Waiting4M3
Active Member
OTOH, we couldn't get a long to sneak onto that cargo ship and start taking VIN pics? I'm a little disappointed fellas.
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j0hn
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With the discovery of shipping pier 80 i created a tool to monitor the outgoing amount of vehicles by ship.
enjoy
Building Tesla Shipping Pier 80
enjoy
Building Tesla Shipping Pier 80
ValueAnalyst
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DHL Exec: Tesla Semi Trucks To Pay For Themselves In 1.5 Years | CleanTechnica
Key: DHL is a German company.
TSLA repricing due to Semi has started with T. Rowe's repurchase of 5+ million shares.
Key: DHL is a German company.
TSLA repricing due to Semi has started with T. Rowe's repurchase of 5+ million shares.
After hearing an AI talk by Yann Lecun (director of Facebook AI research), I think one of the missing pieces to get FSD is the ability for AI systems to predict.
Look the video from 1:11:04
Look the video from 1:11:04
Yeah, with a little bit of sensor leverage, object identification and a physics engine (like some of the iOS coding assist tools) predicting is not so hard.
You can tell if a car is accelerating by looking at rate of change of a body angle with respect to the ground. You can look at bumper dive. Both of these are faster than looking at the derivative of distance (If my guess on resolution is right for distance measurement).
If I can see uncertainty jitter (a bobble on an XC race course) a car can with more sensor leverage (distance between sensors) see that too.
It will be amazing, from coordination perspective.
Reciprocity
Active Member
The semi cannot be under estimated what it means to Tesla. When I think of Tesla Energy, there is all the consumer and utility related products that are all fine and innovative and will be a growing and an accelerating business for some time. But to me, its really nothing compared to what Tesla as its own customer with superchagers and megachargers. Better yet, the announcement that Tesla is going to partner with clients like DHL, Pepsi co. and all the other companies that have placed orders, to install charging at their locations. This could be a combination of Mega and Super charging. It would more then likely include very large solar installations and battery installations. Why this matters is that big companies pay very high electrical rates because they are peaking in energy demand when supply is at its most expensive. If they can have Tesla come in and smooth out this demand and supply imbalance with Solar and Batteries, they can save money on more then just their fuel cost and rates for recharging the Tesla Semis. The entire facility can save with lower and more stable rates. In some places, they can actually get paid for some of their own demand usage. I can see a situation where Tesla's charging infrastructure, world wide, would be the largest utility on the planet. Think about that. The biggest generator and consumer of electricity in the entire world. The value of this has not been really thought out. I truly believe that whether Tesla partners with customers or builds out charging themselves, it will be a very profitable business. The margins on the Semi will be fairly small but the margins for charging and installing charging and TE at customers sites will be extremely profitable. At a minimum, 30% GM as a blended rate across all Semi related recharging and TE. Elon always said that the Solar city acquisition would make sense and I think this, more then solar tiles and consumer products is what he meant.
Putting this into context. I own 2 EVs, but I supercharge a lot. If I only charged at home. my cars would nearly triple my electric bill, as it is it doubled. Of course my gasoline bills went to 0 or nearly 0, I still have a riding lawnmower at about $2 a week for half the year. Now imagine if half my neighborhood converted to EVs and had the same thing happen to them. The Utility would be doubling or more the amount of electricity sold into my neighborhood and many like mine. The simple math goes like this. $450 in Gas turns into $300 in electricity which turns into a $150 solar loan which now takes that $300/mo. in Electricity and turns it into peanuts. Tesla gets that cash up front and they have no installed charging infrastructure at my home, which will be here 30 years whether im hear or not. Now in this case Tesla wont be the Utility, but they will still make a good deal of money from the install.
