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

[MC3OZ]

Bill said not a Cybertruck battery pack and no to a Roadster battery pack.

And he said,:

View attachment 683570

What we have heard previously is that a 4680 structural pack is first going to be used in the Berlin and Austin made Model Ys.
4680 cells are needed to ramp Model Y to the eventual required production capacity.

A common pack design would be great if it fits into all car designs, a common production line being able to build different size packs in different cases is more believable..

There is usually no smoke without fire, so I think a (pilot) production line for 4680 structural packs exists somewhere, and getting to that stage is a major milestone...

If I had to guess, I still think those packs are initially targeting the Model Y platform..

If this speculation is right, there were 2 signing ceremonies and they showed the picture of the wrong pack,
Staff should stop leaking information, especially when they get some details wrong, we will find out soon enough.

 

[Carl Raymond]

I interpreted it the other way, that it's a 4680 pack but not structural. The post to which he responded asked if it was 4680 and he said "confirmed".

View attachment 683582

Thinking out loud...

Bill Wright works in Nevada. He says he's had his hands on the contents of the pack in question. He doesn't claim to have seen the pack. He doesn't claim to have been there at the signing while others claim they were there and Bill was not.

Yet Bill seems to think the pack contains 4680.

Suppose Bill was making 4680 cells in Nevada, knowing they were destined to be made into packs at Fremont. He sees the signed pack photo and goes "ahah, there it is, confirmed", not twigging that the makers of the 18650 non-structural plaid pack were equally proud of their work.

I think Fremont is making 4680 packs and maybe Nevada is making 4680 cells, but the photo is of a non structural 18650 pack. The other possibility is that Bill went to Kato Road where he had his hands on 4680 cells. Photos are nice, but it's the facts that matter.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

I'm sure somewhere in New Mexico Elon is amused by this 4680's thing because he's planning on dropping the bomb in a few weeks on the earnings call anyways that 4680 are in production for Austin and Berlin-built vehicles.

 

[Paracelsus]

James Stephenson is knocking it out of the park this afternoon with another very informative series of TSLA charts and tables. Please follow the link - he has already posted 19 tweets in this thread and I don’t think he is finished yet:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1414364304309166080

 

[MABMAB]

Battery obsessed folks, please explain the positive and negative reasons for continuing such discussions, personally I would prefer if these discussions were tabbed for now, I would prefer to be contactless from now on. I have other things on my plate Such as doing some heavy metal lifting without stress cracks developing thus shortening my life.

like, what kind of battery is in the device you are using?
I have 3 devices in sight and have ZERO info about them.
blah blah blah he said she said on titter, all trying to get my eyeballs, I can confirm I am not following any of them
i am unwilling to figure out the minutia details, it is not something I find possible or desirable.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

All 3 devices you are using have some variation of LiPo (lithium polymer) batteries inside.

Lithium polymer battery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There are many manufacturers of LiPo batteries used in phones, laptops, tablets, etc. but in general they all follow the same standard internal chemistry. The main customization of battery packs used in devices is of course shape and size to fit whatever chassis and space they are designed to fit in.

 

[FreqFlyer]

More weight for "it's neither"... Tesla Facts is of course the highly regarded past contributor to this forum known as "Fact Checking".

https://twitter.com/x/status/1414179244385648648

MotorTrend had a Model S Plaid in their hands for a week and stated it was the present battery size with new chemistry. That was over two weeks ago, but hey, its twitter and anyone can post anything salacious.

 

[Criscmt]

Yes.

However existence is usually a pretty far distance from production ready, which is also pretty far from production ramp complete / production volumes.

My response was to the statement “Confirmation that 4680 packs exist!!”

 

[capster]

All 3 devices you are using have some variation of LiPo (lithium polymer) batteries inside.

Lithium polymer battery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There are many manufacturers of LiPo batteries used in phones, laptops, tablets, etc. but in general they all follow the same standard internal chemistry. The main customization of battery packs used in devices is of course shape and size to fit whatever chassis and space they are designed to fit in.

Well, my ex‘s (/s) idea was Lipodiesel sourced from, well, you know (ewww! In her defense, she did see, ahem, a wide swath of the American public in her work). You could solve the climate crisis, the national security challenges of oil, and the obesity epidemic in one swell foop.

What’s not to love?

 

[insaneoctane]

Battery obsessed folks, please explain the positive and negative reasons for continuing such discussions, personally I would prefer if these discussions were tabbed for now, I would prefer to be contactless from now on. I have other things on my plate Such as doing some heavy metal lifting without stress cracks developing thus shortening my life.

like, what kind of battery is in the device you are using?
I have 3 devices in sight and have ZERO info about them.
blah blah blah he said she said on titter, all trying to get my eyeballs, I can confirm I am not following any of them
i am unwilling to figure out the minutia details, it is not something I find possible or desirable.

I find it a bit taxing myself, but the investor angle is simple…proof of 4680 burns down risk to our (crazy?) high expectations of Tesla. Evidence of 4680 in a structural pack in July 2021 would be delightful if true.

