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Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

ir.tesla.com

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Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#111

Post by justapassenger »

Most recent story of Tesla's profitability was built around Musk's manufacturing innovations, that will make Model 3 much cheaper to produce. Experts disagreed, got fired, and alien dreadnought continued. It was such a huge failure, that to this day, portion of Model 3 production is happening a tent. With forklifts, leaking roof and space-heaters.

Tesla now has new profitability story - Musk's innovations in FSD, will make them a lot of money, and make cars appreciating assets. Experts disagreed, got fired, and FSD continues. Wonder how will that end?

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#112

Post by leesec »

BoorishBears wrote: post #105
jtchang wrote: post #68

Being able to test your code out in the real world and dark launch a feature gives Tesla a ridiculous advantage. No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Plus they can even tell if the decision the neural net made was wrong because I assume even Tesla knows you got into an accident. And this over thousands of cars. The speed at which they are collecting data is unprecedented.

I'm so tired of this unapologetic Tesla hand holding. > No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Because they don't want it. They don't want AP regressions we've already seen happen. They don't want engineers testing code out on real people's lives. You really think other companies just don't know how to send OTA updates to an ECU or other car components? I could literally put that together with…

You are giving big OEM's way too much credit, imo, haha.

What you suggested would take at least a year for them to setup at all, let alone work the bugs and making it useful.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#113

Post by nisten »

In 2017 Intel acquired mobileye( the makers of the autopilot radar in the early Teslas), for 15.3 Billion. That begs the question, if Tesla were to sell their autopilot system tomorrow, , given it's safety record, amount of training data, and new FPGA processor IP, how much would it be worth? 15, 20, 40?

This is why I find their delivery numbers completely and utterly irrelevant to company value. This is a just a technology company that has produced a great user experience and is now scaling it.

Their main bottleneck is battery production and they're very competitive at it.

If the bottleneck was auto-manufacturing they would have no trouble raising enough investment to just buy out a car company.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#114

Post by lazyjones »

Animats wrote: post #108

"GAAP net loss of $408M" - the number that matters. Tesla isn't doing that badly. But now that they have some production volume, they have to be evaluated as a car company, not a startup. Can they make lots of cars at a profit? They got the production quantity up by throwing people, money, and a big tent at the Fremont plant. That ran up the cost per car. Although it's better than their previous state of low producti…

> Tesla isn't doing that badly. But now that they have some production volume, they have to be evaluated as a car company, not a startup.

While they're growing at this rate, they're still a startup and expected to use their available cash to improve their market share.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#115

Post by reitzensteinm »

leesec wrote: post #97
bllguo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a great point. Would you agree that the _narrative_ is that Waymo has the superior tech right now? Or did I misjudge that? I suppose I used the wrong word. Any expert or well-informed opinion is what I was after.

Yes I would agree Waymo owns the narrative and a lot of it is based on their disengagement stats. I wouldn't say those tell the whole story. They are also completely different approaches, i.e. Waymo using LIDAR and Tesla relying on cameras as the primary sensor. But the major question is can LIDAR _ever_ be financially feasible, and if so can it become feasible faster than camera gets good enough at vision. Right now…

Waymo quotes $7500 per car for the LIDAR unit, which is financially feasible today for consumer vehicles, even if it only supplied level 3. It's trivial for a level 4 robotaxi. But only once the software works.

Even discounting aesthetics, Tesla couldn't have bolted it on to every car sold in the hope that it'll work in a few years time. They'd be bankrupt by now. They were forced to use cameras if they wanted any intermediate progress.

I get that there's a lot of misinformation about Tesla and you're trying to correct it. Even as a Tesla bear I acknowledge that.

But don't do it by creating further misinformation about competitors. You're just adding to the noise.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#116

Post by snuze »

BoorishBears wrote: post #105
jtchang wrote: post #68

Being able to test your code out in the real world and dark launch a feature gives Tesla a ridiculous advantage. No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Plus they can even tell if the decision the neural net made was wrong because I assume even Tesla knows you got into an accident. And this over thousands of cars. The speed at which they are collecting data is unprecedented.

I'm so tired of this unapologetic Tesla hand holding. > No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Because they don't want it. They don't want AP regressions we've already seen happen. They don't want engineers testing code out on real people's lives. You really think other companies just don't know how to send OTA updates to an ECU or other car components? I could literally put that together with…

As someone in the industry (with domain knowledge), I can tell you that you are oversimplifying the problem and ignoring Tesla’s advantage and leadership in this space. Other manufacturers have to account for legacy systems/designs, it is not as trivial as you make it sound.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#117

Post by greglindahl »

ajross wrote: post #31
greglindahl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you pick the most embarrassing time period for a given stock, it probably massively under-performed. Alternately, you can pick the most flattering time period.

It was a statement about a 5-year period in a stock issued just a few weeks longer than 9 years ago. Are you seriously making a cherry picking argument?

The period chosen misses a 10x run-up just before it.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#118

Post by SergeAx »

Animats wrote: post #108

"GAAP net loss of $408M" - the number that matters. Tesla isn't doing that badly. But now that they have some production volume, they have to be evaluated as a car company, not a startup. Can they make lots of cars at a profit? They got the production quantity up by throwing people, money, and a big tent at the Fremont plant. That ran up the cost per car. Although it's better than their previous state of low producti…

They are lowering customer's urge of refreshed models with nice and quite meaningful software updates. Clever move, if you ask me.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#119

Post by abduhl »

nisten wrote: post #113

In 2017 Intel acquired mobileye( the makers of the autopilot radar in the early Teslas), for 15.3 Billion. That begs the question, if Tesla were to sell their autopilot system tomorrow, , given it's safety record, amount of training data, and new FPGA processor IP, how much would it be worth? 15, 20, 40? This is why I find their delivery numbers completely and utterly irrelevant to company value. This is a just a tec…

Which car company do you imagine Tesla would have "just bought out"?

Keep in mind that Tesla couldn't even raise enough money to buy out themselves, not even at the incredibly discounted price of $420/share.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#120

Post by seabrookmx »

ghettoimp wrote: post #104
eanzenberg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess people like fiddling through an ipad while driving a 2 ton machine at highway speeds? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Looks like Tesla drivers are becoming the "Toyota Camry/Prius" drivers of the past.

Is there some historical problem with camry/prius drivers?

I think they're viewed as the antitheses of "driving enthusiasts" (for better or worse).

Someone who appreciates physical buttons in a BMW likely falls closer to that side of the camp than a stereotypical Prius driver.

I personally would consider myself a driving enthusiast but would have no issue with driving a Prius as a commuter. Quiet, reliable, efficient.. and then I can feel less guilty if I want to have an inefficient "fun car" for the odd sunny weekend.

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