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

[kbM3]

I will have a new update in a week or so; however, I do want to highlight an expected Q2 milestone.
In Q2, Tesla reaches GAAP profits with only Model 3/Y sales. In other words, even if there were no Regulatory Credits and no Models S/X sales, Telsa would still be GAAP profitable (about $400m). Models S/X sales & Reg Credits are icing on the cake.

Excluding Energy and Service?

 

[nativewolf]

I don't think VW learned any less by saving money on their first EV (which they were only making to learn the ropes and reduce emission credits). Using an ICE platform was a cost-saving move, not an indication of their lack of engineering prowess.



I agree, the apparent lack of battery supply does complicate the matter. I do believe even if Ford had as many batteries as they wanted at current prices they couldn't make the Lightning a success vs. the Cybertruck or sell it at a profit across the Lightning range. But I'll never be able to prove it because Ford really doesn't have many batteries at their disposal. And that is Ford's strategic error, not bad luck.

Nobody but Tesla has battery capacity. Tesla does not even have enough for late 2022 production and is that Teslas strategic error?

I would say VW did learn less. There is no feedback coming back to VW on the platform that is transferable. They may have engineering prowess in pockets but it was not at all evident or on display. What we see in the ID 4 is accountant driven planning. A single platform for 22 models. Oh and it has to be able to support diesels... lets not go down the diesel gate rabbit hole because with VW that is just the canary in the coal mine.

 

[nativewolf]

Ford net income went from 1.1 billion to negative 2 billion q1 2020 because their sales declined 12.5%. They can't even make a profit selling half a million cars PER QUARTER. So no they are not making any money moving 35k units of Mach E this year.

Sure, every car company in the world had the same problem. Every legacy co is going to hemorrhage funds, covid aside.

 

[nativewolf]

I see what you did there.

Couldn't resist. I see the flaws in a rapidly released product being a sign of some commitment. New product, low volume, got some issues, better than most expected. The fact they are doing the EV f150 is pretty cool. That is literally the company at this point.

 

[Singuy]

Sure, every car company in the world had the same problem. Every legacy co is going to hemorrhage funds, covid aside.

Every car company in the world had the same problem, except Tesla q1 2020. Yoy growth, didn't take a loss. Difference between managing a tight ship vs managing a bunch of loose ideas like those other auto makers.

 

[Thumper]

Does anyone have info on lap times from the race prepared Plaid spotted at Laguna Seca this weekend?

 

[nativewolf]

I showed this to my spouse, including the nearby visitors center and suggested we should go there. She declined.
The astounding point is that this is furthest north place in continental Europe. Queensland, New Zealand is one of the furthest South points too.
Superchargers are in Kazakstan. Tesla is rapidly making Superchargers the leading indication fo where stars will be coming. All they need to do is triple production soon!

Hitchhiked there as a young man with a month to blow. Coastal Norway is great in summer. Fisherman in the Lofoten Islands gave me a ride in his Transam, his island had 2 miles of road. He could only really drive it by taking the several hour ferry ride over to the mainland. Bucket list sort of trip if I were advising young people. Artic bird colonies by the millions, reindeer on the drive back through Finland, fishing villages, 6 toed puffin hunting dogs, daylight forever. Good stuff.

 

[nativewolf]

Every car company in the world had the same problem, except Tesla q1 2020. Yoy growth, didn't take a loss. Difference between managing a tight ship vs managing a bunch of loose ideas like those other auto makers.

Not arguing with you, I agree. Just not helpful or indicative to single Ford out vs the others. Think of it this way. Despite losing billions they launched a money losing demo project to gain experience and prepare for the launch of a must win project to protect the companies key market; f150/250/350. At this point nothing else matters to ford. Don't let Rivian beat you to scale in EV trucks.

 

[kbM3]

This isn't route optimization planning to determine the best order to travel multiple destinations... there are software packages that you can buy for such logistics needs.

