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

[mongo]

So...
Fremont S/X line workers are supposed to start back up the 11th.
Both S and X in all build levels are showing 8-12 week delivery times to Michigan. I know beginning of quarter is overseas, but isn't this a bit longer than usual?

Demand bump due to stock price? Caution due to refresh ramp? Me overthinking?

 

[mrdoubleb]

So...
Fremont S/X line workers are supposed to start back up the 11th.
Both S and X in all build levels are showing 8-12 week delivery times to Michigan. I know beginning of quarter is overseas, but isn't this a bit longer than usual?

Demand bump due to stock price? Caution due to refresh ramp? Me overthinking?

Maybe. Probably. Most definitely.

 

[Singuy]

That's why they push for solid state battery for reliability and re-uses, stated in post #235084

#235084 heltok, Today at 4:49 AM

First generation ss batteries are anything but reliable. It will be ridiculously expensive to manufacture. For a company that doesn't want to make money off batteries, it just weird. Daimler already have solid state in use today. It's inferior to their non solid state offering. Nio should wait for maturity of this technology and cheap enough so they can have a chance with their strategy.

Also what's the capex on one swapping station and cost associated with one additional battery for every car and one tech for every swapping unit? Shanghai has a 72 stall super charger. If 72 nio shows up at a swapping station, what is the wait time? How is this strategy a money maker?

 

[15Peter20]

This was the fundamental model of the long-failed Israeli company Better Place. I was a consultant to a venture company that wanted to bring the model to Australia. I can't go into detail, but the conclusion was that the only thing going for that way of doing things was that it capitalized on people's range anxiety and familiarity with gas stations. As soon as customers got familiar with EVs in day to day life, they'd buy something else. Also the specifics of the chosen vehicle for the Oz market was just plain stupid (they wanted to convert Holden Commodore/ Opel Senator to BEV).

Better Place went a bit further in their proposals to assuage range anxiety: they proposed a small fleet of motor cycles with 7kW 2-stroke generators on the back, pizza delivery style, on a pay-per-emergency-charge basis. Happily this went nowhere!

 

[Fobble]

First generation ss batteries are anything but reliable. It will be ridiculously expensive to manufacture. For a company that doesn't want to make money off batteries, it just weird. Daimler already have solid state in use today. It's inferior to their non solid state offering.

If we keep looking back to where the technology was still under developed, we will be missing out a great deal on a company's future directions.

I can't say for sure if battery swap is a good business model, but they have to differentiate themself from Tesla to attract buyers. I myself wish Tesla allows battery swap. My 2015 MS range drops about 5% every year the last 2 years, but Tesla keeps saying it's normal.

 

[Singuy]

If we keep looking back to where the technology was still under developed, we will be missing out a great deal on a company's future directions.

I can't say for sure if battery swap is a good business model, but they have to differentiate themself from Tesla to attract buyers. I myself wish Tesla allows battery swap. My 2015 MS range drops about 5% every year the last 2 years, but Tesla keeps saying it's normal.

Again, it's good for the customer but not for the business. The trick with Tesla is finding that balance. I mean Tesla can just gift every customer a free car as that will be amazing for the customer...not so much for the company.

 

[Fobble]

Again, it's good for the customer but not for the business. The trick with Tesla is finding that balance. I mean Tesla can just gift every customer a free car as that will be amazing for the customer...not so much for the company.

I respectfully disagree, and stop right here.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

My 2015 MS range drops about 5% every year the last 2 years, but Tesla keeps saying it's normal.

What model? I have a late 2015 85D and teslacore says my battery degradation is 2.6% There again it also says S100, when I know its an 85. It also says projected battery at full range: 326.13 miles, whereas in practice mine gets about 240, but thats in UK weather.

 

[Nocturnal]

Yes, the focus on energy density from Tesla competitors always surprises me. Whilst higher energy densities are nice to have they are no longer a critical factor for BEVs. That is why Tesla is focussed on cost/KWh and manufacturing scalability, as demonstrated by Battery Day.