Now if I was a Tesla semi customer, my semi would typically cost me about $4200 a month in fuel for 10,000mi/mo at 6-7mpg and $3 diesel. With Megacharging, that same 10,000mi/mo is 1MWh x .07/KWh or $70 for 500 miles, x2 x10 or $1400 for 10,000 miles. A lot of assumptions there but if the pack is actually smaller then it might be a bit cheaper. That is $4200 taken away from Big Oil and Gas and converted to Tesla. Lets say the margins on that fuel is %10 or $420/mo. At 30%, the $1400/mo is $420/mo. So Tesla, only using TE and Megachargers can completely offset and take over the profits of the entire oil and gasoline supply chain. As everyone knows, the margins on gas are slim at the retail level, but the inefficiency of getting that oil out of the ground, transporting it half way around the world, refining it and then transporting it all over the country, then taxing the crap out of it, leads to very little profit margin. Now take this and multiply it by 1000 class 8 semis, or 100,000 a year starting in 2022. That's $42 million in profits (compounded annually so that its $4.2B a month in 10 years with a million semis on the road) siphoned from oil and gas and directly into Tesla's coffers as the largest utility on the planet. Whether they partner with customers and get paid up front for hardware or they put in the hardware and charge for the energy. I realize this is capital intensive but there is a huge difference between raising capital for this type of effort where you have a captive customer who might sign an agreement to buy electricity for 30 years, vs the risk of buying equipment to build EVs that people might not even want.. yeah right. but you get the point. The other important thing to note is that Tesla will not sell a single Semi if you cant charge them, so a charging network is not an optional thing here, its mandatory. Tesla knows this more then anyone else as they would not have sold many model S's without charging.
You can argue that Tesla cannot make any markup from Charging at 7c/KWh. This is still tbd, but there is evidence that Solar + Battery costs can give you electricity at costs that would allow 30% GM. This is at today's rates and lets not forget that Tesla is going to be making their own panels and makes their own batteries so if wholesale rates already allow these margins, Tesla should be able to make sure that they have enough margin to make it all work. Elon did not pull that 7c number out of his rear end. If I am smart enough to do the basic math above, so is Tesla. Scale has a way of making all of this stuff work. Building one micro grid for megacharging may not work, but working with Local governments, utilities, customers like Pepsi, and you have a lot more places where you can work deals to keep costs down. Remember, utilities will like this because Its Diesel being converted to Electricity. Its new business for them and in many places, they are under regulatory pressure to buy more renewable energy. They do not have a choice. If they dont buy it, they need to buy credits to compensate. I know, because some are buying my credits for solar that I generate and consume myself. They dont even get the energy, they are paying me to use my own solar. This is not an insignificant amount and equates to about 20% of my total cost to go solar. My point is that batteries will not always be necessary, as net metering can be used as a battery. Batteries would only be used to offset higher rates from demand related fees. These are typically assessed for businesses that have very high demand during peak times. A system can be designed to fully leverage every option available. Big companies are spending a lot on energy and there is a tremendous opportunity for TE to give them a much lower blended rate while also making it much cheaper to transport their goods. The Solar city acquisition is looking better and better.
Anyway.. I know I preach a bit to much and some might call me a hyper bull or whatever, but I think people are missing the boat on why the Semi is so important. If the specs are anywhere near what they are hoping, then it is probably a more important vehicle then the model 3. A 100,000 semis is equivalent to 2.3 million model 3s in terms of consumption while only being about a million Tesla's in terms of battery requirements. Tesla didnt make buses for a reason. They didn't bother with a econbox for a reason. They believe in margins and they need them for the mission. The Semi is no different. I believe the scale required for the Semi will also make every Tesla cheaper by enabling massive economies of scale. For example, if you are going to build a billion battery cells, you can use custom machines that run faster then a machine gun pumping out cells. You can have raw materials come in one side and leave as completed packs and motors out the other end. This massive scale gives you a lot of power when it comes to securing natural resources. For example; Think about what happens If Tesla comes to you and says we will buy your entire supply for the next decade, just load up the Tesla semis when they show up.
ValueAnalyst
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Elon will pass 20M followers on Tuesday; one week ahead of my projection.
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | Twitter
50M by year-end is within reach if daily net adds, currently at ~50k, continue to accelerate with Model 3, SpaceX, and TSLA.
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | Twitter
50M by year-end is within reach if daily net adds, currently at ~50k, continue to accelerate with Model 3, SpaceX, and TSLA.
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Tesla Model 3 gets hacked, reveals more details and great potential for dual motor/ performance versions
Article is nice, but, first post in the article’s comment section has much more information.
Article is nice, but, first post in the article’s comment section has much more information.
Thanks schonelucht, helpful to see where you got a sense of this increase in invite group size from.
This all seems fully consistent to me with Tesla needing to find enough US rervationists who will take the first production configuration ($49K and up) deliveries of the 3 from now until about the end of April. I think the shift to Canada deliveries would start then. In case your wondering, this timing for the shift is what I’ve written all along (you can see that in post 2503 from two weeks ago in this thread where I walked through the scenario in the most detail).
