Tesla Talk

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122415813#Comment_122415813

im not saying its deliberate at all - im saying what you said - testa didn’t scale the service to match the sales, at all - but they aren’t going to rush to do that either, considering the pressure on margins and the SP

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122417961#Comment_122417961

45 percent profit slump. He's really having a serious impact on perceptions and sales despite people pretending to ignore that he isn't.

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122418231#Comment_122418231

it’s not Elon. The S and X are old hat, the 3 and Y are “grand” and the cybertruck is daft. In two years the S and X will be gone, the 3 and Y will be old hat, and who knows the outcome. Even Mercedes only knocked about 10 years out of the w201 and w124 and that was a very different time.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122418302#Comment_122418302

American customers are actively disassociating themselves from the brand though.

You've your Irish hat on.

This has nothing to do with their older models.

Gumbo

I think it has to do with more supply and choice. Tesla were never and can never remain No. 1. Not with the choice available now. It would be silly to knock them purely because they are not at the top consistently.

They will be up there in the tables just as VW will be, MG, Kia, Hyundai and BYD. Obviously the Germans will be high up if they can get their act together in time.

The figures constant decreasing sales across all EV’s. Not just Tesla. It would be more beneficial to do the below comparison in August if I’m honest as many of the legacy dealers will hold the June cars for 1st July registrations where Tesla won’t so that explains the sharp drop off in May, June etc

listermint

Irish sales figures have no bearing on the Tesla market, never had. They certainly have no bearing on the profit slump. And the supply issues have no bearing on the US market at all . We have no factories here and we are RHD which is a subsection of production. Figures here are meaningless on the context of the profit slump and the CEO

Gumbo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122419526#Comment_122419526

I’m not saying Irish sales have a direct impact but I’m highlighting the general down turn in EV buying.

This downward spirals are similar across the globe. Across all brands, not just Tesla and its CEO.

JOL1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122419526#Comment_122419526

To be fair what is happening in Irish market (increased competition etc) is likely to be indicative of whats happening in the wider industry and Tesla pricing strategy here (reduced prices) is also featuring across their other geographic markets feeding into drop in margins—> drop in profitability.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122419972#Comment_122419972

US EV sales aren't down, Tesla just have less of a market share due to much more choice in the market. According to the ACEA EU BEV sales overall are up 1%, but we've seen a shift in which countries EVs are sold in. The sudden withdrawal of the environmental bonus in Germany caused a big swing in prices which has led to a drop there. It was meant to run to 2025 but was struck out by a court.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122418302#Comment_122418302

This is what they put out in their earnings report

"Plans for new vehicles, including more affordable models, remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025. These vehicles will utilize aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms and will be able to be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up,"

The next gen platform was meant to be the base of the robotaxi and a model that slots below the 3/Y. If they can launch a smaller cheaper car that can be co-produced on the 3 and Y lines, then I can see it selling well. Something Golf sized would work well. 3 has just had a design refresh so is likely fine for another few years, Y is meant to have similar next year.

Tesla have moved from trying to be an Audi to being VW, I treat the S as the Arteon. I don't think it's really needed as a serious money maker.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122418386#Comment_122418386

this is very apparent in the fall in California sales which is material to the overall business - CA sales dwarf all other states by a factor of 5x (CA 350k, next is TX: 65k - and all other states are in the relative noise level. Some remote states have a few hundred sales total pa).

one thing that stands out from the financials is the auto margins - half what they were just 2 years ago, and let’s be honest there’s absolutely no chance of recovering, and will probably fall further.

This 14% seems to be the same or even a little lower than BMW, Porsche and Merc - while the likes of VW, BYD, Toyota and many others operate on 6-10% margins, but on far higher volumes obviously.

sk8board

SP is down 13% today, on these results, which is actually a surprise when you consider the very high level of retail ownership and Musks 14%.

Retail is usually pretty dumb in its buying methods, buying dips like this.

Retail controls about 55% of outstanding shares, which is massive for a company this size

Gumbo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422031#Comment_122422031

Is that a big deviation?

For example, are any other large companies down similar amounts?

