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

[StealthP3D]

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Stick a fork in it - GM is done

Dinosaurs and dragons are big creatures and, as such, they die long slow, agonizing deaths. The first thing they do is pretend they are not mortally wounded.

 

[MartinAustin]

Dinosaurs are big creatures and, as such, they die long slow, agonizing deaths. The first thing they do is pretend they are not mortally wounded.

Are there any industry watchers that try to predict GM's financials off these figures? (there are a lot of folks who try to do it w/ Tesla deliveries etc.) Wondering if they will post a profit. I expect Ford to post a loss.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to realise that Tesla is continually making a profit but the "majors" are all losing money - quarter after quarter - and what their conclusions will be at that time

 

[Artful Dodger]

Tesla Model 3 LFP Battery + Sandy Visits the ONE Facility | Munro Live

Direct link to Sandy Munro's video at the Model 3 LFP pack segment: (cued to 15:25)

• Pack overview
• partial teardown of a single module
• functional description of components
• exposed LFP cells

Here's a transcript segment of One's Director of Technology* Tim describing the LFP module:

Tim: "So you know this is a relatively pretty slick design that they've got going on here. So they have a flex circuit for their voltage sense and temperature sense for the cells. They have the cell bus-bars integrated through a lamination process with a little plastic sleeve that actually covers up and includes all of the high voltage connections.​

​

"They laser-weld the voltage-sense tab that's connected to the flex circuit to the bus bar on the pre-assembly which allows them to have that offline pre-assembled and then drop it down and do their laser welding with not too much worry for positional control on the bus bars. It's a very slick design."​

TL;dw the whole segment is pure bty pron for Mech-Es






Stand by for one more hi-rez detail pic coming in a separate post.

Cheers!

 

[Artful Dodger]

Oblique end-view of the CATL bty module for the new Tesla Model 3 SR/LFP: (1 mb jpeg - click thumbnail to see full-size)



Cheers!

 

[StealthP3D]

Direct link to Sandy Munro's video at the Model 3 LFP pack segment: (cued to 15:25)

• Pack overview
• partial teardown of a single module
• functional description of components
• exposed LFP cells

Here's a partial transcipt from Sandy's employee "Tim" describing the LFP module:

Tim: "So you know this is a pretty slick design that they've got going on here. So they have a flex circuit for their voltage sense and temperature sense for the cells. They have the cell bus-bars integrated through a lamination process with a little plastic sleeve that actually covers up and including all of the high voltage connections.​

​

"They laser-weld the voltage-sense tab that's connected to the flex circuit to the bus bar on the pre-assembly which allows them to have that offline pre-assembled and then drop it down and do their laser welding with not too much worry for positional control on the bus bars. It's a very slick design."​

TL;dw the whole segment is pure bty pron for MechE's

View attachment 716938

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Stand by for one more hi-rez detail pic coming in a separate post.

Cheers!

That's not Sandy's employee, he's the director of Technology (or some such title) at ONE.

 

[StealthP3D]

Are there any industry watchers that try to predict GM's financials off these figures? (there are a lot of folks who try to do it w/ Tesla deliveries etc.) Wondering if they will post a profit. I expect Ford to post a loss.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to realise that Tesla is continually making a profit but the "majors" are all losing money - quarter after quarter - and what their conclusions will be at that time

Yes, that's what Wall Street analysts are supposed to do. The consensus is a "Buy" rating on the stock. You might be able to find some analysis on Seeking Alpha but it tends to be very low quality. I think the subject matter is pretty dry so I doubt there are GM fans pouring over all the details as often happens here with Tesla. I do think the reduction in production that was kicked off by the chip shortage has helped boost sales prices but I don't follow it closely at all so who knows how the reduced sales will impact profits. My guess is the higher average selling prices will surprise analysts who have updated their earnings projections based on the low sales numbers so GM will probably beat analysts expectations. But that shouldn't be surprising - it's how the game is played.

