It was another typical Elon Musk earnings call.
Tesla is evolving into the world’s preeminent robotics and AI company.
It is building the largest neural network in history, which means all the Tesla’s ever made are talking to each other, some four million by the end of this year.
When the US goes all electric in a decade, the size of the power grid is going to triple (buy copper), or else brownouts and outages will become constant. Every home in the country is going to need solar roofs to meet the demand.
Demand for cars is the greatest Tesla has ever seen, far beyond their ability to produce them, and Q1 is the slow quarter for the auto industry. I just tried to buy a new Model X and the waiting list is one year. In fact, I can sell my existing 2018 Model X on eBay for more than I paid for it….new.
Elon never fails to amaze.
As for the stock, you have to get used to the idea that the world’s greatest company has annual 45% drawdowns. That’s how Tesla has always traded. It's either going to zero or infinity, depending on who you talk to.
My decade target is still $10,000 per share. We just had a $420, 35% pullback, so we may take one more run at the lows before we go to new Highs. But I have only been trading Tesla shares for 11 years. What do I know?
I’ll never forget my first tour of the Fremont factory in 2010, right after they bought it for stock from Toyota (TM) out of the General Motors (GM) bankruptcy (Toyota owned half). Tesla then occupied only a tiny corner of the gigantic 50,000 square foot space.
But you know what? There were virtually no humans on the assembly line, just a long row of red German-made robots. There was just the occasional guy shooting oil into automatic joints.
It was a vision into the future.
I knew I was on the right track when the salesman told me that the customer who just preceded me for a Tesla Model X P100D SUV was the Golden Bay Warriors star basketball player, Steph Currie.
Well, if it’s good enough for Steph, then it’s good enough for me.
So, when I received a call from Elon Musk’s office to test the company’s self-driving technology embedded in their new vehicles for readers of the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader.
I did, and prepare to have your mind blown!
I was driving at 80 MPH on CA-24, a windy eight-lane freeway that snakes its way through the East San Francisco Bay Area mountains. Suddenly the salesman reached over a flicked a lever twice on the left side of the driving column.
The car took over!
There it was, winding and turning along every curve, perfectly centered in the lane. As much as I hated to admit it, the car drove better than I ever could. It does especially well at night or in fog, a valuable asset for senior citizens whose night vision is fading fast.
All that was required was for me to touch the steering wheel every minute to prove that I was not sleeping.
The cars do especially well in rush hour driving, as it is adept at stop-and-go traffic. You can just sit there and work on your laptop, read a book, call some customers, or watch a movie on the built-in 5G WIFI HD TV.
When we returned to the garage the car really showed off. When we passed a parking space, another button was pushed, and we perfectly backed 90 degrees into a parking space, measuring and calculating all the way.
The range is 300 miles, which I can recharge at home at night from a standard 220-volt socket in my garage in seven hours. When driving to Lake Tahoe, I can stop halfway at get a full charge in 30 minutes at a Tesla supercharging station.
The new chargers operate at a blazing 400 miles per hour. That’s enough time to walk to the subway next door and get a couple of sandwiches.
The chassis can rise as high as eight inches off the ground so it can function as a true SUV.
The “ludicrous mode,” a $12,000 option, take you from 0 to 60
mph in 2.9. However, even a standard Tesla can accelerate so fast that it will make the average passenger carsick.
Here’s the buzzkill.
Tesla absolutely charges through the nose for extras.
The 22-inch wheels, the third row of seats to get you to seven passengers, the premium sound, the leather seats, and the self-driving software can easily run you $30,000-$40,000.
A $750 tow hitch will accommodate a ski or back rack on the back. There is a $1,000 delivery charge, even if you pick it up at the Fremont factory.
It’s easy to see how you can jump from an $84,990 base price to a total cost of $162,500, including taxes, for the ultra-luxury Performance model, as I did.
As for “drop dead’ curb appeal, nothing beats the Model X. When I first started driving Tesla’s I used to get applause at stoplights. It took a while to realize they were cheering the car, not me.
Even after driving one of these for 11 years, I still get notes with phone numbers from young women asking for rides. And they don’t even offer that as an option!
My original split-adjusted cost for my Tesla shares is $3.30.
It’s still true that if you buy the shares, you get the car for free.
I got three.
Thank You, Elon!
