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

[Tslynk67]

Better than expected, given the ... interesting history of Tesla vs Clarkson in the early days, esp. the first part of the video, where Tesla's strengths are demoed.
Having 6 lawers in the car is off course a dirty trick, but ... could be worse. At least the good first part is more believable to fence-sitters 'cause Clarkson is not seen to having 'caved' to Tesla but maintains his life-long skepticism of non-gas cars.

That video is from around 4 years back - it's a pre-Raven P100D and the price he quoted is before the massive drop in PS/X pricing that came in September 2017

So imagine how much better a Ravan would be - faster, better handling, more comfortable, cheaper and then ramp it up to 11 for the Plaid when it comes!

Makes me want to buy a Model X, even though I have one already

 

[Christine69420]

BobCat = BatteryCathode?

Info from the Quad Squad has it that the area they have been clearing directly east of the main factory and the parking lot is for the battery cathode factory.

To me it sounds unlikely that a cathode factory would need to be more than one order of magnitude larger than the battery cell production factory itself. But I am no battery scientist.

The Quad Squad have info that the battery cell factory will be in the current factory - in the smaller north west are where they now are building the steel framework at an amazing speed.

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

New Tesla factory plans submitted for Austin

There is a comment from

user "M B"



I have not so far been able to find this permit.

Very interesting!

I didn't think they would bother to move the cement plant when they have sooo much other land in Texas. (Pretty sure they have a contractual obligation to ensure an alternate site for Martin Marietta)
Since the new site is apparently the same size as the current very large building, it seems logical that it will be - more or less - a clone. If true, then WOW.
Co-location of the soon to be two adjacent factories must be worth more than I thought.

This is very good news.

 

[elasalle]

Is it just me or is Elon Twitter now better than earnings calls? I feel like he's giving so much with a bit of decoding we know, somewhat, when v9 hits and how good it will be, updates on Model Y 22/23 beating Corolla for #1 spot, updates on Texas crash and many details.

Twitter Elon can be fashionably late with his timelines, Earnings Elon can't

 

[elasalle]

Volkswagen investigated by SEC over 'Voltswagen' prank

The agency is looking into whether the EV-themed April Fool's joke influenced the brand's stock price.

www.cnet.com

20M $$ ??

 

[Thekiwi]

Very interesting!

I didn't think they would bother to move the cement plant when they have sooo much other land in Texas. (Pretty sure they have a contractual obligation to ensure an alternate site for Martin Marietta)
Since the new site is apparently the same size as the current very large building, it seems logical that it will be - more or less - a clone. If true, then WOW.
Co-location of the soon to be two adjacent factories must be worth more than I thought.

This is very good news.

well - cyber truck has to be built somewhere - isn’t the current Austin construction primarily for the Model Y?

 

[Dancing Lemur]

The new Powerwall+ spec sheet has a wider crop of the image posted earlier with more of the bike visible (lo-res, sorry).

While I can see wanting something else besides the PW/meter in a marketing photo, the bike is not an obvious choice (ostensibly a bike needs no power at all). The back of a white M3, for example, would have worked.

I have a hard time seeing this as anything other than a Tesla e-bike tease, as was posited earlier. And I want one of them more than I want the cyberquad.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

Very interesting!

I didn't think they would bother to move the cement plant when they have sooo much other land in Texas. (Pretty sure they have a contractual obligation to ensure an alternate site for Martin Marietta)
Since the new site is apparently the same size as the current very large building, it seems logical that it will be - more or less - a clone. If true, then WOW.
Co-location of the soon to be two adjacent factories must be worth more than I thought.

This is very good news.

From the beginning the info from the drone flyers has been that Martin Marietta, the construction company that sold the land to Tesla, will build a new permanent plant for themselves on the other side of the highway. Supposedly at the north end so roughly right across from where the temporary concrete plant that is used for concrete to the factory construction is now. Presumably Marietta kept a piece of land there while selling the rest to Tesla.

As for size I thought it was clear from the start that they won't be able to build 2 million cars in the building that is going up now. No matter how big it looks. I'm expecting at least one more similar sized building in Austin, possibly two, and in Berlin where the current building is smaller probably two or three more.

So at least one more like they are building now. Plus several smaller buildings as well as a pretty big office/hq and for Space X a Starlink factory and office.

The current building is sitting on something like a tenth of the land Tesla bought so there is plenty of land even if they use some of it for a riverwalk/park for the public.

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Info from the Quad Squad has it that the area they have been clearing directly east of the main factory and the parking lot is for the battery cathode factory.

To me it sounds unlikely that a cathode factory would need to be more than one order of magnitude larger than the battery cell production factory itself. But I am no battery scientist.

The Quad Squad have info that the battery cell factory will be in the current factory - in the smaller north west are where they now are building the steel framework at an amazing speed.

The area they are clearing directly east of the main factory looks to be considerably smaller than 150 acres. So it may be included in this application but is a bigger area. 150 acres is about the size of the factory they are currently building. However it is unclear from the information provided whether the 150 acres in this application is for the building or the site (including parking, etc.)

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Very interesting!

