At the Tesla Shareholder Meeting, 2018.

As I expect to get my hands on my Model 3 in a few days, after a wait of nearly 27 months after registration, I felt a need to attend the Tesla Shareholder Meeting today, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Equally importantly, as a shareholder, I wanted to hear from Elon Musk how, in his words, Tesla is doing.

When you enter any public arena these days, one should not be surprised if one is subjected to some sort of body scanning. The Tesla meeting was no different.

Where I did get surprised was the manner in which they established that I was a shareholder: If I had pre-registered, they would have known that I am a shareholder, but I went there almost at the last minute without any pre-registration. I had to establish that I was a shareholder by logging into my brokerage app on my smartphone and showing that I did indeed own Tesla stock (in my name).

Roadster II at the Tesla Shareholder Meeting

An interesting fact that came out was that Tesla is experimenting with networking about 50,000 residential PowerWalls in Australia. One can imagine the possibilities: Subject, of course, to transmission losses (and any regulatory considerations) 50,000*14 = 700,000 kWh worth of energy is available in an emergency to many of those 50,000 homes!

Another fact is that the specification Tesla put out last year for the Roadster II -- 0-60 mph in 1.9s, top speed of 250+ mph, 620-mile range -- was just for the base model! One can only imagine what the premium model would have!!

Summary? I'll continue to be long on Tesla stock. Tesla is doing well on the EV front, expects to generate good gross margin on energy storage. There was not much talk on solar energy generation except for a brief mention of a home with solar roof ...