2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[Yggdrasill]

The plug-in share in Sept was actually 48%. Any idea what the cumulative percent of plugins is among all the cars on Norwegian roads?

There's 136,600 BEVs out of ~2.6 million light vehicles, so about 5.3%. I don't know exactly how many plug-in hybrids there are, but something like 7.5% total plug-ins probably isn't very far off.

Where is the tipping point? It seems an average car was paying almost $100k in new car taxes earlier. Plus toll taxes, ferry charges and very high taxes on gasoline. At the Norwegian car sales rate of ~13600 cars a month, that's a loss of $1.5B in revenue every month just in initial taxes. If the entire new car sales are BEVs and PHEVs, how is the govt going to fill this big hole in the budget?

How and why cars are expensive in Norway (tax examples) • r/cars

An average car has never involved $100k in taxes. Registration taxes are around 21 billion NOK per year, so with 155k cars sold per year, an average car is taxed 135k NOK, or 16.7k USD. The median car tax is significantly lower, as larger, more polluting cars pull up the average substantially.

Of course, as the share of BEVs increases, it will become necessary to start taxing them. But we will probably hold off until roughly 2020 before starting the phase-in of taxes. At the same time, I think we'll see fossil car taxes being increased substantially. And then, sometime in the 2025-2030 period, we'll simply start banning fossil cars. Starting with the more polluting non-hybrid diesel cars and then continuing on from there.

Reading ev-sales.blogspot, it seems some places within Norway are curbing incentives as plug-ins reach early majority. Will be interesting how this is tackled.
EV Sales: Norway

I have a feeling that the EV thing will be a repeat of the diesel thing ten years later. The pollution in creating batteries and electricity are not insignificant for most countries. The politicians are as smart as they were 1-2 decades ago.

As a rule of thumb, the environmental impact of making a car is proportional with the sticker price. Obviously the production of a Model X will have a significantly higher environmental impact than making a Tata Nano, but compared to say a Cadillac Escalade, it's not obvious which is worse. And in general, approximately 80% of the environmental footprint of a car is from the use-phase. And with US and EU grid average electricity, driving on electricity is significantly cleaner than driving on fossil fuels. In the EU, a BEV will usually cause ~40% less pollution than an equivalent fossil car, over the lifetime of the car. And this is something that will only improve. Batteries are getting cheaper and cleaner, electricity is getting cheaper and cleaner. While oil is getting dirtier and dirtier, as we increasingly rely on fracking, oil sands, arctic deep sea drilling, etc.

Making car ownership cheaper also promotes more cars that cause more congestion for everyone.

That's true. That's part of why they've implemented congestion tolls in Oslo and Bergen. If you drive into Oslo in rush traffic with a diesel car, you now need to pay 58 NOK, or 7.1 USD. Outside rush traffic hours, it costs 5.9 USD. This is a new system from October 1st. BEVs are still exempt, but the plan is that in 2019, BEVs will start paying 20 NOK in rush traffic hours and 10 NOK outside rush traffic hours.

Edit: I noticed that reddit post has mixed up the tax numbers. The total isn't correct.
But here is another old article, saying Norwegian govt sees the car as a "milking cow". 2/3 of the petrol prices are just taxes.
Oil-rich Norway is taxing on cars

Yes, roughly 2/3 of the fossil fuel prices are taxes. There hasn't been a major revenue hit from the fossil fuel taxes though. As you can see from the fossil fuel sales graph (in millions of liters per month, diesel in red, gasoline in blue, total in yellow):

The revenue hit should grow when the Tesla Semi rolls out in large numbers. Trucking is a major consumer of diesel.

 

[Gerardf]

I still don't buy the rumor of power problems at GF causing major stoppage of work. Anything that is so critical to maintain power for (such as environmental control for the electrolyte) would come with it's own UPS system dedicated to it, not even needing a site-wide PowerPack setup to protect it. Nobody would build such a facility with such equipment and not provide a UPS for it, unless they were extremely irresponsible and pocketing the savings.

I agree. Was trying to remeber if the Gigafactory opening even included a view of PowerPacks.

Below a screenshot of an aerial.
Anybody have a better picture to see if these are Powerpacks ?
There are behind the transformers.

 

[Yggdrasill]

I agree. Was trying to remeber if the Gigafactory opening even included a view of PowerPacks.

Below a screenshot of an aerial.
Anybody have a better picture to see if these are Powerpacks ?
There are behind the transformers.

