Tesla Talk

Hardly stale. Model Y is best selling car in the world (remember everyone mocking me for correctly predicting this 2 years ago?) and will get major refresh within months. Model 3 had its refresh a year ago and that was a big improvement over the old one. Both cars are best in class, with best tech, best spec, best efficiency, lowest price yet highest margin.

They will be cash cows for a while yet…

Was impressive from the expensive RAV4 to become second last year, but it looks like it will have to yield that place to the much cheaper Corolla this year (the best selling car in the world for most of the past 20 years)

But I reckon neither will be even in the top 5 next year and neither in the top 10 by 2028 unless both have evolved into competent BEVs by then

Tesla is a relatively new Company but as @unkel has shown its history shows that it continues to upgrade/improve its product offering with more planned. This is not unique, other car manufacturers adopt the same approach (BMW Series 3,5 & 7 launched in the 70's and still relevant, VW Golf (1974), Ford Fiesta 47 years of production).

Launching new iterations and preserving the same Model name are not mutually exclusive. What is important is that cars remain competitive in the market, everyone can form their own view on that but Mod Y was highest selling car worldwide last year, Mod 3 has had a significant refresh and Mod Y will follow shortly …which is persuasive (to me) and a long way off from the label "stale" that has been thrown around

And even hardware physical updates can typically be got for relatively little money. You can upgrade the entire media control unit in a 2012 Model S for the same one that is in a brand new 2024 Model S for €1550, this means all software and functions are the same, so your ancient car with its ancient slow computer - with 3G internet and a no longer working internet browser LOL, is now a very fast modern computer with lightning quick screen and map and routing updates, disney, youtube and netflix, modern games and what not now included too (not that I would use any of those really)

great set of results from Tesla tonight.

As always with Tesla’s interpretation of GAAP accounting, the truth is in the details -

€0.70 eps, vs consensus of €0.60. the delta is driven by a big increase in carbon credit sales (€0.06) and an increase in current liabilities increasing the cash position, perhaps temporarily (€0.04).

They slashed costs in Q3, incl 10% headcount reduction, but delivered more cars - which is an achievement. Not sure if there was excess stock at the start of the quarter.

auto margin is up from 14 to 17%, back where it was at the start of the year.

So on the face of it it’s a super set of results - but as always, the details hide a slightly different story, albeit still a v good one.

one blot on the copybook is that total auto revenue is down slightly, even though they sold more cars, due to price cuts, which can only go so far.

Of note - the cost of delivering a car for Tesla (raw materials, factories, staff etc) is at an historic low of $32k, which is what’s driving the margins up to that 17%

Yes it is ..or at least its one important metric …there is good bounce after market closed (10%) so the market has reacted favourably. Have just listened to Investor call. What ever talents you think Elon may have (or not have) public speaking isn't one of them.

These figures are reported on widely by multiple industry bodies and a quick google search will disclose the numbers. There is consistency in the reporting across the motor industry sites who monitor such things and I see no reason to doubt the veracity. Not sure exactly what gives rise to your scepticism. Two examples attached

Who was burned?

Ah ok, classic case of love turned to hate then. Pity that happened. All that energy would have been better spent fighting Tesla rather than just post negativity and untruths on online forums

Personally I have taken Tesla to court 4 times, and won all of them

Get off your high horses. I still like my Model Y, but am also critical of the brand and Elon, it's possibly to hold both views simultaneously you know.

For those knowledgeable about Tesla’s FSD model: As Tesla continues to train their vision model to manage new scenarios, is it likely that the model’s performance might degrade in other areas? I would assume that as FSD’s capabilities increase, so does the local compute resources required to run the more complex model in real-time. I’m drawing a parallel to large language models, where increasing the number of parameters to improve capabilities also leads to higher inference resource requirements. A model that is simulated and inferenced in the cloud will be far more capable because the resources available is many orders of magnitude greater than a than one ran locally on resource limited hardware.

That's only natural, isn't it? HW3 (like my 2017 car that came originally with HW2 but was upgraded for free to HW3) can do FSD quite well, but the compute power of the current HW4 is far stronger. This in time will be replaced by HW5, etc.

The difference we will likely be able to measure by stats like accidents or fatalities per 100 million miles. HW3 could end up 10 times safer than humans, HW4 100 times safer, HW5 1000 times safer, etc.

Tesla never needs to release another car again for the current share price to be justified. You make the mistake with many other people, that Tesla is just a car manufacturer like all other car manufacturers.

My point is just that the day to day volatility is a load of nonsense. Only if an event happened that would have significant impact on the net present value of all future profit, is a leap up or down justified. I.e. if Tesla announced that from tomorrow FSD is no longer beta, it is allowed to be level 5 autonomous (no need for a driver), people can get fully comp insurance with Tesla and if the car **** up, Tesla is responsible. Something like that has a huge impact on total future profit if it happened. Or another one: if Musk died tomorrow. Not if the company sold a few thousand cars more or less than expected in one quarter or if the gross margin was one percentage point lower or higher 🙄