Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Nuclear Fusion]

New VIN Registrations Reveal That The RHD Tesla Model 3 Is Coming! | CleanTechnica

34% of countries drive on the left
Countries That Drive on the Left Side of the Road
Although, considering India, I’ll bet it’s 40% of the world’s population

 

[Nocturnal]

I think Tesla is expecting most orders would be for the SR+ and that the SR+ is just a software-locked MR so they are producing them now. Hence the 2 weeks lead time.
The SR with has cloth seats and is more stripped down need special handling so the 4 weeks lead time.

Is it a software locked MR or is the SR a software locked SR+? Based on features/price I definitely think they expect most to order the SR+ as well. SR seems to be built just to say they hit the 35k number. I could see the base SR having almost no profit, but the SR+ price differential being mostly margin.

 

[gringotuanis]

How do you get to that conclusion? Where are you getting the production rate, mix and ASP out of the delivery schedule?

If they had orders there's be backlog. What happened to the 300k or 200k short range preorders? That would be months of backlog on the order page.

 

[AlMc]

View attachment 382947

Tesla pickup still in highly futuristic mode.

View attachment 382931

This worries me. I hope this is not a 'Falcon Wing door/pedestal non folding seat hubris' situation. Fingers crossed.

EDIT: But there seems to be enough Short Term things to worry about for the moment, Gawd, I love (I mean hate)volatility........I know, I know, get out of TSLA if you can't handle it.View attachment 382949

 

[Artful Dodger]

If my hypothesis is correct, the new "adjustable" Grohmann battery pack machine will mean they can tweak the battery pack sizes for Model Y with very little difficulty as well.

Yeah, I don't think thats what happened:

• Tesla built the new Grohmann machine on a newly created "forth floor" at GF1 (per carsonight/DISQUS)
• They also had to maintain full production of LR/MR packs meaning the existing machines on the 3rd floor couldn't be taken out of service
• Tesla plans to provide initial SR packs to GF3/Shanghai from GF1 so there will be increasing demand there too

Conclusion: the new Grohmann line is dedicated to SR pack production, and the existing lines will continue at full output for LR/MR.

 

[Fact Checking]

If Musk would discuss the current margins on the cheapest model (it sounds like he avoided that topic on the call),

He avoided most off-topic questions in the call.

@ReflexFunds estimated 7% margin for a base SR IIRC. Cash margin should be significantly higher.

Effects of the AP/FSD price tweaks are unknown at the moment, but they could improve margins significantly.

 

[mongo]

No. First car is September-October at the earliest.

@Mich didn't say it was GF3

But I doubt Tesla was able to sneak a stamping press in somewhere...

 

[elasalle]

Looks like the SEC tail end risk needs to clear before facts begin to matter again

With SEC closely parsing everything that EM is doing, why would he not be doing as they are saying ...

Only other thing I can think of, is Analysts are entering new prices in their financial models and everything is showing negative ...

.. Rockfeller sold oil at 80% loss, to squeeze out the competition .... (+not saying Tes is doing that) ..

 

[Artful Dodger]

That's misleading: ARK's TSLA price targets are $4,000 for the most optimistic outcome, the lower one is $700.

Yes, understood. ARK Invest has a Bull and a Bear thesis ($4,000 vs $700) with the Bull thesis depending upon FSD Level 5 / Tesla Network in operation.

These bullet points were made by the article's author. I think the full article is worth a read.

Cheers!

 

[Singuy]

If they had orders there's be backlog. What happened to the 300k or 200k short range preorders? That would be months of backlog on the order page.

MR took a lot of the SR customers for the U.S due to tax savings. Most MR buyers figured MR with PUP+ 7500 tax credit is probably worth it vs waiting for a 35k SR with no PUP and with reduced tax credit of 1875.

As for the rest of the world, looks like SR will not be available for another 5-6 months which holds the bulk of the SR reservation orders.

 

[M3Rider]

But it won’t be anywhere near as long as the 3.
And if he isn’t stupid by putting falcon wing doors on it, I reckon we can expect it 1st half 2020

 

[neroden]

Here:
SEC.gov | Office of the Whistleblower

ArtfulDodger, you're the one who tracked down the evidence of the scam, you should please submit it to the SEC.

 

[AlexS]

@Mich didn't say it was GF3

But I doubt Tesla was able to sneak a stamping press in somewhere...

Probably Model 3 stamping press have enough capacity for producing also Model Y parts. so they needed just the tools. Anyone know the model of Schuler press for Model 3?

