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SebastianR
Active Member
If we follow the ramp of the Model 3 we can assume that Tesla will (hopefully) not need any further cash beyond Q3 to complete the ramp for Model 3 all the way to 10.000 units/week.
Do we assume another big capital raise / dept raise for the Semi in Q3? How else will get it to market so soon? Or will this be a boutique offering in the first half year? What's your take?
Off-topic fun: I guess something like this could never happen with a Tesla Semi:
catastrophic failure - Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat
Do we assume another big capital raise / dept raise for the Semi in Q3? How else will get it to market so soon? Or will this be a boutique offering in the first half year? What's your take?
Off-topic fun: I guess something like this could never happen with a Tesla Semi:
catastrophic failure - Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat
dc_h
Active Member
I drove my wife to midway airport yesterday on her way to Augusta for a day at the Masters. We passed an industrial area with a FedEx distribution center. The pollution is so much more dense and obvious. It really highlights the huge impact the semi will have. It will be interesting to see how they plan on building the semi’s and how many they will build annually. Will they automate like early Model S or go higher density automation like the Model 3. To build 100,000 a year it would seem something closer to the Model 3 line will be needed. Can they minimize the initial automation and use an agile model to increase production 20-30% year over year and start closer to 50,000 a year and keep the initial capex closer to a billion? Cash flow once the 3 is moving should be adequate to cover at least 1-2 billion for the semi without any cap raise. Q3 revenue should be about 7 billion from auto alone, assuming 5k 3’s per week and 2k S/X per week delivered. That should allow close to 1billion per quarter in capital investment internally funded. Assume the 3 line will need at least 200 to 300 million per quarter to continue ramp to 10,000. If they can hit 10,000 weekly in early 2019 the semi and Roadster investments should be very manageable.
Anyhow, looking forward to the semi. The impact on clean air will be immense. 100,000 semis will be equal to replacing well over 1 million and probably close to 5 million cars and if they are initially deployed in urban and denser areas where charging will be easier, will be even more impactful from a health and environmental impact that can be seen by people in a just a few years.
I still hope Tesla will follow up with a commercial sprinter which can also replace the fumes of at least 5 to 10 cars and are the life blood of urban logistics. Combined with the semi this can change urban air quality dramatically over the next decade.
Anyhow, looking forward to the semi. The impact on clean air will be immense. 100,000 semis will be equal to replacing well over 1 million and probably close to 5 million cars and if they are initially deployed in urban and denser areas where charging will be easier, will be even more impactful from a health and environmental impact that can be seen by people in a just a few years.
I still hope Tesla will follow up with a commercial sprinter which can also replace the fumes of at least 5 to 10 cars and are the life blood of urban logistics. Combined with the semi this can change urban air quality dramatically over the next decade.
Freight Railroads Get Boost from Tight Trucking Markets
A tight trucking labor market coupled with rising fuel prices is tipping shipment from trucking to railroads. If Tesla Semi were in full swing right now, these to drivers would be pushing trucking outfits to buy platooning electric semis. This is critical for addressing both labor shortage in trucking and fuel costs.
So it is good for us to keep tabs on how competition between trucking and railroads plays out. It shows potential growth for Tesla Semi demand.
A tight trucking labor market coupled with rising fuel prices is tipping shipment from trucking to railroads. If Tesla Semi were in full swing right now, these to drivers would be pushing trucking outfits to buy platooning electric semis. This is critical for addressing both labor shortage in trucking and fuel costs.
So it is good for us to keep tabs on how competition between trucking and railroads plays out. It shows potential growth for Tesla Semi demand.
Anyone have thoughts on how much Tesla invested in tooling for the two (known) demo tractors? Wondering if everything was custom/ milled billet v.s. prototype tooling/ cast/ molds. Given the 3 skipped prototype tooling, might Tesla have done the same again?
The drive units alone were likely produced in quantities of tens.
The drive units alone were likely produced in quantities of tens.
Brando
Active Member
Suspect that 3-D printing is used often in prototypes now days, right?
But I suspect SEMI past the first prototype stage and what we saw were Engineering Prototypes and the line between those and Validation Prototypes probably blurs as Tesla/Elon always trying to improve/streamline processes, right?
Tesla does have aluminium casting operations:
Tesla is using the Lathrop facility as a castings, machining, and foundry center. Such parts for Model S/X,
are made in-house at the Lathrop facility. below is a list of todays job openings
Equipment Maintenance Technician Manufacturing Lathrop, California
Lead Equipment Maintenance Technician, Castings Manufacturing Lathrop, California
Production Associate, CNC Manufacturing Lathrop, California
Remanufacturing Technician, Drive Unit Manufacturing Lathrop, California
RTest Technician Manufacturing Lathrop, California
Spares Technician Manufacturing Lathrop, California
Sr. Remanufacturing Automation and Controls Engineer Manufacturing Lathrop, California
check this out - here is a way to "watch Tesla develop"
Jobs at Tesla | Tesla
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Brando
Active Member
check out the May earnings call - Elon/JB say they do better than the 8:1:1 - with even less Cobalt. And as Cobalt the most expensive part, they are confident Tesla has the cheapest battery.
Reciprocity
Active Member
Yeah, that's amazing and it must be how they are getting the densities of nca and charge cycles of nmc with NCA chemistry.
