Rob Maurer on TSLA

“For me, what I've all I guess my investment thesis in Tesla has always been like I I view Tesla as the leader in electric vehicles. I view Tesla as the leader in autonomy. That's what I want to be invested in because I think that's very clearly going to be the future of transportation. And that sort of story has never changed for me.”

“Like I'm someone that's bullish on both of these companies. So, I don't know that I have like some super strong feelings. Obviously, I have shares in both.”

“I think that that would be something that the market would react positively to though because I think one of the concerns is that that high CapEx budget, negative free cash flow potential associated with that could mean that maybe Tesla would have to raise money or just be in a less comfortable position.”

“This is going to be a great year for Tesla, I think. One of our best years ever. And then I think next year will be even better.”

“I think that take rate will probably keep increasing as people keep understanding how good FSD is”

“when you look year-over-year, you're going to have Tesla probably quadrupled their AI capacity”

“So, that suggests, if you're really going to get to 25 billion plus in uh 2026, you've got really three quarters instead of four quarters to amortize that higher run rate CapEx over.”

“it doesn't make any sense. So like that that will trail that and probably trail it by a fair amount because it's just a different level of liability to let a consumer in their car go and do that whenever they want versus Tesla in their fleet doing it with their cars”

“So um you know once a quarter I think we'll see something that's a pretty pretty decent step up.”

“if these dollars are going to be spent, they're going to be spent in a in a great way that's going to lead to really good return for shareholders in the future.”

“Uh, if Tesla achieves what they want with uh, you know, with uh, autonomy, like for the life of the vehicle, that is like the utilization that that allows for is worth a lot more than $8,000.”

“You know, Tesla's continuing to grow out their global footprint, you know, year-over-year and and quarter-over-quarter. And I think that will consistently be be happening probably for the rest of Tesla's history as, you know, at least the foreseeable future.”

“Q1 could be a challenging quarter, especially since, you know, Q4 we've got the introduction of standard range, you know, standard version of the 3 and the Y at a lower price.”

“but I don't think that's anything significant at the moment, um, or probably for, yeah, next couple of quarters at least.”

“So, wouldn't be surprised to see both average selling price, costs, and margins, uh, all of those three come down for the energy storage business as as that volume does increase.”

“that being said, they're also going to like scale volume massively here, too, and that comes with both cost advantages, but also as you serve like a way larger market, something that's probably likely to double to triple over the next year, 2 years, um, maybe 3 years.”

“but eventually over time, you know, they'll get there and they'll I think the iteration speed of FSD, like comparing it to Cybertruck, I think from where we've been at the last year to where it'll be a year from now and a year from from then, I think that that loop becomes shorter um to like catch semi up with with passenger vehicles.”

“so I wouldn't expect anything on that for a couple of years other than just like we're going to, you know, see it start to evolve in a similar way.”

“That'll be the same thing applied to the car. It will do things that it could not have done without reasoning.”

“Yes, he's been off on timing in the past, but the thesis that this is going to be better than people, unquestionably, I think is still on track and I think, you know, we're very close to reaching that and probably happens with hardware 4 and if not, it's I like can't fathom that it wouldn't happen with hardware 5 um or with AI 5.”

“you know, everything's going to be autonomous. Full stop. So the TAM is the entire transportation market, not Uber and Lyft.”

“Heading into Q4, we should be expecting a drop there, right? Maybe even a couple thousand dollars, tough to say, uh but that'll drop with the should drop with the expiration of that tax credit.”

“I wouldn't be surprised with seeing that pop up like that. If we see something like that sometime, you know, relatively soon, next 6 months or so, like something like that for Tesla.”

“next quarter we shouldn't expect another 238 million”

“not not going to zero uh in my in my view anytime soon.”

“Putting that together with Shanghai, which will probably exceed 40 would be my guess. We're probably talking somewhere in the 140, 150 uh if I'm doing the math right on that. 130 to 150. Something in that ballpark I think is where Tesla can probably hit in with these three factories.”

