Hey everybody RobMower here, welcome back to Tesla Daily and welcome into Cyber Truck week as we are now just a few days away from those first deliveries. Today we'll talk a little bit about Cyber Truck, we've also got FSD news, pricing updates, a possible new investment candidate for Tesla and a few other items as well.
Quick look at the stock, we're not too far from where we left things last week, Tesla today closing at $236.08 up about 3.5% on the day compared to the Nasdaq which was down about a tenth of a percent.
Alright so as we head into the first Cyber Truck deliveries on Thursday over the last few days Tesla has expanded the store count which has Cyber Truck vehicles on display. A better theater dot com has been tracking those stores, it looks like we are now up to 15 different stores with Cyber Truck's on display and many more rumored to be coming soon. And as words started to spread about the Cyber Truck hitting stores more and more people making the trips out to those stores to see the Cyber Truck, actually many many reports of pretty long lines building up just to see the Cyber Truck, not even be able to go in it yet, but just to see it from the outside. Some of these lines were pretty reminiscent of the Model 3 order lines ahead of the Model 3 unveiling many years ago which at the time was one of the most eye-opening signs for where Tesla was heading and yet was a sign that was ignored by many for a long time. So hopefully this is a great sign for the Cyber Truck just like it was back then for the Model 3 and for Tesla.
And remember this isn't a line where there's any benefit to placing an order sooner or anything like that like there was for the Model 3, this is just to get a glimpse of the Cyber Truck in person. So very exciting and that excitement should extend through this week and hopefully that extends to other Tesla vehicles as well beyond just the Cyber Truck. It sounds like Tesla's doing a good job of getting people's information while they do wait in line to see the Cyber Truck. So name and email and then Tesla can follow up and give them more information about vehicles from Tesla that they could order today. A lot of these people probably very familiar with that but some aren't going to be and that effect from Cyber Truck is something that can last a long time and introduce a lot of new people to Tesla that maybe otherwise wouldn't have had any interest at all. So despite what Jeffries was saying last week about maybe it being a good idea for Tesla to just cancel the Cyber Truck at this point, I think this is giving us a lot of indication that well maybe this is a product that is worth doing.
A couple of the quick details on the Cyber Truck we've got a short video from OMG Tesla on X which appears to show the wake-up sequence for the lights on the Cyber Truck and also the adjustable suspension increasing in height, maybe happening automatically which could be done to make it easier to get in and out of.
Alright next we've got a couple updates on FSD. Not a Tesla app had reported that FSD version 12 had started to roll out to some Tesla employees. Elon commented on a report on this on X saying yes. He also replied to a whole Mars post which said FSD 12 this could be the moment the moment that changes everything or it could suck even worse than V11 with quote unquote it feels human. So this is a big milestone we've talked before about how important FSD version 12 is the changes in the underlying architecture that hopefully enable faster progress in the future with the end-to-end neural network approach especially as Tesla ramps up their compute capability so significantly even in the last six months but in the next six months from now again.
好的,接下来我们有关于FSD的一些更新。Not a Tesla app 报道称FSD 12版本已经开始向一些特斯拉员工推出。埃隆在X上对此报道发表了评论,他说是的。他还回复了一篇有关火星的帖子,上面写着:“FSD 12可能会成为改变一切的时刻,但也可能比V11更糟糕,这就像人类一样。”所以这是一个重要的里程碑,我们之前已经讨论过FSD 12的重要性,它在底层结构上的改变有望为未来的快速进展提供支持,特别是随着特斯拉在过去六个月中大幅提升计算能力,而在接下来的六个月中也会继续提升。
Now that we're seeing this go to employees hopefully that's a good sign that we start to see it in the hands of customers relatively soon hopefully this year. When we do see that nobody should expect this to be perfect if it was perfect it probably would have been released in a non-perfect form a while ago. There's still going to need to be a lot of training that happens but hopefully this is the architecture that raises the asymptote raises the bar in terms of where Tesla can get to which it very much should and as always it's going to be extremely interesting to follow that progress.
So I'm glad to hear that and then the other update on FSD we had a few reports that Tesla was getting close to releasing FSD in China. Sometimes those reports can be a little bit misleading people maybe take things out of context or get more excited than they should for the stage that it's at.
