2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[Mike Smith]

"Rob Penner, chief executive officer of Bison, told Trucknews.com “I was down in Santa Clara earlier and was able to test drive the Tesla “mule” (Tesla tech in a Cascadia) and the performance was really impressive. They have been running this truck for about a year moving their own parts in and out of Nevada with very good performance data."

Tesla semi hits the streets - Truck News

 

[bambam4171]

Very likely you misunderstood what they said. Show me where they said they CANNOT afford. They don't want to. They don't need $2B in bond sales to build 30% of the white elephant in the midddle of nowhere, whose output is yet unknown after 4 years.
.

http://www.handelsblatt.com/unterne...troautos-und-der-mut-zur-luecke/20012772.html
Well they fear the cost is too high.

For the time being, they do not want to hear anything about own battery production. Everything is too unsafe, unclear and far too expensive. Whether Volkswagen, Daimler or BMW, they are all waiting. The establishment of its own production facilities would only be considered - if at all - in the middle of the next decade - with the next generation of batteries, which promise much greater range for electric cars.
...
The high investment costs for a factory, however, cannot be borne by the industry alone. No one can expect a company's CEO to go into advance payments on the back of his shareholders,"he says. "I therefore believe that the state should share the risk."

As you can see they can't do it because they fear they would be killed by their shareholders. This is a clear advantage for Tesla, the have a CEO with a Vision, not just a paid puppet that needs to please everyone.

 

[bambam4171]

what innovations? you guys are just plain silly with your... "Elon the Great... I'm not sure if the human race is ready for your genius!"

seriously guys... they put a battery in a car and then made a stock go through the roof... that's it. the genius is not the technology... it's the marketing.

History of the electric vehicle - Wikipedia

"The invention of the first model electric vehicle is attributed to various people.[2] In 1828, Ányos Jedlik, a Hungarian who invented an early type of electric motor, created a small model car powered by his new motor. In 1834, Vermontblacksmith Thomas Davenport built a similar contraption which operated on a short, circular, electrified track.[3] In 1834, Professor Sibrandus Stratingh of Groningen, the Netherlands and his assistant Christopher Becker created a small-scale electrical car, powered by non-rechargeable primary cells.[4]" )

Yes and because they where so good at it we all drive Jedliks and Davenports now, right? Come on, even you have to admit that before Tesla no one had a package that was desirable. Its IPhone all over: MS had the tech before, but could not create a sexy package that people would use. Steve Jobs had the vision what it takes to make it a bestseller and today few know there was anything before the IPhone. Same with Tesla and this is something most ca CEOs do agree on: Tesla made the EV sexy and only by doing this it grew momentum. If you can't see that I'm at loss.

 

[Mike Smith]

I'm guessing the Model Y reservation price will be $5000, or at least $3000. I don't think they really wanted the Model 3 lineup to be this long, and would have charged more for reservations if they had known. Having a shorter lineup for the Y will be especially important because there will be more competitors by then. They could possibly get 150k reservations for $750M.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

what innovations? you guys are just plain silly with your... "Elon the Great... I'm not sure if the human race is ready for your genius!"

seriously guys... they put a battery in a car and then made a stock go through the roof... that's it. the genius is not the technology... it's the marketing.

Your statement lacks nuance and is IMO incorrect.

There is innovation on several points:
(1) The decision to use relatively inexpensive mass production 18650 Lithium Ion cells was a pretty creative move, because it allowed Tesla to achieve adequate energy density at lower cost.

(2) Tesla’s battery pack mitigated the risk of pack failure by running the coolant loop to each cell, and having every cell wired with its own fuse. This choice is unique compared to other EVs, which use larger prizmatic cells. Nissan’s approach, using the larger cells and air cooling, proved to be an inferior choice compared to Tesla’s method. This was reflected in the quick degradation of LEAF battery packs in hot climates.

(3) Use of OTA updates to improve car functionality and patch firmware bugs. Existing car makers didn’t do this.

(4) 17” touch screen. When Model S was under development in 2009, touch displays of this size and quality did not exist. The much smaller iPhone was it. The first iPad wouldn’t go on sale until 2010. Tesla spent a lot of time working with suppliers to make the huge touch screen work.

(5) Supercharger network. This took DCFC to a whole new level and made convenient long-distance travel finally possible for EVs.

