Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[jesselivenomore]

Qui vivra verra. It's all about how it's spun and most of all Tesla's response. Their track record when it comes to commitment to safety is excellent, but their track record when it comes to communications... well, not excellent.

Assuming zero communication from Tesla, do you all of a sudden believe there is the possibility of wide spread charging problems? That Model S's will begin to spontaneously combust at multiple superchargers? Do you think anybody believes that?

If not, then TSLA is not going to lose 20% of its value. That is ridiculous to even suggest, much less be "pretty certain" of. To be honest I thought you were kidding originally.

Yes, the stock market can overreact at times, it can be irrational at times. But in general (even during the times of irrationality and overreaction) the market is attempting to price in risk. Even if something has a low probability of happening, 10% chance, the stock market will still attempt to discount the impact. So if the impact is $1 billion, with a 10% chance of happening, it would make sense for a stock to lose $100 million in market cap. And then the stock recovers if the 90% plays out and nothing happens. So while many may think the stock was "dumb" to go down in the first place, it was actually behaving rather rationally.

In our case, even in a doomsday scenario of Tesla announcing on Monday that every single supercharger had to be shut down for repairs, I doubt the impact would be much more than 20%. And the actual likelihood of that happening is less than 1%.(instead of the 100% you are assuming)

In other words, you will be lucky to get a 0.2% hit on share price. However, even then, it would be indistinguishable from whether the market is trying to price in imminent risk, or if it was just some chump who sold his 100 shares.

 

[Causalien]

... But you and I know that in this worst case scenario no one is going to make such a balanced calculation but instead mr. Market will have a knee jerk reflex fiesta and scalp 15-20% of the market cap before coming to its senses.

With regard to Berlin for real estate I agree and it's not to late. I was there last autumn and I saw grandiose 200 sqm flats right on the Kurfürstendamm going for €400k. That's just crazy, like half or less of say Paris or London. And Germany is the real economic super power of Europe...

Mediocre scenario, it balances out the quarterly sales. It'll drop 20% if quarterly sales is bad as well. Elon's track record isn't good here, I still remember the last time the forum predicted that TSLA is emptying the pipeline so that it'll be a beat when in reeality, TSLA emptied the pipeline to meet the lower end of the guidance. The Model X data is not promising.


€400k is too much commitment since I don't live there and when compared to Leipzig of about €100k in the downtown area and in a university town.

Also southern Spain along the beach for €300k for a 2 bedroom seems pretty good. I am looking for places in Tariffa for when prosperity in Europe comes back. That area's toursim depends on AUstralian surfers and british clubbers from what I remember.

 

[AlMc]

I have NO idea of what the cause of the *ir* was and how the market will react and what % TSLA will change. *IF* we see a 20% drop I will be 'all in' for the first time since March 2014.


One thing is certain....TM/TSLA is one wild ride.

EDIT: I still have cash on the sidelines from when I thought we would be sub $200 a couple months ago....:scared:

 

[Zaxxon]

Once again I feel the need to remind I people that they accomplish nothing by writing f*re, *ir*, etc. The word is fire. Fire fire fire fire. Shorts and bots that want to read our discussion will do so either way. No need to make reading flow more difficult.

 

[chickensevil]

As the discussion on the fire is split between two threads, I just wanted to point out that a new photo in the other thread from the start of the fire clearly demonstrates that it originated at the rear of the car and may even be linked to a fault in the supercharger, as there is mysterious white smoke in the background.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...n-Norwegian)?p=1302316&viewfull=1#post1302316

Is it just me or does that photo look like the trunk is open. Why would you wall away from the car with the trunk left open??? Seems fishy...

 

[mrdoubleb]

I'd be very curious as to what you would back this particular assertion up with. I've seen nothing that suggests this being a likely cause from the photos, nor from my first hand knowledge and experience with the Model S parts involved...

See Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016 - Page 14 and Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016 - Page 8

Edit: Also, people know me on this forum at all will undoubtedly easily note that I'm generally the last person to jump to Tesla's defense on anything. If I do, there's probably a pretty compelling reason.