I feel sad for Mr. Peterson. He wrote over a dozen articles in the last year how Cobolt will give a death blow for Tesla
I read somewhere that Kobold is Old German for bewitched. (Relates to its affinity with both silver, copper and arsenic and the ancient method of roasting ore for extracting metal, fumes driving the workers clinically mad.)
Actually, Daimler-Benz already is launching an electric Mercedes-Benz Sprinter:
Electrified and connected Mercedes Sprinter to land in 2019
Not to mention the :
Electric vans from Mercedes-Benz Vans: eVito now available to order; ecosystem for the electrification of commercial fleets | marsMediaSite
Some smaller BEV vans are already in production:
Electric vans available in the UK
All of these completely ignore the largest concentration of BEV commercial vehicles existing today mostly in China. You might want to check out BYD, which has delivered BEV busses in the US. While doing that you might check out Blue-Bird, the US school bus builder.
Not to neglect Tesla, but Tesla concentrates mostly where nobody else tries, and others quickly follow.
Little of that is obvious in the USA, which lags in BEV adoption, but the USPS is operating BEV vans:
https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/electric-vehicles.pdf
Despite official US government discouragement the pace is quickening and many BEV trucks are on the way with even Cummins developing motive force.
That said, China is absolutely the world's leader in BEV, including commercial vehicles:
Shenzhen leads the way in switch to electric buses
It's Not Just Shenzhen — Jaw-Dropping China Electric Bus Roundup | CleanTechnica
We all should hope Tesla succeeds in building gigantic mega-factories in China very soon!
I think makers of commercial vehicles understand that uptake of electric vehicles will be merciless as the TCO economics turn in favor of electrics. In the consumer space they can play on emotion-based preferences for ICE, but in the commercial space you have to be prepared to help your client cut their costs.
Brando
Active Member
reminder: some of the reasons we lag behind - example of how easily we are manipulated
Brando
Active Member
I think this info from the last earnings call May 3, 2018 ??
So it will be interesting to watch these charge stations coming on line.
Anything less than about 50 kW seem too small, right?
AND is anything above 250 kW too large??
Tesla shares Supercharger V3 details, critiques Porsche's 350 kW chargers
“We’re definitely going to be improving our Supercharger’s technology. The thing about a 350 kW charger is that it doesn’t actually make a ton of sense, unless you got a monster battery pack or have like a crazy high C rating… We think 350 kW for a single car; you’re gonna frag the battery pack if you do that. You cannot charge a high-energy battery pack at that rate, unless it’s a very high kW battery pack. So, (for us), something along the couple of hundred, 200-250 kW, maybe.”
“We’ve always said that this is not intended to be a walled garden, and we’re happy to support other automakers and let them use our Supercharger stations. They would just need to pay, you know, share the costs proportionate to their vehicle usage, and they would need to be able to accept our charge rate or at least our connector, at least have an adapter to our connector. This is something that we are very open to, but so far, none of the other car makers have wanted to do this. It’s not because of opposition from us. This is not a walled garden.”
So it will be interesting to watch these charge stations coming on line.
Anything less than about 50 kW seem too small, right?
AND is anything above 250 kW too large??
Tesla shares Supercharger V3 details, critiques Porsche's 350 kW chargers
“We’re definitely going to be improving our Supercharger’s technology. The thing about a 350 kW charger is that it doesn’t actually make a ton of sense, unless you got a monster battery pack or have like a crazy high C rating… We think 350 kW for a single car; you’re gonna frag the battery pack if you do that. You cannot charge a high-energy battery pack at that rate, unless it’s a very high kW battery pack. So, (for us), something along the couple of hundred, 200-250 kW, maybe.”
“We’ve always said that this is not intended to be a walled garden, and we’re happy to support other automakers and let them use our Supercharger stations. They would just need to pay, you know, share the costs proportionate to their vehicle usage, and they would need to be able to accept our charge rate or at least our connector, at least have an adapter to our connector. This is something that we are very open to, but so far, none of the other car makers have wanted to do this. It’s not because of opposition from us. This is not a walled garden.”
I don't necessarily think so:
The comment from the call was talking about a single car:
"We think 350 kW for a single car; you’re gonna frag the battery pack if you do that."
Whereas the superchargers Tesla typically roll out can charge 2 cars.
If course then there's always the Semi....
Brando
Active Member
Hello - that was 2 years ago - December 2016
see my above post from about 2 weeks ago
continuous improvement - continuous evaluations - yeah, things change, especially in newer technologies (we still have no scientific understandings of how batteries work - therefore we have constant experimentation and "only" get 5-7% annual improvement
listen to Dahn talks about lithium batteries for more details and current understanding. and of course there are many many other ideas for energy storage, Lithium batteries just one of those stories (note how many different chemistries are being experimented with just with Lithium).
side note: solar cell - alternative to silicon - here is just a start
Perovskite solar cell - Wikipedia
I'm sure the child's play was in reference to a Megacharger for a Semi.
If they theoretically unveiled 500kW chargers that could charge two vehicles at 250kW each... not sure "child's play" would make sense as a dismissal of 350kW.
A 1 MW or more charger though...
If they theoretically unveiled 500kW chargers that could charge two vehicles at 250kW each... not sure "child's play" would make sense as a dismissal of 350kW.
A 1 MW or more charger though...
If the large Semi is rocking 800kWh of battery, it can do 8x an 100kWh pack, or upwards of 800kW charge rate, 200kWh each if split into 4 separate banks. 1,000 kW would fit with MegaCharger and equal 4*2*Supercharger max rate.
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