This is adding waypoints in a specific order effectively segmenting the existing route, or adding additional segments, along the way to a final destination. And indeed my Toyota does that.... with much more modest hardware than even my Gen1 MCU has. Heck my Compaq iPaq hendheld with a CPU with fractions of a GHz of clock rate could do that 20 yrs ago.

While it's true that the route factors in elevation costs and considers battery range to include Superchargers, the system already does that... so for a destination 500 miles away, all that calculation has already occurred. There's no real additional heavy lifting the system is not capable of if I add 2 stops, effectively making it 3 individual routes to the same destination.

Now while there may be a valid reason Tesla hasn't gone to the trouble of adding waypoints, but it's hard to believe storage capacity or computational complexity are either of them.

In addition to waypoints, I would love to be able to specify a destination rate of charge target. The Nav system will happily route me on a trip to a destination with no charging such that I would arrive with only 30 miles range remaining. It would be nice to be able to override to arrive with 40% say, so that at my last supercharger stop, it calculates the proper charge needed to have adequate charge when I arrive.

 

[kbM3]

Elon said the Insurance opportunity is probably ~30% of the entire car business. The Energy business is growing into a TAM thats 10x the Auto market. Then there's Robotaxi, with its 70% margin opportunity. Did I mention A.I.?

TL;dr I think you're gonna need a digger moat.

Insurance is an interesting opportunity.
1. Before Tesla achieves unsupervised FSD, Insurance profits per vehicle should exceed all other insurance companies.
2. After that, Tesla assumes all risk on FSD miles (which according to Elon will be the vast majority) so no robo-taxi company or individual using FSD full time would need to pay for the majority of insurance that covers driving.

Certainly a successful robo-taxi scenario will spin off so much profit, insurance revenue will be dwarfed even if it doesn’t decrease.

 

[AudubonB]

…
So, GM will end out surviving nicely, whether or not the NA lagging lineup ends out quickly adapting. ===>Specifically keep in mind that the Bolt and the upcoming Hummer and pickups are really attempts to ignore all GM's BEV and small vehicle talent<===. The successful GM markets, China and Brazil are the stellar two, are not closely connected to the NA idiots, but they are closely connected with each other. Despite the NA issues, China origin Buicks do well and, perhaps oddly, Cadillac does well in China:
….

I’d be more than happy to keep that in mind if I properly understood what you’re trying to say. Is it that their EV talent is amassed in China, and possibly also in Brazil? If so, is that irrespective of the enormous fraction of the Bolt’s engineering, and effectively all of its production, is out of SKorea?

 

[AudubonB]

It's just an educated guess as Ford, like most makers, doesn't break out the numbers. If Ford was making money on them at the current price point, they would make more of them. I doubt the loss is massive since it's a relatively low volume product. They are making them for the emission credits they don't have to buy.

Based on the hoses alone, someone has to hook all of those up, wrap 'em and secure them. When the frunk liner is pulled out it looks like a cross between someone's low-budget plumbing repair project and a work of modern art depicting society's current mental health. I think the factory down in Mexico must have a lot of experienced hosers working there. We can assume they don't work for $5/hour but they are probably pretty proficient and fairly fast. So that's good. But there are four pumps under that frunk and a bunch of other complexity (all made by suppliers, I'm sure).

Then there's the big battery and all that crappy software that has to be costed over very few vehicles.

Close to half those”hoses” are in fact wiring harnesses. Doesn’t excuse the mess….it just parcels it out to two poorly-executed but distinct segments.

 

[AudubonB]

Fun fact: Tesla began construction of the northernmost Supercharger in the world in Honningsvåg, Norway, at 71 degrees N. Latitude. That’s well over 1,000 miles further north than the northernmost SC in North America- Edmonton Canada! Isn’t it quaint?

View attachment 672978

Who’s up for a road trip?

Rub it in. Go on, just rub it in…..

