Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[MitchJi]

Unfortunately Musk's bizarre history with Hyperloop, which he made up on the back of a napkin *as part of a public attack on California HSR*, claiming that it would cost less (nope, all the cost is in civil construction which is identical)

And ignoring the fact that it has lower capacity.... this means that I'm much more inclined to expect that Musk meant what he said and really was proposing to take riders out of packed large buses and put them a few at a time into smaller vehicles.

Because that's *exactly what he proposed* as an "alternative" to HSR -- taking riders out of packed trains and putting them a few at a time into smaller vehicles. (It's not really an alternative,

I assumed that building tubes on pylons would be much cheaper than laying railroad tracks. If not HL obviously isn't substantially cheaper. I'm going to give Elon and all of the people working on this the benefit of the doubt on the cost, and assume they are not all complete imbeciles.

You seem to be missing the idea that the HL cars can be strung together just like railway cars. Of course they could also run smaller HL "trains" more frequently.

You are right, I was referring to PowerWalls. As for PowerPacks, your customers are large businesses or utilities. They pay zero price to brand and care all about cost benefit. There will be a lot of competition and I do not think Tesla has much future prospects there.

Think about it: PowerPacks are stationary objects and they do not need to meet the stringent requirements of battery pack in an automobile. Tesla battery pack technology is an overkill for that use case. So, you will have plenty of competition from mediocre players.

Incorrect. You think that utilities will be willing to make do with less reliable batteries? Plus Tesla has the least expensive high quality packs, nobody else is even close, and that's before the GF pack cost reductions.

 

[mmd]

Another TSLA bullish analyst changes boat. James Albertine of Stifel had a price target of $400 in Feb 2015. Then, lowered to $325 3 months ago. Now at Consumer Edge Research since July. Wonder if he will join Q2 ER.
Jamie Albertine joins Consumer Edge Research
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-albertine-2191611

Dougherty's Andrea James (PT $500 after Powerwall last year) and Dan Galves of Credit Suisse ($325, then $240 in Feb 2016) also changed boats earlier this year.
Credit Suisse Lowers Tesla's Price Target To $240; 'Choppy Path, But Worth The Wait'

Full ratings: Tesla Motors (TSLA) - Stock Predictions & Price Targets

 

[jhm]

10 mpg sounds too good. I think you are confusing the mpg of pick-up trucks with big rig mpg, or may be using mpg of big rig with no load. Big rigs are usually 5.5-6.5 mpg while hauling loads, but can be doubled with aerodynamic and other minor changes, like in the Airflow bullet truck. A much simpler solution than installing huge battery packs and supporting charging infrastructure. A plug-in hybrid version could increase this mpg a bit more.
AirFlow Trucks More Than Doubles Big Rig Fuel Economy - Gas 2

Cool! I like this airflow design. Now just open up that nose, get rid of the diesel engine, and make room for a stack of swappable battery packs. Say 1 to 6, each about 120 kWh. (Changed my assumption from earlier post)

So this aerodynamic shell is good for 13.6 mpg. Here's how I convert that to kWh/mile. The Model S is comparable to a gas car getting about 25 mpg, but use 0.32 kWh/mile. So the ratio is 8 kWh/gal. Now divide that by 13.6 mpg for the Tesla Semi and we get about 0.6 kWh/mile.

So if it is 300 miles to the next swap station, the rig will burn through 180 kWh so 3 fresh 120-kWh packs will plenty of capacity for 50% DOD. Indeed, changed my pack size here so that one pack would be good for 100 miles. Thus a stack of 6 packs would be good for 600 to 900 miles range, a full day of driving if needed.

Let's suppose the pack density gets to 300 Wh/kg. So these 120 kWh packs weigh 400 kg or 880 pounds. Anybody know weight limits for semis to put this into perspective? Naturally, you don't want to lug around more packs than needed for your next leg.

So a really key issue here is the aerodynamics of the rig. Without a really efficient design you'd need twice the battery capacity which could be enough to upend the economics.

I'd also point out that 0.6 kWh/mile Supercharging is really not that bad of an option. However the demand charge cost of providing Supercharging on say 6 packs at a time could be quite expensive. Swapping retains the advantage of charging at lower power cost and at lowest energy cost. Buying up surplus power at 1 c/kWh seems pretty sweet to me.