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422083#Comment_122422083

13% is pretty sizable by any measure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422031#Comment_122422031

Retail gets bored easily though. It is turning into a meme stock alright. Tesla will collapse or get bought for a song is my prediction.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422083#Comment_122422083

Overall tech is down a few points this week, stock market is down off the back of some expenditure coming on earning calls. OpenAI for example needing 5billion to just run their processing. Tesla is down 14 percent over 5 days which is way off market 4 times most drops.

But it could be down to miserable forecast results but also coupled with elons play for tech and AI running a poll this morning on X about tesla investing in xAI. The cost per openAI commentary would be scaring off retail and non retail. The future plays may be wearing thin on reality now.

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422592#Comment_122422592

Tesla is a car company though. Its value proposition was what it was bringing to bear in a sector dominated by industrial behemoths. It did really well in shaking things up, the model s was a truly groundbreaking vehicle. Maybe they will successfully pivot into something else, but it seems like a weird move… like Peugeot focusing on their peppercorn grinders rather than cars or something.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122422995#Comment_122422995

Tesla hasn't been valued as a car company for a long time, the stock price was more closely matched to tech companies based on a future as a mobility services provider. Selling cars to consumers is just part of the so-called masterplan to get to that point.

I wouldn't see working towards a thing you'd said you would as a pivot. Whether they achieve it or not is a whole other question. I think they will, but not in the timelines that investors have to come expect.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122423541#Comment_122423541

i dont see it, he'd have to aquire to pivot in a meaningful way. Theyre behind any play for AI. more fluff. Hes far too invested in X and commentary on it

sk8board

just reading the Musk transcript from the earnings call. It’s actually mental stuff - this is not a person to be taken seriously 😂

• goes into detail about how FSD would work on other planets too, but also says there is a known issue with it not working on our own planet if you’re wearing sunglasses 😂
• Reckons the $25k humanoid robot business is worth $5tn in the “short to medium term”. I mean what the actual heck!

No wonder the institutions are selling and retail investors + musk are now almost 70% of the stock of a company with a $700bn marCap.

Retail and insiders trade on pure hope. This is why there’s no fundamental underpinnings to the SP.

There’s no other company that comes remotely close to such a lopsided share register.

Likely some of the 13% fall yesterday is disillusioned retail owners too - seeing falling sales, falling revenue, falling margins - and no real tangible replacement projects - it’s all hope and moon shots.

maidhc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122423845#Comment_122423845

all he needs to do imo is reskin the y and 3 to a more cybertruck inspired look. The phaeton was a failure, but it sold shed loads of passats .

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122423941#Comment_122423941

cybertruck has been a massive failure by all measures. falling values, non completed orders. court cases to allow for resale. And god knows that level of production investment was made. If Q3 goes the same way, And there doesnt seem to be anything realistically that will change that then hes toast in Tesla leadership. Is the Pivot to Trump in full form a play on making his vehicles more competitive or obtaining more large goverment subsidies. Hes not cosing up to him within the last month for no reason. There is something going on here he doesnt pivot like this without seeking large personal gain.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122423830#Comment_122423830

I think that Elon being distracted by X may be good for some of the engineering efforts. The FSD team are making progress every release, it's not as quick as "Elon" time but it's still moving towards the goals they outlined in the master plans.

My point was addressed at @maidhc who thought that Tesla's value proposition was in the automotive sector, Tesla could pivot to be a pure auto play with an 8% margin matching other manufacturers in their premium economy market, a lot of people who've invested in the aspirational side of the business would be burnt as you aren't going to see high multiples in that kind of business.

SchrodingersCat

Tesla are an automaker, albeit one more tech oriented. They bend metal like other automakers and are limited in scale as a result like other automakers. They want you to believe that they are a different type of company and that they deserve to be valued like a tech company. But the truth is their margins are what other automakers achieve (<20%) and have similar automaker issues and cycles with their products.

Bulls will claim that their value isn't in how much they are currently selling, but how much they will sell in future. They point to their Full Self Driving as evidence of their AI potential.

