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Musk endeavours

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BobbyD
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Re: Musk endeavours

#259825

Postby BobbyD » October 24th, 2019, 10:55 am

PeterGray wrote:I have to say I'd find slide 4 of the presentation pretty worrying, if I were a TSLA investor.

Auto revenues down 12% YoY, and flat QoQ, total revenue down 8% YoY and 1% on QoQ. Op margins down. Opex down too, which is good news, but if they are trimming Opex at the expense of growth it's not.

No major disaster here. TSLA is still in business, but it's not looking a lot like a major growth company at the moment.


S/X deliveries down 37% YoY...

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Re: Musk endeavours

#259868

Postby BobbyD » October 24th, 2019, 1:48 pm

Omar Awan, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist, was driving his leased Tesla in February when he lost control on a south Florida parkway and the car slammed into a palm tree, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in state court in Broward County.

A police officer couldn’t open the doors because the handles were retracted and bystanders watched helplessly as the car filled with smoke and flames, according to the complaint, which alleges the fire originated with the car’s battery.

The door handles on the Model S are flush with the car and pop out -- “auto-present” in the words of Tesla -- when they detect that the key fob is nearby.

“Fire engulfed the car and burned Dr. Awan beyond recognition -- all because the Model S has inaccessible door handles, no other way to open the doors, and an unreasonably dangerous fire risk,” according to the Oct. 10 suit. The complaint lists the cause of death as smoke inhalation and states that Awan had sustained no internal injuries or broken bones in the crash.



- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... markets-vp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#259870

Postby odysseus2000 » October 24th, 2019, 1:54 pm

PeterGray wrote:I have to say I'd find slide 4 of the presentation pretty worrying, if I were a TSLA investor.

Auto revenues down 12% YoY, and flat QoQ, total revenue down 8% YoY and 1% on QoQ. Op margins down. Opex down too, which is good news, but if they are trimming Opex at the expense of growth it's not.

No major disaster here. TSLA is still in business, but it's not looking a lot like a major growth company at the moment.


Looks to me that the average selling price of the cars as come down, as expected given the decline in S & X sales leading to the circle 3% fall in gross margins.

Cash on the balance sheet has gone up, so no danger of the business going bust and the exciting new products are closer.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#259892

Postby BobbyD » October 24th, 2019, 3:40 pm


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Re: Musk endeavours

#259905

Postby BobbyD » October 24th, 2019, 4:45 pm

First ID3 leasing quotes I've seen: https://wevee.uk/vw-id-3?gclid=Cj0KCQjw ... taEALw_wcB

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Re: Musk endeavours

#259939

Postby PeterGray » October 24th, 2019, 6:27 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
PeterGray wrote:I have to say I'd find slide 4 of the presentation pretty worrying, if I were a TSLA investor.

Auto revenues down 12% YoY, and flat QoQ, total revenue down 8% YoY and 1% on QoQ. Op margins down. Opex down too, which is good news, but if they are trimming Opex at the expense of growth it's not.

No major disaster here. TSLA is still in business, but it's not looking a lot like a major growth company at the moment.


Looks to me that the average selling price of the cars as come down, as expected given the decline in S & X sales leading to the circle 3% fall in gross margins.

Cash on the balance sheet has gone up, so no danger of the business going bust and the exciting new products are closer.

Regards,


I agree, no immediate sign of the business going bust. But TSLA is rated as a growth company. It's not currently living up to its rating. There's a business there, something I've never questioned, but these are not good results for a company with the rating, and expectations, that TSLA has.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#259984

Postby odysseus2000 » October 24th, 2019, 9:21 pm

PeterGray wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
PeterGray wrote:I have to say I'd find slide 4 of the presentation pretty worrying, if I were a TSLA investor.

Auto revenues down 12% YoY, and flat QoQ, total revenue down 8% YoY and 1% on QoQ. Op margins down. Opex down too, which is good news, but if they are trimming Opex at the expense of growth it's not.

No major disaster here. TSLA is still in business, but it's not looking a lot like a major growth company at the moment.


Looks to me that the average selling price of the cars as come down, as expected given the decline in S & X sales leading to the circle 3% fall in gross margins.

Cash on the balance sheet has gone up, so no danger of the business going bust and the exciting new products are closer.

Regards,


I agree, no immediate sign of the business going bust. But TSLA is rated as a growth company. It's not currently living up to its rating. There's a business there, something I've never questioned, but these are not good results for a company with the rating, and expectations, that TSLA has.


We have gone from certainty by many bears that Tesla was going bust, but even the most aggressive of bears is no longer so confident. Next on the list of bear certainty was that Tesla would not make a profit, but they have.