Innovation is not necessarily developing a new technology. Sometimes it is using existing components in novel ways. Famous example: Corning Gorilla Glass existed decades before iPhone. It was Apple that found a use for it in smart phones.

 

[bambam4171]

I'm guessing the Model Y reservation price will be $5000, or at least $3000. I don't think they really wanted the Model 3 lineup to be this long, and would have charged more for reservations if they had known. Having a shorter lineup for the Y will be especially important because there will be more competitors by then. They could possibly get 150k reservations for $750M.

Honestly they could ask for 10k and everybody I know would still rather get inline for Y rather than 3. Sedans are way too unpractical and at least in Europe not desirable.

I just really, really hope he ditches the Falcon wing doors on the Y. Several years in and they still can't get them reliably right in the X.

 

[Gerardf]

One of the invisibles here posted a link to the Toyota truck, hinting at Hydrogen competition.
Interesting in it was the small buffer battery in it. And of course there is also Nikola.

Nikola truck :
Nikola Motor pulls wraps off zero-emissions truck - Truck News
“The battery pack is sized to contain a maximum 320 kW-hr charge. Having such a large capacity allows for reserve power for hill climbing.”


Toyota truck :
Toyota’s fuel cell semi to begin drayage hauling this month
“The Project Portal heavy-duty truck concept generates more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from those two Mirai fuel cell stacks and a 12kWh battery, a relatively small battery to support class 8 load operations. The concept’s gross combined weight capacity is 80,000 lbs.”


Toyota, good luck hauling 80.000 lbs up hill with that 12 kWh buffer between the PEM Fuel-cells and the motors. Good chance driver will not even make it to the top with that. Image than have the choice between trying to turn back while going uphill (no go !!) or call some tow truck that can tow you up there. (In 2019 a Tesla Semi could help you out then ;-) )

Nikola, good choice to have a 320 kWh buffer so you can get uphill.
However, in order to save 180 kWh / 680 kWh batteries compared to Tesla Semi, a big PEM fuel cell has to be installed, very large high pressure expensive high quality tanks and (last but not least) a nationwide H2 infrastructure powered by 4x as many solar panels to reach the same energy as Tesla needs. Lets be optimistic and make that 20-25 cents for each kWh. I also bet batteries will come down in costs quicker than a fuell-cell system.
Maybe reconsider and go back to initial plan ?

TLDR:
Game over, fool-cells indeed, also for use in trucks.

 

[SPadival]

With all of these innovations occurring so rapidly, anyone else concerned that Tesla's 5-7 year roadmap might bring about mass unemployment in several transportation and energy industries (specifically in CA first)?

I'm a very long-term Tesla investor, but I'm a human being. Wondering what can be done to proactively help others that are going to be affected by these inventions and to get them back on track in the newly evolved industries or into another one altogether.

As the great man himself has advocated - Universal Basic Income

 

[Dynastar]

It's not just manufacturing. There's less work for lawyers as AI can do discovery work much faster. Radiologists will also lose out to AI. Jobs in the financial sector, on and on.

If the market was rational lots of jobs in the financial sector would already be gone, so maybe humans will stick around for longer then people think...

 

[mmd]

Some poster of this forum pooh-poohed Toyota semi horsepower and torque. But (s)he failed to mention what Tesla semi numbers are. Lo and behold! They are missing on Tesla semi page. The Reserve button and dollar figures are very visible, but key power numbers are missing! Last time Tesla made claims about horsepower of P85D, it had to eat its own words and pay out customers in some lawful country in Europe for false advertising.

Semi | Tesla

Neither did the poster explore that 670 horsepower and 1325 lb ft is comparable and perhaps better than most diesel semi. The poster just imagined that the largest real car company did no homework before creating their semi truck, and his wisdom exceeds collective wisdom of Toyota engineers!

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_horsepower_of_a_semi_engine

What is the average horsepower of a semi engine?
Answered by The WikiAnswers® Community
Usually around 200-400HP. Horsepower can basically be imagined as how fast the engine is running, while torque is the actual rotational force. The trucks have big engines, which means they run slow. A typical semi engine may only run up to 2,500RPM, which means low relative horsepower. Rather, they produce a lot of torque. That 250HP semi may be putting down upwards of 1,000 ft-lbf of torque. Compare that to a Honda Civic 155HP / 139ft-lbf [K203Z].

