2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[gene]

Audie-on-the-road on Friday. I'd better be able to listen to that TED Talk!

Audie and Jenny, have a safe drive. Are you taking the Cassair Hwy? It's always been my preferred choice.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

I have been displaying my car at car shows between 2 and 5 times a month for nearly 3 years. Mostly because I believe in the mission of the company, but partially because it's just plain fun. Even in a decent sized metropolitan area of Florida where Teslas are not exactly rare, the number of people who have no idea is simply staggering. So many hard core "car people" have walked up and asked "What is that?" Almost inevitably followed by "Who makes it." The awareness of Tesla, and by extension, the capability of BEVs is still ridiculously low. I'm doing my part to educate the public and encourage other Tesla owners to do the same.

Also in that vein, every time I'm in "pole position" at a red light, I take the opportunity to educate other drivers on the benefits of electric power. Even my lowly RWD 85 makes the point quite well.

Heck, my S60 can beat my (manual though) Porsche 911 Turbo, at least first 20-50 meters

 

[DurandalAI]

On a robot related note, if there are 467 of these Kuka robots being installed, how does that compare to what Tesla has for the S/X lines?
According to Wikipedia, there are 160.
Tesla Factory - Wikipedia
So, 2.9x the number of robots, if the 160 number is correct.
How many lines will this supply? If more of the process is being automated, it might be safe to say this will be enough robots for 2 assembly lines?

 

[geneclean55]

Hopefully this guy didn't violate any NDAs with his photos. And if so, hopefully they don't fire him until he's done!

Yeah, was kinda hesitant about posting although of course he started it, and the link was already up on stocktwits. Hope he doesn't get in trouble though.

 

[RobStark]

"The Southeast's best outdoor and gun trading community!"

I would have never found those Kuka pics on my own.

Nope, not in a million years.

 

[generalenthu]

So we have our answer, shorts have not received Elon's message about stormy weather, and if Q1 is as good as Elon has let on, they will run for the exits.

The story of the shorts is quite interesting over the last 6 months or so. Short interest bottomed out at 26,213,855 shares on August 31, 2016 at ~$210 and was rising for a couple months (some of the rise is likely due to SolarCity shorts continuing to short Tesla) before peaking on November 30th with 35,687,317 shares at ~$180 (this is the period that jesselivenomore is referring to as the period of "irrational depression" due to uncertainty about the Solarcity acquisition). Then, as Tesla rallied, bears were rational and exited their positions, realizing that they had their time in the green during the extended downtrend in Tesla. So short interest went down to 31,012,918 shares on February 28, 2017 at ~$245. Since then, shorts seem to have held and even added to their positions as short interest has slightly swelled to 31,584,047 on April 15 while Elon warned of stormy weather and Tesla has blown past $300. Seems like a set-up for a light squeeze.

I would estimate that the hedging associated with the latest convertible offering is about a million shares. So should not really consider the short position to have increased since 245.

 

[geneclean55]

On a robot related note, if there are 467 of these Kuka robots being installed, how does that compare to what Tesla has for the S/X lines?
According to Wikipedia, there are 160.
Tesla Factory - Wikipedia
So, 2.9x the number of robots, if the 160 number is correct.
How many lines will this supply? If more of the process is being automated, it might be safe to say this will be enough robots for 2 assembly lines?

So they will be producing the model Y concurrently after all

You sly dog, Elon

 

[geneclean55]

"The Southeast's best outdoor and gun trading community!"

I would have never found those Kuka pics on my own.

Nope, not in a million years.

I am eagerly anticipating the Electrek article currently underway

 

[Reciprocity]

There will be replays of the ted talk including elon's interview replayed this Sunday at theatres nationwide. Check the Ted talk website and/ your local theatre. I'm seeing it Sunday at 3pm in Lincolnshire, IL IMAX if anyone wants to get together and do a toga tesla party around the theatre

Hell yeah, Toga, Toga, Toga... On the other hand, you don't want to see me in a Toga.

 

[MitchJi]

View attachment 224439 TESLA

Check this out (before it gets taken down maybe).
He says he is there for 7.5 weeks to install/test the kuka robots for the M3 line. 467 of them....

So M3 line ready to manufacture on June 16?

Thanks!

I grabbed all of his text posts:

467 robots and 21 KL slides. Slide is basically a horizontal track that is level to .01 of a millimeter.

I am a Field Service Engineer for Kuka Robotics. I am here at Tesla for 7.5 weeks to help set up and commission 467 robots and 21 KL slides. Right now I am installing a separate cable for an external axis.

From what I understand, these are for the new M3 line. The robots are getting mounted up high and down low.

Downloaded all the photos.. on my work laptop!! I wouldn't visit that site again from work. Why are the robots mounted so high ?? (Page 2 pic). Alien Dreadnaught 0.5 ?