We are now into a bear narrative that Tesla is not a growth business. Given that Tesla is on track to sell 1 million cars per year and is now transitioning from expensive cars to a range of less expensive ones and commercial vehicles, along with a range of storage solutions and with a new factory coming on stream later this year or early next year it seems premature to describe Tesla as NOT a growth story.

From my bullish perspective Tesla looks on track to grow very strongly. There will certainly be periods when there is less growth than bulls would like, but even this quarter the balance sheet shows strength and the sales of electric cars are still buoyant as the average price falls and other entrants enter while others like Dyson withdraw.

Imho Tesla's great growth has hardly begun, we have gone from a state when almost everyone expected Tesla to fail and be replaced by legacy auto to a state where people say it isn't growing fast enough. To quote Reagan: "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260220

Postby odysseus2000 » October 25th, 2019, 7:14 pm

One of the claims of Tesla management is that storage will be bigger than electric cars.

This may be true, but will it all be batteries?

For residential use I would bet on batteries, but there are other possibilities for industrial scale storage such as:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ic-battery.

In principle storing energy by compression and regaining by releasing the compression is a well understood tech, but the scale needed at the energy densities proposed looks large with associated maintenance costs and I am not sure how quickly such systems can extract energy, but on the + side, without the potential unreliable chemistry of batteries.

Other ideas include the "revolutionary" idea of storing energy by lifting a weight up and recovering energy by letting it fall down. Some studies have shown such ideas are possible in old mine shafts and having been used in clocks for centuries it has a good track record and is simple, but I am not sure about scale or long term reliability with the big heavy weights that would be needed.

Does anyone have any views on this and how it may be a competitor and/or partner for grid scale battery storage.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260222

Postby redsturgeon » October 25th, 2019, 7:19 pm

I struggle to see how this system would have any advantages over pump water storage methods that are in common use.

John

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260231

Postby odysseus2000 » October 25th, 2019, 8:05 pm

redsturgeon wrote:I struggle to see how this system would have any advantages over pump water storage methods that are in common use.

John


Works on flat land, pumped water storage not good with out higher gravity land to put water on as I understand it.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260237

Postby redsturgeon » October 25th, 2019, 8:30 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:I struggle to see how this system would have any advantages over pump water storage methods that are in common use.

John


Works on flat land, pumped water storage not good with out higher gravity land to put water on as I understand it.

Regards,


Gravity works the same way with water as it does with solid weights IIRC.

John

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260244

Postby odysseus2000 » October 25th, 2019, 9:26 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:I struggle to see how this system would have any advantages over pump water storage methods that are in common use.

John


Works on flat land, pumped water storage not good with out higher gravity land to put water on as I understand it.

Regards,


Gravity works the same way with water as it does with solid weights IIRC.

John


Yes, but if you have flat land, where do you put the stored water, or are you suggesting pressurising the water in a tank and letting it out. In which case I believe capacity does against you, better as I understand it to pressures gas, e.g. the welding cylinder I buy contains if I remember correctly over 2000 psi or 2000/14 approx 140 x atmospheric pressure. That stored energy could be used to do work, e.g. spin a generator.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260245

Postby odysseus2000 » October 25th, 2019, 9:30 pm

This was a good way to play Tesla:

https://twitter.com/smartertrader/statu ... 52227?s=20

Alas I didn't!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260246

Postby redsturgeon » October 25th, 2019, 9:31 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
Works on flat land, pumped water storage not good with out higher gravity land to put water on as I understand it.

Regards,


Gravity works the same way with water as it does with solid weights IIRC.

John


Yes, but if you have flat land, where do you put the stored water, or are you suggesting pressurising the water in a tank and letting it out. In which case I believe capacity does against you, better as I understand it to pressures gas, e.g. the welding cylinder I buy contains if I remember correctly over 2000 psi or 2000/14 approx 140 x atmospheric pressure. That stored energy could be used to do work, e.g. spin a generator.

Regards,


Water towers or mine shafts? I was not aware that water could be practically pressurised and I think pressurising gases has some benefits but it was mainly the lifting heavy weights bit I was referring to.

John

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260253

Postby odysseus2000 » October 25th, 2019, 11:05 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:
Gravity works the same way with water as it does with solid weights IIRC.

John


Yes, but if you have flat land, where do you put the stored water, or are you suggesting pressurising the water in a tank and letting it out. In which case I believe capacity does against you, better as I understand it to pressures gas, e.g. the welding cylinder I buy contains if I remember correctly over 2000 psi or 2000/14 approx 140 x atmospheric pressure. That stored energy could be used to do work, e.g. spin a generator.

Regards,


Water towers or mine shafts? I was not aware that water could be practically pressurised and I think pressurising gases has some benefits but it was mainly the lifting heavy weights bit I was referring to.