Of course if your aim is to build electric aircraft then 360wh/Kg or more is very helpful

That’s because it’s super easy to put out a press release about how superior your energy density is. It’s far more difficult to actually build cars/batteries at a profit.

 

[Fobble]

What model? I have a late 2015 85D and teslacore says my battery degradation is 2.6% There again it also says S100, when I know its an 85. It also says projected battery at full range: 326.13 miles, whereas in practice mine gets about 240, but thats in UK weather.

June built 70D. It held up well until mid 2019.

 

[kanweg]

You explained why the business model is good for the customers..but how is it good for the business when NIO has to carry the weight of inferior batteries when new tech comes out when in Tesla's case, the customers are the one left holding the bag(and they should). Also revenue from superchargers to Tesla in China will be great as most people can't charge at home. So that's like selling them the inferior battery pack AND charging them rent.

Nio's has every incentive to SLOW battery innovation while decreasing manufacturing cost or else they end holding too many bags as customers only want the best. They are doing the exact opposite.

i forgot to mention that it solves the no home charging issue.

You want the consumers to be the bag holders. May I say that I prefer not to be a customer of a company with that mindset?

I also fail to see any problem. If a new battery comes out with 20% better range, my car with the old type of battery would have reduced resale value. With swappable batteries, there is no problem for the consumer. And with respect to your point, no disadvantage for the EV company either. The old batteries are rented out just like the new ones. The consumer sometimes has an old type battery with less range, and other times a new battery with more. No problem (if the consumer was originally happy with the former range when he sold the car).

 

[Bladerskb]

As for the computer, high "FLOPS" is easy to achieve nowadays. GPU's achieved >1TFLOPS 10 years ago so 4.2TFLOPS isn't astounding in 2021 (a couple of modern phone SoC's have this much too). It's also irrelevant as a measure for AI performance.


So while not putting down NIO's announcement altogether, it does sound like it's a numbers game announcement and not entirely as earthshattering as it's made to seem. Now if they had announced that it's ready for sale this year in 2021, then it would be seismic.

It's 4.2 tflops? How is this 7x Tesla fsd? Were they using the measurements of the gpu? Cause 4.2tflop is like 1/3 the speed of a xbox series x. Tesla didn't focus too much at all when it comes to gpu performance as it's generalized compute. They wanted more asic compute which the ai accelerator pumps out 72tops, complete obliterate 4.2 tflops which is like nothing more than a mid range graphics card you can buy for 150 dollars. I guess if nio wants better quality games then it's something. Fp4 and fp8 is what Tesla focused on, not fp16 as the computer is not used to render graphics of a triple A video game. It's used to predict road conditions as they are not doing HDmaps. So the precision of fp16 is a waste. So yes fp16 gpu performance nio is 7x faster than tesla but totally intentional.

Them focusing on gpu performanc of fp16 almost tells me they don't know what they are doing except only for marketing purposes like porsches 30x acceleration without losing power. Nvidia's ai accelerator are very tensor core heavy which is fp4 and fp8...cause you know..they know what they are doing.

Not it’s 1,016 TOPS (int8), FSD is 144 TOPS (int8).

144 * 7 = 1008... hence they say 7x more powerful.

Come on Tesla fans, get it together!

 

[Nocturnal]

Curious what folks think a realistic value for Tesla is in the next year or so. I always believed they would be a trillion dollar company but to me it seems the stock may be a bit ahead of itself. Don't get me wrong, I am big Tesla fan and I definitely want them to succeed on all fronts (energy, FSD, cars etc). However, I am interested in what folks think about the rationale behind the current valuation and how much more growth to expect.

I struggle answering this question for myself. It’s overvalued based on near-mid term performance but there is a lot more to this SP than that. Some of it is market dynamics. Tesla longs are all crazy and we don’t want to sell. There is also a sugar ton of extra money in the market and green tech is going to boom because of natural trends and political winds in the US and globally.