Another thing I'd like to point out here is that there are economic advantage to cycling fast. Suppose through the combination of trucking and grid powering these packs get 2 50% cycles and can hold up for 10k cycles. This is a life discharge of 5 MWh output per kWh capacity. But it will take about 14 years of twice daily cycling to use up the life expectancy. But in ten years, the battery technology will advance so much that these packs are easily obsolete. New packs hack twice the density for one thing. So it would be advantageous to cycle these even more frequenly. Three times a day would high life expectancy in 9 years, just in time to beat obsolencence. But how can you cycle more frequenly. I think swapping provides an answer. If truckers swap every 200 miles, pack can be cycled a couple times per day for trucking and once more at night for grid supply. Managing an inventory of packs independent of a fleet of vehicles assures that each pack is consistently utilized over its lifecycle. Packs that are fixed to a single vehicle may be underutilized or overstressed depending on how that specific vehicle is used. But swapping from truck to truck, every pack will get roughly the same treament, well utilized and not overstressed. The idea is to extract the most value possible from each pack in the shortest time possible to avoid obsolencence and capital cost.

Now let's suppose we are able to extract 5MWho per kWhc. That provides about 8300 mile and compared with 13.6 mpg aerodynamic diesel truck, this saves about 612 gallon. Valued at nominally $2.50/gal this is worth $1500 per kWhc. Meanwhile the cost to Tesla is about $150 for the battery plus $200 of solar power for charging ($40/MWh utility scale solar for 5 MWh life). There are also costs for service at swap stations say $50 to $150. So we get to Tesla's cost at around $500 per kWh for a service that creates about $1500. The net benefit of $1000 gets split between Tesla and customer. Suppose the customer is to save 20% on fuel plus avoid owning batteries or an ICE with all its maintenance cost. So Tesla is positioned to make upto $800 if the batteries are well utilized for a full life. Let's give this a 50% haircut.

So a 120-kWh pack in the swappable inventory could net Tesla about $48k over 10 years.

Yeah, I'd say that is a pretty good prospect. This also may explain why Tesla doubled the price on Powerpacks. If you can net $48k per 120-kWh semi pack, why would you sell a Powerpack for $25k gross? Plus, Tesla gets to sell the big trucks too.

So someone check my math and assumptions. This is looking a bit too good to be true. Even if we give this another 50% haircut it still looks pretty damn good.

I hope folks don't mind straying too far off topic on this, but Tesla is upto something here. They've had Jerome in skunk works for a reason. And now we have a few clues to work with. So how big is this?

 

[Sancho]

I bought all of my TSLA shares 3.5 years ago. I sold some (one-third of my holdings) for the first time today. Please forgive me, but it had nothing to do with the company or the market. It was to pay cash for a new home I’ve had built. Closing will be on Monday. Thank you Tesla Motors.

Excellent! And when the TSLA share price soars again, you can build an addition.

 

[3Victoria]

@Curt Renz -- congrats ... enjoy your house, garage, and .... Model 3!

 

[mmd]

@jhm,
You are absolutely right, an electric semi truck is technically possible. The question is economics. Trucking companies are all about profits and lowering of costs, or we don't get our free shipping from Amazon Tesla semi truck has to compete on pricing with these efficient trucks. Here is a 2012 article on Daimler's Cascade Evolution. The article says, it costs $6220 more. It also needed an aerodynamic trailer. Airflow also likely needs that for its 13.4 mpg.
Daimler Shows Big Rig Getting Almost 10 Miles Per Gallon

The cost of a big rig will increase approximately $6,220 because of the fuel-saving technology, according to the Obama administration. Truck operators will save $73,000 on fuel over the lifetime of the trucks, according to summaries of the regulation.

Freightliner hasn’t announced what the 2014 Cascadia will cost, Daum said. The company is confident buyers will be able to cover the increased cost through fuel savings in one to two years, which would mean a price increase for that model in the $3,000 to $6,000 range, he said. A new truck typically is priced at more than $110,000, he said.

Isn't the battery swapping you propose quite expensive? IIRC, Tesla was charging $40 for a swap for Model S. If it costs anywhere near that (probably more), then there will be no cost savings for fuel.