What’s more, weekly production will be considerably higher on average for this period we have just entered, (I’d guess about 1,800 average) than it has been year to date (I’d guess 800-1,000 average), so more invites make sense. More invites to non-owners also make sense as one would think they’d have a substantially lower take rate on the $49K starting price offering (vs. holding for something cheaper) than owners. While there have been plenty of reservationists opting to hold among owners too (dual motor, Performance on there way), I think non-owners would defer at a higher rate. Finally, Tesla is now suggesting 3-6 weeks until delivery to the new group invited to configure vs 4 weeks for groups in the past, and as you mentioned, non-owners may well be more excited to enter their data points into that spreadsheet than owners.
I really don't think Tesla is anywhere near exhausting that pool of candidates. They have a backlog of 250k US reservations. Even if only 10% would go for the available specification, that's still 18k US potential customers left waiting so far.
This seems inconsistent. Now till end of April is at least 10 weeks of production. That means 18k cars. In addition to the 6k or so delivered so far in the US in 2018. That's 184k, leaving only 16k Model S/X for 2018 January to June inclusive. If that were the case then domestic deliveries should already be estimated to July if not August.
My current hypothesis is that Tesla is positioning themselves for if they'd miss their ramp up. If adding more semi-automatic lines isn't feasible (they are already short on their labour pool to the point of pulling people from the S/X line) and the German equipment isn't ready to scale up pretty much immediately in Q2 then we'd be looking at the current sub 1k/week rate for a few more months. On Feb 9th Tesla confirmed that they are scaling up semi automatic production. But with the very short turn around time between production/VIN assignment/delivery, we'd see that happen with at most one or two weeks delay. Since that day however, the tracking is undeniably pointing to a flat production rate somewhat shy of 1k/week. It may still come to pass but I think it is at least a bit delayed compared to Elon's expectations (what's not).
To summarize : invite many Americans now. If the German line works pretty much out of the box early Q2 then pump cars out at 3k-5k/week and blow through 200k in Q2. Inconveniences some customers but demand is certainly not the problem anyway and Wall Street will be very happy just in time for raising money through either some packages leases or straight out bond/equity offering to finance expansion to 10k/Model Y/Semi. If the German line doesn't work, shareholders won't be happy anyway because they care mostly about totale volume. In that case optimize for the most happy American customers by trying to time 200k arrival early July.
There was some bear talk over the weekend how this would doom Tesla. The purpose of this post is to examine this claim. Tesla lists its purchase obligations in their annual report. In the following table each column is the year in which Tesla listed the obligation while each row is a year in which the obligation held to purchase.
Clearly the early years (2015 and 2016) are dominated by the first Panasonic purchase contract. Although this was a multi-year contract the purchase obligations only extended one year at time since there was a seperate 'early termination' fee that covered the risk to Panasonic that Tesla walked away from the deal.
We can see that Tesla had purchase obligations for roughtly $500M each year under that deal. In early 2015 Tesla announced the Powerwall. I now believe that this was a gambit to cover for these obligations in the face of then mounting but unforeseen delays on the X. But since S demand kept growing, there was no need for additional cell use and ultimately very little energy storage products with cells from this contract were produced. This leads me to conclude that car production from 2014 (30k) was not enough to cover the $500M purchase obligations, but car production from 2015 (50k) was. With an average capacity of 75kWh per car we get cell prices between $133 and $222/kWh under the contract.
Later on Powerwall got a redesign to take advantage of a cheaper cell source. I am unsure of the purchase agreement and obligations for 18650 cells going forward. Anyone has any insight?
From 2017 on, I believe the majority of the obligations are due to the gigafactory coming online. Here is how Tesla describes it
The wording seems to suggest that $1B of the purchase obligations are due to regular purchase agreements and $16B due to special agreements with selected vendors that are open to more open ended cooperation. Ie Panasonic. Tesla has two purchase agreements with Panasonic. A yearly purchase of 1GW of solar panels and an undisclosed number of battery cells from the gigafactory.
For the solar panels, a price of 50cts per kW seems a good estimate. It's well below wholesale prices (but a 1GW purchase is above and beyond wholesale) plus Tesla provides a factory floor space to Panasonic in the deal. That should take care of $500M of annual purchase obligations.