This is tech that was promised years ago but still hasn't fully delivered. None of the breakthroughs in AI used in FSD have come through Tesla. Transformers came from Google. The acceleration in the AI hardware came from NVidia. CNN's were developed by one of the "Three grandfathers of AI" from Meta. Actually, there was a laughable argument between him and Elon on Twitter not so long ago where Elon showed how he didn't understand the tech that was used Teslas Autopilot; CNNs and Transformers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/05/28/elon-musk-is-feuding-with-ai-godfather-yann-lecun-again-heres-why/ https://www.thinkautonomous.ai/blog/tesla-cnns-vs-transformers/

Lets say FSD and thus Robotaxis do deliver, what potential does it have? Elon said "you can think of Tesla [like] some combination of Airbnb and Uber"

Airbnb and Uber.

Two companies whos total valuation is around 200b. A fraction of the 600b that Tesla is currently valued at. Thats what they want to become?

Elon is a good salesperson, not so much a tech person. He has done good with Starlink and SpaceX. But Tesla is too hyped and overvalued for what it does.

JOL1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122423845#Comment_122423845

Institutional Investors hold 43.96% (source Nasdaq)

JOL1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122424110#Comment_122424110

Comparisons with Airbnb/Uber is clearly meant in terms of business models and maximising the assets utility as opposed to the combined value….

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122424110#Comment_122424110

Contrast Uber as the current model, they make money by connecting paying drivers to move consumers. The drivers bring their own car.

In a future robotaxi model, you remove driver wages as a primary cost, if the robotaxi company is making their own cars then you also remove vehicle acquisition costs as a primary input. Tesla have a charge point operator business so don't even need to make money on the charging of the car.

If the company is using electric cars that leaves vehicle manufacturing, energy, and maintenance as the only costs. If an investor believes that Tesla will achieve that in a timeframe that suits there require for a return on investment, they you can see why they would value the company so much higher than Uber.

I've said it a few times, I believe that if Tesla achieve their robotaxi goals they will stop selling cars to consumers. Why sell a car with an 8% margin, when you can use the manufacturing capacity to build a taxi and make 8% on every single journey.

I don't have any money invested in Tesla, as I don't think they'll achieve it at scale in a time frame that suits me.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122424236#Comment_122424236

Tesla cannot do FSD or robotaxi without radar / lidar. It's not possible at all. It's voodoo science.

At best with their current technology stack they can cover specific mapped and videoed cities and get licenses for that. But even that would be hard to do with camera and AI image examination. There's far too much emphasis and showmanship put on their capabilities when they aren't doing the basic right. Are they the best in image recognition at scale? Probably yes. Can FSD work on that alone. Not at all.

We don't talk about that enough because the bears seem to rule the information roost.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122424181#Comment_122424181

that’s correct, but it doesn’t show the true retail ownership, only who controls the shares.

If you trade Tesla on robinhood, you don’t own the shares on an individual basis, the HOOD institution does.
It’s actually hard to estimate true retail ownership because of that, but generally it’s thought to be about 55%, 13% Musk (he’s sold a lot), and 28% institutions

sk8board

I read something recently that if you strip out the auto business from Tesla and look at all the other projects and things in isolation, all massively delayed or eventually canned - it’s a textbook ponzi - finding one project after another to keep giving people hope and prop up the price.

it’s worth remembering that this is a company that investors once valued at twice its current SP, and also that on a 3 years view is down over 30%, while something as generic as a global ETF is +55% in the past 3 years (SWRD for example).
you have to go back to the 2020 Covid rally (that rose all stocks), to find a true Tesla meme rally.

Retail is never patient, because they don’t trade on fundamentals, they trade on hope and the presumption that they know what they’re doing.

I gave the example before that if you bought Bank of Ireland at the bottom of the Covid crash in May 2020, it has outperformed Tesla since, and even paid a dividend in the past 3 years too

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122424449#Comment_122424449

If you ask the question is vision and general knowledge enough for a car to be driven in a new area, I think the answer has to be yes based on the fact that we have millions of drivers doing so every day. Claiming it's not possible at all is a very large claim. Claiming it's not feasible in the short-term future makes sense.

Lidar is a good technology and much cheaper than it used to be, it's use is to obtain depth information to map into a 3d world. We know that can also be achieved by using offset vision and computation, 3d projection from more than 1 video is no longer on the list of particularly hard things to do.