over the next 2-4 years, until some real competition emerges. With continual ramping up of Model 3 production, unit costs for the car are going to continue to drop, so profitibilty appears to be almost inevitable at this point.

At least, that's the way I see it.

*...as if they weren't already being exhorted to pull out all the stops.

 

I agree with you that Tesla has some tremendous advantages including the proverbial first mover advantage. Helping Tesla is the fact that the people would could be significant competitors are not making the investments that they need. Nisaan has been making EV's for a long time, one would have assumed they would have had a comparable line up to take on Tesla head to head (An Infinity version that would go ahead to ahead with the S model is due out till 2021). They have not. GM has not done anything beyond introducing the Volt and Bolt. They have not come out with different models or promote current products. Volkswagen is creating a charging network (because they were forced to do so) but they are still a ways away from having models that are competitive and in large volumes. Hyundai is making noises as is Jaguar. Then there are new ones like Lucid who has a billion dollars in investment. Until otherwise proven, these are empty promises.

 

Bad and good profit is relative. In normal companies, if you miss the consensus analyst forecast by even 1 -c-, it is considered bad, even if the forecast was wrong or the EPS grew by a measly 16% instead of 17% the analysts expected. Tesla is not a "normal company". All they need to show is they have reduced their losses considerably and that they will reach profitability soon. I do not expect then to have profit, just to show that they have almost reduced their losses and that there are generating a lot of free cash flow. Profitability is not the immediate goal, the goal is generate free cash that reduces the need to borrow from outside. It is more that the trajectory is important, rather actual profitability. But then I may be wrong, and that has known to have happened.

 

My issue is with his entire propaganda campaign, and that he knows what he's saying in most cases simply isn't true. For example, talking about empty car carriers only to insinuate there "isn't really" a shortage of such trucks, instead of the reality that once the carrier drops off the cars, it has to make a return journey empty. Duh!

This isn't a forum for anti-Tesla propagandists or bashers or FUDsters or whatever label you choose -- I guess they prefer "Tesla skeptic" but that's factually wrong, because a skeptic is one who hasn't yet made up his mind and isn't convinced by the available evidence. These Tesla bashers, him included, have very definitely made up their minds. They're not actually skeptical about anything; they are certain (or at least pretend to be). They've made up their minds and refuse to be convinced by the facts... or at least, pretend to. It's hard to believe that in most cases they actually believe what they're saying, especially when they turn on a dime from one argument to the exact opposite, merely to avoid admitting they've been shown to be wrong.

It continues to astound me that IEVs staff are so tolerant of these people who are here only to spread their negative, anti-social stock manipulation propaganda. This is social media; why should anyone tolerate it being used for anti-social purposes? Sooner or later they all get banned; why don't the moderators make it sooner, and spare the rest of us Usual Suspects* a lot of annoyance and wasted time?

Someone once said that he understood from what he'd been told that the IEVs staff actually likes having the bashers around, because the controversy they cause generates comments. Of course I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then that's a pretty cynical policy.

*My affectionately teasing term for forum regulars (including myself)

 

Here's a Bloomberg opinion piece which IMHO pretty well sums up the entire "take Tesla private" story, from start to Musk agreeing to the SEC settlement, and has some IMHO pretty insightful observations:

"Tesla Will Try To Be More Normal"

I think I've seen similar comments on just about everything in the article, so for those following the story closely, there may be little or nothing new here. But I think it's good to see this all assembled into one article, and I'd recommend it to casual readers who want a summary of the entire story, including a look at how this is likely to affect Tesla going forward.

Go Tesla!