One pattern that could make sense is a purchase obligation of $1 - $1.5B in cells starting from 2017 and doubling in 2020. Add in the $500M from the solar panels and the numbers roughly make sense. Remains to explain why 2018 is higher? One possibility : because in 2017 Tesla fell short of its obligations to purchase cells in some of it is rolled in this year. Another : the old 18650 purchase agreement for $500M is extended on a year by year basis.
Finally my answer to the bears claim that these purchase obligations will sink Tesla. There is a definite risk on solar panels. Last two quarters Tesla sold only very little panels (around 200MW total) and solar roof is only scheduled to ramp in the second half of the year (and slowly at that). It's very plausible there is a shortfall of several hunderds of megawatt. At the same time, the new tariffs on Chinese production should help. Rolling those purchase agreements forward to later years may be harder since there is also a minimum spending obligation with SUNY.
For cells, we are looking at a $1B-$1.5B yearly obligation. With cell prices at $100/kWh this is 10-15GWh. That's between 150 and 200k LR Model 3s. For 2018 it is increasingly hard to reach the upper bound with the ramp being delayed (and currently showing no signs of resuming). Here however Panasonic is much more likely to agree to roll obligations to later years. In fact they already did when the CEO of Panasonic admitted they were waiting for the ramp up in module fabrication capacity before they'd ramp up their own volumes. That's instead of ramping up immediatly and dumping the cells + invoice in Tesla's lap.
Tl;dr : there are certainly concerns for Tesla's purchase obligations for 2018 but at the same time there are several mitigating factors that will very likely play out.
| - | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 563 | - | - | - |
| 2016 | 20 | 538 | - | - |
| 2017 | 13 | 12 | 2756 | - |
| 2018 | - | - | 93 | 2762 |
| 2019 | - | - | 79 | 2280 |
| 2020 | - | - | 4 | 3485 |
| 2021 | - | - | - | 3434 |
| 2022 | - | - | - | 3436 |
| thereafter or unspecified | - | - | 4377 | 2128 |
Clearly the early years (2015 and 2016) are dominated by the first Panasonic purchase contract. Although this was a multi-year contract the purchase obligations only extended one year at time since there was a seperate 'early termination' fee that covered the risk to Panasonic that Tesla walked away from the deal.
2015 10-K said:
We can see that Tesla had purchase obligations for roughtly $500M each year under that deal. In early 2015 Tesla announced the Powerwall. I now believe that this was a gambit to cover for these obligations in the face of then mounting but unforeseen delays on the X. But since S demand kept growing, there was no need for additional cell use and ultimately very little energy storage products with cells from this contract were produced. This leads me to conclude that car production from 2014 (30k) was not enough to cover the $500M purchase obligations, but car production from 2015 (50k) was. With an average capacity of 75kWh per car we get cell prices between $133 and $222/kWh under the contract.
Later on Powerwall got a redesign to take advantage of a cheaper cell source. I am unsure of the purchase agreement and obligations for 18650 cells going forward. Anyone has any insight?
From 2017 on, I believe the majority of the obligations are due to the gigafactory coming online. Here is how Tesla describes it
2018 10-K said:
The wording seems to suggest that $1B of the purchase obligations are due to regular purchase agreements and $16B due to special agreements with selected vendors that are open to more open ended cooperation. Ie Panasonic. Tesla has two purchase agreements with Panasonic. A yearly purchase of 1GW of solar panels and an undisclosed number of battery cells from the gigafactory.
For the solar panels, a price of 50cts per kW seems a good estimate. It's well below wholesale prices (but a 1GW purchase is above and beyond wholesale) plus Tesla provides a factory floor space to Panasonic in the deal. That should take care of $500M of annual purchase obligations.
One pattern that could make sense is a purchase obligation of $1 - $1.5B in cells starting from 2017 and doubling in 2020. Add in the $500M from the solar panels and the numbers roughly make sense. Remains to explain why 2018 is higher? One possibility : because in 2017 Tesla fell short of its obligations to purchase cells in some of it is rolled in this year. Another : the old 18650 purchase agreement for $500M is extended on a year by year basis.
Finally my answer to the bears claim that these purchase obligations will sink Tesla. There is a definite risk on solar panels. Last two quarters Tesla sold only very little panels (around 200MW total) and solar roof is only scheduled to ramp in the second half of the year (and slowly at that). It's very plausible there is a shortfall of several hunderds of megawatt. At the same time, the new tariffs on Chinese production should help. Rolling those purchase agreements forward to later years may be harder since there is also a minimum spending obligation with SUNY.