Semi truck sales is not a high volume business. 35,130 heavy trucks were sold in US in May.

 

[maoing]

Another TSLA bullish analyst changes boat. James Albertine of Stifel had a price target of $400 in Feb 2015. Then, lowered to $325 3 months ago. Now at Consumer Edge Research since July. Wonder if he will join Q2 ER.
Jamie Albertine joins Consumer Edge Research
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-albertine-2191611

Dougherty's Andrea James (PT $500 after Powerwall last year) and Dan Galves of Credit Suisse ($325, then $240 in Feb 2016) also changed boats earlier this year.
Credit Suisse Lowers Tesla's Price Target To $240; 'Choppy Path, But Worth The Wait'

Full ratings: Tesla Motors (TSLA) - Stock Predictions & Price Targets

This is very intereting observatin. I guess "too bullish" isn't always good. The median PT is 240 now (MS 245 and GS 240) , IIRC the real SP rarely exceeding the median PT except the 2013 bull run.

 

[maoing]

I bought all of my TSLA shares 3.5 years ago. I sold some (one-third of my holdings) for the first time today. Please forgive me, but it had nothing to do with the company or the market. It was to pay cash for a new home I’ve had built. Closing will be on Monday. Thank you Tesla Motors.

Congrats for your new house and sucessful profit taking. But are you kidding to sell 1/3 of shares with such distressed price? TSLA SP is way misunderstood and undervalued. TSLA market cap only stands for $31B as close of market today, in 10-20 years, it has potential to become a $1000B company, that's >30X. With mortgate interest rate so low ~3% in these days, why not to keep more shares to catch the imminent TSLA momentum train? To name a few, SCTY merger vote short squeeze, >50% YoY growth model S/X, expoential growth model 3, unlimited blue sea Tesla energy market, unbeatable SCTY pannel, much anticipated truck and bus etc. laid down by Elon's grand vision.

 

[winfield100]

Yes, the scale is extreme here. We have been discussing an end state for the whole globe with 100% renewables for all energy. So at this global scale something on order of 500 to 1000 TWh of storage will be needed, not accounting for growth in consumptions! It's a huge scale! Diablo Canyon is trivial in comparison.

thanks. those are scales i like to discuss (follow Dr Richard Perez out of SUNY a bit)as a bit OT, suspect will need a lot more electric. Waiting in 10 yrs or so announcement of "beam riders" ground (or lunar) based lasers that are engines to keep a "conveyor belt" of ships between earth/luna and mars. continuous boost/decel. (old concept, separate engine from ship) back to lurk mode

 

[dmckinstry]

Congrats for your new house and sucessful profit taking. But are you kidding to sell 1/3 of shares with such distressed price? TSLA SP is way misunderstood and undervalued. TSLA market cap only stands for $31B as close of market today, in 10-20 years, it has potential to become a $1000B company, that's >30X. With mortgate interest rate so low ~3% in these days, why not to keep more shares to catch the imminent TSLA momentum train? To name a few, SCTY merger vote short squeeze, >50% YoY growth model S/X, expoential growth model 3, unlimited blue sea Tesla energy market, unbeatable SCTY pannel, much anticipated truck and bus etc. laid down by Elon's grand vision.

It's about timing the need, not the greed. I sold nearly half my shares 3+ years ago. I really "NEEDED" my Model S then (okay, it's just that I really didn't want to wait any longer than the 3 1/2 years I had waited already). I'd started buying my shares in late 2011.

 

[racer26]

Cool! I like this airflow design. Now just open up that nose, get rid of the diesel engine, and make room for a stack of swappable battery packs. Say 1 to 6, each about 120 kWh. (Changed my assumption from earlier post)

So this aerodynamic shell is good for 13.6 mpg. Here's how I convert that to kWh/mile. The Model S is comparable to a gas car getting about 25 mpg, but use 0.32 kWh/mile. So the ratio is 8 kWh/gal. Now divide that by 13.6 mpg for the Tesla Semi and we get about 0.6 kWh/mile.