 

[ggr]

How then do I read here Drift velocity - Wikipedia"

Drift velocity is proportional to current.
​

Also, look at Wikipedia's example:
u = I/(nAq)

with:
u: avg velocity of electrons (m/s)
I: current, (ampere, coulomb per sec)
n: avg electrons per m^3
A: wire cross section (m^2)
q: charge of an electron (-1.6e-19 coulomb)

So:
- more electrons does (indeed) not mean faster electrons, but more current does, which was the point I was making.
- the number of electrons in the wire is fixed (not-compressible, like mongo's river)

TL;DR: I stand by my statement

My apologies for misinterpreting your first posting. The link title made me think that you were saying the electrons moved quickly.

 

[Fact Checking]

Volumebot short selling percentage shot up to 67% today:

tsla | Volumebot​

This is very high on an already intense day with 250% the average daily volume, and suggests that most of today's selling were shorts who reacted to Chanos's Twitter signal earlier today.

Buyers were likely TSLA institutional investors.

My non-advice: take the "Chanos discount and sale" while it lasts?

 

[neroden]

Someone apparently missed the fact that for 1 1/2 quarters now Tesla has been maintaining inventory of common configurations to accelerate delivery times.

Yeeeeeah, but they have to fill the European backlog, which is probably 9 weeks production (which only started in Jan or Feb, and they had to do Chinese shipping too). I think it's not very likely to get delivery in March for a new European order.

Remember, the website delivery estimates have been wildly wrong over and over again. It would be weird if they started to be right.

 

[humbaba]

Found this interactive per U.S. county disposable income map:

Interactive: Visualizing Median Income For All 3,000+ U.S. Counties​

There's definitely islands of prosperity such as a few lucky counties in Nevada that got a Gigafactory built next to them , yet around half of the rural counties by area are what I'd call relative poverty, even if we adjust by living expenses.

But it's not black and white, I stand corrected there.

I'd also say that Tesla probably wouldn't have to build too many Superchargers to be able to claim: "there's a Supercharger within 150 miles public road driving distance from every point in the contiguous U.S."?

Two issues: I think you need to take a second look at road maps of the midwest -- Tesla would need to do substantial expansion to achieve that. The road networks are darn awkward. Secondly, it wouldn't be enough for an SR.

If your destination is 150 miles from any super charger and you are getting 165 miles actual (that matches recent fair weather road trips I've done) and you are constrained to the <5mph 120v charging you would be looking at at least two days of uninterrupted charging. And it could easily take more (last night it averaged, at best, ~2mph which would be ~4 days to recover the nominal range). And in cold weather even a 10% additional range loss would make the super charger too far to reach. Put another way, I've seen mentions here of 30% range loss from extreme cold (while others cite much greater, though I've not seen that myself outside of short drives) and I've experienced ~10% just from crosswinds.

Don't get me wrong, in places with high charger density the SR is quite workable. And Musk's goal is to accelerate adoption, not give 100% coverage. But IMO the success of the EV in the midwest is about bringing battery prices down to where >300 mile range is the norm rather than trying to increase super charger density.

Volumebot short selling percentage shot up to 67%:

tsla | Volumebot​

This is very high, and suggests that most of today's selling were shorts who reacted to Chanos's Twitter signal earlier today.

Buyers were likely institutional investors.

My non-advice: take the "Chanos discount and sale" while it lasts?

Definitely. I used up most of my powder today, though I have some left if it goes lower. And low enough I go all in on $TSLA

 

[schonelucht]

So you did mean 1.8 billion? 1.1 million got you a "funny" reaction from me

Between $1.4 and $1.6 after corrections seems most plausible to me now.

 

[neroden]

Now, I could be totally wrong. We do know that Tesla appears to have done work in securing raw materials for cell production. But that just means Tesla could be a supplier to Panasonic as well as a customer. We also know that Tesla is buying Maxwell for their dry electrode battery cell process, which would allow Tesla to have significant manufacturing IP for cell production sometime in the future (but still not cell chemistry). We also know Tesla recently patented work done by Jeffrey Dahn with regard to electrolyte composition (which IS cell chemistry), so Tesla has been doing some cell chemistry research for the last year or so. But Panasonic is the company that has tons of battery researchers. Tesla doesn't.

If you have info to the contrary, I'd love to hear it rather than just saying you disagree with my statements.

I think you said it yourself (emphasized above), and I'd point out that J B Straubel has been seriously into battery chemistry stuff for a long, long time, in great detail. There was also the discussion of adding silicon to the anode (I don't remember exactly when that was). Tesla definitely owns some battery chemistry patents, and I'm quite sure they're using them. Probably Panasonic has some IP too , but I am pretty sure they can't make Tesla cells for anyone else.

 

[MP3Mike]

I think Tesla is expecting most orders would be for the SR+ and that the SR+ is just a software-locked MR so they are producing them now. Hence the 2 weeks lead time.

Highly unlikely. Based on the weights the SR+ and MR are not the same with just software differences.