General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[22522]

A NY Times feature piece on Tesla today. Includes a number of pics we haven't seen before.

Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

This is useful, but intellectually sloppy work by someone who writes well and likes alliteration.

Tesla needs to, in semiconductor fabrication jargon, "step and repeat" that factory in several different locations.

The "tent" helps.

Any excess robots will be repurposed in the new locations.

Tesla lost labor moving stuff around, but that motion likely returned efficiencies vs the traditional 'cast in stone' production line approach.

 

[dc_h]

Although there is still the relentless characterization of Tesla and Elon as "desperate":

"Its purpose is as notable as its hasty construction. The semi-permanent structure houses a third assembly line — part of a desperate effort to speed up production of the Model 3, the car that Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has said is critical to the company’s financial health and immediate future."

Still, an interesting piece.

You make desperate sound negative. As Warren Buffett said, Elon seems to like it that way. He thrives on chaos and unattainable goals. So it is a bit desperate, but it has been before and it likely will be again. Once Tesla is cash flow positive and profitable, hopefully q3 & 4, Elon will probably bet the farm again and build two gigafactories at the same time. China may break ground first, but Europe will probably follow quickly and maybe another Sprung structure to assemble Semi and Roadster. They have stamping capacity in Fremont and a subcontractor in Michigan and they need some assembly away from the main plant, unless Elon plans to build some boring tunnels for workers commuting and shipping.
What’s the closest place they could build an assembly site for the semi and Roadster with an available labor force? Washington away from Seattle seems like the best market, but could they use Sparks? Seems like labor force and transportation into the plant will be a growing issue. Sparks if possible would be nice, dropping off stamped parts from Fremont and picking up battery packs from Sparks.

 

[Big Earl]

This is hilarious!

Look at the mimic from Gordon Johnson when Trip spoke at the second half of the recording......

How much room is left to run in Tesla?

Did you catch Gordon’s assertion (twice) that Tesla has “canceled Supercharging nationwide?” What in Earth is he even talking about?

 

[Foghat]

This is hilarious!

Look at the mimic from Gordon Johnson when Trip spoke at the second half of the recording......

How much room is left to run in Tesla?

Trip does a great job. I like his thinking.

On the competition question, it’s simple:

Are people going to buy a Tesla with a massive supercharger network or a Porsche, Audi, etc, without a charging network?

The only option for all these other companies is to use the supercharger network, which implies they will have to comply to Tesla charging capability standard (which makes Tesla the global standard of ev tech in the eyes of consumers) as well as *pay Tesla for access to the nerwork* which lowers Tesla operating costs each time they do...or they won’t come close to testing Tesla’s market share in EVs and maybe on the broader car market in general as Tesla grows its production capabilities over time.

The big companies do have the ICE production capability advantage, but the ability to battery Ev and fueling infrastructure is actually well behind Tesla and will be years before they catch up.

What Tesla consumer demand is showing they are looking a completely different experience to ice offerings of which Audi and the rest have not completely committed to as Tesla has, thus they won’t see the numbers Tesla is and will continue to enjoy until they do.

Gordon has been a solarcity and Tesla hater for years so it’s a broken record at this point and I see he works for a different company now so maybe they haven’t heard the record as long yet. He and Chanos pretty much the same argument for a long time.

 

[Drax7]

But Gordon is an analyst, he analyses so he must know.
What a naive fool.

 

[avoigt]

Well this is how I would translate Elon:

"If the media is claiming we have a problem and bottleneck at the paint shop than I post a picture of the paint shop showing all goes just good there."

As a CEO you won't post pictures of areas that don't do well. A good example is the battery pack assembly that was an issue for a longer period of time. We never have seen a picture of it.

Elon posted a picture of the paint shop a few days before when they did red.

The entre paint shop part really does not make a lot of sense to me. Its a very well known process in the industry where automation is standard and well established since many years. It goes pretty quick and you plan this of course well in advance to have all equipment. Its hard for me to imagine what could be the issue there. Its not like Battery pack assembly where everything is new, complex and no experience does exist.

Another piece of the puzzle from the paint shop. That could explain the issue they had (past tense!)

(...) "At 3 a.m. on Thursday, the time Tesla made him available for a telephone interview, he said he was trying to fix a glitch in the part of the plant where the Model 3 is painted. “The carrier that the car is on is coming out of the paint booth slightly too fast for the sensor to recognize it, and it’s tripping the sensor even though everything is fine,” he explained.

Tesla engineers are trying to reprogram the sensor so it can operate at the accelerated pace. For now, he said, “we have somebody standing there just pressing the ‘O.K.’ button to restart it.” (...)

Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

 

[BozieBeMe2]

But Gordon is an analyst, he analyses so he must know.
What a naive fool.

I loved the way he kept asking Trip Chowdhry, are you an analyst??
Does he even know what that is; -ANALyst-

As a foot note, Gordon is so fixated on profit that he has missed the main point, at this point in time Tesla is the sum of it's parts. Meaning, Tesla is already profitable, based on the Potential of it's, - Parts -
Gordon refuses to look past Tesla, the car manufacturer and see the sum of Tesla's other money makers.

