General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[RobStark]

Gold. Electric gold.

Tesla to set up mini solar stores inside Home Depot.

The reporter thinks the main benefit for Home Depot is renting out underused floor space.

And not associating Home Depot with the Tesla brand. LOL.

 

[DragonWatch]

Interesting read January 2018 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card

Once you get past the easy to read chart, their snap-shot of each vehicle is really interesting. Before giving up due to dwindling effect of my decaf coffee, there appeared a thread of equal footing for the M3. While no manufacture is pumping out the numbers comparable to Tesla, several of the top contenders were stated as having trouble with production.

I do not think I can attribute this to astrology ~ whatever in retrograde

 

[hobbes]

I've stated before Tesla does not provide monthly reports, only quarterly. Don't read too much into InsideEVs numbers.

I know. And it wasn´t me who posted those numbers. Was just dampening the exuberance with regard to the original post a bit. To correct myself anyway:

That would be nice compared to the other EVs- but less than 500/week on average.

No production during the first week of Jan since the factory was closed.

I remember something like that - does anyone have a source handy? But even using 3 weeks, would be only 625/week.

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

Inside EVs has a long enough track record of accuracy that I trust their numbers, give or take 10%. So I trust that the real number is between 1687 and 2062. That’s deliveries.

Then there’s production. I assume at least 800 cars are in transit, and possibly double that (1600). So that’s production of 2500-3600 in January, with the factory closed for one week.

Then there’s the question of progress. December production was ~2400 over 31 days, or ~77/day. January production (2500-3600) over 24 days (factory closed 7 days) was between 105-150/day. That’s growth of 36-95%.

Applied to February. 28 days with a rate of 105-150 cars/day, multiplied by 36-95% growth suggests February production of 4-8k. Too broad a range to be useful, but it means 6.5-10.5k quarterly production going into March.

So, in absolute terms, the numbers are meh. On pace to get to 2500/week by the end of March, but certainly not ahead of pace.

In relative terms, Model 3 is the #1 selling EV in America for January, and is unlikely to give up that position until Model Y hits full production. Woo-hoo!!! It’s a win that doesn’t feel like much of a win, but I’ll take it.

 

[RobStark]

Man you guys are "see the glass half full " types. According to the article Solar City had already tried this approach, without success. Plus the rationale for bailing SC out was the cross selling in Tesla stores. Not hearing too much buzz about how great that plan has worked out over a year after the "merger".

LOL

This is what Solar City had inside Home Depot.

Solar City had undifferentiated generic Chinese product that competed on price.

These will be Tesla branded stores. Not Solar City. Huge difference.

They will have made in the USA solar panels which will be much better looking and more efficient than generic Chinese panels.

Plus the Tesla Solar shingle/roof. The original planned called for Tesla Solar to also offer generic Chinese panels for the budget conscious but with the 30% Trump Tariff I think almost everyone will opt for the Made in the USA Tesla/Panasonic made product.

 

[hobbes]

In relative terms, Model 3 is the #1 selling EV in America for January, and is unlikely to give up that position until Model Y hits full production. Woo-hoo!!! It’s a win that doesn’t feel like much of a win, but I’ll take it.

That´s just how I feel. You worded it much better than I did.

 

[hobbes]

A bit off topic, but nice to see: SpaceX recovering a rocket that was supposed be dumped into the ocean:
Elon Musk on Twitter

reddit user @EnsilZah has a nice fictional headline: "SpaceX fails to not land rocket".

Still trying to find a Tesla analogy for that . Anyone?

 

[JRP3]

I remember something like that - does anyone have a source handy? But even using 3 weeks, would be only 625/week.

Found a LOT of Model 3's in a Tesla lot - Pictures inside

 

[30seconds]

Looks like ramp is happening, but not on pace with Elon's guidance (surprise, surprise). Overall I'm expecting 5k/ week towards mid-year. With the recent cash injections from roadster/ semi/ ABS they should be fine, but probably going to be a rocky Q1 earnings.

 

[Esme Es Mejor]

More extrapolations from Inside EVs numbers.

Worst-case scenario (105 cars/day at 36% monthly growth) projects to 4K for February, 6K for March, and 12.5K for the quarter. Not exciting, but I’d be fine with that.

Best-case scenario (150 cars/day at 95% monthly growth) projects to 8K for February, 17.5K for March, and 29K for the quarter. That would be amazing.

 

[MXWing]

Man you guys are "see the glass half full " types. According to the article Solar City had already tried this approach, without success. Plus the rationale for bailing SC out was the cross selling in Tesla stores. Not hearing too much buzz about how great that plan has worked out over a year after the "merger".

