2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[22522]

What is fishy is that the article claimed the capital authorization happened in May, but by the end of August Tesla will have received parts for 12,000 Model 3's. Given the hand production rate quoted they won't be able to have 12,000 batteries completed by the end of August. And it is highly unlikely they will have a new automated production line built and installed just 3 months after committing the capital. Just saying...

It is difficult to not agree with you.

The only explanation I know is that there was a resource constraint - maybe the more visible Fremont factory.

 

[Reciprocity]

What is fishy is that the article claimed the capital authorization happened in May, but by the end of August Tesla will have received parts for 12,000 Model 3's. Given the hand production rate quoted they won't be able to have 12,000 batteries completed by the end of August. And it is highly unlikely they will have a new automated production line built and installed just 3 months after committing the capital. Just saying...

It very well would have been an issue if needing to fully validate the pack in actual cars and in crashes and in bad weather. They certainly would have tested many aspects in the lab and in model S mules. But when you are building something to automate the manufacture of the final product, you have to have the final product finalized.

I again wonder how packs are assembled today for S/X as they make over 2k per week today.

 

[geneclean55]

It very well would have been an issue if needing to fully validate the pack in actual cars and in crashes and in bad weather. They certainly would have tested many aspects in the lab and in model S mules. But when you are building something to automate the manufacture of the final product, you have to have the final product finalized.

I again wonder how packs are assembled today for S/X as they make over 2k per week today.

I am pretty certain that automated pack assembly only began in the summer of last year with Gigafactory facilities coming online (pack assembly NOT production). So, yes Tesla must have been handpacking for at least 1500 cars a week.

 

[dc_h]

Not investing early enough to automate battery pack production is inconsistent with forecasting 2000/week in August and 4000/week in September to parts suppliers. Something is fishy here.

My math says 150 at one pack per 70 minutes is 7*150 per day, or 1050, without OT. Sounds ok for July. I'm sure not all are assembling, but manual seems ok for the first month or two, or three.

 

[Curt Renz]

Nice piece here from someone obsessed with m3

July Surprise

Thanks, Navin, for alerting us to that thread and the information it contains.

I replied to a similar post in the TSLA Market Action thread. I'll repeat that post of mine here.
________________________________

That thread's initiator is not just some random member of the Model 3 Owners Club message board. TrevP is Trevor Page, the founder and administrator.

Here's a link to Trevor's Model 3 Owners Club channel on YouTube: Model 3 Owners Club

And here's his latest video published earlier today:

 

[scaesare]

Definitely similar "very similar" but different .

That was a bit of an aside. The more pertinent part of that excerpt from the earnings call was the two specific TE cell chemistries.

I'm wondering if you have any references for that no longer being the case?

 

[ValueAnalyst]

Now taking bets on when Elon will first utter the words "the machine that builds the machine that builds the machine."

It wouldn't be too bad if we had a machine that produced a bunch of Gigafactories for $500m a pop in a few months.

 

[landis]

As the pack is made now, the dimension that will matter for the pack height is the cell height, from 65mm to 70mm, seems like a small difference, but who knows

Exactly.
Anyone else remember way back when on one of the calls, from about the time when they changed from 20-70 to 21-70, either EM or JB explicitly said that the 5mm was no big deal for eventual transition into the S/X packs?

So when the time comes, I don't expect the transition to be any more disruptive than other new packs like say the 100 pack for example.

 

[dennis]

How do they make 2400 packs a week today for S/X? Is it fully automated? If not, I'm sure they can do the same until the automated model 3 pack line is up and running. How do they make packs for stationary storage today? Could throw bodies at the problem in the short term. Not ideal but they are pulling forward the gigafactory by about 2 years. That can't be easy and probably compressed a lot of timelines. No room for error. They need an insane amount of cells and packs for everything they are doing. My guess is that they will have both automated and man made for the next couple of years to just make as many packs as possible. It took them 5 years to build 300,000 cars worth of packs. In the next 18 months they are going to build 500,000 cars worth and probably another 100,000 cars worth of powerepacks and powerwalls.

All hands on deck.

Edit: to answer the original question. It's also a bit of a chicken and egg scenario where they needed to make sure the pack was going to work as designed in the car after a cash and so on. Then they could make the commitment to finalize the line. Also, they are pulling forward the gigafactory and production of the model 3 in mass by a couple of years so maybe the original plan allowed for more time to automate the packaging of the cells. We know all of grohmann were all hands on deck for model 3.

It very well would have been an issue if needing to fully validate the pack in actual cars and in crashes and in bad weather. They certainly would have tested many aspects in the lab and in model S mules. But when you are building something to automate the manufacture of the final product, you have to have the final product finalized.

I again wonder how packs are assembled today for S/X as they make over 2k per week today.

