That poor bikerider about a minute in

Crazy to see (1) AI react in a safe & relatively efficient manner in very complex situations and (2) how ****ty SF traffic is .

That isn't AI...AI/"neural net" for self driving is bull**** created by Musk. That's pure situational analysis imo.

If this then that x 5000. Path, goal, parameters, exceptions, safety layers x 20. Only sane way to do it. And improvable until it's perfect as long as you have unequivocal 3D ultra fast maps of your environment and a good simulator. Musk thinks he'll solve this in 8 months form scratch using "machine learning" black box training = the dude is either gone in the head or a pure conman. He won't solve it in 80 months using machine learning. And he explicitly said they'd be machine learning paths rather than hard coding...it's insanity.

Closed my shorts right after the funding news broke. I still have my Jan 20 200s. Will concede I got too caught up in dreams of a quick demise when I loaded into Jan 2020 100s back in Q3 when the SP was diving, took a fair size loss on these. I conflated the price moving in my direction as the end coming true (just like the bulls everytime it pops over 300). If he can sell this FSD that anyone can prove as false, then I can't bet when it will all be over, just that it will be. Accordingly my plan is to cool off some and look to simply short amounts I can't get squeezed on whenever there is a pump. These trades are pre-conditioned on demand continuing to die, everything is still pointing in this direction.

Since your post is getting buried, I'll opine with my admitted nescience, and hopefully someone more informed can correct me.

2. I don't think we know who bought the 200m worth of non-ZEV credits, because the 10-Q filing didn't say. I would assume it's mostly from the FCA (Fiat) deal.

3. I don't know the article you refer to, but that 2b figure seems too high. I would have thought the fines themselves would be around that if they did nothing, and the point of pooling with Tesla is to avoid the fines. There's still some uncertainty how badly they will miss the 2021 emissions requirement, so my guess is the 200m is essentially to buy the option to pool with Tesla through 202X, knowing it's conceivable they'll sell enough low-emission cars that they don't even need Tesla's credits, and there's probably some agreement of how much they'll pay per gram of CO2 needed to offset the average when they miss the requirement. So maybe that 2b figure referred to total capex allocated for making their own cars that are within the looming emission requirement, plus the couple hundred million they'd have to spend buying credits from Tesla.

I think you're right that the absence of ballyhoo about the deal was to not draw attention to the margins dropping to 16% or whatever. And bear in mind Tesla usually sells 25m-50m in credits every quarter, so while this is a big uptick, it's not some great boon or new revenue vehicle they've developed.

This video is pretty sweet. It shows off the most advanced FSD feature available today and also shows how cool Tesla owners are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrI7pNoGh4U

Financial times:
https://www.ft.com/content/fd8d205e-...omments-anchor

"Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has said it will pay electric carmaker Tesla close to €2bn to help it meet tough new emissions targets and has reported a 29 per cent drop in first-quarter profits.

The company will purchase credits from Tesla to help it hit carbon dioxide goals and avoid large fines in the US and Europe, at an estimated cost of €1.8bn.

Carmakers across Europe are striving to meet a 2020 EU target of average car CO2 emissions of 95g per kilometre. In 2018, average emissions were 120.5g per kilometre, according to data supplier Jato Dynamics.

Fiat Chrysler aimed to meet this target without the need for credits from 2022, banking on a strategy of making its own cleaner vehicles, as well as hybrid and pure electric models, said chief executive Mike Manley.

About 80 per cent of FCA’s CO2 compliance would come from purchasing credits from Tesla in 2020, falling to around 15 per cent in 2021 as the company’s sale of battery and hybrid vehicles grew, he said.

Many carmakers are launching electric vehicles in the hope that the nascent market will expand as the new rules come into force.

The partnership between Tesla and FCA in Europe was agreed privately in February, and first reported by the FT last month."



In the CC they said:
1.from the CC:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/edite...l?guccounter=1

"And as mentioned by Mike, we're talking about or compliance strategy. We did enter into various agreements in the quarter to ensure that we have access to regulatory credits to complement our vehicle launch strategy towards meeting emissions compliance in EMEA and NAFTA going forward. So the total commitment under those contracts is about EUR 1.8 billion, which will be spent over the next 3 years. Last year, we had cash outlays between credits and compliance payments of about EUR 600 million included in our cash flow. We expect 2019 number to be moderately up from that. And we think it's important that we have managed to secure these credits, which we believe to be a very economic way of complementing our compliance strategy through the launch of the electric vehicles that Mike mentioned."

2. See the more specific Tesla pooling details in the Q and A part of the CC. Don't want to quote it all here. FYI they never say explicitly they are giving all 1.8B in cash to Tesla

I'd still appreciate it if ppl can address the other things in my earlier post: the 8k issue and if anyone in here predicted demand+ earnings would be just so bad in q1.

This is good stuff from the Friday CC, thanks for posting. So ~$180 million/quarter flowing into Tesla coffers. In line with what they got last quarter.

To answer your other questions:

- I expected a big loss given their massive price drops on S/X which are cash cows, PLUS the large drop in sales of these. The other thing that happened is the delivery time went from 10 days in NA to 30 in Europe...which means inventory pile up and outlays without incoming. It's somewhat the reverse what happened in Q3 2018. I didn't really quantify the loss but didn't expect it be $900 million without regulatory credits.

- The 8K is a mystery. Perhaps confidentiality clauses in the agreement waiting until after earnings? That seems most probable to me. But someone leaked it anyway.

Seeing as how it took a day to spike, was it possibly all the institutions who bought the converts shorting the stock as a hedge? I'm really happy I was able to exit my short the morning of the 2nd after it was announced but before it really popped.

Interesting discussion on the mechanics of the deal here:

And some speculation surrounding the raise that makes sense:



Can anyone poke holes in this?

