Battery Pack Costs Plus Overlooked or Underappreciated Items from Q4 Call

[MitchJi]

If Tesla is really poised for $70/kWh by end of the year, this can go a long ways toward improving cash flow. Once they've got volume for Model 3, what is prevent them from using new battery in Model S/X. Imagine the 100kWh pack cost dropping from say $14k to $7k. On say 100k/y Model S/X, this is a savings up to $700M that goes directly to bottom line.

Also in the shareholder letter, "We had our highest ever Q1 for [Model S and X] orders. With demand exceeding supply, we are making considerable progress with margin improvements." So could these margin improvement include battery production costs?

Yes!

With so much attention right now on Model 3, Tesla could be making some really strong gains with Model S/X that analysts are not paying attention to.

Some information about battery pack technology:
Luna Cycle Announces Wire Bonded Ebike Battery Packs

The M3 teardown:

My opinion is that Tesla blundered with the M3 pack problems. And they still have a lot to learn about automobile production. But overall they’v focused on battery costs and what they have accomplished GM and Mercedes believe isn’t possible. So I believe that it’s just a matter of time until they nail their alien dreadnaught technology.

I’d like to know how much and when they plan to incorporate what they are learning about production to the next iteration of the M3, the semi, the Roadster, and the MS-MX. If they used similar production techniques with the MS-MX they could probably sell them for about $10-20k more than the M3. The industry isn’t prepared for that!

All it requires for them reduce their MS-MX pack costs to the same level as the M3 is to convert them to 2170’s, produced with the same custom equipment designed for the Gigafactory and produced with the same level of colocation.

If they scaled up the semi and Roadster production I’m sure that they could reduce their prices substantially.

How many $100-120k Roadsters do you think that they could sell? That would really be a blow to gas cars!