Tesla = sexy
Solarcity = ehhh

The average joe/jane has no idea the two entities are one.

 

[bdy0627]

Looks like ramp is happening, but not on pace with Elon's guidance (surprise, surprise). Overall I'm expecting 5k/ week towards mid-year. With the recent cash injections from roadster/ semi/ ABS they should be fine, but probably going to be a rocky Q1 earnings.

That's guidance at this point.

 

[Bobfitz1]

This week there have been 3 interesting articles from Electrek and Bloomberg that have relevance to the excellent discussions TMC has had on it's 'moats' and potential competition from ICE industry giants.

First is on VW group announcing plans to produce 500K EVs at their Zwickau factory. Starting sometime next year and ramping through 2020. If they were actually able to pull this off, it might be 'real' competition for Tesla. Two and a half years to take a giant ICE plant and convert it to produce half a million EVs annually seems optimistic to me. Also it's not clear where they would find high performance batteries for that many EVs by 2020/2021. Actual cell factories they may be partnering in, are projected to ramp up to major GWh production in a much longer time frame.
VW plans to produce 1,500 electric cars per day at its Zwickau factory

Second is latest news (or repackaged news) from Diamler. Mercedes-Benz unveils aggressive electric vehicle production plan, 6 factories and a ‘global battery network’
"As we previously reported, Daimler has one of the most aggressive electrification plans amongst established automakers. They plan for Mercedes-Benz and smart cars to offer electric versions of all car models by 2022. "
Daimler says "As batteries are the heart of our electric vehicles we put a great emphasis on building them in our own factories. With our global battery network we are in an excellent position: As we are close to our vehicle plants we can ensure the optimal supply of production."
This still strikes me as mostly as Daimler EV PR smokescreen. As previously the case, what they call battery 'factories' are battery pack factories w/o cell production lines. Article points to their agreement/funding of SK Innovation to double it's cell production to 4 GWh by sometime in 2019. Their current 2 GWh is already spoken for, so presumably the add'l 2 GWh goes to Daimler. Too bad 2 GWh only powers around 25,000 full range EVs! I may be mistaken but saying you'll offer electric versions of all your models by 2022, suggests you may be adapting those models ICE designs to EV use rather than designing them for EV from scratch as Tesla has done.

I saw the third article today on Bloomberg:
The Swift Rise of a Chinese Battery Giant
The China colossus being CATL.
Article's subtitle reads "The key to overtaking Tesla by 2020? Lots of government help for EVs."
"The company plans to raise 13.1 billion yuan ($2 billion) as soon as this year by selling a 10 percent stake, at a valuation of about $20 billion. The share sale would finance construction of a battery-cell plant second in size only to Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory in Nevada. "
A comparison chart in the article shows a typical business media goof. It fails to show that by the time this new CATL battery gigafactory is producing 25 GWh, Tesla GF1 is expected to have grown to 105 GWh annually.
They say much (all?) of the new production will go to China based EV production by the large western auto companies.
If that's the case, then CATL plans don't look to solve Daimler's non China based EV cell supply shortfalls.

If anyone can summarize what Li ion cell types CATL is now producing and plans to also develop higher performance form factor cells, that would be relevant to getting a better view on just how much CATL plans may boost the EV competitiveness of the ICE companies, which to date seem late to the party and weak.

 

[AudubonB]

Non-Mod mode:

Thank you for your concerns. I stand by my assessment, and suggest to all that if you provide reference links, if they are not current then include also their dates of publication.

 

[dmckinstry]

A bit off topic, but nice to see: SpaceX recovering a rocket that was supposed be dumped into the ocean:
Elon Musk on Twitter

View attachment 277463

reddit user @EnsilZah has a nice fictional headline: "SpaceX fails to not land rocket".

Still trying to find a Tesla analogy for that . Anyone?

?"Tesla fails to have more than 0.002% (just a WAG) of any of their vehicles explode or catch fire".

Edit: I should probably add a couple more zeros in front of the 2.

 

[Zaxxon]

Inside EVs has a long enough track record of accuracy that I trust their numbers, give or take 10%. So I trust that the real number is between 1687 and 2062. That’s deliveries.

Then there’s production. I assume at least 800 cars are in transit, and possibly double that (1600). So that’s production of 2500-3600 in January, with the factory closed for one week.