 

[insaneoctane]

After watching the FSD v9 videos, I’m glad it’s not public beta yet. I was jelly and wanting ”the button” myself….not anymore. There’s still a lot of work to be done. I don’t know how quickly it happens, but the videos I watched showed me that this product is NOT ready for the general masses today. What the AI team has accomplished so far is impressive, but still seems like a long way to go unfortunately (IMO). I do hope to see rapid progress, but at this point don’t know what to expect. Let’s say it’s definitely more than “2 weeks” away.

 

[Singuy]

After watching the FSD v9 videos, I’m glad it’s not public beta yet. I was jelly and wanting ”the button” myself….not anymore. There’s still a lot of work to be done. I don’t know how quickly it happens, but the videos I watched showed me that this product is NOT ready for the general masses today. What the AI team has accomplished so far is impressive, but still seems like a long way to go unfortunately (IMO). I do hope to see rapid progress, but at this point don’t know what to expect. Let’s say it’s definitely more than “2 weeks” away.

From what I can tell fsd beta is ready for prime time for the majority of the US. It's challenging in big cities for sure like NYC or Sanfrancisco...but fsd beta will handle major cities in FL no problem because we have lane markings and self explanatory roads. I'm sure many other mid size and small cities would work too.

When I was in NYC, we had to eventually park our cars and take a taxi because the roads were a mess and we have no idea how to drive on it.

 

[StealthP3D]

Bill said not a Cybertruck battery pack and no to a Roadster battery pack.

Oh, no, I've been completely ignoring the speculation about the battery pack in the photo because, even if it had been 4680 cells, that would not imply Tesla has the manufacturing process dialed to churn them out in high volume. The challenge with designing the manufacturing process is to move from a low yield of useable cells to a very high yield of useable cells. The production line can only be run in short bursts and then it must be shut down, the cells examined and adjustments made to the manufacturing process. This will happen over many iterations. So, even a very low yield from early production line prototypes will result in some good cells at some point in the development of the line. My assumption all along has been that these early "good" cells will be incorporated into packs for testing and validation purposes well before there are commercial quantities. It's too expensive to continue to run a line that, for example, is only putting out 80% good cells.

From the standpoint of an investor, the photo of a signed battery pack is meaningless, even if we knew it actually had 4680 cells inside. I was responding to the speculation that, at some point, it will be announced that 4680 cells are going into volume production of vehicles. Personally, I think it's still far too early for any such announcement but would, of course, be ecstatic if Elon announced they were killing it with the development of 4680 cells and announced it as early as the Q2 earnings. My actual expectations are tempered to hope they are ready for high volume production by Q1 2022. The investor in me would be very pleased with such a timeline.

 

[mickificki]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1414360214174720001

Been following James Locke on YouTube and Twitter. Seems fairly level headed on fsd, and he’s impressed.

anyone have guesses on when fsd subscription might roll out? Q4 perhaps?

 

[Carl Raymond]

I find it a bit taxing myself, but the investor angle is simple…proof of 4680 burns down risk to our (crazy?) high expectations of Tesla. Evidence of 4680 in a structural pack in July 2021 would be delightful if true.

Yes.

How many gazillion posts have used the phrase “production constrained“?

4680 ends that. Or at least accelerates growth to the next level of constraint, whatever that turns out to be.

The number “4680” is shorthand for ‘Tesla becoming masters of their own destiny’, by bring cell production in house. It’s got nothing to do format. Discussing format *would* be a waste of space.

 

[PeterJA]

Darn that slippery Elon. I knew he was being sued for the SolarCity acquisition, but I didn't know Tesla also acquired SunPower, according to Associated Press or MarketWatch or that bastion of journalistic excellence that is Yahoo Finance.

Elon Musk under fire again: CEO to testify over Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity

On Monday in the Delaware Court of Chancery, the Tesla CEO will testify about the $2.5 billion deal in a shareholder lawsuit that alleges that Tesla's acquisition was rife with conflicts of interest, overlooked SolarCity's fundamental weaknesses and unsurprisingly failed to produce the profits...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[woof]

Your inner voice is a tad sassy.

@Krugerrand 's outer voice seems even more so.

 

[mltv]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1414406791148933120

 

[MC3OZ]

From what I can tell fsd beta is ready for prime time for the majority of the US. It's challenging in big cities for sure like NYC or Sanfrancisco...but fsd beta will handle major cities in FL no problem because we have lane markings and self explanatory roads. I'm sure many other mid size and small cities would work too.

When I was in NYC, we had to eventually park our cars and take a taxi because the roads were a mess and we have no idea how to drive on it.

My recollection is that the original FSD Beta improved rapidly in terms of the edge cases it could handle for the first 2-4 weeks.
Diligent beta Testers were submitting good "bug reports", then fleet data was sourced to retrain and improve the NN.

After a while that stopped, because the "pure vision" version was coming..

This time around I expect the same thing, 2-4 weeks of rapid improvement, and after that some tail end of really hard to solve edge cases.

So essentially the process is >>find problem>> source training data>>retrain>>retest>>probably repeat..

I tend to agree with Karpathy, if human vision, and meat computer can drive in those environments then a Tesla Vision NN should eventually be able to do it.
Eventually being the key word here... I expect after around 4 weeks we will find the next plateau.

 

[Juhoru]

anyone have guesses on when fsd subscription might roll out? Q4 perhaps?

I guess this is the latest what has been said about that:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1413021267997995008