Elon Musk needs his own thread because he's in every damn thing

Tesla's Q1 earnings call is today at 5:30. I was listening to Bloomberg and they were saying that one of the main things people will be watching is if Elon acts like an adult or an impetuous ass.

Either way, I'm not expecting anything good -- I think Tesla is entering a spiral. Their grossly overvalued stock price was destined to return to earth at some point.

 

Downward spiral indeed. How did the call go?

 

Elon’s busy accusing Australia of censorship. And trying to get his $56B pay package approved. But if he says layoffs and AI enough times, stock price might hang in.

 

I don't think that is accurate with Tesla. Tesla's valuation is driven by regular investors, not cultists. Regular investors bought into the claim that Tesla was a tech company that was an early entrant into a disruptive technology (EV over ICE), rather than it being an auto manufacturer taking a huge risk on an unproven energy source.

 

Tesla's software for their infotainment is among the best in the industry and their chargers are better than virtually any other charger out there. They may have already missed this opportunity, but they could have made A LOT of money licensing their software to traditional automakers for their EVs.

CCS chargers are also giant loads of crap right now. With Tesla now allowing other car manufacturers to use their plugs and chargers, Tesla could easily become the primary manufacturer for public chargers and make a killing building chargers and selling them to the companies that operate the public chargers.

 

Do public chargers make money?

 

Operating them? No. But selling the chargers to the operators does. As an example, Electrify America is losing money hand over fist, but the chargers they are using are absolute dog sh*t so they are down way more than the 95% uptime rate the manufacturer claims. If Electrify America were to start buying chargers from Tesla, they would have a much higher uptime and their maintenance costs would go down significantly. So while they would still be losing money, they would be losing less money.

 

Some priced in ahead but it seems that the boost in after markets is due to Tesla substantial increase in capital expenditures and highlighting an emphasis on producing affordable EV's to better compete with China. Up 13% in aftermarket. Emphasis remains on growth and technology. If robotaxi is ever realized, it would be huge. Who knows?

 

It won't.

 

I get the feeling the Electric car market will focus on compact cars for the time being with cars like the Bolt and the Leaf. They appeal to the sort of driver who used to buy these.

 

What are you talking about? He’s a rocket science submarine tunnel engineer!!!

 

I sincerely hope so. The American appetite for gigantic vehicles is a crime against the environment and aggressively antisocial.

 

Humans have eyes, therefore self driving cars should use cameras only!

But then, he wasn’t really wrong about lidar either.

 

Americans will by ICE big trucks for as long as long as they're available.