So if it is 300 miles to the next swap station, the rig will burn through 180 kWh so 3 fresh 120-kWh packs will plenty of capacity for 50% DOD. Indeed, changed my pack size here so that one pack would be good for 100 miles. Thus a stack of 6 packs would be good for 600 to 900 miles range, a full day of driving if needed.

Let's suppose the pack density gets to 300 Wh/kg. So these 120 kWh packs weigh 400 kg or 880 pounds. Anybody know weight limits for semis to put this into perspective? Naturally, you don't want to lug around more packs than needed for your next leg.

So a really key issue here is the aerodynamics of the rig. Without a really efficient design you'd need twice the battery capacity which could be enough to upend the economics.

I'd also point out that 0.6 kWh/mile Supercharging is really not that bad of an option. However the demand charge cost of providing Supercharging on say 6 packs at a time could be quite expensive. Swapping retains the advantage of charging at lower power cost and at lowest energy cost. Buying up surplus power at 1 c/kWh seems pretty sweet to me.

Another thing I'd like to point out here is that there are economic advantage to cycling fast. Suppose through the combination of trucking and grid powering these packs get 2 50% cycles and can hold up for 10k cycles. This is a life discharge of 5 MWh output per kWh capacity. But it will take about 14 years of twice daily cycling to use up the life expectancy. But in ten years, the battery technology will advance so much that these packs are easily obsolete. New packs hack twice the density for one thing. So it would be advantageous to cycle these even more frequenly. Three times a day would high life expectancy in 9 years, just in time to beat obsolencence. But how can you cycle more frequenly. I think swapping provides an answer. If truckers swap every 200 miles, pack can be cycled a couple times per day for trucking and once more at night for grid supply. Managing an inventory of packs independent of a fleet of vehicles assures that each pack is consistently utilized over its lifecycle. Packs that are fixed to a single vehicle may be underutilized or overstressed depending on how that specific vehicle is used. But swapping from truck to truck, every pack will get roughly the same treament, well utilized and not overstressed. The idea is to extract the most value possible from each pack in the shortest time possible to avoid obsolencence and capital cost.

Now let's suppose we are able to extract 5MWho per kWhc. That provides about 8300 mile and compared with 13.6 mpg aerodynamic diesel truck, this saves about 612 gallon. Valued at nominally $2.50/gal this is worth $1500 per kWhc. Meanwhile the cost to Tesla is about $150 for the battery plus $200 of solar power for charging ($40/MWh utility scale solar for 5 MWh life). There are also costs for service at swap stations say $50 to $150. So we get to Tesla's cost at around $500 per kWh for a service that creates about $1500. The net benefit of $1000 gets split between Tesla and customer. Suppose the customer is to save 20% on fuel plus avoid owning batteries or an ICE with all its maintenance cost. So Tesla is positioned to make upto $800 if the batteries are well utilized for a full life. Let's give this a 50% haircut.

So a 120-kWh pack in the swappable inventory could net Tesla about $48k over 10 years.

Yeah, I'd say that is a pretty good prospect. This also may explain why Tesla doubled the price on Powerpacks. If you can net $48k per 120-kWh semi pack, why would you sell a Powerpack for $25k gross? Plus, Tesla gets to sell the big trucks too.

So someone check my math and assumptions. This is looking a bit too good to be true. Even if we give this another 50% haircut it still looks pretty damn good.

I hope folks don't mind straying too far off topic on this, but Tesla is upto something here. They've had Jerome in skunk works for a reason. And now we have a few clues to work with. So how big is this?

I'll take a whack at checking your math by estimating a different way.

Aerodynamic & rolling resistance, power & MPG calculator - EcoModder.com

Rolling resistance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That link shows the ecomodder drag and rolling resistance calculator for an 80000lb fully loaded semi with optimistic Crr and Cd, with a frontal area of a little over 9 m^2 https://www.the-blueprints.com/blue...-4x2-semi-trailer-tractor-streamspace-cab.png

Using that table, somewhere right around 69mph it takes 150kW to overcome the drag.
150kWh = 69mi, therefore that's a fair bit more pessimistic than your example, at 2.17kWh/mi

Because the trailers are a standardized size and shape, I don't think you can appreciably change the A component of the drag equation, and .0045 is already pretty optimistic on the Crr. And sure, 80k lbs is a fully loaded worst case. Tesla does have experience with producing vehicles with low Cd, though, so maybe they can do better than my optimistic estimate of 0.6

Truck drivers are allowed to drive for 11 hours in the US, and 69mph * 11 hours = 759mi.