I think CNEV posts covered it well though they said that the report was that work to bring FSD to China is indeed moving forward at the moment local media outlet China Fund news said citing a report from the US EV maker. So looking at that closely work to bring FSD to China that's something that we should all have been expecting is underway. It doesn't really give us much of an update on when exactly that would be.
我认为CNEV的帖子已经很好地涵盖了这一点,尽管他们说报道是中国当地媒体China Fund News援引美国电动车制造商的报告所称,目前将全自动驾驶(FSD)引入中国的工作确实正在进行中。因此,仔细看来,我们应该都预料到将全自动驾驶引入中国已经在进行中。但这并没有提供给我们具体的更新,究竟何时完成。
Definitely seems like there's progress being made but CNEV post also says Tesla is indeed moving forward with making FSD available in China but there's no exact information as to when that will happen the report said citing a company insider. So I don't see these reports as being about something that's going to happen immediately but we sure seem to have been seeing a lot of rumors about this over the last couple of weeks so hopefully soon enough.
Okay next we've got some pricing updates we had talked before about how when Tesla had lowered prices on the Model 3 and the Model Y back in the beginning of Q4 or in early October they had removed the inventory discounts from those vehicles. That was the case for about a month and then a couple weeks ago Tesla started adding inventory discounts to the Model 3.
No big surprise there as we know a lot of people probably waiting on the Model 3 specifically for the Highland update which we expect sometime early next year in the US. Tesla though has now started to add back those inventory discounts to the Model Y as well. Nothing on the S and the X yet but as we know from the Panasonic earnings report it seems like Tesla has cut production on the S and the X but for the Model Y we're now seeing inventory discounts in the US that are in some cases up to around three thousand dollars.
So we've seen pretty positive from a gross margin perspective pricing actions in China recently however seems to be moving a little bit the other direction now in the United States as we head into the final month of the quarter. I do think these discounts are a pretty big deal something will continue to monitor there's always going to be influencing factors like the EV tax credit switching over to point of sale at the beginning of next year but there's also things like seasonality and historically Q4 pretty strong quarter for vehicle sales so more price cuts whether it's on new vehicles or through inventory not something you want to see in terms of a demand signal but hopefully things like the cyber truck a little bit of advertising that Tesla is doing and further progress on costs will help.
All right next up a pretty interesting one here relating to Tesla and XAI. Davily on X had suggested a possibility that Tesla should invest in XAI saying that Tesla provides a monetary investment in XAI as well as dojo compute resources going forward and XAI gives Tesla some equity and access to GRAK AI going forward. Elon replied to another post about this saying that he will discuss it with the Tesla board.
From the beginning of XAI it's been clear that there will be some sort of connection between XAI and Tesla says on their about page that we are a separate company from X Corp but we'll work closely with X or Twitter Tesla and other companies to make progress towards our mission.
Then last week Elon posted that X Corp investors will own 25% of XAI. The relationship there has been a little bit more apparent so far with GRAK having trained and continuing most likely to train on Twitter or X data but not as much as been apparent with Tesla as of yet of course it's still very early stage for XAI. You can imagine the use cases for GRAK in a Tesla vehicle.
We've talked a bit about that especially in a robo taxi type of future or an optimist type of future so the prospect is definitely interesting and again there's likely to be a relationship one way or the other. I think this relates more to how that relationship is structured financially and how to maximize the mutual benefit to both companies.
Alright next up we've got some pretty interesting news on Tesla situation in Sweden. We've talked about this a couple of times where initially there was talk of a strike for unionization of Tesla in Sweden. It didn't seem like many employees actually ended up participating in that but then outside of Tesla it seemed like the unions were going to sort of conspire and stop working with Tesla in whatever capacity they could to add pressure to Tesla. So one of the undertakings was to stop the delivery of license plates for new vehicles from Tesla which obviously would create a number of problems.
Because of this Tesla had filed a lawsuit today actually against the Sweden transport agency and perhaps the most shocking development at least for me in the United States is that a district court in Sweden has already ruled on this and they have granted Tesla's request. Ruling that the Swedish transport agency must give consent for Tesla to be able to pick up license plates from the plate manufacturer to be able to provide them with their new vehicle sales. Certainly a win for Tesla in Sweden but also highlights the kind of issues that Tesla may have to continue to deal with as unions continue to push to unionize Tesla.