Last I checked there are no batteries in the C pillar or the trunk. If you check the pictures posted in the dedicated thread, you'll see (as pointed out by others too), that in the early shot of the fire, it only burns at the rear & left back side of the car. In all previous battery pack fires we had video or pictures of, the fire started to vent towards the front of the car (as designed) and then engulfed the frunk and the front, later spread backwards to the passanger compartment. Here the fire does not appear to be spreading from the main battery pack.

I's add two more comments:
- This could still be Tesla's fault in terms of a part failing in the S or in the SC stall.
- I am no fire investigator and have limited info like everyone, so I could be wrong, of course.

EDIT: added photo in question

 

[Ingineer]

You really think there is anything in the Gen1 HVJB (high voltage junction box) that could overheat and cause a fire? Without throwing any errors?

Having disassembled one, seems extremely unlikely to me. If the HVJB were going to go up in flames it would probably happen during hard acceleration where that junction from the battery and the inverter is under 3-4x the stress than the most powerful supercharging. Then again, the majority of the HVJB components are metal... not really much in there to go up in flames anyway. Are there any previous reports of failed HVJB components? I mean really the only things in there are metal bus bars, fuses, and a couple of contactors. The contactors are supervised by the fast charge module for safety, also, for stuck-open and stuck-closed conditions among other things.

If the 2/0 cabling somewhere got hot enough to melt the insulation, it would short with the second layer and cause a fault. All of the high voltage wiring in the Model S has two layers of insulation and a braided wire ring in between to sense insulation faults.

Sure, heat buildup would be at a junction somewhere, maybe a loose bolt or something? I just don't see it happening during a supercharge even at the ~330A mark. For comparison, there is ~330A flowing through that box any time you're using ~100kW of power while driving, which is pretty normal acceleration power. I'm reasonably certain that the software would have detected a loose connection related voltage drop and thrown a red flag, too. Tesla is pretty much on top of high voltage safety related items and detecting faults in all sorts of ways.

Anyway, a fire originating in the Gen1 HVJB seems very unlikely to me. If there were an issue with HVJBv1 then we would have seen a problem well before now considering there are something like 50,000 cars on the road with HVJBv1 and probably hundreds of thousands of related supercharge events.

Let's say one of the terminal bolts on the SC contactors was over or under tightened at the factory, or during a recent service. That terminal could have enough resistance to heat up the contactor to the point of ignition of it's plastic housing. Some of those contactors are hydrogen filled as well (not sure about Teslas though). There is plenty of plastic in the JB for fuel. All that has to happen is the box get hot enough to ignite the foam seat cushion which is right on top the box.

Over-tightening the terminals on one of those Tyco contactors could distort the internal contact enough to cause appreciable resistance gain. Let's posit that that was a CPO car, and maybe Tesla serviced the car before sale. They could have worked in the HVJB for several reasons, that's all it would take.

Another possibility is a primary to secondary short on the power company transformer. This could have caused some arcing, especially given isolated ground systems in Norway. This might also explain why there is smoke seen coming from the shed.

It could still be the charge port too. It could have had a loose bolt in the back and maybe the Delta-T rise was so fast it achieved ignition temp before rising the temp enough to have a overtemp fault sensed. I have not analysed the charge port design enough to see where the thermistor is.

My money is on the HVJB. 300 amps is definitely enough to generate a lot of heat! A 3 volt drop over a small area might not be sensed and that's 900 watts, easily enough to light the contactor plastic on fire.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

A lot of Model X photos, videos, and first impressions are being posted to the Model X sub-forum here. Response so far is very positive. The overall quality of the first deliveries of Model X seems to be higher than the first deliveries of Model S, although some owners are noting minor fit/finish issues like interior trim misalignments.

My general sense is that if Tesla can successfully ramp up Model X production, the X will eventually outsell the S by at least 3:2 (60% Model X, 40% Model S). People who own both a Model X and a Model S note that the X has more headroom across all 3 rows, and has easier ingress/egress. While Model X has some range penalty due to its bulk, 257 miles for the 90D is perfectly good, and actually pretty close to the original Model S 85's 265 mile range.

