Cathie Woods Doubles Down On Her Tesla Bet; $5,000 Price Target

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Whitney Tilson’s email discussing that investors helped build Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), they could undo it, too.; Driverless cars are 90% here. Another is 90% left to go.; Comments on Cathie Woods of ARK; Tesla’s chips; from a reader.

1) A big Heard on the Street story in the WSJ: Investors Helped Build Tesla. They Could Undo It, Too.

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Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

2) Another WSJ story: Driverless Cars Are 90% Here. Another Is 90% Left to Go.

3) More comments from friends on ARK:

Cathie Wood, the ARK boss, says that people are responding to their model by saying how impressed they are with it. She emphasized TWICE (or more?) that the feedback to her Tesla model had been supremely positive.

Is she completely out of her mind?

Has she heard of "Twitter"?

This was nothing short of The Twilight Zone.

And:

Omg, Cathie Woods is clueless. She is on CNBC and says analysts reading her model are coming to them for insights!

And:

Cathie's new target is $5,000.

Very much doubt anyone here can learn anything from her, but it's a charitable thought.

She's doubled down on her Tesla bet over the past few weeks, perhaps shamed into by the Grant Williams video, and now the only thing she can do is bravely talk her book.

And:

I have the uncanny feeling she had the hots for Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos too. Probably still does.

Let's see... 19 billion Edison machines, at 60% gross margin, with massive recurring revenue... Theranos likely worth $3 trillion and sexy-voice Liz is 10x richer than Jeff Bezos. You go girl! Girl power! My spreadsheet rocks!

I feel emboldened knowing that I'm betting against the equivalent of Florida subprime mortgage brokers in January 2006.

4) Comments on Tesla's chip:

One of my recent peeves of Cathie Woods’ and Tesla’s claims that their chip is 4 years ahead of competition. The thing is Tesla started designing theirs three years ago. How can you get 4 years ahead if they got there from standing start in 3 years? As a side note, 2 of the three processors on their chip are off the shelf IP (and are one or two generations behind others).

And:

In due course, you can be sure that the fine folk at Nvidia will take Tesla to task for whatever exaggerations they've made.

Nvidia is not going to lose this. Of that I can feel pretty confident.

And:

Look. Anyone can make a special purpose chip with no overhead that outperforms a general purpose with overhead. But Tesla doesn’t know how the need for overhead will develop.

Let me give you an example of how this chip set can’t work for fsd.

They say it’s fully redundant. And it is, to some extent. So let’s say one chip does its analysis and says go left and the other says jam on brakes. Who wins? That’s why the space shuttle uses three processors - to break any tie that pops up. Guaranteed hw4 will have 3 chips; there will be no fsd before then.

5) A reader wrote:

In your Venn Diagram, I would add another overlapping circle titled “People who don’t Understand how electricity is made”.

As a former Tesla owner (Model S 2015-2018) living in Lake Country, IL, my electric car ran primarily on COAL. The idea that it was green is a joke! Just moved the emissions from the tailpipe to the smoke stack...

I bought it because:

  1. great looking car with;
  2. acceleration/torque and;
  3. generous federal and state subsidies, with a;
  4. manufacturer willing to sell it at less than the cost to produce, and;
  5. no douchebag stigma (like similar expensive sportscars)

I think the ‘green’ narrative provides air cover for wealthy buyers under part e) above.

I sold it because:

  1. consistent repair issues
  2. concern over battery life
  3. risk of manufacturer not being able to service or produce parts (BK), and;
  4. a generous residual value guarantee from the manufacturer that was expiring.

I enjoyed owning the car but I am short the stock. Keep up your great work!

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