I didn't think they would bother to move the cement plant when they have sooo much other land in Texas. (Pretty sure they have a contractual obligation to ensure an alternate site for Martin Marietta)
Since the new site is apparently the same size as the current very large building, it seems logical that it will be - more or less - a clone. If true, then WOW.
Co-location of the soon to be two adjacent factories must be worth more than I thought.

This is very good news.

There were reports shortly after the land was acquired that the Martin Marietta concrete plant would be moved, perhaps across the road to near the asphalt plant.

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

well - cyber truck has to be built somewhere - isn’t the current Austin construction primarily for the Model Y?

Perhaps, but I am unsure about how important the Cybertruck is near term - the plans seem to change.
With Elons recent twitter posts about beating Toyota corolla in '23/23 perhaps the short to medium term plan is to go plaid speed re model Y.

 

[LiveLong&Profit]

The new Powerwall+ spec sheet has a wider crop of the image posted earlier with more of the bike visible (lo-res, sorry).

While I can see wanting something else besides the PW/meter in a marketing photo, the bike is not an obvious choice (ostensibly a bike needs no power at all). The back of a white M3, for example, would have worked.

I have a hard time seeing this as anything other than a Tesla e-bike tease, as was posited earlier. And I want one of them more than I want the cyberquad.

View attachment 658586

For sure a Tesla e-bike would sell plenty, but that just looks like an ordinary bike to me .. (?)

 

[MikeAtkinson]

As for size I thought it was clear from the start that they won't be able to build 2 million cars in the building that is going up now. No matter how big it looks. I'm expecting at least one more similar sized building in Austin, possibly two, and in Berlin where the current building is smaller probably two or three more.

The Berlin main building is 1/4 of that planned. There are several smaller buildings planned between it an the drive unit building. They seem to be going to build several buildings around the drive unit plant to complete the second quarter. One of these is the "warehouse" which is where they are going to put the cell/battery plant.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Tesla Employee count

https://twitter.com/x/status/1387888687422312451

So we can calculate productivity:

Year	Employees	Car Production	Productivity (cars/empoyee)
2020	70,757	509,737	7.2
2019	48,016	365,232	7.6
2018	48,817	254,530	5.2
2017	37,543	100,757	2.7
2016	17,782	83,922	4.7

That is very crude as Tesla Energy and other activities affect employee count. Employee count is end-of-year while production is spread over the year, so ramping production leads to lower productivity estimates.

Per Cars Per Employee And Productivity At Volkswagen Versus Toyota – Michel Baudin's Blog



Considering Tesla's vertical integration, no dealerships, servicing and charging infrastructure, and the number of employees in Tesla Energy, Tesla's productivity is really good.

Imagine what this will look like in a few years once Austin and Berlin are up and running. It could go 2x-3x the number of employees by the time they're building 5m vehicles a year.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

I guess we will get Tesla China sales number for April any time now. Expect fairly low numbers as there seems to have been a lot of shipments to other countries. We would need production numbers to be able to tell much about how well they did in April.

 

[Prunesquallor]

I guess we will get Tesla China sales number for April any time now. Expect fairly low numbers as there seems to have been a lot of shipments to other countries. We would need production numbers to be able to tell much about how well they did in April.

Are there enough exports from Shanghai now that we'll see "waves" in China sales?

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

The Berlin main building is 1/4 of that planned. There are several smaller buildings planned between it an the drive unit building. They seem to be going to build several buildings around the drive unit plant to complete the second quarter. One of these is the "warehouse" which is where they are going to put the cell/battery plant.

Yes, in Berlin the original drawings made it look like the first building was one of four very similar ones built next to each other, each with a cut off corner. Haven't seen that picture being used by Tesla for a long time and with some other buildings, and the switchyard, already built or starting to be built where the next quarter would be means it won't really look like that at all.

The shape of the latest tree clearings they've done makes it hard to figure out what they are thinking for the next phase.

 

[OrthoSurg]

For sure a Tesla e-bike would sell plenty, but that just looks like an ordinary bike to me .. (?)

I agree with you.

seat tube not tubular to hold a hidden electric motor.
downtube too small to hold significative amount of batteries.

this looks like a debranded regular carbon road bike frame.

with this tube geometry, it would be holding a really small electric motor with some batteries to push 200 watts for couple minutes but not the range of the Trek Domane+ or Specialized Turbo. Unless Tesla has decided to surprise us, again, which means I would have to add another bike in my crowded basement.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

Are there enough exports from Shanghai now that we'll see "waves" in China sales?

It seems like not only are they still sending Model 3s to mainland Europe. They've stepped up RHD versions to the UK, Japan and some other markets. Plus Israel is a new market they are shipping to.

I't won't impact Model Y numbers but I expect Model 3 numbers in April to be way low. So expect some FUD about that.

 

[Prunesquallor]

It seems like not only are they still sending Model 3s to mainland Europe. They've stepped up RHD versions to the UK, Japan and some other markets. Plus Israel is a new market they are shipping to.

I't won't impact Model Y numbers but I expect Model 3 numbers in April to be way low. So expect some FUD about that.

A new GoJo metric? China sales in April.