I'm not related to JP, but I'm shorting TSLA...

[tftf]

What caliber of gun was it?
No worries. When I come across your comments I'll keep track of them and put together a compilation.

For a last time: Because you misquoted me, see above. 15-20 billion USD is clearly not the same as my 5-10 billion USD (wich included the Gen III car, not just the battery factory) and I never said TSLA couldn't raise the money. I wrote that dilution or more debt would be inevitable because the huge battery project is intimately linked to the Gen III (I also wrote the Gen III won't go on sale in numbers before the battery plant is finished) and it takes 2+ years to construct the plant so TSLA would need to start the project soon.

@SteveG3. I responded to your questions in a PM.

 

[Causalien]

Not siding with the shorts, but I believe that The Great Recession type market crisis is likely in 2016. I think Elon mentioned this year 2016 in one of his interview. Not sure where.

2016 because of two things. It is the last term of Obama admin and the problems in the last recession never got resolved, but rather pushed onto the government's balance sheet. S&P propped up by QE and private debt financing shifted to student loans. The crisis only shifted to a different type of asset and the market is a confidence game.

 

[Krugerrand]

For a last time: Because you misquoted me, see above.

And I assured you that as I came across your many comments on SA that I'd catalogue them and put together a compilation (to remind you). That's tens of thousands of comments to go through, so a little patience.

In the meantime, you still get to be quite wrong about how much the GigaFactory will cost Tesla (and TSLA) (even including all costs of Gen III). :wink:

 

[tftf]

And I assured you that as I came across your many comments on SA that I'd catalogue them and put together a compilation (to remind you). That's tens of thousands of comments to go through, so a little patience. In the meantime, you still get to be quite wrong about how much the GigaFactory will cost Tesla (and TSLA) (even including all costs of Gen III). :wink:

You make me come back again to correct this because that's again wrong or even confusing me with other people:

1. "Tens of thousands"? This comment number may be of JP (he has a comment count of over 27k on the SA site as I type this). I have about 90% fewer comments than him and many are on other stocks (from AAPL to ZNGA). You must probably be confusing me with him or other people commenting on TSLA over at SA.

2. My cost estimate was a blog title, not just a comment. It's obvious: If TSLA has multiple partners their slice of the total cap ex will go down. The $5-10 billion was my total cost estimate (for all partners) and including development and tooling of the Gen III car (I wrote the two projects were closely linked: No mass sales of Gen III cars without a finished battery factory and that it made sense to finance the plant using joint-ventures or similar structures).
If you look at other projects of this size (a current example is the new Apple HQ in Cupertino: Apple's new headquarters could cost $2 billion more than planned, report says - San Jose Mercury News ) there are often cost overruns, so even the battery plant cost may be higher than the current $4-5 billion estimated by Tesla. We will only know this in 2017-2020. In my experience it is very rare that the final costs of such huge projects are lower than the original estimate.

3. It's obvious you will find errors in some of my old comments especially as they relate to future estimates (for example, my TSLA unit sales estimate for 2014 is probably too high). But I stand by my main thesis and I really don't like when people misquote my numbers or articles.

I will not come back and correct further misquotes. I work hard and take pride in my estimates and therefore hope that my numbers/estimates and comments are used/quoted correctly from now on. Everyone can confirm by looking at the original sources over at SA. Thank you.

 

[ggr]

...
2. My cost estimate was a blog title, not just a comment. It's obvious: If TSLA has multiple partners that their slice of the cap ex will go down. The $5-10 billion was my total cost estimate (for all partners) and including development and tooling of the Gen III car (I wrote the two projects were closely linked: No mass sales of Gen III cars without a finished battery factory and that it made sense to finance the plant using joint-ventures or similar structures).
If you look at other projects of this size (a current example is the new Apple HQ in Cupertino: Apple's new headquarters could cost $2 billion more than planned, report says - San Jose Mercury News ) there are often cost overruns, so even the battery plant cost may be higher than the current $4-5 billion estimated by Tesla. We will only know this in 2017-2020. In my experience it is very rare that the final costs of such huge projects are lower than the original estimate.

This is not at all a reasonable comparison. Apple set out to create an artistic masterpiece using techniques that had never been done before, requiring precision that had never been done before, and demanding perfection. It's also on very expensive real estate in a place where costs (including building) are high and variable.

The Gigafactory, on the other hand, is going to be concrete in the middle of a desert somewhere, and people are going to want the job so they'll compete on price and get fixed contracts. There won't be anything particularly special about the building itself. The equipment inside it will be straightforward evolutions of stuff that is already in other factories. So I don't believe it will be either as expensive in the first place, nor likely to have the cost overruns.

Now if you want something to compare it to, how about the NSA's new data center in Utah. Which (the building part) was completed on time and budget, and it was even a government project. There were problems with power supply and software, but I don't think those were relevant.

 

[Krugerrand]

You make me come back again to correct this because that's again wrong or even confusing me with other people:

1. "Tens of thousands"? This comment number may be of JP (he has a comment count of over 27k on the SA site as I type this). I have about 90% fewer comments than him and many are on other stocks (from AAPL to ZNGA). You must probably be confusing me with him or other people commenting on TSLA over at SA.

*le sigh* There are tens of thousands of comments on SA. Wasn't referring to *you* having made tens of thousands of comments.

2. My cost estimate was a blog title, not just a comment.

It was both a blog title and commentS made.

It's obvious: If TSLA has multiple partners their slice of the total cap ex will go down.

Yes, that is obvious. What was never obvious to you (when you began your dissection) was that Tesla would have a partner/s in the endeavor or come up with some clever, creative way to execute, even after many who know a lot more than you about Tesla said as much to you.

Siting Apple's HQ now is why you got the numbers wrong in the first place, and why you'll continue to be wrong. As a further example, on SA you've sited battery mfgs and how battery mfging is a low margin business, and therefore arrived at conclusions about what Tesla mfging their own batteries will be and the resultant outcome. You'll be wrong on that aspect as well.

What you should be doing is looking at SpaceX and Solar City, and seeing what those companies have done to achieve more with less. What you should be doing is looking at what Tesla has done to date, how much they've achieved for a fraction of the money. As it stands, it's going to cost Tesla roughly a mere $2B (give or take a few million) to get their Giga Factory up and running. If we generously (and I really think it's quite generous) allot another $1B from Model S and X sales for all other things Gen III related (R&D, additional line equipment, hiring and training of more people etc...) we come to a grand total of $3B. Heck, let's pretend they blow the budget, someone high up makes a critical error, while Elon is on a Hawaiian vacation with his family, that costs Tesla a whole bunch of money (they get fired over it, of course) and we add another $1B; now we're at $4B, still short quite a lot from your $5-10B. I'm not even sure how someone's 'hard work and pride in their estimates' can have them coming up with a $5B range in the first place. *shrug*

3. ... I really don't like when people misquote my numbers or articles.

We all have things we don't like others to do. For instance, I don't like it when people put in qualifiers after the fact. I consider that something you do and believe this most recent post of yours is an example. I don't like it when people take credit for something they never said, did, or identified. Like when you said the longs on SA claimed the Giga Factory would never happen, but that you'd been touting it as a reality all along. And I don't like it when people go out of their way to stir the pot, such as you bringing the whole 'confirmation bias' thing to this forum and then acting coy about your motives for doing such a thing.

For the sake of not making you come back again, I sincerely apologize if I've misquoted your original Giga Factory et al... estimate numbers.