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

[RobDickinson]

We've only just had the last ship arrive in Europe but its gone to central southern Europe not northern

 

[Wicket]

I’m still waiting for Meet Sawyer to run for governor.

Has anyone done a deep dive on the sodium ion batteries that I occasionally seen mentioned? Often the tout is that lithium is more difficult to get Han sodium which while true I don’t think is a substantially strong motivation given lithium is plenty abundant. What is the principal bottleneck to sodium in the past?

quantumscape jumped today on a filing that said they had a deal with a big ten unmentioned manufacturer. Who do we figure that is?

 

[thx1139]

There could be a new Tesla record in Norway this quarter. Big deal you say? With a growing EV market everywhere it's almost hard for Tesla not to set a new record in most markets.

But in Norway the EV share is so high, possibly something like 80% this quarter, that it's not that easy. Especially since in the Norwegian market all the established brands are now actually trying for real to sell their EVs. I don't think there is any other market that has almost every important player putting in an effort.

When Tesla set the current record during the start of European m3 deliveries in Q1 2019 a lot less models were competing.

So that record is 7,174 cars. So far with seven weekdays to go Tesla is at 5,982. That is 1,192 behind. Which translates to 170 cars per weekday remaining.

Considering you have to go back almost ten days to find a day with less than 170 sold it's almost certain there will be a new record. Today was 303.

Unless of course they run out of cars to sell before the end of the month.

And still has a chance of overtaking the whole VW Group in sales for Q3. By my calculations 1350 behind VW Group after today. Last time this occurred was 2019 Q3.

 

[Unpilot]

Are you inferring that we should care more because I could careless about that. I love being apart of this group an all but for all intensive purposes itching the scratch is the least of my concerns. Theres to much negativity, and those who own Tesla's shuld under-stand this going in. Your inperfect just like I, and noone is getting more comfortability here with all of these wreckless criticisms. I'm am not a English teacher, but theres my too cents .

/s

A lot of people are gonna be itching right about now, lol.

You must be my spirit brother/sister.

 

[Knightshade]

Will they recognize this on an individual basis though? Seems a little complicated. Isn't it more likely that they simply 'replace' anyone kicked out from new users/buyers?

So you have 10,000 users who has had FSD recognized. 100 gets kicked out. The next 100 new users don't have any new revenue recognized, they simply take the place of those kicked out.

Just seems like a lot less to keep track off with the same result.

I'd think you have to do it on an individual basis.

Money you've taken in, and owe something for, is a liability on the books specific to the person to whom you owe it.

On top of that- not everyone paid the same amount for it either. Nor even bought the same exact thing (the pre/post 3/19 change for example). So "customer owed FSD" isn't inherently fungible either.



That said- I'm perfectly open to being corrected by @The Accountant or someone deeper into the weeds on this stuff.

 

[Thekiwi]

Elon has not only thought about who would be liable for FSD accidents, he answered it a long time ago. The company who makes the system will be liable. There are a number of ways to insure this and, since FSD won't be a thing until it's better than the average human, the cost will be lower than insuring a human driver for the same number of miles. The exact amount will depend upon how much safer it is than the average human.

The potential outcomes for liability for the repair costs in a crash and being liable for injury/deaths in a crash are two rather different things though right? The former is simply monetary cost, which is fine for Tesla to cover, but the latter can lead to non-monetary implications. A human found at fault may be prosecuted and/or lose their drivers license, so what does a company taking responsibility for FSD controlling the vehicle face when FSD is found to be in error? A recall/ceasing of FSD operations until the failure is proven to be fixed? something else? A huge monetary penalty?

 

[RobDickinson]

Who is responsible for accidents and the insurance at the time is an interesting question for L4/L5 vehicles.

 

[winfield100]

Well, that was a stalagmite. Wonder if our whale is waking up?

remember
“the mites go up, and the tights go down!”

 

[TheWalkingDad]

I’m still waiting for Meet Sawyer to run for governor.

Has anyone done a deep dive on the sodium ion batteries that I occasionally seen mentioned? Often the tout is that lithium is more difficult to get Han sodium which while true I don’t think is a substantially strong motivation given lithium is plenty abundant. What is the principal bottleneck to sodium in the past?

quantumscape jumped today on a filing that said they had a deal with a big ten unmentioned manufacturer. Who do we figure that is?

Probably Toyota or VW.

Solid state batteries are like the holy grail of batteries: cheap, high range, high charge rate, and high energy output. However, they are a tough problem to also solve. Typically liquid electrolytes acts as a conductor for energy transfer and they are easier to mass produce, scale and cool in a traditional form factor. They can be easily scaled. Since this is solid state, it relies on an anodeless design. The material that acts as a dendrite barrier is also a mystery as it must also allow for energy transfer while preventing a short circuit. It is also drastically different than conventional batteries since each cell is like a playing card. So far stacking these haven't really been tested. I really hope they do indeed have the formula and this isn't another Theranos.