For cells, we are looking at a $1B-$1.5B yearly obligation. With cell prices at $100/kWh this is 10-15GWh. That's between 150 and 200k LR Model 3s. For 2018 it is increasingly hard to reach the upper bound with the ramp being delayed (and currently showing no signs of resuming). Here however Panasonic is much more likely to agree to roll obligations to later years. In fact they already did when the CEO of Panasonic admitted they were waiting for the ramp up in module fabrication capacity before they'd ramp up their own volumes. That's instead of ramping up immediatly and dumping the cells + invoice in Tesla's lap.
Tl;dr : there are certainly concerns for Tesla's purchase obligations for 2018 but at the same time there are several mitigating factors that will very likely play out.
Reciprocity
Active Member
Tesla already stated that the current semi automated lines are capable of 2500/w and that the new automated lines are not required to achieve this goal. They literally released an 8k filling to reiterate that fact just a few short weeks ago. The new automated lines are required to go to 5k/w. This line will be installed next month and ramp to 2.5k+2.5k from the current semi automatic lines. What you are saying is that tesla has not improved production rates all year and won't until the end of q2? Just to be clear, you are assuming sub 1k/w until a month before tesla said they would be at 5k and you are basing this off people taking photos of vins? If this is the case, people are going to be able to buy tesla stock for 180 real soon. And you claim the reason is that the semi automatic lines cannot do more then less then 1k/w even though tesla said they can do 2500. Was this a mistake or a lie? It seems odd that they would put out an 8k clearly stating 2500/w when they knew it was not possible to do more then 1k. You would think that would cause some issues with the sec.
Reciprocity
Active Member
The bear case is silly as usual. Why would massive demand sink anyone. Why would Panasonic torpedo its biggest customer over some small misses. My guess is that Panasonic will have its share of misses as well. This is a partnership and both parties have a lot invested and a lot to lose. Panasonic is going to be struggling to keep up, tesla and Panasonic are year or more behind schedule as it relates to demand. Model y and a pickup is going to make that problem even larger. Compare that to competitors not having enough cells. Tesla could buy them from Panasonic and sell them to BMW.
To be precise here is what it said :
8-K said:
So there is a crucial difference. 2500/wk is not dependent on the German line but the then current semi automated lines needed incremental capacity added to reach that rate. That capacity has not yet arrived or it has not yet led to higher deliveries.
8-K said:
Yes and no. I am saying that they have not improved production rates this year so far and there is a chance that their plan to do so is materializing slower than hoped for. I am basing this on essentially the work that @Troy and @chojn1 have done. It
I think you misremember what was written in the 8-K as pointed out above.
Hi. Here is the latest situation as of today:
Production since inception
Production since inception
- 7,137 Based on buyer VINs
- 8,295 Based on NHTSA VINs
- 8,508 Bloomberg
- 624 Based on buyer VINs
- 794 Based on NHTSA VINs
- 1,052 Bloomberg
Reciprocity
Active Member
Cars have to built before they can be delivered, I think you make to many assumptions based on Vins input by consumers as it relates to what is being manufactured. If your assumption is correct, then there is about 0 chance of hitting anything near 2500 and 5k in the next 4 months since apparently there has been no improvement in last 2 months, how would anyone expect them to 5x production in 4 months. Does anyone think that he 3rd time they move back 5k will be meet with anything short of a bloodbath? Asking for a friend.
You are consistently reading too much into what I write. Just to be very clear 1) there has been no real improvement over the last two months 2) that does not mean there is 0 chance of hitting their goals, but the likelihood is decreasing. Much more so on the 2500/wk which, according to their 8-K, is a question of incrementally adding capacity than on the 5000/wk which depends on a step change (new German equipment installed). Due to the short delay between production and delivery we should have seen gradual capacity increases over the last few weeks working their way through increased output.
That's a very good question and exactly why I try to research any signs on production hits and misses that I can. To be honest, I don't have all the answers, but you aren't providing many yourself either.
Reciprocity
Active Member
You make good points and it does seem clear, which is extremely alarming. It really does appear that no progress has been made. Which does not equate to what had just been reiterated recently. The two bottlenecks where the conveyance system and the pack assembly. And apparently no progress has been made even though equipment was onsite per the 8k. It only makes sense that there is little chance that production will not do 5x in 4 months. 2x maybe, but not 5x. This is a bridge to far. I for one will be buying some protective long term puts and putting in stop losses. Not an advice.
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