Based on this, I'd expect: Minor impact on Q4 '15 results. It's difficult to say how many X deliveries happened before the quarter ended. Noticeable impact in Q1 '16 results and possible big impact on Q2 '16 results as Model X runs at full production capacity. A promising Model 3 reveal, combined with improved financials from Model X sales, could make early May 2016 a good month for investors. Risk factors: Model X ramp problems and/or poorly received Model 3 design. The next 5 months are going to be very interesting.

 

[Yggdrasill]

You really think there is anything in the Gen1 HVJB (high voltage junction box) that could overheat and cause a fire? Without throwing any errors?

Having disassembled one, seems extremely unlikely to me. If the HVJB were going to go up in flames it would probably happen during hard acceleration where that junction from the battery and the inverter is under 3-4x the stress than the most powerful supercharging. Then again, the majority of the HVJB components are metal... not really much in there to go up in flames anyway. Are there any previous reports of failed HVJB components? I mean really the only things in there are metal bus bars, fuses, and a couple of contactors. The contactors are supervised by the fast charge module for safety, also, for stuck-open and stuck-closed conditions among other things.

If the 2/0 cabling somewhere got hot enough to melt the insulation, it would short with the second layer and cause a fault. All of the high voltage wiring in the Model S has two layers of insulation and a braided wire ring in between to sense insulation faults.

Sure, heat buildup would be at a junction somewhere, maybe a loose bolt or something? I just don't see it happening during a supercharge even at the ~330A mark. For comparison, there is ~330A flowing through that box any time you're using ~100kW of power while driving, which is pretty normal acceleration power. I'm reasonably certain that the software would have detected a loose connection related voltage drop and thrown a red flag, too. Tesla is pretty much on top of high voltage safety related items and detecting faults in all sorts of ways.

I respectfully disagree. The average power output while driving is closer to 15 kW. Only when supercharging do you see very high power levels for tens of minutes.

Anyway, a fire originating in the Gen1 HVJB seems very unlikely to me. If there were an issue with HVJBv1 then we would have seen a problem well before now considering there are something like 50,000 cars on the road with HVJBv1 and probably hundreds of thousands of related supercharge events.

If the issue is with the HVJB, it is clearly something that is extremely unusual. Like the seat belt fault. If any recall would be required, which is probably not the case, we'd be talking about an inspection to check for faults. A high voltage resistance measurement from outside the car would likely be enough, though maybe you would have to remove the battery pack.

A HVJB fault can explain some of the things we know have happened. We know the owner had had the car for two days. If the previous owner never supercharged, and this was a serious fault in the HVJB, it would make complete sense that this would occur so soon after the car changed hands.

The progression of the fire is also exactly as expected assuming an ignition source under the rear seats or in the trunk. If we aren't talking about the HVJB, my next thought would be something stored in the trunk, like spent fireworks.

 

[wk057]

Let's say one of the terminal bolts on the SC contactors was over or under tightened at the factory, or during a recent service. That terminal could have enough resistance to heat up the contactor to the point of ignition of it's plastic housing. Some of those contactors are hydrogen filled as well (not sure about Teslas though). There is plenty of plastic in the JB for fuel. All that has to happen is the box get hot enough to ignite the foam seat cushion which is right on top the box.

Over-tightening the terminals on one of those Tyco contactors could distort the internal contact enough to cause appreciable resistance gain. Let's posit that that was a CPO car, and maybe Tesla serviced the car before sale. They could have worked in the HVJB for several reasons, that's all it would take.

Another possibility is a primary to secondary short on the power company transformer. This could have caused some arcing, especially given isolated ground systems in Norway. This might also explain why there is smoke seen coming from the shed.

It could still be the charge port too. It could have had a loose bolt in the back and maybe the Delta-T rise was so fast it achieved ignition temp before rising the temp enough to have a overtemp fault sensed. I have not analysed the charge port design enough to see where the thermistor is.

My money is on the HVJB. 300 amps is definitely enough to generate a lot of heat! A 3 volt drop over a small area might not be sensed and that's 900 watts, easily enough to light the contactor plastic on fire.

AFAIK there is no HVJB related service check that would be done on a CPO or similar unless there was some kind of fault to begin with. *shrugs*

Just seems very unlikely to me that the HVJB is the culprit. I'll be very shocked if this turns out to be the case.