My math says 150 at one pack per 70 minutes is 7*150 per day, or 1050, without OT. Sounds ok for July. I'm sure not all are assembling, but manual seems ok for the first month or two, or three.

Well it is good to hear that everything is A-OK with pack production for the Model 3. Must be time to load up on more TSLA.

 

[MP3Mike]

I'm wondering if you have any references for that no longer being the case?

How about the fact that they no longer offer two different version of the Powerwall: daily vs. backup/monthly

 

[scaesare]

As the pack is made now, the dimension that will matter for the pack height is the cell height, from 65mm to 70mm, seems like a small difference, but who knows, look at Samsung's exploding battery issue, a few mm can make all the difference. But it's not like Tesla just discovered the 2170 size in 2015/2016. I'm sure it's been on their roadmap longer than that, and it's more than likely that they would have made room for it at some point during MS design/redesign.

One of the pack teardown videos (wk057's?), revealed that there was roughly 1/4" between the bottom of the battery modules and the bottom pan of the pack.

It so happens that, if that estimate is accurate, it works out to a bit over 6mm of dead space under each module. If that space is not there to allow some margin for the bottom pan to deform in case of impact, then a 5mm taller module might fit without any change to the external dimensions of the pack.

 

[doctoxics]

It very well would have been an issue if needing to fully validate the pack in actual cars and in crashes and in bad weather. They certainly would have tested many aspects in the lab and in model S mules. But when you are building something to automate the manufacture of the final product, you have to have the final product finalized.

I again wonder how packs are assembled today for S/X as they make over 2k per week today.

I recall that more than a year ago Tesla was assembling battery packs for Models S and X in Fremont with robots; entirely robotic.

 

[SwTslaGrl]

For a 21700 S/X redesign perhaps it'll include other improvements like the heat pipe hinted in a patent? It would make the pack increase in z height but be more compact in x and y.

 

[scaesare]

How about the fact that they no longer offer two different version of the Powerwall: daily vs. backup/monthly

Well that's certainly telling.. I wasn't aware of that... thanks.

Is that the case with Powerpacks as well?

 

[sundaymorning]

Robert W. Baird Reaffirms Outperform Rating for Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

 

[GoTslaGo]

Robert W. Baird Reaffirms Outperform Rating for Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

Interesting quote:

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)‘s stock had its “outperform” rating reaffirmed by equities researchers at Robert W. Baird in a note issued to investors on Monday, May 15th, StockTargetPrices.comreports. They presently have a $368.00 target price on the electric vehicle producer’s stock. Robert W. Baird’s price objective would suggest a potential downside of 0.92% from the stock’s current price.

End quote.

 

[Curt Renz]

Robert W. Baird Reaffirms Outperform Rating for Tesla Inc. (TSLA)

Interesting quote:

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)‘s stock had its “outperform” rating reaffirmed by equities researchers at Robert W. Baird in a note issued to investors on Monday, May 15th, StockTargetPrices.comreports. They presently have a $368.00 target price on the electric vehicle producer’s stock. Robert W. Baird’s price objective would suggest a potential downside of 0.92% from the stock’s current price.

End quote.

May 15th?

 

[racer26]

I met Trevor from M3OC a couple weeks or so ago, and talked to him. He was present at the VIP factory tours.

I provide this information to give color on what he may or may not know about the state of the Model 3 line. He told me that he saw the parts of the Model 3 line visible from where the tour went, and that while it obviously wasn't ready yet, work seemed to be progressing at a feverish pace.

Knowing that he saw what it looked like during the tour, and that he is now saying his source is suggesting as many as thousands by the end of July I find interesting. I expect a high degree of reliability in Trevor's source. If there weren't, then Trevor would tend to prefer trusting what he saw with his own eyes and that many of you saw with your own eyes.

 

[dennis]

I met Trevor from M3OC a couple weeks or so ago, and talked to him. He was present at the VIP factory tours.

I provide this information to give color on what he may or may not know about the state of the Model 3 line. He told me that he saw the parts of the Model 3 line visible from where the tour went, and that while it obviously wasn't ready yet, work seemed to be progressing at a feverish pace.

Knowing that he saw what it looked like during the tour, and that he is now saying his source is suggesting as many as thousands by the end of July I find interesting. I expect a high degree of reliability in Trevor's source. If there weren't, then Trevor would tend to prefer trusting what he saw with his own eyes and that many of you saw with your own eyes.

Very interesting...believing what someone told you rather than what you saw with your own eyes.

 

[zdriver]

Just sent PM's to those that wanted the recording of JB's talk this weekend. Anyone else that's active in the investor section and interested, PM me.

(they made it clear they didn't want personal recordings, so I'm just avoiding posting a public link - I'd expect it to show up here someday)