It's in my personal commentary on the earnings call, over in the Q2 results thread.
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This can be especially important to understand before one attempts to go into business for oneself. Unfortunately, I had to learn this the hard way (as I do most things). But the things you learn the hard way, you don't easily forget, so there is that silver lining.
dc_h
Active Member
Little noted among the good news, was the branding shift away from Elon = Tesla today. This will shift the story from Elon vs shorts, or Elon vs pedo Gus (just kidding, he was a troglodyte-look it up). Getting the teams out to talk about their big news was great. Karpathy on AI, the chip superstar from Apple and Intel, JB on batteries, all now businesses that could be billion dollar co’s outside of Tesla. Rebranding Tesla as the company Elon got started, but now several businesses with geniuses running point on AI, chip development, battery chemistry and the global sales guy and the quiet finance guy. It makes the corporate brand appear more stable than the 50 billion dollar startup run by the eccentric genius. ‘I hope this is phase one of rebranding tsla and a sign of the simpler more effective corporate structure paying off already.
Great call. Definitely the best ER I’ve ever been on.
Great call. Definitely the best ER I’ve ever been on.
Why not? No problem. I tried not to bring my words into the translation.
Original Article: (paywall but free with registration)
パナソニック、ＥＶ電池セル３割増産 テスラ共同工場が世界最大に
Panasonic will increase battery cell manufacturing capacity by 30% from now by the end of 2018, at the Gigafactory in Nevada, USA., which they co-operate with American auto manufaturer Tesla. The planned annual capacity is 35 GWh (Giga means 1 billion) and the batteries are supplied to Tesla's Electric Vehicle, "Model 3". Tesla had production issues from last fall, but it is being resolved. Hence the capacity increase. One year late from the original plan, this is going to be the world biggest battery factory.
Panasonic adds three production lines, totalling 13 lines, to make lithium-ion batteries, to accomodate Tesla's Model 3 production target of 5000 cars per week. The latest production lines are 20%-30% more efficient than existing lines. Total investment of the Gigafactory is five billion dollars (approximately 5000-oku Japanese yen). According to sources, Panasonic pays one third of this investment. At the factory, Panasonic is responsible for upstream production of battery manufacturing (cell manufacturing), and Tesla is responsible for downstream production (assembly).
Model 3 is a very popular car with 500,000 reservations by last summer. However, Tesla struggled to complete fully automated production process and they made less than 3000 cars per week, at the end of May 2018. As a result Panasonic's cell manufacturing lines didn't run full capacity, negatively affecting Panasonic's financials.
At the end of June, Tesla quickly increased Model 3 production up to 5000 cars per week, temporarily. Panasonic was forced to redirect cells for home batteries to Model 3 to cope with the demand. That's why Panasonic plans to increase cell production capacity to originally planned 35 GWh, to support Model 3 stable weekly production of 5000 cars.
Tesla eventually plans to produce 10000 Model 3 cars per week. At that time the Gigafactory need to be expanded and bring the annual production capacity to 50 GWh. Tesla is running out of cash right now and the future is not clear.
skitown
Member
Huh, I wasn't expecting this twist at the end.
I believe it! Anyone try to get a Tesla recently? It’s not waiting for a car anymore, it’s getting a pdf from their contracts department that allows them to get paid. That’s going to be the source of cash flow crisis.
Phil Seastrand
Member
Unfortunately I've found this to be true with just about everything that I've been an "expert" in. Very sad.
hockeythug
Active Member
I loved the CapEx raise question given the excellent Elon Musk vs. Short sellers analysis. Looks like the attacking their borrowing market train has derailed. And paying off debts!!?? What is this sorcery?
If we take that translation to mean they have currently 10 lines, adding 3 more (of which they are 20-30% more efficient) to hit 35 GWh, then that means they're currently capable of ~25.2GWh-25.7GWh. Subtract ~1GWh for TE perhaps. That should support something around 6000 cars/week for 50 weeks a year run rate. So it seems like cell production shouldn't be a problem for 6k/week, but it will constrain them to somewhere around there, especially if they also want to ramp TE higher. ~28GWh (plus TE) for 7k, ~32GWh for 8k... this all assumes LR batteries of course. If 1/3 are SR at 8k, they only need ~28.7GWh.
On the other hand, if what the article is telling us is that to hit 5k/week sustained they must add 3 lines which are 20-30% more efficient... then they are currently only at around ~14.5-14.8 GWh (3600~3700/week), and the added lines will only bring them to ~20GWh (~5000/wk). That would mean hitting 6 to 8k of LR would require 5 to 10 more of these new more efficient lines.
Sounds like Tesla needs to get crackin' on building out new sections of GF1 and Panasonic needs to start ordering up / building new lines at a much greater number than 3.
On the other hand, if what the article is telling us is that to hit 5k/week sustained they must add 3 lines which are 20-30% more efficient... then they are currently only at around ~14.5-14.8 GWh (3600~3700/week), and the added lines will only bring them to ~20GWh (~5000/wk). That would mean hitting 6 to 8k of LR would require 5 to 10 more of these new more efficient lines.
Sounds like Tesla needs to get crackin' on building out new sections of GF1 and Panasonic needs to start ordering up / building new lines at a much greater number than 3.
Agreed, X Fan -- many if not most Swedish athletes, pop stars, business folk etc moved out, first their money. Even famous theater and film director Ingmar Bergman left the country after being fetched by police, on stage during a rehearsal, over tax issues in the mid-70's. I don't think he was super rich like HM main owner Stefan Persson, who got a special law exempting him from confiscatory taxation if he moved back from London to Sweden.
Also here are some details about US July sales for BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Jaguar, that echo Tesla's chart in the Q2 letter.
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Yes rich folks whose wealth isn't reliant on actually being in any specific place will likely move. But what % of tax income is that fraction of people? I think small.
Ha! Should we expect a big increase in accounts payable, as the time between delivery and payment increases due to Tesla's difficulty issuing contracts on time? ;-)
Interesting. There still seem to be plenty of superrich people living in Sweden, though, and the country seems to be doing fine.
Of course, >100% taxation (something I've only seen in Sweden) is really quite different from 92%, and is slightly beyond confiscatory. The formal economic studies on what the optimum rate for maximizing the government budget (i.e. the rate above which people would evade the income tax faster than the tax raised money) have given results between 70%-90%.
To be fair, those >100% rates were on margin and 40-50 years ago. But they did certainly contribute to breaking the thitherto (is that a word
?) hegemony of Social Democrats for 44 years and the first non-S government after Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi fame) started a public fight in the papers with finance minister Sträng. Some 30 years ago S and the Liberal party made a deal to limit income tax to more reasonable levels (while still keeping many hidden, indirect forms of taxation). It took some years still to creep down to 50% total taxation overall, and it soon began to creep back upwards. It has become more difficult to stash money off shore, too. Or so I hear We still see a lot of really fancy sailboats around here this time of year, not all showing non-Swedish flags.
But all that is basically off topic here. Sorry, mods.
If I remember correctly, there are examples of +100% taxation in India—aimed at the Tata family.
Yuri_G
Member
What's your source? I'm seeing far less Jaguar XE's sold
Total I see is 12,780
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/10/jaguar-xe-sales-figures-usa-canada/
Wasnt Elon/Tesla going to report Autopilot statistics? Did they forget that?
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