If Tesla had real competition then I’d say this SP is crazy and we should cash out. They don’t though. I assume we level out or even dip at some point here but it’s too risky to potentially miss the next parabolic move.

 

[kanweg]

Another disadvantage for a swappable pack is that you can't make it a structural pack and integrate it into the car body like Tesla will be doing. So their cars will be heavier and more costly to manufacture.

Yes, that is one of the advantages Tesla has. The other points I mentioned (plus solving the no home charging problem for many people) are the advantages the other business model has. If I had to compete with Tesla, I’d go into that direction, because no way I would be able to compete with Tesla head on. I would need to address other (real or perceived) issues customers have when considering a BEV.

 

[Mengy]

Someone on Twitter suggested that the new $25k car should be called Model Q. Final torching of the shorts by the best selling Tesla Q!

The Model Q. I like it!

 

[Nocturnal]

Another disadvantage for a swappable pack is that you can't make it a structural pack and integrate it into the car body like Tesla will be doing. So their cars will be heavier and more costly to manufacture.

Let’s also throw in cost and incentive to not care for your battery. If you can swap then you have no reason to take care of your battery. Max charge, running it hard etc. On the cost side, you have to build an extra 20%? in numbers of packs. That means you are building fewer cars for sale. This is somewhat offset by not needing to pay for chargers but still. Battery swaps also don’t take 5 minutes unless there is low demand.

 

[Singuy]

Not it’s 1,016 TOPS (int8), FSD is 144 TOPS (int8).

144 * 7 = 1008... hence they say 7x more powerful.

Come on Tesla fans, get it together!

That's good to know because I just went with what the other poster said. That video is 3hrs long with a bunch of singing and dancing so I didn't look into it.

 

[Krugerrand]

Who is the guy MCing the event? I like Elon's style so much better. No offense to whoever you are. You did a lot better job than I would have done.

George Blakenship. You must be new. Came from Apple. Responsible for Apple store styling and thus Tesla store styling. VP of sales, left end of 2013. Supposedly to retire but I think he and Elon had a falling out.

 

[Singuy]

i forgot to mention that it solves the no home charging issue.

You want the consumers to be the bag holders. May I say that I prefer not to be a customer of a company with that mindset?

I also fail to see any problem. If a new battery comes out with 20% better range, my car with the old type of battery would have reduced resale value. With swappable batteries, there is no problem for the consumer. And with respect to your point, no disadvantage for the EV company either. The old batteries are rented out just like the new ones. The consumer sometimes has an old type battery with less range, and other times a new battery with more. No problem (if the consumer was originally happy with the former range when he sold the car).

Every customer is a bag holder for everything you buy. I don't remember many times that you buy something and 5 years later the item you bought is better than 5 year later tech.

Also a car doesn't last forever and should degrade along with the battery. Maybe the battery pack is brand new on the car but not the seats and the paint job.

Btw, all this "renting out" is just another marketing word when the real word is call "leasing". Every car company provides an option to "rent out their cars" in the form of a lease. Tesla actively discourage leasing because it's not a money maker.

 

[kanweg]

Let’s also throw in cost and incentive to not care for your battery. If you can swap then you have no reason to take care of your battery. Max charge, running it hard etc. On the cost side, you have to build an extra 20%? in numbers of packs. That means you are building fewer cars for sale. This is somewhat offset by not needing to pay for chargers but still. Battery swaps also don’t take 5 minutes unless there is low demand.

Well, the batteries are mounted precharged, so I don’t see a max charging issue. And with smart batteries (or info obtained from the car when the battery is swapped), data can be transferred, e.g. determining whether you get a discount on the rent or not depending on battery abuse.
I don’t see an inherent mechanical problem in performing a battery swap in 2 minutes. It must be a drive through set up unlike what Nio has), and automatic steering (remote control or using a program in the car) for substantially correct positioning of the car, The replacement apparatus can take care of the fine positioning.

I agree with the disadvantage of the cost of additional batteries needed, as mentioned in my post. But with Tesla using Powerpacks, that starts to make the situation more comparable.