“Overall though, these kind of seem to be remaining flat. I wouldn't really anticipate that changing super significantly.”

“with a lot of reasons for that kind of growth to continue here over the next year or so.”

“it's going to take a long time to do that, but my my point of view on Tesla leading that market has has never changed and I don't think if anything, I think that point of view is just becoming stronger over time.”

“until we can kind of enter that next phase of growth, which I think, as I've said many times, is going to be driven by FSD, by robotaxi, by autonomy.”

“And I think by the time that we talk again, which will be at the latest next quarter, uh we're going to see some pretty dramatic progress.”

“So, you know, sometime this quarter we should see another expansion again from Tesla.”

“But it's going to put ASP pressure on especially if it is something that is pretty similar to the Model Y. Um that's going to put pressure on actual Model Y sales uh probably pretty significantly.”

“uh and it is going to continue happening and probably in hindsight will seem like it happened pretty quickly here. Uh that's sort of my expectation over the next 12 to to 18 months.”

“I think there's good reason to believe that we'll see another major step forward with FSD with whatever the next release is.”

“But I would also expect costs to come down um maybe even a little bit faster than ASPs which would then hold gross margins um you know or keep them maybe even improve them or keep them around that that same level”

“And I think at some point Tesla will very likely be best-in-class or on par with best-in-class uh just in terms of the app experience uh for any sort of ride sharing.”

“if that sort of rate of progress can continue um next year when we're sitting here and talking about autonomy it's going to be a very different picture”

“Uh that should hopefully start to allow that energy deployment line to start growing again maybe as soon as next quarter. Um but if not certainly I would think by the end of next year early or sorry end of this year early next year.”

“If Tesla can help balance that out a little bit by not launching a lowerc cost vehicle in the third quarter in the US and doing that in the fourth quarter instead, it just makes a ton of sense. So, that would be what I would expect absent other complicating factors of which there are certainly always a lot of.”

“It's going to pull forward demand into Q3. It's going to remove demand from Q4.”

“So that should pull forward a pretty significant chunk of demand into that quarter.”

“Um, and I think that's probably likely to continue. uh with the possible exception of Q3.”

“So, I think once Tesla feels like they can take those people out, there's nothing stopping them from saturating that service area with with vehicles because the cost of doing that is not extremely prohibitive, especially just in one market.”

“So, in my point of view, once Tesla gets to that point, it's way way done. It just they can't compete with that. Um, and I, you know, I think that will happen pretty quickly.”

“Like I don't think people appreciate that that when Tesla gets to a point where they match Whimo, there is absolutely nothing Whimo can do to be competitive in that market.”

“So, uh, as Tesla gets more and more cars added to the fleet, obviously, which should happen, I think, relatively quickly as long as there are no issues, then they can start adding new participants.”

“I think people just get really excited for it to be this all at once thing, which I don't think it's going to be. I think it's still going to take a long time.”

“That'll obviously lower free cash flow in future quarters if that has to then average out to, you know, whatever 8 and 1 half divided by 3 is 2.8 eight or whatever.”

“I don't think that someone's going to be ahead of Tesla on that for a lot of the reasons that we just talked about with Whimo and and um with Whimo and Tesla for autonomy.”

“Tesla's going to have a cost advantage there just based on number one their approach”

“And if we can get the first step of that down, I think there's a lot of reason to be confident that those other subsequent steps happen quickly.”

“if this newer vehicle, newer lower cost Cybertruck does allow Tesla to increase the volume then um that can bring cost down further, which then can be a very virtuous cycle where uh you can continue to have volume more and lower price more and um potentially leads to a very good outcome.”

“that's a much healthier sign for the actual underlying business, which means better quarters ahead, all all circumstances being equal.”

“So, like we said, we're quickly uh approaching the end of the first half of 2025, which means we're just a mere matter of weeks away uh from these new vehicles.”

