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Apr 21 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
It's that time of year again, and we once again opened ARK's Tesla Model. No one from ARK responded to our questions about last year's model in the thread quote-tweeted, and there are even more mistakes/ridiculous assumptions this year.
2/ Last year, ARK had 17,640 human-driven Teslas coming onto a non-existent Tesla ride-hail network in 2021.

In this year's model, ARK has 29,293 Teslas coming on in 2022, bear case. Again, this network doesn't exist, nor has Tesla hinted it ever will.
3/ ARK still figures 50% EBITDA margin on Tesla's non-existent human-driven and robotaxi ride-hail network right off the bat, when Uber & Lyft haven't even been profitable.
4/ ARK doesn't stagger vehicles coming onto any platform, and has never modeled this correctly. I went into this more last year. It looks like they tried to do a midpoint thing (row 61), but that isn't how it works.
5/ The ASP tables completely changed once again. Why does ARK change the base assumptions for total possible miles every year?
6/ Again with the empty cell reference, which is defended by, "Note that we assume that in 2024 Tesla stops using the majority of its excess cash to buy new property plant and equipment."
1) Your years are off.
2) WTF? So it just goes to zero?
7/ Now the new stuff. Remember, ARK locks its spreadsheets so you can't poke around and see how they forecast between now and 2026. We unlocked it.
The most important factors in ARK's entire model are EV/EBITDA for insurance business (which ARK spells "busines"), EV, & robotaxi.
8/ ARK figures an enterprise multiple of 13x for Tesla's EV biz, because that's what Daimler is (?), 10x for Tesla's insurance biz, because that's "roughly equivalent to industry average", and 19x for the robotaxi biz, which is "Much less than industry average for software." Huh?
9/ Those assumptions do not change in ARK's bear or bull valuations, and if you tinker with those multiples, you'll get some ridiculous 2026 share prices.
10/ If you hold constant ARK's enterprise multiples, ARK's BULL assumptions suggest a market cap of $327B this year (69% lower than $TSLA's current market cap), and $700B in 2023. Maybe that's why ARK is selling $TSLA?
11/ ARK's model was built entirely on the assumption that Tesla does a ride-hail network. EV/EBITDA is the same whether human-driven or autonomous, purports ARK. #MaaS

That's why 99.7% of ARK's Monte Carlo sims it ran have it higher than current mcap.
12/ What happens if Tesla's robotaxi business has a negative EV/EBITDA, like $LYFT? It destroys ARK's model. In the bull case, Lyft's -13.8x EV/EBITDA would throw ARK's 2026 suggested share price to -$1,147. Yes, negative. Bear case would be $1,210.
13/ ARK added Bitcoin to its TSLA model this year. ARK thinks Tesla will spend 10% of its year-end investable cash on $BTC, and that BTC will have a 33% CAGR.

ARK's Tesla est. for 2022 year-end BTC value: $5.9B (bull) $6.7B (bear)

$TSLA's current BTC value: $1.74B
14/ There's so much more that just doesn't make any sense in this model, & plenty more crazy assumptions, like # of vehicles sold, or that 31% of all new Teslas sold in 2026 will be fed into the non-existent human-driven ride-hail network (bear case), etc.
15/ These are just some initial takeaways from three sets of eyes looking at the model for a few hours. Many thanks to @conor__dalton & @Real_Jack_Shea.

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More from @TaylorOgan

Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Apr 21
JPM call with CPCA: "When asked whether the industry can make up April production lost in late 2Q or 2H22, CPCA indicated it will depend on underlying demand." CC: @DKurac
CPCA: "A more noticeable recovery should take place after April 25th as key logistic bottlenecks such as worker mobility and transportation are addressed." CC: @TroyTeslike
CPCA call last night: "Production likely lost ~500-600k units in April, leading April output down ~30% y/y."
Read 4 tweets
Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Apr 4
BYD raised its guidance from 1.2M-1.3M passenger NEV deliveries in FY22 to 1.5M, conservatively, and up to 2.0M with no supply chain issues. Here are our thoughts, and how this stacks up. Image
2/ First of all, remember how easy it has been for BYD to scale its NEV production over the last two years. It helps that BYD is the only EV OEM that makes its own chips and batteries in house.

BYD has shown scaling is of no concern.
3/ BYD's FY21 CAPEX was more than its previous three FYs, combined. It has A LOT of new factories coming online, including chip fabs, battery factories, and auto factories. Since BYD doesn't throw elaborate parties for each new factory opening, you may not hear much about these.
Read 8 tweets
Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Mar 8
Tesla Full Self-Driving perspective thread:

One of the difficulties in determining where Tesla falls in the autonomous vehicle space is that Tesla provides essentially no data to the public, especially its FSD Beta program.

Using the limited data we do have, let's compare. Image
2/ I've put into perspective where Tesla sits relative to the others attempting Level 4-5 in the past:
Here:

And here:

But now there is a dataset the Tesla crowd is beginning to (contribute to and) cite.
3/ If you haven't seen it already, there is a data collective where select Tesla FSD Beta testers can manually input milage and disengagements from their drives to track the rate of improvement from version to version. Image
Read 15 tweets
Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Feb 1
Here's a typical drive on Tesla FSD Beta, and why it's the opposite of useful. It's most certainly not even close to being "safer than a human", by any factor.

22-minute drive, 4.5 miles, and WAY too many interventions.
Here's the route we drove. Nothing crazy. We didn't even film all of the interventions. I have drives like this every time I use it, regardless of what x.x version it's on. THIS is what Elon is saying will be Level 4 this year. THIS was supposed to be robotaxi in 2020.
Read 5 tweets
Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Jan 28
As more and more companies are deploying actual robotaxis with no driver to cities, the Tesla FSD project looks increasingly further behind, both iteratively and functionally.

Elon is looking more desperate wrt FSD as the competition reveals genuine autonomous vehicles.
If you are still failing to see this, godspeed. Over the past year, Tesla/TSLA owners have privately reached out to me, admitting they were too blinded by the obsession with “FSD sucks now, but version x.x will blow your mind.” Tesla is nowhere close to robotaxis.
The frequency of people in the Tesla community reaching out to me went from a few per month this time last year, to multiple per day in the last two months. Almost all these days are FSD beta testers. They are fed up and can’t believe how many believers there still are out there.
Read 7 tweets
Taylor Ogan Profile picture
Dec 14, 2021
Piggybacking on @bridgemccarthy_'s thread on BYD's role in Toyota's announcements today:

1. We think last week's media reports on Toyota partnering with BYD to produce a $30k affordable EV next year missed the point. This isn't new news.

2/ So Toyota unveiled 15 BEV models today (finally) that it plans to sell before 2030. Toyota wasted too much time and money on FCEV technology over the years, so the world's largest automaker has been scrambling to get on board with BEVs in the last 2.5 years.
3/ Here's what I think happened. The timing is important.

Toyota was pursuing a "side project", of sorts, to develop its first BEV in 2018-2019. Subaru, equally clueless on EV tech, wanted in, so it threw Toyota some $ to help with ongoing R&D...
Read 12 tweets

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