Somewhat relatedly I suppose in the United States Reuters is today reporting that the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed claims that Tesla illegally fired employees working on autopilot software at Gigafactory New York to stop unionization efforts. We talked about this a lot at the time there was a lot of media reporting about it a lot of media that jumped to the conclusion that now the NLRB isn't even agreeing with so nice for Tesla to have that dismissed but the labor board did say that they found merit to two separate claims that Tesla maintained an unlawful rule on the acceptable use of technology in the workplace and solicited grievances from workers in an attempt to thwart support for the union. So we'll have to await more details on that part of it but just as a reminder it's not like the NLRB is the final arbiter of any of this. It was just a couple of months ago that we had a US appeals court overturn a NLRB ruling so that's something that can happen even if something like this moves forward with the NLRB.
All right last couple of Tesla things we've got a report from car sales.com.au that the Model 3 performance version the updated Highland version will be available in early 2024 they say that Tesla says that the new version will be quote unquote pretty special and arrive sometime in the first half of 2024. So they're saying Tesla said this they don't really link to anything so presumably they were told this directly perhaps just by an employee and there's not a whole lot of other detail in this report so it's not something that I'm putting a ton of weight in now of course this timeline would not be unexpected and despite the lack of other information it's still probably worth noting.
And then Berenstein today published an updated note on Tesla analyst Tony Sakinagi is keeping his $150 price target and underperform rating on the stock and primarily questioning the differences in valuation between Tesla and BYD pointing to BYD's recent growth versus Tesla's.
Of course this is something we've talked a lot about over the last year I think BYD has made really impressive progress in that period of time and there's merit to a very long conversation about this but I think just kind of looking at both companies and looking at their growth rates or their current financials or whatever which Tesla's are still superior in terms of bottom line things like that income but BYD is certainly catching up closing the gap but you've also got to put that growth in context a lot of that for BYD has happened in China they're now at a place where they probably have to seek expansion outside of China to continue growing it anywhere near those type of growth rates and they're certainly starting to do that and I don't want to discount their efforts or their potential there but it is very important context to have in mind similarly it's important to understand that BYD already has offerings in lower price point segments than Tesla does which on one hand is a very positive thing assigned that they've moved very quickly to be able to offer that but on the other hand a lot of the growth has been driven by the vehicles in those segments and if you can no longer continue to go even lower in your segment that's also something that makes growth more difficult so again it's a very long conversation lots of points to be made on both sides but it's also not as simple as just saying hey look this company is growing faster why aren't they worth the same amount as this other company which seems to be growing a little bit slower as we know a lot more to it than that
all right last couple of things we've got updates from Volkswagen and from Hyundai Hyundai saying that they plan to halt production at their factory in Asan South Korea for construction of an EV plant in early 2024 I don't know exactly how those correlate but just in general another sign that we're seeing continued EV efforts more outsized EV efforts I would say from Hyundai than some of the changes in strategy that we seem to have seen from some other automakers recently and then for Volkswagen Reuters is reporting it that they are implementing around an $11 billion cost cutting plan which will include headcount reductions and Reuters also reports that the CEO of the Volkswagen brand so not the parent company but the brand told staff that quote with many of our pre-existing structures processes and high costs we are no longer competitive as the Volkswagen brand end quote not all that dissimilar from previous reports we've had about Volkswagen over the last couple of years
all right lastly for today quick look at the calendar busy week for Elon busy week for all of us Elon today visiting Israel and then of course later this week handing over the first ever cyber trucks that'll be on Thursday Tesla saying that that will happen at 2 p.m. central time noon Pacific and then as far as the economic calendar goes on Thursday we'll also get the PCE report in the morning personal consumption expenditures for October and Wednesday we'll keep an eye on updated GDP for the third quarter that is the second release so just a revision of the first release about a month ago as for my schedule bear with me as I am traveling down to Austin this week I am going to do my best to have an episode tomorrow and then we'll just kind of have to see how things develop through the rest of the week that'll wrap it up for today though so as always thank you for listening make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications and also find me on X at Tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Tuesday November 28th episode of Tesla Daily thank you.