 

[WolfHero]

Weekend OT: Kaohsiung City in Taiwan announced covid economy recovery plan to promote shopping within it's municipality. A lotto draw you can enter as long as you spend at least NTD $200 (USD $7.20). Top monthly prize: A Tesla Model 3 (contest runs from October 2021 to May 2022, so total 7 cars)

Source in traditional Chinese: 高雄開就賺

 

[StealthP3D]

Only 48,390 pre-orders for the Rivian R1T? I honestly thought it would have been much higher.

That's for the R1T and the R1S (the truck and the SUV) combined which just goes to show how quickly the market diminishes as the price goes up. I don't think Rivian has broken down the reservation numbers by model but consumers are after value. If you're going to charge a high price, you have to offer a lot more.

 

[transpondster]

So, in fairness, Ford seems to have done a credible job with the Mach E. It sounds like they have Plug & Charge working with Electrify America (no app or or whatever needed, just plug in and the car starts charging) and the single FordPass app for other charging networks. That avoids two of the main hurdles: locations (they have multiple networks to draw on) and the absurdities of needing another app with another management and billing scheme for every charger. I believe I heard they were also able to identify some charge stations that were known to not work with the Mach E and remove them from the nav system so the car wouldn't suggest them.

That doesn't help with all the 50 kW locations or broken-down chargers... but it's certainly one of the better moves in a situation where they've missed the boat on rolling out their own charging network.

Footnote: How the plug-and-charge feature in the Ford Mustang Mach-E works

hopefully it's now better "working" than in this video"

 

[Chunky Jr.]

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to realise that Tesla is continually making a profit but the "majors" are all losing money - quarter after quarter - and what their conclusions will be at that time

If I wanted to lose a ton of money, I can't think of anyone I'd rather shovel money to than the legacy automakers.

 

[RobStark]

hopefully it's now better "working" than in this video"

It is.

When a new CCS vehicle comes out there are usually bugs in the interface between car and DCFCs.

It usually gets resolved in 3-6 months.

By then most of the Utubers that do charging vids have already recorded their vids.

 

[SN_8]

Tesla Model 3 LFP Battery + Sandy Visits the ONE Facility | Munro Live

The LFP portion that you direct linked is pure gold. But the historical perspective at the start of the video about the relative pros and cons of electric cars more than 100 years ago is fascinating as well. Thanks for linking.

 

[HG Wells]

That's not Sandy's employee, he's the director of Technology (or some such title) at ONE.

At ONE what ? /S

 

[Thekiwi]

FYI - democrats capitulate to Senator Munchin, with the reconciliation package that contains the EV rebate to be greatly reduced from the original $3.5 Trillion down to somewhere in the $2 Trillion range. no word yet as to where the cuts will come from - but at this stage the EV rebate is very far away from being a certain thing.

'It’s not a success': Dems head home after infrastructure stalemate

Frustrated lawmakers worry their failure to deliver either a deal on a social spending bill or an infrastructure vote could have lasting consequences.

www.politico.com

Biden floats roughly $2 trillion price tag for reconciliation

Biden went to Capitol Hill Friday afternoon to deliver bad news for both moderates and progressives.

www.axios.com

 

[Mengy]

credible compared to who and when? I don't think the Mach E is anything near the Y on any attribute other than "not a Tesla."

The Mach E is a very nice EV when compared to every other non-Tesla EV, Ford did a bang up job on their first EV. Tesla is just so far ahead of the pack that nothing can really match them with regards to tech and specs. Lucid has a great range but they brute forced their way there with larger battery packs, even though their efficiency is rather nice. Most other EV's could really use some improving in many regards.

 

[winfield100]

The way I see it, between all EV players vs. Tesla is that they kinda do things as they go along, perhaps for SP or whatever.

But if you look at supercharger network... Tesla started building it out BEFORE they've achieved mass volume. Meaning they were spending money to offer the right EV experience before the Model 3 is even remotely close to production.

The philosophy is really to offer THE experience from day 1. And it's always a small step, starting with your core market, which in Tesla's case, it was from California and expanded from there to a coast-to-coast network, then to Canada and other countries in the world.

For Rivian to really succeed, or any EV player really, they need to stop thinking car-building from the ICE era, where you only need to make cars, the re-fuel infrastructure, and whatever is someone else's problem.