Toyota Rolls Out Hydrogen Semi Ahead Of Tesla's Electric Truck

“The power is large enough and the drivability and performance, everything, has to meet the current diesel truck requirement,” Toyota Senior Executive Engineer Takehito Yokoo told Forbes.
..
Over the past year, Toyota engineers spent a great deal of time with trucking companies at the Southern California port to learn the daily requirements of the vehicles they use, according to Craig Scott, national manager for Toyota’s U.S. advanced technology group.

“They had done a lot of pilot programs with CNG and electric vehicles and they all had the same complaints: ‘It’s not really feasible. We can’t replace our diesel trucks with these because we can’t refuel quickly or the performance of the truck isn’t good enough,’” Scott told Forbes. “We thought great, the fuel cell handles both of those.”

The poster then (optimistically!) assumed 25 cents/KWh for generating H2, but forgot that Tesla is giving away electricity at 7c/KWh to its semi trucks.
===
But the poster was too afraid to answer the core point raised by my previous post. Which is ???
Do the semi prototypes even work as described, or are they again the solar tile type product that was nothing more than glass slabs with stick on colorful paper?
We have to see the semi fictitious semi product (half fictitious, half product) in action in the wild. Hey, what better place than to put it at LA port alongside the Toyota truck? Someone please tweet Elon. LA is close to Elon's home and will greatly help with the pollution at the port.

 

[Remus]

Yes and because they where so good at it we all drive Jedliks and Davenports now, right? Come on, even you have to admit that before Tesla no one had a package that was desirable. Its IPhone all over: MS had the tech before, but could not create a sexy package that people would use. Steve Jobs had the vision what it takes to make it a bestseller and today few know there was anything before the IPhone. Same with Tesla and this is something most ca CEOs do agree on: Tesla made the EV sexy and only by doing this it grew momentum. If you can't see that I'm at loss.

Hell No!!!

Jobs is NOT an engineer but Musk is! The technology was NOT there before!!!! Jobs is a charismatic presenter. Musk just let the product speak for themselves.

It is like Anybody can chain thousands of cheap PC together but before Google nobody can use those PCs to do amazing things. They combined existing technology like grid computing and pexos protocol, and the results is a revolutionary computing paradigm that overturned the entire industry over its head. It’s their core technology, not the packaging!

Just like Google, Tesla has its core technology. That is why traditional car manufacturers are doomed because till today they still have no idea what hit them. They are working on some 1-200 mile “Tesla killers”. When Tesla is looking at 600mile range.

 

[SPadival]

VW, BMW und Daimler: Elektroautos und der „Mut zur Lücke“
Well they fear the cost is too high.

For the time being, they do not want to hear anything about own battery production. Everything is too unsafe, unclear and far too expensive. Whether Volkswagen, Daimler or BMW, they are all waiting. The establishment of its own production facilities would only be considered - if at all - in the middle of the next decade - with the next generation of batteries, which promise much greater range for electric cars.
...
The high investment costs for a factory, however, cannot be borne by the industry alone.

Wow. This is equivalent to procrastinating on how to re-arrange the deck chairs as the ship is sinking and then finally asking for government rescue as the bubbles are rising to the top.

As you can see they can't do it because they fear they would be killed by their shareholders. This is a clear advantage for Tesla, the have a CEO with a Vision, not just a paid puppet that needs to please everyone.

You are giving us TSLA shareholders too little credit

 

[Anstandswauwau]

VW, BMW und Daimler: Elektroautos und der „Mut zur Lücke“

1. German car industry is waiting for their current supply chain partners – Continental and Bosch are mentioned – to supply them with batteries.
2. Bosch is said to decide by the end of this year if they want to enter the battery production market.
3. Bosch expects this to be the biggest investment in their corporate history ever.
4. They're still undecided as they've sunk €3bn+ due to misinvestement in the solar industry.
5. Bosch would rather like to produce solid state- instead of lithium-ion batteries but those are still way off (2020+ IIRC).
6. Terra E, a consortium consisting of Thyssen-Krupp, Manz and M+W, plan to produce 34 GWh worth of batteries (for approx. 650k cars) in two factories in Germany until 2028.