Time will tell.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

So really not knowledgeable about this stuff. What are the challenges of Tesla building it’s own chips. Essentially why wouldn’t they go this route and overcome this obvious bottle neck.

Thanks in advance.

 

[RobDickinson]

So really not knowledgeable about this stuff. What are the challenges of Tesla building it’s own chips. Essentially why wouldn’t they go this route and overcome this obvious bottle neck.

Thanks in advance.

Expense, lead time and knowledge, plus one plant/node may not even cover all their requirements, and they would also have to design a lot of new semiconductors instead of buying off the shelf stuff.

The new samsung plant in texas is $17bn ..

Just the photolithography parts have a 12-18 month lead time and growing..

Demand, Lead Times Soar For 300mm Equipment

Capacity demand at the leading edge is creating a supply shortage for key manufacturing equipment.

semiengineering.com

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Expense, lead time and knowledge, plus one plant/node may not even cover all their requirements, and they would also have to design a lot of new semiconductors instead of buying off the shelf stuff.

The new samsung plant in texas is $17bn ..

Wow. That’s big bucks. So I’m guessing they won’t be building their own chips at all then.

in other news. We contributed to the cause again. Ordered our model y last night. Woohoo.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Excited to see a rare Elon interview on PBS. Not familiar with the program, but PBS is usually pretty legit. Would like to see us get some separation from the likes of Bezos and Branson.

In Their Own Words | Season 2 | Episode 5 Preview | Elon Musk | PBS

Elon Musk's story is about a thrilling 21st century "Iron Man" come alive.

www.pbs.org

 

[StealthP3D]

Anyone willing to take one for the team and listen in and report back?

Btw it’s obnoxious that they’re doing this. Just give the information. Stop trying to make money off your sources (who are wrong half the time anyways )

I agree, a real sh!tshow. But it gets worse than that. The claim that they will "share what they can about the latest information they've received regarding Tesla 4680 production sitrep at Kato & Giga Texas", implies they have inside information they can't share. If true, that makes them insiders by definition under rules regulating insiders and trading.

I hope they are not buying or selling Tesla stock or options. If they are, I hope they get investigated for insider trading.

As an investor, I heavily discount any info released by such a sh!tshow.

 

[willow_hiller]

A couple new tweets from Elon about the insurance roll-out. Texas next month, maybe New York next year, eventually hoping for worldwide:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1440481412835016705

 

[EnzoXYZ]

Excited to see a rare Elon interview on PBS. Not familiar with the program, but PBS is usually pretty legit. Would like to see us get some separation from the likes of Bezos and Branson.

In Their Own Words | Season 2 | Episode 5 Preview | Elon Musk | PBS

Elon Musk's story is about a thrilling 21st century "Iron Man" come alive.

www.pbs.org

I got popcorn and beverage all ready……then it was just a preview. Will add to must watch with inspiration 4 all end of September.

 

[Singuy]

Nasty. So prediction from last week is coming true. Macro in total correction territory. Spy has about another 6.5% downside. Tesla may fair better but let's just hope it can keep beating macro like today.

Gap close at 749, strong resistance at 755, need to break to get to 800. On the downside 714 is support and 692 is the support that will reverse tsla's bull trend to a bear trend. Expect more red in the macro environment ahead as vix closed above 23 two days a row while all indexes are closing below 50 Ema 3 days in a row. Just gonna be a sh%# show the next couple of weeks.

 

[Accident]

Futures jumped from -.40% to +.3% on news that Evergrande negotiated payment for onshore bonds.

 

[2daMoon]

remember
“the mites go up, and the tights go down!”

My mom told me the ones hanging down from above are holding on "tite"

 

[Tronguy]

Wow. That’s big bucks. So I’m guessing they won’t be building their own chips at all then.

in other news. We contributed to the cause again. Ordered our model y last night. Woohoo.

Actually, with respect to chips...
There's two divisible parts of building an IC (saying this as a person who had actually done this.. with a cast of many).

