Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread

[aronth5]

I probably missed it but did try searching to see if there was any news regarding extending the railroad spur to the gigafactory? One would think this would be an important initiative for transporting battery packs to Fremont instead of by truck.

"Faraday Future received a grading permit from the North Las Vegas Public Works Department in July, allowing construction of the plant to where does Tesla stand?"
Faraday Future Approved for Apex Rail Spur
Faraday to reimburse RTC $3.27 million for railway spur design

 

[winfield100]

This is somewhat peripherally related to the Gigafactory, vis-à-vis Li NMC batteries, cylindrical and prismatic

The Torqeedo electric boat motor is partnering with BMW to use the i-3 battery. Torqeedo was using cylindrical batteries in their smaller packs and is using the BMW i3 battery pack (prismatics)

They had an i3 battery pack at a trade show in Tampa, Florida, USA this week, Jan 16th -18th .

The price was verbally quoted as $27,000 US for the 33kWh pack, about $810/kWh

Pictures - Technology - Torqeedo

(older battery pack)

I3 battery picture (newer larger battery pack for Torqeedo boat motors

The Electric BMW i3: Here's Why an i3 Battery Upgrade Currently Doesn't Make Sense

I find it intriguing that BMW is offering Torqeedo, I3 battery packs to sell and the cost of over $810/kWh retail.
I do like the idea of electrifying boats.
I can also see lots of battery packs being sold to boat owners as diesel and gas motors are de-emphasized and electrics have much greater thrust and are much less expensive to run, such as on sunlight

 

[MXWing]

I'm down to fund a kickstarter project that will fly drones over Gigafactory and Area 51 just to see what is happening!

 

[hobbes]

Time to wake up this thread again! Just found this talk by Kurt Kelty on reddit:

Was posted only yesterday and the talk was in March, so hasn´t been posted at least in this thread .
Bad audio quality but all the slides are there, with info for example on materials sourcing (availability, price, ethical issues)...

 

[JRP3]

Was posted only yesterday and the talk was in March, so hasn´t been posted at least in this thread .

I posted it to 2 other threads today It's worth getting as many eyeballs on it as possible.

 

[hobbes]

I posted it to 2 other threads today It's worth getting as many eyeballs on it as possible.

Saw that *AFTER* I posted, I swear !

 

[Electroman]

Thanks for posting it here. This is the thread I follow, and so i would have missed it in other threads

 

[dc_h]

Montana posted an alpha article about how Tesla was committed to 3 billion in spend at Sparks by December 2016 and only had 477 jobs for their huge tax breaks. He's tweeting about it also. Is it worth trolling with corrections?
Do we have more solid data on the investment and jobs track? I noted he did not count the thousands of contractor jobs and cherry picked dates to tell his narrative.
Not really worth fighting and I'm fine with the shorts. They keep providing free marketing and keep TSLA and Tesla on the front or second page of the financial and auto mags every day. That said, I hate the false narrative and the glom-on haters who think this is a Ponzi scheme or subsidy corporate welfare story.

 

[JRP3]

Is it worth trolling with corrections?

Probably not, it's outdated data and not relevant. I posted a few comments saying as much, but really the more false hope the shorts have the better for us

 

[dc_h]

Probably not, it's outdated data and not relevant. I posted a few comments saying as much, but really the more false hope the shorts have the better for us

Think you're right. I assume whatever the sorts spew will come out in the wash.

 

[winfield100]

Montana posted an alpha article about how Tesla was committed to 3 billion in spend at Sparks by December 2016 and only had 477 jobs for their huge tax breaks. He's tweeting about it also. Is it worth trolling with corrections?
Do we have more solid data on the investment and jobs track? I noted he did not count the thousands of contractor jobs and cherry picked dates to tell his narrative.
Not really worth fighting and I'm fine with the shorts. They keep providing free marketing and keep TSLA and Tesla on the front or second page of the financial and auto mags every day. That said, I hate the false narrative and the glom-on haters who think this is a Ponzi scheme or subsidy corporate welfare story.