Then there’s the question of progress. December production was ~2400 over 31 days, or ~77/day. January production (2500-3600) over 24 days (factory closed 7 days) was between 105-150/day. That’s growth of 36-95%.

Applied to February. 28 days with a rate of 105-150 cars/day, multiplied by 36-95% growth suggests February production of 4-8k. Too broad a range to be useful, but it means 6.5-10.5k quarterly production going into March.

So, in absolute terms, the numbers are meh. On pace to get to 2500/week by the end of March, but certainly not ahead of pace.

In relative terms, Model 3 is the #1 selling EV in America for January, and is unlikely to give up that position until Model Y hits full production. Woo-hoo!!! It’s a win that doesn’t feel like much of a win, but I’ll take it.

I have to quibble with your numbers, as I don't think you subtracted December in-transit (800) from Jan production/delivery estimates. If I do that, I get the following using the same +/- 10% from InsideEVs as my 'high' and 'low' guesses, and using 800 in transit at end of Jan (0% growth from Dec) as my low, and 1600 in transit (100% growth from Dec) as my high guesses on that front:


Jan prod weeks 3.5
InsideEVs est 1875
Dec in transit 800

Jan del low (InsideEVs @ 90%) 1688
Jan del high (InsideEVs @ 110%) 2063

Jan del low - Dec in-transit 888
Jan del hi - Dec in-transit 1263

Jan in-transit low 800
Jan in-transit high 1600

Jan del low - Dec in-transit + Jan in-transit = Jan prod low 1688
Jan del high - Dec in-transit + Jan in-transit = Jan prod high 2863

Jan prod/week low 482
Jan prod/week high 818

Jan prod/day low 69
Jan prod/day high 117

Dec prod/week 542
Dec prod/day 77

Jan compared to Dec prod/day, low 89.00%
Jan compared to Dec prod/day, high 150.96%

In short, Tesla could be anywhere from treading water in Jan vs Dec, to up 50%, assuming InsideEVs is relatively accurate. My personal opinion? We have insufficient data to draw any conclusions, much less extrapolate this data out to future months. My gut feel is that production has improved over the course of January, and that we're likely to see it improve more rapidly in February as bottlenecks continue to drop. We will hopefully find out more concrete data in 6 days!

 

[Duffer]

Man you guys are "see the glass half full " types. According to the article Solar City had already tried this approach, without success. Plus the rationale for bailing SC out was the cross selling in Tesla stores. Not hearing too much buzz about how great that plan has worked out over a year after the "merger".

Bear with me, I'm only on my first pot of coffee, but my thoughts are:
1) Home Depot on a bad day has more foot traffic in one store than six or eight Tesla stores combined.
2) If you are looking at the solar roof/Powerwall displays at a Tesla store you're probably waiting for your turn to test drive a vehicle, design your vehicle, and or take delivery of your vehicle.

Based on the above, having displays in Home Depot manned with actual Tesla employees (not somebody from a temp agency) that can explain the products in detail is a advertising win.

Edit: spelling

 

[Uptownman]

The reporter thinks the main benefit for Home Depot is renting out underused floor space.

And not associating Home Depot with the Tesla brand. LOL.

Fixed It!

 

[ggr]

Moderator note (ggr with apprentice tyrant hat on). Just to enlighten all the readers, particularly @myusername. There is now a separate thread
Myusername and numerology thread (out of market action)
that anyone with sufficient interest can read and reply and discuss in. Any post from any member that talks about the magic number 6 will be moved there (except this one ). Any post from the named member that is snarky, content free, or contains incorrect information will appear there. If the post meets my definition of rationality it will be allowed to stay where the discussion is. Anything downright insulting to another member will, as usual, go to snippiness, be deleted, or result in harsher action, depending. So will anything similar anywhere that is aimed at @myusername... still a member after all. It may change at some indefinite future time. I/we will not be discussing this policy further in this forum.

 

[RobStark]

First is on VW group announcing plans to produce 500K EVs at their Zwickau factory. Starting sometime next year and ramping through 2020. If they were actually able to pull this off, it might be 'real' competition for Tesla. Two and a half years to take a giant ICE plant and convert it to produce half a million EVs annually seems optimistic to me. Also it's not clear where they would find high performance batteries for that many EVs by 2020/2021. Actual cell factories they may be partnering in, are projected to ramp up to major GWh production in a much longer time frame.
VW plans to produce 1,500 electric cars per day at its Zwickau factory

Does Zwickau operate at full capacity 334 days per year?

I read unionized German workers are sporadically striking for a day or two in support of the largest German Union calling for a 28 hr work week.