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Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

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Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#81

Post by navigatesol »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #75
navigatesol wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linking to a Teslarati article, that's a laugh. When will you realize that this company makes things up at every turn? They are cutting capex, again. They are slashing prices on cars with "unlimited demand". Let's see in a year how it's going,and what excuse you and they will have.

Is that Youtube video fake? The ~90k vehicles Tesla sold this quarter? "Fake news"? I have no excuses, just proof of hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles on the road, and billions of dollars worth of manufacturing capacity running. Come back in a year we shall.

>The ~90k vehicles Tesla sold this quarter

And made less revenue than last quarter. Brilliant.

Is the 1 billion dollars lost this year after saying profits forever fake? The lawsuits from whistleblowers? Months long waits for parts? The miniscule growth after slashing prices greatly? The securities violations? Tesla Solar selling the least it ever has?

I could care less about some factory shell in China. They told you they'd build 10k a week in Fremont, didn't they? You have rose coloured glasses.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#82

Post by _ph_ »

dyarosla wrote: post #54
slg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This report is bad news for Tesla, but I think it disproves the "demand problem" narrative. Tesla delivered more cars than they could produce this quarter. Both delivery and production numbers were at record highs. The average sale price of the Model 3 remained stable. Meanwhile they are nearing production of the Model Y which is likely depressing demand of both the Model 3 and Model X. Once the Model Y is available,…

Agree with most of the above except for the "Model Y likely depressing demand"- is there any indication that the Model Y is in demand at all?

In most markets, sedans are in decreasing demand and the popularity of SUV/CUV vehicles is increasing. By that, the Y should be in larger demand than the 3.

Also, the Y addresses some of the tradeoffs made for efficiency on the Model 3: the missing hatch and the low second row. The Model Y will have a proper hatch, more cargo space, more vertical space in row 2 and optionally even a 3rd row of seats, increasing the attractivity for families with many children.

Putting that together, there is a lot of reason to assume the demand for the Model Y might eclipse the one for the Model 3.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#83

Post by lancewiggs »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #9
kenhwang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They missed market expectations. They lost 6x more money (-$2.31/share vs expected -$0.35/share) and sold less cars ($6.3b sales vs $6.5b expected) than the market wanted with more capex to come (China Gigafactory, Model Y).

Not sure how does the CapEx gets allocated for the projects that are already progressing. For example: Tesla started building GF2 in China a few months ago so any idea in which Quarter(s) Tesla account for the CapEx? Is it before the project starts or at the end or every month gets even distribution of CapEx allocation from Start until End of the project.

When invoices arrive from the build of the project they would be put into a capital expense account. I would imagine that the costs include upfront and ongoing components, as that's what contractors need. The asset (plant) is valued as the total of the invoices received and depreciation applies, which gives an ongoing tax shield.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#84

Post by simonebrunozzi »

almost_usual wrote: post #44
spullara wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He meant up 8% over the five year period.

>The opportunity cost of owning it has been huge while the rest of the market ripped up Still doesn't make any sense. The S&P is up over 50% over five years. Outperforming TSLA by almost 3x (including the after-market change it is 5x).

I think the term we are looking for here is "alpha" [0], and you want a "good" stock to generate "alpha" in respect to the overall market.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#85

Post by imglorp »

skybrian wrote: post #78
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.

Well, maybe. Since most of this data will be very repetitive, I don't think we can know for sure how much it helps?

You (and neural nets) learn the most when a boring repetition is violated. The error function was activated and that's worth feeding back into learning.

Ask any kid, they probably couldn't say what happened at school all week. But if they do remember something, it would have been something outside of their routine.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#86

Post by mehrdada »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #73

I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control. Also, it seems to me that Tesla should work with one of the big three automakers on manufacturing. Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a…

> I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control.

I’m sure there is one person that made a decision on that basis but I’ve heard many more not-real customers speculating about this as if they were in the market, but they very clearly wouldn’t buy a Tesla anyway and would’ve found another excuse (hint hint: with so much negative noise and FUD and hatred by big media it’s not hard to find one). The reality is even if Tesla hypothetically goes bankrupt, it’ll most likely cause a change in who owns the equity at large and will likely not materially impact the customer base.

In general, it’s much easier to expand the customer base by solving real problems for people who are eager to buy stuff but can’t (for example, due to real charging problems in urban areas or the car being expensive) than to try to soothe a skeptic. This applies to VCs you pitch too. Spending time changing people’s mind is often futile, and in this case it’s not at all clear that it materially impacts Tesla. They are for the most part production constrained still.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#87

Post by kinghajj »

eanzenberg wrote: post #72
eanzenberg wrote: post #57

Sidenote: I can't stand the ipad in the middle of Tesla cars (and other carmakers who choose this path). I got a BMW because of the sheer usefulness of physical buttons while driving / keeping eyes on the road.

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.

I've found that the majority of functions needed when driving are available through the steering column's stalks, left/right buttons, or voice commands. If I ever do need to use the touch screen, I can activate TACC & Autosteer, and glance back and forth between the screen and road while finding the next button to press. And for the common functions, I've developed an awareness of the button locations, so I can press them while maintaining a view of the road. Sort of like how I had a sense for the physical buttons of my last car; only difference is that now the sequence of button pushes must also be learned, not just the physical location.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#88

Post by imglorp »

skybrian wrote: post #78
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.

Well, maybe. Since most of this data will be very repetitive, I don't think we can know for sure how much it helps?

You (and neural nets) learn the most in the smaller number of cases when a boring repetition is violated. The error function was activated and that's worth feeding back into learning.

Ask any kid, they probably couldn't say what happened at school all week. But if they do remember something, it would have been something outside of their routine.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#89

Post by Animats »

jameslevy wrote: post #41
Klathmon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real answer is nobody knows. It's obviously got some benefits, and I think most people in ML would agree that real world data from the "average person" (as in "not a Dev or paid to do this") is worlds better than simulations. Still, "ahead" and "behind" isn't really a thing before you reach the finish line here. Many think Tesla will never reach full self driving or won't reach it without additional senso…

Is there any public research or data regarding the value or predicted delta value of long tail "average person" driving data of this kind versus the kind of data captured by driving around the same small portions of SF or MV? I've looked around but haven't found anything. Granted, Tesla and its competitors don't have an incentive to publish this kind of data...but are they even in a position to be able to calculate i…

Probably not. Ordinary staying-on-road is pretty much solved. There's years of dashcam imagery available.

The last minute of video before each crash would probably be more useful. Training on dashcam data of people doing stupid stuff from Youtube might be useful. You don't need steering, braking, and accel data; you can run a 3D SLAM algorithm to extract the path and get that.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#90

Post by bllguo »

leesec wrote: post #60
bllguo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

contentious? Genuinely curious for a source here. everything ive ever seen says Waymo is far in the lead, though I dont work in this space.

The contentious part is that Waymo doesn't have a product yet. It's easy to imagine something is better when you can't actually use it. In truth there are only 3 self driving products that I know of available today. Tesla's Autopilot, GM's Supercruise (only on CT6), and commma.ai's openpilot. Of those Autopilot is easily the best. I never know why a source would matter in these cases as the writers of these sources u…

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.

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