Meanwhile at LG Chem:

 

[Starno]

I fear the future is likely to be ugly. The advent of AI and ubiquitous robotics could be managed but history tells us it will not be. The super wealthy who have already stacked the deck in their favor will own most of the robots. The wealth the robots create will not be shared with the masses. This will be a vicious circle with even more of the wealth going to the owner class. The obvious but politically forbidden (at least in the US) solution would be a basic wage and the encouragement of limited human fecundity. I despair just thinking about it.

I don't agree about the fact that the wealthy with benefits from AI and robots and not the mass.

Today a smartphone is as powerful as a 500 000 dollars computer 40 years ago. And almost everyone has a smartphone, it's not something only rich people have.

-------------------------

AI is dangerous in itself, not because of the lack of distribution.

 

[bambam4171]

Hell No!!!

Jobs is NOT an engineer but Musk is! The technology was NOT there before!!!! Jobs is a charismatic presenter. Musk just let the product speak for themselves.

So, which technology was not there before? E-Motors? Batteries? Chargers? E-mobiles? All been done in one way or other before. However not in the way Tesla did, which is exactly my point. It is the sum of things that is greater than the individual piece.

Yes Musk is the closer to tech than Jobs, however I think they both are/where pretty close. If you don't agree please have a look at what Jobs has done by starting Apple and Next. Being close to tech I don't really see as the big impact. Having a vision and following up on that without cutting corners is. There are thousands of engineers out there that know more about EV than Musk I would bet, most of which likely work at Tesla, so how come we did not see thousands of EV startups? Yes, vision (and of course money, which again Musk got by having a vision first in zip2 and paypal)!

 

[avoigt]

Another 10 Semis reserved....

Tesla’s Semi already making waves at LA, Long Beach port complex — 2 years before its release – Daily Breeze

 

[avoigt]

VW, BMW und Daimler: Elektroautos und der „Mut zur Lücke“
Well they fear the cost is too high.

For the time being, they do not want to hear anything about own battery production. Everything is too unsafe, unclear and far too expensive. Whether Volkswagen, Daimler or BMW, they are all waiting. The establishment of its own production facilities would only be considered - if at all - in the middle of the next decade - with the next generation of batteries, which promise much greater range for electric cars.
...
The high investment costs for a factory, however, cannot be borne by the industry alone. No one can expect a company's CEO to go into advance payments on the back of his shareholders,"he says. "I therefore believe that the state should share the risk."

As you can see they can't do it because they fear they would be killed by their shareholders. This is a clear advantage for Tesla, the have a CEO with a Vision, not just a paid puppet that needs to please everyone.

BMW announces today to invest 237 m€ into a new unit to understand the Batterie technology. This says all. They are many years behind don't really understand what they buy in terms of Batteries today and try to understand the market.

This is a shame!

 

[Gerardf]

<snap>

I am replying to MMD, who wrote something ' interesting' (and a lot of 'other stuff').

In a long post his main defense (I quote : "my core point raised") seems to be: What if Tesla is telling lies about the specification of the Semi and it does not work. For me the 'interesting' part is to to get confirmation that already the only real argument against the Tesla semi left is hoping & praying that Tesla is telling lies about its specification. I think MMD is not alone in that, the same hoping & praying might already be going on in the board rooms of other truck makers.

However it also means MMD insinuates Tesla is telling lies in both official public presentations and on their website. Such position makes any discussion useless. Actually such is libelous. Maybe MMD wants to go there in reaching for last straws, but I will not.

So I write the rest mainly for the other readers here.

For starters, I was not comparing Toyota and Nikola Semi's to other Diesel trucks, but to the Tesla Semi,. I will stick to that, as I have no interest in comparing non-Tesla products with Diesel trucks, at least not on this Tesla forum.

- MMD complains that we do not know some key-specs of the Tesla-Semi, like the maximum power. Lets make an educated guess.
Tesla-Semi has 4 model-3 motors, these are 258 HP each. In the truck Tesla probably pushes it a bit further, but it is well over 1.000 HP anyway. Further on in this post I refer to a source that comes to the same conclusion.

- In the electricity price I was making a comparison, not aiming at exact absolute numbers. We were discussing powering a hydrogen car from Solar. This means you will need approx 4x as much energy from the solar system as a result of all inefficiencies in the hydrogen chain, there is no way around that. Thus, assuming Nikola uses the same panels as Tesla (who will produces these themselves in 2019 when they start delivery of the trucks) Nikola (and Toyota) will need 4x as many solar panels and space, at easily 4x as high cost.
So on competitive position on cost to power the trucks : Game, set & match for Tesla.