“Um so I don't think that they're going to have some sudden turnaround. I think with these other models, it's really going to be up up to Cybertruck.”

“And of course, as uh Megafactory Shanghai ramps up, we should continue to see growth in throughout the rest of 2025.”

“my my expectation would be that Tesla's through this update probably has figured out ways to continue to bring cost down on the model y as well”

“I think any of these oems it's going to take them many years to sort of integrate and by then you know the markets reaction to the value of this should be quite significant already at that point”

“and that's going to happen it's going to happen at some point so um we're we're getting close”

“if that happens again in 2025 then I think it's done right I think it's solved uh I think that gets Tesla to a level where this is a viable product um unsupervised Robo taxi”

“Tesla is definitely planning to have um some sort of significant more you know I'd call it significant scale of Optimus's out and about being produced, hopefully being put to good work in Tesla's factories um you know, throughout the course of this year and and next year. So, again I think this is happening sooner than people think. This this year could definitely be sort of an eye-opening moment for for people in that regard.”

“it does look like those remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025. So, fantastic. I take back all my previous comments.”

“They'll have to get ramps up back to volume production, and that'll probably cause a hit not in Q4, but in future quarters, you know, Q1, Q2, until Tesla gets ramped back up.”

“I don't think we're going to see like a $25,000 car that is just a normal car that you can buy and go drive around”

“once something's autonomous and electric the costs are going to be so low that why would you choose anything else”

“it seems seems to me like they could probably even improve this Beyond 40 gwatt hours at at Le up which if they do that then that could probably even happen at Shanghai too maybe those two alone could do 100 gwatt hours um and you know maybe you start to see that in in 2026 even”

“if that Trend continues then you know that's definitely a win for affordability and for margins and things like that”

“for the next six months I think we see something with model y like obviously Juniper's going on I think that'll be an even more significant update to model y than what we saw with with the Highland model 3”

“I I I would be surprised if there's a cyber cab that ships with a steering wheel um and certainly not my expectation in this you know sort of next six-month period”

“do you think Elon is right the Tesla will hit 20 million vehicles per year before 2030 uh no I don't think that will happen”

“I certainly don't expect the robo van on any sort of very quick timeline”

“I'd probably expect a little bit lower than that too”

“So, if we can continue to grow in delivery capacity, and Tesla continues to make progress on 4680 cost, uh, Cybertruck costs, things like that, uh, Model 3 refresh, hopefully that'll allow room for improvement, uh, a little bit at least in the gross margins from from this level.”

“probably something that will also negatively affect Tesla's profitability.”

“Yeah, it would be a pretty pretty significant negative for Tesla in terms of profitability”

“I still think it would be a very strong positive uh, for the stock, but it's important to keep that in mind.”

“as Tesla gets the cost down hopefully um you know they get to this 15% 20% gross margins uh for the Cy for the Cyber truck and and it can be something that is margin accretive”

“so to see such a big spike means next quarter we shouldn't expect like a similar growth rate”

“going forward most of that stuff should be um done and accounted for and then going forward then you should have savings uh both in your operations and through things like stock based compensation”

“we're not seeing any huge growth in these these businesses going forward we're probably not going to see any huge cost declines in these businesses going forward forward either absent changes in the underlying cost of the actual materials”

“I think it might be the biggest asset value appreciation in history when that day happens when you can do unsupervised full self driving”

“if Tesla actually does figure this out man sentiment can change quickly the business fundamentals can change very quickly too”

“I think it would be very detrimental to to Tesla's future so it's not something I want to see the impact of the stock I do think it would probably be pretty negative”

“I haven't done anything guys like that was completely unrelated to to feelings on on Tesla or anything like that other than what I mentioned in last episode with just other people covering it and all that sort of stuff but yeah I'm I'm still excited about the company they're doing really exciting things”

“I do want to keep my position you know during that period even if it is volatile and I mean that's always been my perspective right like I've held Tesla forever”

“I think there's good reason to view that as a net positive at least when we're talking about the business or the stock”