1. Designing the device. This is typically in Verilog or VHDL or some similar, more complex tool set, where one (actually, a bunch of people) are architecting, documenting, and laying out the device. It's a bit like writing software.
   • When I write software, being a EE, I tend to be very aware of the fact that each line of code, after compilation, becomes assembly code with JMP, LOADREG, indirect (machine) addressing, and all that jazz. Want a SWITCH statement? The compiler generates different code for one of them as compared to playing multiple IF/THEN/ELSE blocks.
   • When I'm writing VHDL - every line of VHDL translates into honest-to-golly NAND, NOR, AND, OR, D-Flip Flops, and so on. In addition, specialized VHDL/Verilog code can pull up different kinds of RAM blocks and all that; and, yes, one thinks hard about where all this hardware is going on the die that one is going to build. At the end of all this, the compilation process results in gates and such with signals, propagation delays, I/O buffers, and lots of floor planning.
2. The Foundry. The Foundry supplies libraries and tools to the people doing #1; what they get back from the designers is stuff that's extremely close to actual layout, but not quite. The Foundry people then take the design data and generate actual mask sets that are used for photolithography; and these, then, are actually made into actual silicon (or GaAs, etc.)

The serious, billions of dollars of construction, care and feeding, and making it all work: That's in #2. #1 is coding, tools sets, simulation (the actual device files bounce back and forth between the chip designers in #1 and the foundry types in #2, refining the design, doing simulations, Simulations, SIMULATIONS until everybody on both sides of the fence are ready to die. Mind you, a good deal of the expenses in #2 are, when going to a particular sub-nanometer technology, is building test chips with all sorts of gates, memories, I/O buffers, and what-all which then get characterized. The characterization gets stuffed into the libraries that get handed to #1, designed to work with the design tools (Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, tons of others), and then the #1 types do the design.

Tesla designed the neural network chips for the computer in the car; but they didn't run the foundry. The foundry, an outside company, built the actual devices, and both crowds validated working silicon.

Costs for the #1 crowd is expensive in people, software seats, and specialized simulation and design support hardware; but it's not billions of dollars.

And, if you're wondering, the fact that Intel still does both #'s 1 and 2 is a continuing source of amazement to the industry at large.

Thing is.. Once one has a working silicon design, the cost per chunk of silicon is very, very small. So doing #1, despite the expense, only makes sense if one is going to buy zillions of a device. If you're only going to do 1000 of a chip, you buy somebody else's FPGA with the right feature set and pay $50-$1000 per chip. If you're going to buy 10 million, then it's cheaper by far to pay the NRE (Non-Recoverable Expense) to the Foundry people for the first hundred devices and pay your design team to work their butts off for a year or more.

So, consider Bosch. They do engine controllers. And the devices they design (assuming that they don't just buy a general purpose controller from somebody else) they sell to everybody who'll buy the box with the chip in it. They can sell a million each to three or four different car companies and make money; if the car company tries to roll their own, they won't beat Bosch on price since they'll have the fixed costs to get the design done, but won't have the volume to make it better. Hence, while I could be wrong on this, I betcha none of the big car companies do any of their own silicon designs (#1), because they can get the same, changing slowly over time, designs built by a specialized design house (a la Bosch) who can sell to all the big design houses.

Which is fine, reduces the cost of manufacture - but, when something Really Different shows up, like the neural chips Tesla is building, this whole incestuous relationship between the car companies and their suppliers falls apart:

1. The car companies don't even have #1 design teams. They have system integrators that mess around with catalogs of what the likes of Bosch & its competitors are building, Even if they wanted to do the whole-car-make-it-go-on-a-test-track, they would have to work with a selected supplier to get the silicon built, knowing all the while that any technology so built would also be going straight to the car company's direct competitors. Ouch.
2. The companies like Bosch who actually have #1 design teams would have to spend serious money with no guarantee they're getting it back, and they don't have, really, the knowledge that the car companies do. What do they do - partner with one car company? They could get stuck into a contract where any new stuff is only shared with that car company, and no other. That wrecks their whole business model of selling to everybody.
3. Eventually, the two points immediately above will get sorted - but this is one place where Tesla's vertical integration must be driving their competitors absolutely nuts.
4. Let's get this straight: Nvidia, a graphics card company for crying out loud, is a direct competitor to Tesla in the neural, self-driving computer space. Why? Because they make really, really, fast CPUs and parallel processors for (wait for it) better game playing on PCs. This is not stuff optimized for driving a real car around: It's stuff that's just close enough so that people without a #1 design team and the design rules to back it up can get something, anything out the door so they don't end up in the trash heap of failed businesses. I got no doubt that an Nvidea-based driving computer can do some self-driving; but is it going to be as good, or as cheap, as purpose-built silicon designed from scratch for the purpose?

This is what it looks like when your competitor is literally a few years ahead of you and you don't have the human and technological resources to compete. Because, when you did have them, you looked around, figured that nobody else needed to spend any money on New Stuff anyway, and fired them all, instead of competing because ten years down the road the barriers to entry were going to be low enough that a real competitor would show up and wipe you away.
You might have a chance if, when that competitor got started, you got started, too - but, from all accounts, the Big Iron Auto Companies spent most of their time saying, "Tesla will never succeed!" and staring at their navels.

And that's just the hardware. Don't get me started on the software.