 

[JRP3]

Just responding to point out the tweet is wrong. 1p4s means the cells are LiFePO4 cells (nominal voltage of 3.2v to give a pack voltage of 12.8v; or 14.4v when fully charged). Also, they wouldn't be 4680 cells, since the 2170 NCA's are 18wh, so a 4680 NCA would be around 90wh - essentially the entire capacity of Tesla's new 12v battery in a single cell (but at only 3.7v).

So quashing that 4680 speculation.

No the low voltage battery is listed as 15.5V which would mean 3.875V per cell, way above the 3.65 max for LFP. I think it's undercharged NMC which would lead to extended cycle life.
Edit:
Thinking further, if it's an 8Ah battery with no cells in parallel it can't be LFP and I don't think it could be 2170 NMC or NCA especially if undercharged as I speculate. Most estimates I can find say 4-5Ah for the 2170 NCA cells. Maybe this is where some of those 4680 cells are going.

 

[scaesare]

In addition to waypoints, I would love to be able to specify a destination rate of charge target. The Nav system will happily route me on a trip to a destination with no charging such that I would arrive with only 30 miles range remaining. It would be nice to be able to override to arrive with 40% say, so that at my last supercharger stop, it calculates the proper charge needed to have adequate charge when I arrive.

Yeah that would be helpful... destination charging isn't always available. Or something like "reserve charge for initial return leg" and it would be smart enough to reserve enough charge to get you back to the closest supercharger returning the way you came...

 

[JustMe]

Does anyone have info on lap times from the race prepared Plaid spotted at Laguna Seca this weekend?

The racing team Unplugged Performance tweeted that this weekend is for shakedown and experience, not aiming for any records. But it sure looks quick in the clip I saw.

They are tuning up for a Pikes Peak race coming up ->

Great article here:

Unplugged Performance Reveals Its Model S Plaid Pikes Peak Racer

The 1,020-hp electric sedan will compete at the 2021 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

www.motortrend.com

 

[Christine69420]

Fun fact: Tesla began construction of the northernmost Supercharger in the world in Honningsvåg, Norway, at 71 degrees N. Latitude. That’s well over 1,000 miles further north than the northernmost SC in North America- Edmonton Canada! Isn’t it quaint?

View attachment 672978

Who’s up for a road trip?

I showed this to my spouse, including the nearby visitors center and suggested we should go there. She declined.
The astounding point is that this is furthest north place in continental Europe. Queensland, New Zealand is one of the furthest South points too.
Superchargers are in Kazakstan. Tesla is rapidly making Superchargers the leading indication fo where stars will be coming. All they need to do is triple production soon!

A road trip to Honningsvåg and the rest of the Finnmark county in Norway is very much recommended. The last year they have started building chargers there - both Tesla and others. When I drove there a few years back I had to use my fossil car. But now I would have taken my Tesla.

July is a great month. Midnight sun on and the snow is finally gone. And the mozzies are still not out in force. Honningsvåg is close to North Cape. And then you can go east until you reach the Russian border. And then cross Finnmarksvidda on your way south. Or venture into Sweden or Finland. Or go south to the beautiful Lofoten archepelago. Or further south down to the Arctic circle.

 

[petit_bateau]

Too bad. Here is the former PSA BEV short term plan:

About Us

Our mission is to provide freedom of movement for all through distinctive, versatile, and sustainable mobility solutions.

www.groupe-psa.com

That excludes their commercial vehicles which have a different plan.
Under Stellantis their platform strategies are already being expanded and NA (Jeep and RAM mostly) has several models under way.
Zero doubt that they are well behind the Chinese. Zero doubt that they are depending on Chinese expertise3 is several major areas.

Structurally Stellantis, GM, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai/Kia are deeply dependent on Chinese market BEV expertise including sales. There is copius documentation behind paywalls from places like Automotive News and MarkLines, among many others.

Most of us seem blissfully unaware that GM is far more dependent on China than they are on the US, with China accounting for as much as 45% of worldwide sales.