This is not the mentality one should have when you are pushing the consumer to adopt a brand new technology. You take their potential concerns into your business model and plan it accordingly. It was super smart of Tesla to exchange traffic for real estate in the case of superchargers. They have very little operation cost and can instead concentrate onto expanding them instead of working out leases with landlords.

Tesla is building everything as they see fit for the experience. And I don't know about you, but as a TSLA investor, I bought into TSLA because of the experience. It actually offered me a better experience than driving an ICE for 95% of my drive. Thus, being an early adopter in this case, there was little to no inconvenience and I'd gladly take that 5% road trip time that I need to plan a bit ahead vs. just drive as before but having to deal with all the inconvenience of an ICE such as constant service and watching for fuel prices.

bit OT
january 2014, father daughter team make first cross country (US) run in Tesla gambling that a supercharger would be activated by watching build permits and beating Tesla team by a week

Historic Tesla Model S Cross-Country Journey Using Superchargers Accomplished

Father and daughter team make history as being the first to drive a Model S cross-country using only Tesla Superchargers. It started out as an everyday run-of-the-mill post on the Tesla Motors forum where it’s not uncommon to see Model S owners share their exuberance about a first ever gas free...

www.teslarati.com

it was also that year or next year a spontaneous convoy of Tesla’s starting from east coast of US headed for Tesla shareholder meeting in California picking up and accreting more drivers along the way “Katamari damancy” like. (road trip!, let’s go, where we going?)(memory is fading tho)

 

[Iain]

Mach .72 in the mid-30s, but most efficient at FL430

Thanks....I had no idea. I’ll be looking out for you soon

 

[ZachF]

This is where it’s going to get fun.

Remember how people used to laugh at how small Tesla is? Soon it’ll probably pass Nissan in quarterly revenue. This quarter, revenue will probably be at ~half GM and Ford… in just 2017 it was only 1/15th their size!

It looks like we’re just days away from Berlin and Austin becoming fully operational battle stations (insert Palpatine cackle).

Then we’ll get to watch it rapidly climb it’s way up the rankings.

 

[nativewolf]

You could argue that Ford is kinda on point, but the truth is that they are just looking for the easiest way out.

If they are actually serious, they should put x billion into upgrading/expanding EA or whichever charging network they want to partner with to adopt some communication protocols on their chargers to make the experience seamless. But the reality is far from it and many MachE owners can tell you the frustrating experience of them accessing the charging network.

The keyword is really "experience". And right now, Tesla offers the best EV experience, bar-none. It's so far ahead that we can basically talk about EV experience as Tesla vs. everyone else. Because none come close to what Tesla has to offer.

From the sidelines it seems that Ford is pivoting as fast as anyone can. The OEMs have just a horrible task ahead. VW has had a lot of press but I think Ford is substantially ahead of them, they have at very credible first try EV (better than the GM or VW products as second/third tries), they have developed a replacement for the primary profit generation, the ford lightening. They had actual innovation in the mache, a few things better than Tesla (watch sandy's videos) which showed the manufacturing depth of Ford vs a startup like Tesla, they did not waste energy and direction in the prior 10 years like VW GM Toyota etc. They literally started from nothing. Now they've committed the farm in this Memphis buildout. So while they are desperately moving and may still sink I give them credit for attempting to move. Elon blames Ford for the labor union tax credit proposal (reeked of GM to me) but if it was Ford that would have been ...more savvy than I realized Ford was capable. I'd be ok with Ford being the surviving OEM in the USA. I'm fairly sure that Chrysler/Dodge gets shut down and I can't see GM surviving the next crash. It will be cheaper for the assets to be sold and pension obligations assumed by the tax payers.

Of course the real indication of Ford savvy was buying into RIvian. GM and Chyrsler passed. Gm of course bought that parody of a company Nikola and that's really all you need to know with the who survives Ford or GM question. Just realizing that the Rivian stake would pay for the Memphis buildout. Huh...well done Ford.

 

[OrthoSurg]

If I wanted to lose a ton of money, I can't think of anyone I'd rather shovel money to than the legacy automakers.

At what point à leader wants to save those well paying legacy jobs at the expanse of repeated bailouts? Legacy automakers jobs will become as irrelevant as closing coal plants jobs in 2030/2035