 

[Unpilot]

Many people have been mercilessly mocking the Tesla Tent on Reddit, but I think that could be a big mistake.

If Tesla can demonstrate that inexpensive, rapidly deployable General Assembly lines are viable, they may be able to scale up faster than analysts are expecting.

We know that some of Tesla’s automated assembly, like frame welding, works, and works quickly. High throughput on early, easily automated steps, which feeds large numbers of parallel assembly lines, may be the game here. It’s like a CPU with a very fast front end decoder and a lot of parallel execution units that process the uOPs from the decoder. Actually, a GPU might be a better analogy.

Plus what Musk has said for a long time is innovation keeps them ahead. So if one part of the "tent" line is an issue they design a different way. In other words they innovate.

This idea that you build a line and then basically set in in concrete for several years is the old way.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

This whole "all hands on

Clasping hands on ears and going "LALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" does not impress me. If you are in denial, thinking all hands on desk and taking people from other jobs to production line (someone would think those "other jobs" are needed for something) can produce sustainable not-burst rate, I can't help you.


And decerasing quality, most likely. It is just done to make good on "5k/week" promise. Actual non-burst 5k/week will happen some weeks later.

In short...WHO CARES?!

The point is that we're there. Whether it's 4000 or 6000 per week or somewhere in between,we're there. Where were they three months ago? They're growing, they're producing more and more cars, they are putting cars into the hands of customers.

Can't wait to see how the shorts move the goalposts once 5K, or whatever other mandate to success they come up with is met. It's really sounding more and more like a bunch of 6 year olds that don't get their way.

Dan

 

[avoigt]

Here we go. The "tent in full swing"

Anybody doubting that they can run a real GA in that structure - here it is?! You need to look at the ceiling to understand its really in that tent like structure.

Yes, its a lot of labour and yes there are no robots but still can you imagine how fast the build that and made it operational?

Thats what I love with Tesla, they just do something knowbody expected them to do. At the end the results counts!

Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

 

[NicoV]

But Gordon is an analyst, he analyses so he must know.
What a naive fool.

Even better, he is a financial analyst! Or so he says.
Not one of the best apparently. Keeping your money in a sock appears to be better than listening to his advice: https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/gordon-johnson

 

[Todd Burch]

Here we go. The "tent in full swing"

Anybody doubting that they can run a real GA in that structure - here it is?! You need to look at the ceiling to understand its really in that tent like structure.

Yes, its a lot of labour and yes there are no robots but still can you imagine how fast the build that and made it operational?

Thats would I love with Tesla, they just do something know body expected them to so. At the end the results does count!

Nice. Source?

Sign on the left confirms this is GA4.

 

[Unpilot]

I think that was from the NY times article from a up stream post.

 

[dc_h]

Here we go. The "tent in full swing"

Anybody doubting that they can run a real GA in that structure - here it is?! You need to look at the ceiling to understand its really in that tent like structure.

Yes, its a lot of labour and yes there are no robots but still can you imagine how fast the build that and made it operational?

Thats what I love with Tesla, they just do something knowbody expected them to do. At the end the results counts!

Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

Looks like the cars pull out on the plant site, not the railroad side of the building.

Also, are there two lines or is the left just part of the final line?

 

[The Blue Owl]

This is hilarious!

Look at the mimic from Gordon Johnson when Trip spoke at the second half of the recording......

How much room is left to run in Tesla?

Chowdhry owned him. The analyst who was busy analyzing the analysis exhibited the same ironclad logic and calm demeanour as his brother in arms, Mark Spiegel. They will be missed.

 

[The Blue Owl]

Here we go. The "tent in full swing"

Anybody doubting that they can run a real GA in that structure - here it is?! You need to look at the ceiling to understand its really in that tent like structure.

Yes, its a lot of labour and yes there are no robots but still can you imagine how fast the build that and made it operational?

Thats what I love with Tesla, they just do something knowbody expected them to do. At the end the results counts!

Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

This assembly line is obviously unsafe. It doesn't have enough yellow.

 

[ggr]

I think that was from the NY times article from a up stream post.

It's a great article; I found it in Google News: Can Elon Musk and Tesla Reinvent the Way Cars Are Made?

 

[ggr]

Chowdhry owned him. The analyst who was busy analyzing the analysis exhibited the same ironclad logic and calm demeanour as his brother in arms, Mark Spiegel. They will be missed.

Hey, his rating is a lot higher! He almost breaks even!

 

[Unpilot]

This assembly line is obviously unsafe. It doesn't have enough yellow.

I am a little late to the FUD game....did someone really assert that Musk hated yellow so the factory was unsafe as there were no yellow hazard signs?????

 

[Foghat]

Chowdhry owned him. The analyst who was busy analyzing the analysis exhibited the same ironclad logic and calm demeanour as his brother in arms, Mark Spiegel. They will be missed.

I think CNBC went down the list of paid talent looking for the standard go-to bears and couldn’t find any. “Well, there’s always Gordon. Sure, use his Axiom #, see if it still works.”