759mi * 2.17kWh/mi = 1647kWh. You could probably have 8x 200kWh modules.

If I use the Panasonic NCR18650B datasheet http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/NCR18650B.pdf which is the cells Model S used to (still does?) use: 243Wh/kg, and you seem to be WAY optimistic on cycle life.

200kWh modules would be 823kg or 1810 lb. 8 of them would consume 14,485lb or about 18% of the load capacity.

The data sheet suggests 300 cycles to 80% capacity. This article Tesla Model S Battery Life: How Much Range Loss For Electric Car Over Time? claims 94% capacity after 50k mi on 85kWh Model S. S85 had 240mi EPA range, so that would suggest 208 cycles to that point. 80% cycles, times a more conservative 500 cycle life = 400kWh lifetime output per kWh capacity.

400kWh / 2.17kWh/mi = 184.3mi lifetime / kWh capacity. Using a more typical semi average fuel economy of 6mpg, that's about 30.7 gal of fuel displaced.

30.7gal * $2.50/gal = $76.80. - ($40/MWh energy cost * 0.4MWh) = $60.80 -- not enough to even reach optimistic gigafactory cell pricing.

Slowing down to 55mph cuts the energy requirement to around 89kW. Or 1.61kWh/mi
55mi * 11 hours = 605mi
605mi * 1.61kWh/mi = 974kWh
Use 8x 120kWh modules instead.
120kWh = 493kg or 1086lb * 8 = 8691lb or around 11% of the payload capacity.
400kWh / 1.61kWh/mi = 248.4mi lifetime / kWh capacity. Displaces 41.4 gal of fuel
41.4gal * $2.50/gal = $103.51 - $16 energy cost = $87.51 -- closer, but still not quite there.

I don't think you need to pay for the cell cost with the fuel savings though. Semi's are expensive vehicles, and I'm guessing the cost savings of not needing a big diesel engine will buy a fair number of batteries.

 

[Runarbt]

I'll take a whack at checking your math by estimating a different way.

Aerodynamic & rolling resistance, power & MPG calculator - EcoModder.com

Rolling resistance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That link shows the ecomodder drag and rolling resistance calculator for an 80000lb fully loaded semi with optimistic Crr and Cd, with a frontal area of a little over 9 m^2 https://www.the-blueprints.com/blue...-4x2-semi-trailer-tractor-streamspace-cab.png

Using that table, somewhere right around 69mph it takes 150kW to overcome the drag.
150kWh = 69mi, therefore that's a fair bit more pessimistic than your example, at 2.17kWh/mi

Because the trailers are a standardized size and shape, I don't think you can appreciably change the A component of the drag equation, and .0045 is already pretty optimistic on the Crr. And sure, 80k lbs is a fully loaded worst case. Tesla does have experience with producing vehicles with low Cd, though, so maybe they can do better than my optimistic estimate of 0.6

Truck drivers are allowed to drive for 11 hours in the US, and 69mph * 11 hours = 759mi.

759mi * 2.17kWh/mi = 1647kWh. You could probably have 8x 200kWh modules.

If I use the Panasonic NCR18650B datasheet http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/NCR18650B.pdf which is the cells Model S used to (still does?) use: 243Wh/kg, and you seem to be WAY optimistic on cycle life.

200kWh modules would be 823kg or 1810 lb. 8 of them would consume 14,485lb or about 18% of the load capacity.

The data sheet suggests 300 cycles to 80% capacity. This article Tesla Model S Battery Life: How Much Range Loss For Electric Car Over Time? claims 94% capacity after 50k mi on 85kWh Model S. S85 had 240mi EPA range, so that would suggest 208 cycles to that point. 80% cycles, times a more conservative 500 cycle life = 400kWh lifetime output per kWh capacity.

400kWh / 2.17kWh/mi = 184.3mi lifetime / kWh capacity. Using a more typical semi average fuel economy of 6mpg, that's about 30.7 gal of fuel displaced.