John


Yes lifting weights is a way to store energy, but you need some structure to provide the height. This could be mines, water towers are not that tall & not rated for heavy loads as far as I know.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260299

Postby dspp » October 26th, 2019, 12:40 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
Yes, but if you have flat land, where do you put the stored water, or are you suggesting pressurising the water in a tank and letting it out. In which case I believe capacity does against you, better as I understand it to pressures gas, e.g. the welding cylinder I buy contains if I remember correctly over 2000 psi or 2000/14 approx 140 x atmospheric pressure. That stored energy could be used to do work, e.g. spin a generator.

Regards,


Water towers or mine shafts? I was not aware that water could be practically pressurised and I think pressurising gases has some benefits but it was mainly the lifting heavy weights bit I was referring to.

John


Yes lifting weights is a way to store energy, but you need some structure to provide the height. This could be mines, water towers are not that tall & not rated for heavy loads as far as I know.

Regards,


For many real-world areas where people live in large amounts, i.e. the primary global load centres, these are predominantly within 50-miles of the sea and on flat land. Mine shafts are a rarity and worth exploiting for gravity storage where they exist but that is a niche use-case. Building storage towers is capex-heavy and uneconomic. Putting dedicated long-distance HV transmission to the high ground areas for (gravity) pumped storage hydro is uneconomic, but it is economic where the HV transmission can be shared with other users to get higher capacity factors on the HV lines. That is why (say) Norwegian proposals are viable, but most are not. Kinetic storage is very high cost and has many serious drawbacks, but does have applications in some very specific use cases (esp. naval ones), bur even there it will have to compete with other technology pathways that have mass scale adoption / learning advantages.

Batteries will - imho - be the primary storage solution to resolve grid intermittency for most of the world's use cases. That is the adoption pathway that is happening right in front of us.

The price of Tesla does not fully take into account the storage & autonomy plays. It is currently only priced as a high-growth automotive manufacturer. Tesla is currently averaging (Q1-2017 >> Q3 2019) 33% yoy revenue growth and 9% qoq revenue growth. Average underlying GM% over the same period is 19% varying in individual quarters from a low of -5% to high of 35%, using the blended methodology I have used before. Using GAAP numbers they have again averaged 19% but been as low as 12% and as high as 25%.

This is blistering and sustained growth at a healthy GM% with fantastic capital efficiency and which has extremely disciplined cash flow.

The traditional automotive sector is watching a new kid come on the block, and give them all a case lesson in how to restructure their industry in broad daylight with full transparency about what is going on, at a global level. Musk has read Christensen et al and is dealing the playbook straight at the incumbents.

If you look at Supercharger connector contention ratio it is healthy at 34-49 vehicles per connector. Likewise destination connectors are healthy at 18-30. That is of course not counting all the private (domestic & work) charger locations, or the public access charger networks. The only EV you can currently buy and drive in pretty much any of the major populated countries is a TEsla. All the others still suffer from range anxiety due to a combination of poor batteries; too small a battery; poor efficiencies (km/kWh); and restricted charger networks.

Vehicle sales per location is generally steady at about 240/qtr. Vehicles maintained per (location+mobile) is stable at 520-640. Inventory is stable. That shows they are scaling quite happily and can roll out the model into each new territory as they see fit.

And that is before getting to the storage game and the autonomy game. There is also some tantalising glimpses that they may be using their scale to create a defensible moat in solar PV deployment by attacking the soft deployment barriers, but I remain unconvinced on that.

At a annualised EPS of $7/share and at the Q3 2019 end quarter share price of $240 that is a P/E of 34 which is nosebleed territory.

But when you look a it on a PEG basis with a 33% yoy growth that is a PEG of 1.03, so that is bang on the fair price range (1.0 is fair price PEG). Admittedly it might not be fair price at today's $328 but I didn't buy at $328 and am not rushing to do so.

Then you have to look at whether the 33% can be maintained over the next 2-4 years and I would say, absolutely it can. Let's do the maths, Fremont is currently doing (Q3 2019) 96,1555 cars per qtr, so 384,620 cars/yr. The sum is 384,620 x 1.33^4 = 1,203,479 cars/yr.

OK, that's the maths so now lets look at the industrial reality. The Shanghai factory is starting to come onstream and the Y is coming onstream next year. Both have battery capacity in place and/or planned to allow them to grow to become full. So that is 500k cars/yr from Shanghai by the 4-yr point, and 700k cars/yr from Fremont by the 4-yr point. That's 1.2 mln cars/yr. Er, that is bang on the 33% annualised growth I laid out. These are the numbers the Tesla board will be looking at, and what they are aiming for as their mid-case scenario.

That's before taking into account any capacity adds from the semi; the pick-up, or the German factory. They represent the high case.

Those of you who are looking at individual quarter yoy or qoq comparisons are being blindsided by the 'steppy' nature of the capacity adds.

Those of you who are dissing the company and the valuation are not doing the maths.