On the Toyota truck and the 670 HP specification you were referring to.

I assume you have an understanding how FC cars work, and why they have a buffer battery. FC's are most happy delivering a continuous flow of electricity, they are bad in delivering high peak load. So for peak loads, the system has to draw from the battery. Nikola decided on a 320 kWh for that, and Toyota 12 kWh.

As stated in the article the Toyota truck it uses two Mirai Fuel Cells. The new Toyota Mirai FC Stack achieve a maximum output of 114 kW (153 hp). (Source, Wikipedia). There are two of these in the truck, so 2x = 228 kW (306 hp).
This means, for continuous use, the Toyota truck can deliver a maximum of 300 hp, as the Fuel cells are limited to that. Effectively it is an 300 HP truck, with a peak power of 670 HP.

For the truck to reach its specification of 670 hp, it will have to draw Power from the buffer battery.
In that case more than half of the power has to come from the buffer battery. Let's be nice to Toyota and assume it is exactly half

This means, that other 228 kW will have to come from the battery. Assuming 100% of that 12 kW battery is available for use, it can deliver that power for a maximum time of 12/228 = 0,05 hour = 180 seconds (3 minutes). Well, in real life use it will of course be less than that actually. Remember the 80.000 lb trucks crawling uphill Elon mentioned, ? The Toyota truck will be one of those. If it makes it.


Comparison to Tesla-Semi.

Tesla officially stated that it can drive the 80.000 lb truck uphill at 5% ramp at 65 mph. Continuous speed.
That requires a total of 1600 hp continously (1,2 MW).
And it can do that for almost one hour before the 1 MWh (or 1,2 MWh) battery is depleted.. WOW !

(I did not redo the calculation, so I am not sure if the Semi indeed has 1600 HP. Source for this : scroll down to MegaWatts).
Tesla's Electric Semi is a Mega Truck > ENGINEERING.com

And it gets better. After driving that almost one hour uphill with an 80.000 lb Semi at an 5% angle (if you can find such a mountain ;-) ) you reached the top, and will go downhill. Now you get a very significant part of that 1 MWh energy back (maybe as much as 60-80% !!) to continue your journey to the final destination.

In Nikola's case, they get about 30% back in their 320 kWh battery.

TheToyota's Hydrogen truck however gets a " full 12 kWh" back on that long downhill drive. Maximum.
To get rid of the rest of the 1 MWh breaking energy it will have turn it into heat in the brakes (and probably replace these brakes once it reaches the village downhill.

TLDR:
- Tesla's semi can deliver a power continuously that is 4x higher than Toyota truck's 3-minute peak power, and almost 6x more than Toyota's continuous power.
- Tesla has unbeatable power costs compared to hydrogen trucks

@ MMD, again, I will not respond to your post now your core argument is that Tesla is telling lies.

Edit:
P.S. And on Tesla and the LA port, see 2 posts above this one.

 

[Mike Smith]

Great piece from Tom Randall:

Tesla’s Newest Promises Break the Laws of Batteries

 

[mongo]

Tesla officially stated that it can drive the 80.000 lb truck uphill at 5% ramp at 65 mph. Continuous speed.
That requires a total of 1600 hp continously (1,2 MW).
And it can do that for almost one hour before the 1 MWh (or 1,2 MWh) battery is depleted.. WOW !

(I did not redo the calculation, so I am not sure if the Semi indeed has 1600 HP. Source for this : scroll down to MegaWatts).
Tesla's Electric Semi is a Mega Truck > ENGINEERING.com

1600 was their guess for power to hit 0-60 in 20 seconds (based on a ratio with other trucks).

Based on 65MPH, 80k pounds, 5% grade, it needs to put out 518kW for the incline in addition to the normal drag of 1.5-2kWh/mile. So high end of rate 650kW / 870 HP.

Speed × grade × mass × gravity =
29.4 m/s × 5% × 36364kg x 9.8 m/s^2 = 517.8 kJ/s
= 0.144 kWh/s ×60 × 60 = 518kWh/h = 518kW
+ 2 kWh/mile ×65/60 = 130kW

My power number for acceleration is 768 kW or 1029 HP average not including air resistance. As has been corrected by others, at 0 speed you get 0 HP, so actual top end HP depends on the acceleration curve.