That's far too tall to be powerpacks. I can't see anything resembling powerpacks here:

That's not to say there aren't any. There could be powerpacks indoors.

 

[mongo]

That's far too tall to be powerpacks. I can't see anything resembling powerpacks here:

That's not to say there aren't any. There could be powerpacks indoors.

I may over simplifying here, but there are definitely PP indoors. That is where they are made . I assume Tesla is doing low cycle count QC on the units before shipping, and longer term testing on a subset for trend analysis. So they would already be wired into GF's power system.

And that is ignoring the cell, module, and pack QC which can be a power buffer (if they use inverters for loads... I will be really sad if they don't)

Edit comma to ... conversion
Edit: for cell and modules, it might make more sense to use a dc-dc converter to HV bus to dc-dc to the unit being charged.
Edit 3: to really be effective, the PP would need switch to isolated from the main feed, otherwise they would backfeed the brown out instead of helping the factory.

 

[jbcarioca]

Nuclear submarines to protect Northern NATO cost money don't you know...
And don't let a Scotsman hear you describe the North Sea Oil as English

A genuine Perthian would not even understand him anyway, I recall dealing with a Perth oilman years ago in the UAE. he brought his own English translator with him. Wise.
Anyway, this subject recalls all the debates about direct and indirect oil subsidies. The fact remains that Norway, Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi are among the few who've really invested for a post-ICE era, or at the least, a post-fossil-production-bonanza future.
From Russia, US, Iran, Saudi, Venezuela, Scotland (UK) much less serious future-proofing.

Now for the BEV booms, slightly different, for lithium:
It still is "Perth", but:
Lithium Australia riding 'biggest change in energy since the Industrial Revolution'

For Tesla, they've already made pretty significant investments in promoting Nevada production but perhaps the bigger story is cobalt:

Still Australia, still Western Australia, well to the East of Perth, but with decent BEV charging options already there and Tesla Destination chargers already in Kalgoorlie right near the Goldfields Museum:

This miner is banking on a cobalt boom

There are plenty of places to go for lithium and cobalt but Australia has already done well sending mined ingredients to China and elsewhere.

Prediction: Some smart people should probably be setting up a gigafactory in WA to produce batteries and packs for use in all the BEV factories being built right now. Doing the value add in WA will make shipping far more efficient and bring back some parts of Australia auto production just as it seems to have finally died.

 

[neroden]

One possibility is because rumors of power quality driven production interruptions are not true...

While this is possible,.... that leak has the ring of truth to it. Furthermore, Tesla was intending to install on-site Powerpacks anyway from day one, although this was delayed, so even the slightest hint that this was an issue should lead to the installation being moved up.

Maybe Panasonic hasn't been telling Tesla that power fluctuations are one cause of the production line shutdowns so they don't know that they need to stabilize the power. "Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" problems are not only very common in companies in general, but Tesla in particular has a substantial record of them. And the leak was emphasizing the problematic corporate culture at Panasonic, which might discourage people from telling Tesla what's happening.

As for the "oh, they must already have UPS for the electrolyte machines, because it would be stupid not to"... that's not sound reasoning. People do stupid ****. This is a very important investing lesson. Even smart people do stupid **** sometimes. Elon's actually done quite a lot of stupid ****. Wise people *correct* these mistakes quickly, and I expect such a mistake to be corrected. But they still make them in the first place.

I should emphasize that I expect all of this stuff to be speed bumps, forgotten in three months. Another investing lesson I learned decades ago on another stock is, don't put *too* much stock in insider reports of chaos, disorganization, and stupid mistakes. A company can tolerate a lot of that for a long time while still doing very well. If the *same* mistake drags on for *four years running* (cough, USB music, cough) it starts to be a permanent problem for the company. But when you hear reports of a new internal problem at a company which has been doing well, odds are they'll get it straightened out within a few months, or at least straightened out enough to be unimportant.

 

[jbcarioca]

While this is possible,.... that leak has the ring of truth to it. Furthermore, Tesla was intending to install on-site Powerpacks anyway from day one, although this was delayed, so even the slightest hint that this was an issue should lead to the installation being moved up.

Maybe Panasonic hasn't been telling Tesla that power fluctuations are one cause of the production line shutdowns so they don't know that they need to stabilize the power. "Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" problems are not only very common in companies in general, but Tesla in particular has a substantial record of them. And the leak was emphasizing the problematic corporate culture at Panasonic, which might discourage people from telling Tesla what's happening.