That's before noting that the network effects of the charger network are becoming easier; that fixed cost absorption is becoming easier; and before allowing for any value ascribable to storage, to autonomy, to solar, or even to robotaxi wet dreams ! Those represent the very high case.

I have been tooling around China the last week in a BYD which is a competitor to TSLA. Buffet / Berkshire Hathaway are invested in BYD. Personally I don't see any comparison - I'd pick the Tesla any day. Judging by what's on the road in China the market is fully primed and ready. (I have been there on work related to the Chinese HV grid ....)

For sure there will be surprises and upsets. Especially with quarterly volatility. But I have about 4% of my portfolio in TSLA and I'm smiling. I might even consider buying on dips if my spare funds allow.

regards, dspp

PS. if you want go to
https://ir.tesla.com/investor-relations
specifically
https://ir.tesla.com/events-and-presentations
https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/47313 ... 61bce15da4

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260307

Postby BobbyD » October 26th, 2019, 1:13 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Yes, but if you have flat land, where do you put the stored water...


Two reservoirs, one at ground level, one below ground level. I've developed a brand new tech to facilitate this. I don't want to give too much away while my patent application is pending, but I will be selling it under the trade name 'Hole'. Some minor ip difficulties atm caused by the fact that some voids in the earth which might to the untrained eye pass for 'holes' occur naturally. Some of these scientist chappies believe that there might be some really big ones within the earth which come pre-filled with more water than is contained in all the oceans...

It isn't difficult to create height differences. Put a concrete wall (working project title 'damn') down the middle of a stationary body of water and assuming you picked a suitable spot you've just built yourself two reservoirs. Like a standard hydro damn, but you are providing the force of the flow with pumps.

Work is currently underway to develop a hot hole technology which imbues the water with a magical boomerang property which sends it flying back to whence it came, negating the need to pump it back up.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260513

Postby BobbyD » October 27th, 2019, 9:29 pm

VW makes Vehicle to Vehicle and Vehicle to infrastructure communication standard in the new Golf.

Car2X is VW’s branding for a combination of vehicle-to-vehicle (aka V2V, car-to-car, or C2C) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X). In effect, it allows a connected car to communicate with either another vehicle nearby, or a piece of infrastructure, and share time-sensitive information.

The data exchanged will depend on how VW uses Car2X. In its first generation, the automaker has been using it to notify other vehicles in the vicinity of accident locations and where traffic congestion is. Sudden braking maneuvers can trigger an alert via Car2X too, or the presence of emergency services vehicles like ambulances.

“With Car2X, the driver is notified that an emergency vehicle is approaching and from which direction even before it’s possible to hear the siren,” Thomas Biehle, Director of Cooperative Security and Electronic Processes at Volkswagen, explains. “This allows cars to pull over and create a clear path for the vehicle – which can save valuable seconds in an emergency.”

...“With WLANp, vehicles receive information in a matter of milliseconds from other traffic participants and their own environment, such as traffic lights at intersections or lane closure trailers on motorways,” Volkswagen explains. In urban environments, Car2X has a range of around 150 meters, or just shy of 500 feet. Out on more open roads, such as highways and in rural areas, Car2X can potentially reach more than five times that.

Combined with VW making Car2X standard on the Golf, it means that Golf 8 drivers will be far more likely to be within wireless range of another compatible vehicle. VW is also implementing Car2X across other models, which will also be able to communicate with the new Golf. That could well encourage other automakers to adopt the DSRC standard, and indeed cities and other municipalities. Potential applications there include flagging empty or soon-to-be-vacant parking spaces, as well as automatically processing payments and tolls.


https://www.slashgear.com/2020-volkswag ... -25597350/

As a potentially useful aid to autonomous driving it's nice to see a properly distributed technology appearing in the mainstream, on top of the benefits provided to 'normal' drivers.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260844

Postby BobbyD » October 29th, 2019, 4:03 pm

Elon Musk to go to trial in December over 'pedo guy' tweet

Los Angeles district judge ruled jury will decide whether Tesla chief’s statements about British diver amount to defamation

...“We look forward to the trial,” Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, said in a statement provided to Bloomberg. “We understand that, while Musk has apologized, Unsworth would like to milk his 15 minutes of fame.”

In September it emerged that Musk’s lawyers were attempting to force a BuzzFeed reporter to testify in the case. Musk sent an email to journalist Ryan Mac in August 2018, replying to a request for comment on the “pedo” statement.

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you [expletive deleted] asshole,” Musk wrote.


- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... on-lawsuit

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Re: Musk endeavours

#260850

Postby Bouleversee » October 29th, 2019, 4:23 pm

He's also being sued by the widow of a doctor who died after his Model S lithium battery (which doesn't react to normal fire extinguishers) caught fire after a crash and the police couldn't open the doors because the handles automatically retract once the doors are shut.


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