GM China Sales Jump 69 Percent During First Quarter 2021

Marking an important recovery with respect to Q1 2020, which was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

gmauthority.com

GM also is deeply dependent on their Korean operation for small vehicle global design.
So, GM will end out surviving nicely, whether or not the NA lagging lineup ends out quickly adapting. Specifically keep in mind that the Bolt and the upcoming Hummer and pickups are really attempts to ignore all GM's BEV and small vehicle talent. The successful GM markets, China and Brazil are the stellar two, are not closely connected to the NA idiots, but they are closely connected with each other. Despite the NA issues, China origin Buicks do well and, perhaps oddly, Cadillac does well in China:

Cadillac Set A New Sales Record During 2020 In China

Marking five consecutive years of growth in the country.

gmauthority.com

There is much that would be off topic to Tesla. Still, Tesla is the only one to have China integrated with global operations and product development. Tesla will benefit disproportionately, no doubt, because they build what China wants most.

What we should realize is that China is producing and designing the vehicles that will end out competing most seriously with Tesla. GM, Stellantis, Daimler Benz and all the others need not go broke, not even BMW. They'll all begin to source and depend on China-market designs, technology and production technologies. They in fact already do.

My last point: we all glory in Tesla's Giga Presses as we should. We all hear about IDRA, the Italian face of Giga Presses. What is far less easy to discover is that IDRA is 100% owned by a Hong Kong base LK technologies, which really is the driver. So, nobody is anxious to discover that it really is Chinese technology that Tesla has been using to make such huge successes.

Please stop imagining that Tesla will end out THE dominate vehicle brand globally and that their innovation is all about California.

There was good reason to go to China and devote inordinate attention to that country. The Tesla mission depends on absolute attention to a sustainable future. That depends more on China than it does on any other country.

Shout at me, disapprove, dislike. Please, please do your homework before making the attacks.

Setting aside parochial nationalism.

Setting aside FSD considerations, and Energy considerations.

If Tesla carry on growing at the rate they currently are, and if the traditional ICE-makers continue on their current trajectories, then the ICE-makers will not close the gap on Tesla as they make the transition to become BEV-makers.

This means that the ICE-makers would end up with volumes lower than their existing volumes. However the potential rise of Chinese BEV-makers may also cause the remaining pie to be shared differently.

If Tesla were to plateau at 10 mln cars/year then the existing industry structure might persist, albeit redistributed and therefore with some corporate casualties amongst the current ICE-makers.

If however Tesla were to blow past 10 mln/yr and attain the 20 mln/yr by 2030 objective then, even if two others (VAG and Toyota) were to have made a successful ICE>BEV transition and preserve their 10 mln/yr status, then the industry structure would be hugely disrupted. And in the scenario where Tesla attains 20mln/yr then it is unlikely that it would stop there, or that two contenders would be able to be stable at 10 mln/yr.

Industry structure will have an effect on Tesla, so these are legitimate questions that are being raised. Ther ability of ICE-makers to survive significant turndowns is limited. I am expecting corporate casualties, but I am unsure how the pain will be shared around, and what the industrial, political, and strategic consequences will be.

Add back into the mix the FSD and the Energy ambitions and industry structure questions become even more interesting. Why call Trasportation something different than Energy when together they account for approximately 2/3 of global energy use. ? The traditional borders of the firms between big oil & gas / big power corps / and big auto do not necessarily need to be replicated in a post-transition global structure.

And that is before I've added nationalism back into the conversation.

 

[Beltsbear]

Ford net income went from 1.1 billion to negative 2 billion q1 2020 because their sales declined 12.5%. They can't even make a profit selling half a million cars PER QUARTER. So no they are not making any money moving 35k units of Mach E this year.

agreed. But Ford will probably make a per unit profit in late 2021. They will never recover the cost of the Mach E program without going over 100k units a year. Of course it was a valuable learning experience and the next EV after the EF150 will be profitable.

 

[Nolimits]

So any thoughts on this weeks price action now that plaid is officially out? Or will the SP continue to teeter totter around 600-610s until q2 reports? Feel like the attn will be back on AMC and tsla good news (and fud )may be in background.