As for the "oh, they must already have UPS for the electrolyte machines, because it would be stupid not to"... that's not sound reasoning. People do stupid ****. This is a very important investing lesson. Even smart people do stupid **** sometimes. Elon's actually done quite a lot of stupid ****. Wise people *correct* these mistakes quickly, and I expect such a mistake to be corrected. But they still make them in the first place.

We will all be wise to understand your points. They are crucial to deciding the future prospects for Tesla large-scale production.

 

[HG Wells]

The VIN's of October are upon us.

Looks like more VIN numbers are being created.

SEE
Highest production VIN in the wild
#400

This seems pretty promising, on Oct 27, someone had reported up to vin 2145. When I checked these 9 vins had been registered, but vin 2147+ were valid but not registered yet. I spot checked down to vin 2584 from 2639, and from 2147-2151 and they are registered as of today!

Since they keep the every 10 or so vins not being valid and/or registered it would seem they added (registered) about 443 vehicles since yesterday and 9 the day before.

ADVISE: Buy low, sell high.

 

[Ovulation]

Nice! And closer to home too. I used to live around that area. Karpathy has worked wonders.. That Apple guy was definitely not a good fit for the role.

Hmmm I just checked him out in an interview with Andrew Ng, he has a suspicious accent, I hope Elon didn't collude with the Russians.

 

[sweter]

I spoke with a service guy last week (my S was in for its annual service) and asked him about the 3 delay. He said he was at the Fremont factory in September and your theory above is what he said is the reason for the delay. He said they don’t want to release the cars to an area until that area is ready for dealing with the deliveries and service needs.

I don’t know if I believe him but it is interesting to read your post. Did you hear this from a Tesla employee or is it your own theory?

Kinda hard to believe that they would slow down the income and keep the costs high just so that "infrastructure" is there. Cash is king and with cash you can build out that infrastructure faster, so why would they not want to get the cash sooner?

 

[neroden]

I absolutely do not believe that lack of delivery infrastructure is the primary reason for the delay, but I also believe that they would like to avoid delivering cars to an area where they have not gotten the area ready for deliveries and service.

Remember, a lot of problems can be happening at the same time in different parts of the company. The company will be trying to solve all of them simultaneously. Technically, the "cause" of the delay is whichever one is the slowest step this week, but if that one gets fixed, the "cause" is then something else, which was probably already a problem last week. They'll be working on them all at once. I'm actually glad that we're hearing about different problems all over the company (all blamed as "the reason for Model 3 delay"), because it hopefully means that they are solving problems across the whole company (and every department head thinks that THEIR department is under the gun to solve the model 3 delay!!!). The number of different departments which are reporting problems should reduce as time goes on, and the only thing to worry about are the few problems which seem to "stick around" for long periods without signs of improvement...

 

[22522]

Kinda hard to believe that they would slow down the income and keep the costs high just so that "infrastructure" is there. Cash is king and with cash you can build out that infrastructure faster, so why would they not want to get the cash sooner?

Company goals are best met by maximizing deliveries in the 6 month window after the 200,000 US car is delivered. The stretch goal was to cross that threshold on Jan 1, 2018. The need for adjustments made the first part April a better place to cross the threshold on deliveries. This plan allows production in February and March to be pushed into distribution for immediate delivery in April. So the organization is training for delivery excellence in that crucial $7.5K window.

 

[22522]

Hmmm I just checked him out in an interview with Andrew Ng, he has a suspicious accent, I hope Elon didn't collude with the Russians.

Not sure they are applying AI at the right step. It is kind of like they are not looking far enough forward through a corner. AI should be defining the construction line path of the center line. Then the car should track on that as if on rails unless an exception interrupt occurs - like road too narrow, object in road etc.

There are standards on curvature when that center line is constructed. The system does not seem to have those rules implemented yet.

I expect to see this in a future release, but wonder if the radius of curvature is a continually calculated parameter that is always available to check against when "tracing" the centerline of the real road - consider how you would do this by hand in a multi stroke way rather than with a near sighted ball point pen placed 10 ft in front of the car.

That is at least how it looks at this rev. Not looking through the corner far enough to construct a radius rule based path.