this is a hypothetical of a possible scenerio of what might happen
SA will delete your comments for miniscule problems it seems "your comment was deleted"
some bears actually are conceding
MS may accuse you of accusing him of lying (he used data from 7/12 - 2/3 year ago)
MS is very sensitive to the phrase "potemkin village" for some reason
actual number of contractors are ignored and you comments may be labled lies
other commenters/minions/avatars of a loose knit group may attack you, attempting to get you to make a miniscule mistake to get your comment deleted
commenters who say from onsite, long term visuals there are closer to 6,000 bodies get ignored
Electrek "lies so should be ignored"
conflicting data is a lie/not real/untruth
they are ROFWSIG and lashing out, especially when you graciously thank them for their $11.4 Billion gift and extremely discounted month long vaca to Kaua'i in Hawaii, paid for a lot by shorts...
its an inconsequential article based on stale data
and MS may view this site about comments, or his minions or avatars may do so, as once, almost immediately after i had a keybord accidentlel failure spelled MS name "septic" and not "skeptic" took me to taks task since i have anold keybord and it malfs a lot at times

 

[schonelucht]

Regardless, actual updates on the status of the gigafactory and its numbers of on-site workers, including contractors, is absolutely useful and relevant to post here.

 

[winfield100]

Regardless, actual updates on the status of the gigafactory and its numbers of on
i-site workers, including contractors, is absolutely useful and relevant to post here.

there was a comment in the not quite alternative fact interpretation filled, / using 7/12th to 2/3 of a year old data" SA article, useful for bird cage liner and penny clicks for the author approaching poverty.

that commenter had been on site at GF for 18 months, and his count was closer to -->6,000 bodies working there

Who ya goona believe, a known "fudster", cherry picking data, massively underwater short, self proclaimed willing to accept 100% losses in options, or "your lying eyes"

i could _almost_ give credence to the tin foil hat folks who say the oil/automotive folks are partially funding the shorts

i accept the 6,000 workers, the photos of lots of car carrier trailors at Fremont, the 1,000+ CPO's, the over full employee parking lots, as actual data that say things are "just fine or even better"

 

[dc_h]

this is a hypothetical of a possible scenerio of what might happen
SA will delete your comments for miniscule problems it seems "your comment was deleted"
some bears actually are conceding
MS may accuse you of accusing him of lying (he used data from 7/12 - 2/3 year ago)
MS is very sensitive to the phrase "potemkin village" for some reason
actual number of contractors are ignored and you comments may be labled lies
other commenters/minions/avatars of a loose knit group may attack you, attempting to get you to make a miniscule mistake to get your comment deleted
commenters who say from onsite, long term visuals there are closer to 6,000 bodies get ignored
Electrek "lies so should be ignored"
conflicting data is a lie/not real/untruth
they are ROFWSIG and lashing out, especially when you graciously thank them for their $11.4 Billion gift and extremely discounted month long vaca to Kaua'i in Hawaii, paid for a lot by shorts...
its an inconsequential article based on stale data
and MS may view this site about comments, or his minions or avatars may do so, as once, almost immediately after i had a keybord accidentlel failure spelled MS name "septic" and not "skeptic" took me to taks task since i have anold keybord and it malfs a lot at times

I wouldn't say anything on seeking, just on twitter. His fans follow and like anything he says, but there is no official bias.

 

[Krugerrand]

Is it worth trolling with corrections?

There's no reason to 'troll' with corrections unless for the obvious one. Posting corrections and the truth, though, is always worth it. There's enough garbage information on any topic that ignorant people believe. It can be argued it's their fault for not doing enough diligent research and critical thinking, but if there's never any correct information available then all the research in the world isn't going to help them learn the truth. I've seen it happen in my own industry. Given enough time people believe that which is not correct (especially if it's repeated often enough) and sooner than you think everyone who knew different and better are dead, and history is rewritten.

 

[Electroman]

There is one clear case of extending the truth that borders on lies. The $45M that Neveda paid to buy the property - how the hell is Montana assigning all of that expense to the very first year operation? Are captial expenses - especially real estate - supposed to be accounted as a depreciating asset over 20+ years or so? So what he did was, he added the transferable tax credits, and 100% of the real estate expenses and divided it by the number of employees on the first year of operation.

That is so blatantly silly. He thinks his readers are idiots? This is no different from articles when Chevy Volt hit the market in 2012, that declared that each Chevy cost $150K to make (or some such silly number) because they took all the assembly line expense and divided that by the first year sales.

The more he writes like this the more he loses credibility. Contractors are also paying taxes. Obviously capital expense will be very high in the first few years of building a huge manufacturing plant, and so the transferable tax credits some of which are directly tied to the capital expense will also be high. And the number of permanent employees will increase while contractors decline as construction and setting up the plant winds down, and full steady state operations begin.