Could you post or PM the photos? I got an error message except for thumbnails and I don't want to register on that site:

Cool man! Try to convert a few antigun folks while you are there. And if they don't convert you know what you must do.\
Rape them violently with a shotgun then dismember them with one of those fancy robots?

Well I was gonna say rape with the robot and dismembered with a shotgun but, potato, tomato

On a robot related note, if there are 467 of these Kuka robots being installed, how does that compare to what Tesla has for the S/X lines?
According to Wikipedia, there are 160.
Tesla Factory - Wikipedia
So, 2.9x the number of robots, if the 160 number is correct.
How many lines will this supply? If more of the process is being automated, it might be safe to say this will be enough robots for 2 assembly lines?

IMO extremely unlikely! Alien Dreadnaught will use a lot more small tightly placed robots.

 

[kenliles]

EM conversion of SolarCity Notes to TSLA shares
Tesla - Statement of Changes of Beneficial Ownership

'The number denoted represents $10,000,000 of the Zero Coupon Senior Notes due 2020 of SolarCity Corporation (the "Notes"), of which the reporting person acquired $10,000,000 in principal amount on December 7, 2015. In accordance with the terms of such Notes, the reporting person converted $10,000,000 of the Notes into 33,333 shares of Tesla common stock at a conversion price of $300.00 per share.'

 

[BornToFly]

Compact Entry Level RWD/AWD Luxury Sedans.
Mercedes Class
BMW 3 Series
Cadillac ATS
Lexus IS

Compact Entry Level FWD/AWD Luxury Sedans
Audi A4 (tarted up Jetta)
Acura ILX (tarted up Civic)

Midsize Entry Level Luxury FWD/AWD Sedans

Lexus ES(tarted up Camry)
Acura TLX (tarted up Accord)

Midsize Luxury RWD/AWD Sedans.
BMW 5 Series
Mercedes E Class
Cadillac CTS
Lexus GS


Compact Luxury sedans totaled 516k in 2016 in the USA.
Midsize Luxury sedans totaled 308k in the 2016 in the USA.
Mainstream Midsize sedans totaled 2.1M in 2016 in the USA.

Total Auto Market in the USA was 17.5M in 2016 in the USA.

I love seeing these kinds of numbers for just a SINGLE country. When you think that in 10-20 years all 17.5M will be electric, I don't think that a few thousand Bolts will hurt Tesla in any way. But, I'm not an analyst, so what do I know....

 

[FredTMC]

This is my favorite of the bunch he posted

Looks like the actual assembly line "tunnel" (white pedestals)

Look at robots up high on pedestal. Neat

unclear to me whether this is the "robotic weld assembly line" that creates the body-in-white OR part of the "final assembly line"

Maybe some smart person can figure it out

 

[geneclean55]

I remember a while back Musk saying, or maybe it was Kuka saying that getting the robots in place by July 2017 would be tough.
Looks like things are going well.

 

[BornToFly]

View attachment 224445

This is my favorite of the bunch he posted

Looks like the actual assembly line "tunnel" (white pedestals)

Look at robots up high on pedestal. Neat

unclear to me whether this is the "robotic weld assembly line" that creates the body-in-white OR part of the "final assembly line"

Maybe some smart person can figure it out

I'm sure there is no way that all those robots can possibly build more cars than the old human lines from the old Nummi plant.... The shorts are right - no way Tesla can build more than 500,000 cars in the Fremont plant, even if they make the plant bigger (which they are). I better sell all my shares and start shorting!

 

[FredTMC]

 

[zdriver]

There will be replays of the ted talk including elon's interview replayed this Sunday at theatres nationwide. Check the Ted talk website and/ your local theatre. I'm seeing it Sunday at 3pm in Lincolnshire, IL IMAX if anyone wants to get together and do a toga tesla party around the theatre

No Tesla (yet), but since it's only a bit over an hour away from me, there's a fair chance I'll be there.

 

[vgrinshpun]

View attachment 224445

This is my favorite of the bunch he posted

Looks like the actual assembly line "tunnel" (white pedestals)

Look at robots up high on pedestal. Neat

unclear to me whether this is the "robotic weld assembly line" that creates the body-in-white OR part of the "final assembly line"

Maybe some smart person can figure it out

Fred, could you post other pictures?

It is interesting that whatever line this is, it will seem to have *two* separate parallel "tunnels", not just one. May be it is modular in that the production capacity can be increased not only by increasing speed of the line, but also adding parallel "tunnel(s)".

 

[vgrinshpun]

I am really disappointed not seeing master robots installing the production line robots!

 

[Mike Smith]

I see they're leaving all the tags on so they can return them after the July media tour. This is clearly another Potemkin village.