30.7gal * $2.50/gal = $76.80. - ($40/MWh energy cost * 0.4MWh) = $60.80 -- not enough to even reach optimistic gigafactory cell pricing.

Slowing down to 55mph cuts the energy requirement to around 89kW. Or 1.61kWh/mi
55mi * 11 hours = 605mi
605mi * 1.61kWh/mi = 974kWh
Use 8x 120kWh modules instead.
120kWh = 493kg or 1086lb * 8 = 8691lb or around 11% of the payload capacity.
400kWh / 1.61kWh/mi = 248.4mi lifetime / kWh capacity. Displaces 41.4 gal of fuel
41.4gal * $2.50/gal = $103.51 - $16 energy cost = $87.51 -- closer, but still not quite there.

I don't think you need to pay for the cell cost with the fuel savings though. Semi's are expensive vehicles, and I'm guessing the cost savings of not needing a big diesel engine will buy a fair number of batteries.

I think more importantly is the autonomy and not needing a driver.

 

[Gerardf]

Hmm, could this post be real ? Then it is the unfortunate person selling for $181

neonacr - $TSLA I put an order in to sell my 250 shares at $281.88 in ... | StockTwits

Profile refers to Mr. jon Katz. Google returns several hits on that name plus investing.
If true that was an expensive typo..

 

[GoTslaGo]

Hmm, could this post be real ? Then it is the unfortunate person selling for $181

neonacr - $TSLA I put an order in to sell my 250 shares at $281.88 in ... | StockTwits

Profile refers to Mr. jon Katz. Google returns several hits on that name plus investing.
If true that was an expensive typo..

Ouch! Guess some of those weird AH trades might be "real" after all! Poor guy.

 

[MikeC]

Hmm, could this post be real ? Then it is the unfortunate person selling for $181

neonacr - $TSLA I put an order in to sell my 250 shares at $281.88 in ... | StockTwits

Profile refers to Mr. jon Katz. Google returns several hits on that name plus investing.
If true that was an expensive typo..

But why wouldn't it have given him the best price available? The bid was obviously way higher than that.

 

[Johan]

Since it's the weekend I think the big kahuna could use some R&D...

(On a related note: I should never have shown my son Pokemon Go)

 

[Bgarret]

I think more importantly is the autonomy and not needing a driver.

Good article by Road & Track on some of the metrics for trucking and autonomy:

Report: Driverless Trucks Will Cut Costs, Millions of Jobs

$4500 to ship a ful container from LA to NY. 75% were labor (driver) costs. Likely the bulk of the remaining 25%was fuel.

From another article - US trucking industry was a $700 Billion industry last year.

 

[AlMc]

Another TSLA bullish analyst changes boat. James Albertine of Stifel had a price target of $400 in Feb 2015. Then, lowered to $325 3 months ago. Now at Consumer Edge Research since July. Wonder if he will join Q2 ER.
Jamie Albertine joins Consumer Edge Research
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-albertine-2191611

Dougherty's Andrea James (PT $500 after Powerwall last year) and Dan Galves of Credit Suisse ($325, then $240 in Feb 2016) also changed boats earlier this year.
Credit Suisse Lowers Tesla's Price Target To $240; 'Choppy Path, But Worth The Wait'

Full ratings: Tesla Motors (TSLA) - Stock Predictions & Price Targets

Valid argument.

In the long term I do feel TSLA will be a good investment but in the short term (this thread) it might be a bit rocky.

For the last two years we have been pretty range bound. The indices are hitting ATH and the other members of the F.A.T. M.A.N. group have given better returns during that time period.

I remain in core shares, a small number of trading shares, LEAPS so I still qualify as a TSLA bull but I am a 'realistic' bull.

 

[Spidy]

Since it's weekend maybe someone can explain to me how margins for Inventory cars are calculated? I mean when they put miles on them as loaners etc. and sell at a lower rate how do you get the margins for that?

 

[Johan]

Since it's weekend maybe someone can explain to me how margins for Inventory cars are calculated? I mean when they put miles on them as loaners etc. and sell at a lower rate how do you get the margins for that?

(Sale price to customer - cost)/cost=margin

Example: ($72000-$58200)/$58200=23.7% margin.
(Made up numbers, inventory car sold for $72k to customer, cost to produce for Tesla $58200)