Going to be away from my computer for the afternoon but I'm putting in a sell stop at 260 to take off another 25% of my position. If that isn't triggered I have a MOC order that will sell 25%.

Hope this post doesn't trigger stinkypete too much!

Didn't see anyone mention that Tesla has improved the range on the Model S long range model (previously 100D) to 370 miles, with the Model X improved to 325 miles, supposedly through a more efficient motor. That's a big change from a 3 years ago when the 85 battery was the top of the line and got about 265 for a model S.

Looks like the iPace and other competitors are coming in around the low to mid 200s for range. The supercharger network plus a significant edge in range makes it a LOT easier to road trip in a new Tesla than any other electric car right now in the US.

This is like saying it's easier to take a train across the country than a bus when there's planes readily available.

I think EVs are superior for every day use, but roadtrips are not their strong point, and that definitely includes all of Tesla's offerings.

No one is buying S/X any more, especially the high end, which means no one cares. Sales have dropped in half and the slump is continuing.

I call BS on the "more efficient motor" though. Electric motors are well know components with high efficiencies and Tesla already had a great one, so how on Earth can they get another 10% out of the motor? I'd say it comes out of other things mostly.

I think Tesla's range superiority is significant. The vast majority of people traveling more than 300 miles are going to just fly. But for intermediate trips—something like LA to Vegas, or Miami to Jacksonville—it's a real selling point that you can easily do those in a Tesla whereas you can't do them in an iPace or a Leaf without recharging. And 350 miles is going to be about as much as a normal person wants to drive in a day anyway, or at least as much as they would before stopping for an hour or so to eat while the Tesla recharges. I think 325–370 is significant utility over low- to mid-200s. For all Tesla's ineptitude and shenanigans, they still offer the most enticing electric cars in the US. You can say they've done so by burning mountains of cash from investors and government subsidies, but they've kept competition at bay for longer than most in this thread would have guessed years ago, and they may still have a few years of dominance left before they get buried by Jaguar, Nissan, GM, Ford (where has Ford been during all this), etc.

The high values are 100 kWh batteries at very high cost. They're an ultra niche product. Best in class for sure but no one wants them even with the $20K - 40K euro price drop in various markets. Not sure why. Perhaps their "refresh" will improve sales but if a massive price drop didn't I'm not too hopeful.

I think it very likely will, at least for a short time, but they're also going to be stuck with a lot of old inventory that they're going to have to dump for ~zero gross or less.

The story to this point is basically that the $7500/$3750 tax credits have been exhausted and they've yet to build a profitable car, while competitors are starting to produce cars that will legitimately compete, especially with the full $7500 credit. It really doesn't look good for Tesla given that demand has hit a brick wall even before the competition has really hit the market.

The FSD nonsense is obviously a hail mary, and even though the projected timeline and robotaxi plans are pure bull****, it could save Tesla if enough idiots are willing to punt on Tesla cars with the $5k+ FSD option with misguided hopes that the robotaxi thing actually happens. There's fanboys out there that definitely believe it's all going to happen, if not on Elon's timeline, then slightly delayed. May sales should tell us how gullible the Tesla target market is (trend in FSD vs non-FSD sales) and if that looks at all bullish we can expect to see Elon going all in with all kinds of outrageously optimistic FSD "news" and more questionable demos that prompt more questions than they answer.

Agree that for cross country trips electric cars are not good and anyone other than a broke college student is going to fly.

But for regional road trips (200-600 miles round trip) flying is often not a good option. For those trips an electric car can be great if it has the right combination of range, fast highway chargers, and destination chargers, or a total pain in the ass if it doesn't.

Right now the Tesla is much more likely to fall in the great category than any other EV. Whether that ends up mattering for sales is hard to say.

Cross country road trips are rather expensive. Just gas, lodging, and food en route would chew up basically all the cost savings of not buying a plane ticket, unless you’re talking about 3 or more people then it could work.

People go on road trips cross country because they need to move cross country anyway or they want to see stuff on the way, not because road trips are cheaper.

I think the most typical roadtripper is a member of a family with 2 or 3 kids.

Once the terms came out it seems that they were much worse for Tesla than originally reported: https://ir.tesla.com/node/19861/html

Here is a good summary of the structuring with an analogy to movie theater popcorn: https://empirefinancialresearch.com/...ok-at-the-deal

food for thought for the bulls, something i picked up on twitter:



if the cars are appreciating assets, like the ceo of the company claims, isn't advocating for their sale and against their lease by said ceo, destruction of shareholder value?

It doesn't matter because the premise is ridiculous.

If you believe a Tesla is an appreciating asset then you will believe anything. You certainly don't care about logical consistency or such boring concepts as shareholder value.

https://youtu.be/68X9ZfWrVL8?t=68

This is brand destruction in full effect:



Mind you this is Jaguar's first try and Audi's mediocre attempt.

This is after a 40K euro price drop for the high end on S/X. In Norway, Musk's pure contempt for his customers/fraud/disorganization around service and reservations has resulted in Tesla dropping 4th to 51th in the country's premier brand ranking survey - the last of all the auto makers. As an upstart American company competing against exceptional European efficiency and service you only get one chance. Looks like they've blown it. This is demand death in a full spiral.

This guy speaks very clearly about FSD for quite a while.

- Agrees with Elon that cameras is the superior long term solution
- "Elon says 1 year, others say 5 or 10 or 20", his personal opinion is 5-10 years
- Explains current limitations of Autopilot
- Explains how constant software updates are "exciting, but dangerous"
- Talks a bit about the challenges facing FSD

He didn't say anything that wasn't already mentioned here, but its nice to hear it all laid out there from an expert imo