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I respectfully disagree. The average power output while driving is closer to 15 kW. Only when supercharging do you see very high power levels for tens of minutes.

If the issue is with the HVJB, it is clearly something that is extremely unusual. Like the seat belt fault. If any recall would be required, which is probably not the case, we'd be talking about an inspection to to check for faults. A high voltage resistance measurement from outside the car would likely be enough, though maybe you would have to remove the battery pack.

A HVJB fault can explain some of the things we know have happened. We know the owner had had the car for two days. If the previous owner never supercharged, and this was a serious fault in the HVJB, it would make complete sense that this would occur so soon after the car changed hands.

The progression of the fire is also exactly as expected assuming an ignition source under the rear seats or in the trunk. If we aren't talking about the HVJB, my next thought would be something stored in the trunk, like spent fireworks.

Well, we don't know if the car never supercharged before or anything. We know that Tesla tests supercharging as part of their QA process, though, so a manufacturing problem should have been found then. Plus the fast-charge module does a lot of checks on things as well.

As for driving power, I said that 100kW would be pretty normal under acceleration, not average driving. Also, the supercharger won't maintain ~300+A for very long anyway.

I hadn't seen that pic of earlier in the fire's life until just a few minutes ago. It at least proves the fire ignition wasn't related to the battery, but I don't think it provides enough info to note a source point either. In that photo there are flames at least as far forward as past the B pillar on both sides of the vehicle and as far back as the rear bumper. There are also flames visible through the passenger side front window and the windshield, suggesting the fire is even further forward as well. So, I wouldn't put my money on determining an ignition point from this photo. I'm also unsure why it appears the trunk is open along with the back passenger side window, which could easily explain why the fire appears concentrated there.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Last I checked there are no batteries in the C pillar or the trunk. If you check the pictures posted in the dedicated thread, you'll see (as pointed out by others too), that in the early shot of the fire, it only burns at the rear & left back side of the car.

I agree the battery pack wasn't involved in the fire. But in my view, the fire depicted is not just the left side of the car. The rear right window has shattered, and you have flames shooting into the air from inside the car. You probably have a similar shattered rear window on the left side, and the tailgate is open, with flames shooting into the air from there as well. I think that the picture depicts the entire rear seat/trunk area engulfed in flames.

 

[AudubonB]

Also, people know me on this forum at all will undoubtedly easily note that I'm generally the last person to jump to Tesla's defense on anything. If I do, there's probably a pretty compelling reason.

Umm....¿¿¿They're blackmailing you???

 

[Johan]

Assuming zero communication from Tesla, do you all of a sudden believe there is the possibility of wide spread charging problems?

No.

That Model S's will begin to spontaneously combust at multiple superchargers?

No.

Do you think anybody believes that?

Yes.

If not, then TSLA is not going to lose 20% of its value. That is ridiculous to even suggest, much less be "pretty certain" of. To be honest I thought you were kidding originally.

I was not.

Yes, the stock market can overreact at times, it can be irrational at times. But in general (even during the times of irrationality and overreaction) the market is attempting to price in risk. Even if something has a low probability of happening, 10% chance, the stock market will still attempt to discount the impact. So if the impact is $1 billion, with a 10% chance of happening, it would make sense for a stock to lose $100 million in market cap. And then the stock recovers if the 90% plays out and nothing happens. So while many may think the stock was "dumb" to go down in the first place, it was actually behaving rather rationally.

So why was TSLA worth $290 last summer, $200 in November last year, and now $240? Mind you I have followed TSLA stock price closely since buying in at around $35 in and the market has been anything but logical or sensible about how it's pricing in risk. Sure, in the last year or so there has been a tendency towards a greater understanding of the actual TSLA story but the market as a whole is still a very long way from getting in, and the short interest should tell us something; namely that there are a lot of people who believe TSLA is overpriced and of course are just waiting for confirmatory reasons for this. It's the seemingly never ending thug-o-war between longs and shorts in TSLA that's been going on for years. Stuff like this is what can cause wild price swings in that type of environment.

In our case, even in a doomsday scenario of Tesla announcing on Monday that every single supercharger had to be shut down for repairs, I doubt the impact would be much more than 20%. And the actual likelihood of that happening is less than 1%.(instead of the 100% you are assuming).