 

[dennis]

I spoke with a service guy last week (my S was in for its annual service) and asked him about the 3 delay. He said he was at the Fremont factory in September and your theory above is what he said is the reason for the delay. He said they don’t want to release the cars to an area until that area is ready for dealing with the deliveries and service needs.

I don’t know if I believe him but it is interesting to read your post. Did you hear this from a Tesla employee or is it your own theory?

I spoke to a service manager a few months ago. He told me that from a service perspective the Model S and Model X just happened. OTOH for the past year the first topic in every status meeting has been Model 3 Readiness.

 

[dhrivnak]

I still don't buy the rumor of power problems at GF causing major stoppage of work. Anything that is so critical to maintain power for (such as environmental control for the electrolyte) would come with it's own UPS system dedicated to it, not even needing a site-wide PowerPack setup to protect it. Nobody would build such a facility with such equipment and not provide a UPS for it, unless they were extremely irresponsible and pocketing the savings.

Not sure I agree as the ovens and large processes take huge amounts of energy. I worked in large chemical manufacturing and I am unaware of a critical process that had UPS back up besides the control rooms to help have an orderly shutdown. Shutdowns were VERY costly from a maintenance and product quality point of view. They did not happen often but when they did it took weeks to recover.

 

[ValueAnalyst]

Impressive new autopilot video. The previous versions would quit on almost every bend. Go Karpathy!

Won't let me embed the video halfway, but that's where the best bits start.

The commenter does point to improvements, but the first half is quite scary actually... Lots of disengagements.

Could anyone explain why AP seems to be having so much difficulty with tight and extended curves? That tells me it's not relying much on GPS to foresee/know what's ahead, which would allow the "driver" to know the curve is extended, but almost all on camera vision, which doesn't lead to slow enough speed to turn the corner without sharp steering movements.

Edit: you're right; the second half if quite impressive. Tight and extended curves seems to be most of the problem. Handling interruptions in lane markings nicely. Speed seems high. I wonder if they can slow the car more if GPS data shows tight/extended curves ahead. Still deep in Level 2.

 

[bambam4171]

The commenter does point to improvements, but the first half is quite scary actually... Lots of disengagements.

Could anyone explain why AP seems to be having so much difficulty with tight and extended curves? That tells me it's not relying much on GPS to foresee/know what's ahead, which would allow the "driver" to know the curve is extended, but almost all on camera vision, which doesn't lead to slow enough speed to turn the corner without sharp steering movements.

Edit: you're right; the second half if quite impressive. Tight and extended curves seems to be most of the problem. Handling interruptions in lane markings nicely. Speed seems high. I wonder if they can slow the car more if GPS data shows tight/extended curves ahead. Still deep in Level 2.

Well I guess for a start he is not using it as it is intended currently. AFAIK it is still a system with the intended use of highway driving. Maybe Tesla should consider disabling it outside of those roads to help prevent bad reputation by misuse.

 

[defc0n]

The commenter does point to improvements, but the first half is quite scary actually... Lots of disengagements.

Could anyone explain why AP seems to be having so much difficulty with tight and extended curves? That tells me it's not relying much on GPS to foresee/know what's ahead, which would allow the "driver" to know the curve is extended, but almost all on camera vision, which doesn't lead to slow enough speed to turn the corner without sharp steering movements.

Edit: you're right; the second half if quite impressive. Tight and extended curves seems to be most of the problem. Handling interruptions in lane markings nicely. Speed seems high. I wonder if they can slow the car more if GPS data shows tight/extended curves ahead. Still deep in Level 2.

Yuck, that was painful for me to watch. If it were a human I would know exactly what to tell it: put your eyes on the curb line that's on the direction you are turning into. Forget the other line further away. The only thing you need to care about is where your tires are on the direction you are turning.

Of course, this advice is probably not helpful at all in terms of how autopilot works.

In terms of auto racing, it's a matter of focusing on and getting your tires to hit the apex of the turn. With my background, that's what I would program it to do, and not have it constantly searching for the 2 curb lines and keeping it dead center between them. In a sharp corner situation, its common to not be able to really decipher the outer curb line very well, and like I said, that should be immaterial in terms of how you should drive.

 

[sundaymorning]

The VIN's of October are upon us.

Looks like more VIN numbers are being created.

it would seem they added (registered) about 443 vehicles since yesterday and 9 the day before.

Hopefully they’re starting to crank it up before ER.

 

[geneclean55]

Scrap energy deal - Puerto Rico governor

More impetus for microgrids, I hope...