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2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

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It's a side effect of designing the factory with greater care and attention to detail than the products it produces. Of course if you do that it allows you to replicate the factory's at a reduced incremental cost.

[joke mode]
Tesla wait?! You are kidding, right?
[/joke mode]
I would guess Tesla thought of GF as a product because they are going to be building factories at a completely unprecedented rate. I'm not sure it's ever been achieved in a capital intensive industry like this one.
 
can't teach an old dog new tricks ;)

I wish, WISH, client management was as easy as explained in CFA books...

Although, rereading they are going to buy TSLA with the 3,500, not sell 3,500 less of TSLA they have. So the decision is what to do with cash on hand when you want to get a Tesla, I can see buying the car and guaranteeing ability to pay vs buying TSLA and hoping it appreciates as payments are due. If the money was already in TSLA, the physiological effect of FOMO/ opportunity cost feels different.
 
Although, rereading they are going to buy TSLA with the 3,500, not sell 3,500 less of TSLA they have. So the decision is what to do with cash on hand when you want to get a Tesla, I can see buying the car and guaranteeing ability to pay vs buying TSLA and hoping it appreciates as payments are due. If the money was already in TSLA, the physiological effect of FOMO/ opportunity cost feels different.

I would fire him as a client if he asked me to sell TSLA. I've done that before.
 
Ok, that's too much coffee for you.

It is an interesting question. Eventually the supply chain of everything Tesla uses needs to double just as quickly as Tesla doubles. So pretty much anything can become a bottleneck at high enough scale.

One way to think about this is the learning curve. For example as the cumulative installation of solar doubles, the cost of solar per Watt comes down about 22%. This is very fast learning, and it is why solar is able to scale so quickly for so long, decades. Battery packs also are on a learning curve, and it may even be steeper than solar according to some researchers. So suppose that as cumulative battery pack production doubles, the producer cost comes down say 30%. On one hand this is very helpful because it allows packs to scale very fast as prices falls, but it may also impose a speed limit too. BNEF observes that pack prices are falling 20% per year. At 20%/y price decline it takes 1.60 years (=ln(.7)/ln(.8)) to achieve a 30% price reduction. So if the learning curve is at 30%, then the cumulative supply of battery packs can double every 1.60 years, which is an annual growth rate of 54% = 2^(1/1.60) - 1. So what happens if you try to grow supply much faster than that, say 100%/y? It could be that you simply accelerate annual decline in battery prices. But you could get ahead of the technology gains and obtain a lower learning curve rate. For example, costs may decline just 20% with every doubling of cumulative production which would remain in line with the 20% annual decline observed, but with production doubling every year. If you get seriously ahead of the technology gains and push say mineral supplies to double, you may see mineral prices spike up so fast that it undermine any gains with your technology. So in the extreme you could see the cost of batteries actually increase y/y instead of falling 20%/y. So it is hard to say how the learning curve changes if you push production to double faster.

I think mineral prices are a key constraint. If tight mineral supplies cause the annual pack cost to decline at a slower rate than 20%/y, then we may be trying to grow the pack supply too fast. Technology gains are critical because we need better technology to get better battery economy and performance from a given set of mineral prices. For example, if cobalt were ridiculously expensive, then we would need technology gains that show how to get more battery from less cobalt. We would also need higher investment in developing new cobalt resources, but that comes with higher prices. But without that specific sort of technology gain to minimize exposure to cobalt prices, then pressing the pack supply to keep doubling drives cobalt prices even higher. At some point a pack becomes too expensive for demand to keep doubling annually. For example, solar module prices have actually gone up about 25% because the supply of polysilicon has become tight. So this can slow up the growth of solar this year. More investment in polysilicon resource development and more research into how to minimize polysilicon per Watt are both needed to get solar prices back on track with long-term price declines, otherwise annual volume growth rates may slow. Mineral resources can be grown at certain rate for a certain price. To get them to grow faster, you have to pay a higher price. Technology gains are thus needed to avoid paying a mineral price higher that what pack demand can bear.

Got it; thank you.
  1. Are you most worried about Cobalt? Any other mineral specifically?
  2. Can Tesla develop battery tech without Cobalt?
  3. Cobalt prices nearly tripled in the last year. How quickly can miners bring additional supply online?
  4. Has Tesla been buying mineral rights? This can be a very important competitive advantage just like prime land is for homebuilders.
 
My dad was that way. I had to convince him to take a 0% loan in 1984 instead of cashing in 6% cds. First car loan he ever had.

When I was buying my current car, I told the dealership's business manager that, "I'll be paying cash." She replied, "No you won't." I asked, "Why?" She answered, "Because you'll get an additional $1300 rebate. Just pay off the loan in full a month from now with no prepayment penalty." That's what I did. I assume she received a commission for selling the loan. ;)
 
Got it; thank you.
  1. Are you most worried about Cobalt? Any other mineral specifically?
  2. Can Tesla develop battery tech without Cobalt?
  3. Cobalt prices nearly tripled in the last year. How quickly can miners bring additional supply online?
  4. Has Tesla been buying mineral rights? This can be a very important competitive advantage just like prime land is for homebuilders.

1) I am most worried about Cobalt. Chile has given Albemarle massive new lithium brine concessions. Albemarle and SQM are also ramping up production in Argentina( with a new free market President allowing profits to be repatriated).

2) Obviously yes. Elon said recently he thinks there is one new chemistry that may be a game changing breakthrough. I think he was talking about the John Goodenough fronted sodium glass battery invented at the University of Texas at Austin.

3) Cobalt prices have risen in large part by hedge funds speculating on cobalt. Not primarily on increased demand from end users.

4) I don't think so but not sure. Elon has said Tesla was "talking to the miners directly." In order to sign long term deals where price volatility risk would be shared between Tesla and the mining companies. Cutting out the middleman, the spot market makers in London.
 
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When I was buying my current car, I told the dealership's business manager that, "I'll be paying cash." She replied, "No you won't." I asked, "Why?" She answered, "Because you'll get an additional $1300 rebate. Just pay off the loan in full a month from now with no prepayment penalty." That's what I did. I assume she received a commission for selling the loan. ;)
You would probably-I say probably- do better keeping the loan (<2%?) and investing the cash in TSLA!
 
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