In other words, you will be lucky to get a 0.2% hit on share price. However, even then, it would be indistinguishable from whether the market is trying to price in imminent risk, or if it was just some chump who sold his 100 shares.

I'm not assuming this will be the case. My worst case assumption is similar to Causalien's: every car sold has to be taken in for repairs. While these repairs may not be all that costly or time consuming they would be very costly with regard to reputation.

I would say that my rough guess is that there's a +50% chance (risk) that Tesla is not coming out with an official statement or blog post to address the fire and the cause of it before Monday morning. If so, it's in my opinion, bad news pointing to an actual problem with the car and/or the Supercharger and the market will price this in.

There's however (let's hope) a good chance too that they are able to pin-point the cause to something other, that is unique to this situation, this car, a faulty temporary SC or some such thing. In that case a drop will be avoided.

And to get some perspective, seeing as this is the short-term thread: Whatever happens won't change the TSLA story over time one bit other than a small blip on the 5-years stock chart.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Another possibility is a primary to secondary short on the power company transformer. This could have caused some arcing, especially given isolated ground systems in Norway. This might also explain why there is smoke seen coming from the shed.

The nearest shed contains the supercharger cabinets for the permanent superchargers, so the smoke is most likely from the Tesla. I explained the layout at Brokelandsheia here: A Model S just caught fire while supercharging in Norway (link in Norwegian) - Page 21

 

[Ingineer]

AFAIK there is no HVJB related service check that would be done on a CPO or similar unless there was some kind of fault to begin with. *shrugs*

Just seems very unlikely to me that the HVJB is the culprit. I'll be very shocked if this turns out to be the case.

Let's say the car had a worn charge port and they replaced the whole assembly (cables+port), that would be a reason. This could have also been a long time coming. A slightly out-of-tolerance connection will at first be only slightly higher resistance, will build some heat, which will create more oxidation. The temperature cycling as it heat/cools over many cycles will cause the connection to further loosen, and this with the oxidation will cause growing resistance. Sometimes it can take many years for a weak connection to build to the point it can begin exponential runaway. I've seen it many times in my career. In fact, this happens with older UMC's and HPWC's often enough, and we're talking way less power.

Well, we don't know if the car never supercharged before or anything. We know that Tesla tests supercharging as part of their QA process, though, so a manufacturing problem should have been found then. Plus the fast-charge module does a lot of checks on things as well.

The Gen1 HVJB has no intelligence and no sensing (temp), unlike the Gen 2 box. Besides, as I indicated, a fault can exist for many years sometimes before getting to the point of runaway which it will reveal itself.

As for driving power, I said that 100kW would be pretty normal under acceleration, not average driving. Also, the supercharger won't maintain ~300+A for very long anyway.

A few volts drop for mere seconds at 300+A might be enough to ignite the plastic on the contactor. There are also inductive effects; so lets say the connection that was loose was the battery connection. Under hard acceleration (500+A) the terminal may be held in a "safe" position due to magnetic flux, but a lesser current won't have enough flux to hold it tight, thus more resistance. I've seen this effect first hand more than once!

 

[Yggdrasill]

As for driving power, I said that 100kW would be pretty normal under acceleration, not average driving. Also, the supercharger won't maintain ~300+A for very long anyway.

In this video it stays above 200A for 23 minutes: Supercharging Tesla Model S 85 kWh to 100 % - YouTube

A 3 volt drop means 600-900W for 23 minutes, which is significant.

I hadn't seen that pic of earlier in the fire's life until just a few minutes ago. It at least proves the fire ignition wasn't related to the battery, but I don't think it provides enough info to note a source point either. In that photo there are flames at least as far forward as past the B pillar on both sides of the vehicle and as far back as the rear bumper. There are also flames visible through the passenger side front window and the windshield, suggesting the fire is even further forward as well. So, I wouldn't put my money on determining an ignition point from this photo. I'm also unsure why it appears the trunk is open along with the back passenger side window, which could easily explain why the fire appears concentrated there.

Nothing can be said conclusively - but the HVJB is located right in the center of the fire.

 

[AWDtsla]

I respectfully disagree. The average power output while driving is closer to 15 kW. Only when supercharging do you see very high power levels for tens of minutes.

You must be one of those people that achieves rated miles. More like 40kW (or more) here, and instantaneous power is several times supercharging power as well. I'm sure cars in Germany have average power that is much higher as well.

 

[Irishjugg]

Poker feels too similar to investing. My last RE bet was Vancouver and it already paid off. I was thinking of Berlin and Leipzig next in Germany. Sadly Berlin already shot up in the 3 years I was travelling.


So for th charger gate. I am guessing $5000 per car at ~100k car= 500mil impact. Which, at most, should be 1.6% if market cap.

I don't have the capital to do it (yet), but I think a strategy of RE investing where you follow weed legalization is a really good one. Denver prices and rents have shot up since legalization took place. Lot's of tourism, lots o fpeople moving in to be new renters etc. I am thinking it would be good to buy up multi units in the areas where legalization is taking place right after the vote is in, but before the law is "on" so to speak. Doing a historical analysis on Denver makes me see how much of an opportunity I missed.

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WK057, thanks for yet another excellent post.


also...
On the topic of real estate opportunities, don't forget the obvious effects of the gigafactory on real estate prices near Reno, NV. Interstate 80 Eastbound out of Reno and Sparks might get pretty busy as workers head to the gigafactory, and for this reason you can expect to see growth in a community called Fernley, east of the gigafactory. Mountains limit the area where housing can be built in the vicinity of the gigafactory, but the few nearby areas with available water and flat terrain will do great in the coming years.

Oh, I'm definitely looking at Sparks, Reno, and Fernley. I think you are dead on here.

 

[jhm]

I don't have the capital to do it (yet), but I think a strategy of RE investing where you follow weed legalization is a really good one. Denver prices and rents have shot up since legalization took place. Lot's of tourism, lots o fpeople moving in to be new renters etc. I am thinking it would be good to buy up multi units in the areas where legalization is taking place right after the vote is in, but before the law is "on" so to speak. Doing a historical analysis on Denver makes me see how much of an opportunity I missed.

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Oh, I'm definitely looking at Sparks, Reno, and Fernley. I think you are dead on here.

Legalized Marijuana also good for Girl Scouts. Cookie season is on.

 

[wk057]

In this video it stays above 200A for 23 minutes: Supercharging Tesla Model S 85 kWh to 100 % - YouTube

A 3 volt drop means 600-900W for 23 minutes, which is significant.
Nothing can be said conclusively - but the HVJB is located right in the center of the fire.

Around 200A is actually pretty much within spec of the wiring being used even by NEC standards, which is saying something since the car regularly goes well beyond specs like the NEC during normal operation based on Tesla's engineering calculations. I mean, for example, Tesla pulls 1500A through #2/0 wire in the P90D/P85D... which is almost 8x what that wire is rated for by the NEC. And heat generated is exponential here. So 200A vs 400A is 4x more heat, not 2x. Run that out to 1500A and, well, you can see why I'm pretty skeptical of 300A supercharging causing problems. One 1/4 mile run in a P90D would be ~1500A for about 9-10 seconds. Running the heat numbers out on the back of the napkin means that means that run in the P90D builds up the same amount of heat in the wiring and components as something like 3-4 minutes of 300A supercharging... in 10 seconds. Talk about stress on components! And this heat doesn't really have too far to go, so back to back 1/4 mile runs? Sheesh.

For another example, check out data I pulled from my P85D showing a ~100V sag under full acceleration at 1300A. That means 130,000 W of heat being generated. 130,000W of heat! And you're worried about 900W of heat... In my 5 second run I generated the same waste heat as a 900W loss running for over 10 minutes. I mean, these are stresses I subject my P85D to all the time, as I'm sure many others do. Really, supercharging is tame compared to heavy acceleration and such. At 1000A+ we're talking measurable physical stress on wiring and such. At 300A, not so much.

Sure there is a chance that something came loose or wasn't installed correctly, or whatever. But, given that this is an older vehicle that's been on the road for several years and hadn't had an issue until yesterday... I'm going to defer to Occam's razor or other similar logic for now and just figure it's something much more obvious.