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

[sundaymorning]

I am considering going up for the case. I have contacted another TMC member for advice (thanks!) and been on the Court website. NO CELL PHONES allowed in court so may get nothing till after the case is over which I suspect could be around 3pm.

I just hope if I go up there are enough seats in the courtroom......

While you’re there can you wear a t-shirt that says

“FK Tesla, FK Elon, FK the environment I’m shorting America and I’m in bed with the SEC!”

It’ll be a great way to spread some positive FUD for Tesla longs. Can you take one for the team?

But seriously, I hope you go in a regular Tesla T-shirt. Everyone who goes should wear a regular Tesla T-shirt, it’s enough to pass on the message.

 

[neroden]

Yes - complete make over of US with robust public transportation and dense urban living will take decades & decades. We don't have that much time.

Yeah. 100% agreed. We have to use everything we've got which doesn't make things worse, and EVs are a huge part of that. (As are electric *buses*.)

By the same token, we should not use "autonomous cars" or "future Hyperloops" as an excuse to stop building important train lines or as an excuse to promote sprawl or ban tall buildings. And they are being used as excuses for that sort of sabotage of public transportation and sabotage of urban living, which understandably gets public transportation advocates and urbanists irritated.

Meanwhile, this is where some of the GOP senators are at. Seriously.

View attachment 390584

Childhoold lead poisoning from gasoline; it's the only thing I can come up with to explain it. Sigh.

 

[Krugerrand]

Shipping containers can be watertight, in which case they should not allow any extra moisture in, even during shipping across the ocean.

Tesla already has panels racked for easy movement around the factory (since they must batch panel production with more panel types to make than they have presses). Just add additional padding, tie downs, etc, perhaps run the rack through a jumbo plastic wrap machine, load into standard container - basically do more than gravity to keep things in place.

Do you have any idea how much those racks cost?

No. Does not make sense.

 

[neroden]

*Some* of that stigma is deserved(in the US, at least, haven’t tried public transit in other places). I’ve had two different encounters with violent people on public transit. One on a city bus where two men were arguing and then one of them pulled out a knife and started threatening everyone and another on VTA where a guy kept walking up to me, yelling at me, punching the walls and demanding I moved(regardless of where I moved to, he would follow).

Never experienced anything similar anywhere other than public transit. I’ll take my car, thank you very much.

(Emphasis mine.)

Bizarre. You must have had an unusually lucky experience with driving.

I've experienced many, many instances of aggressive tailgating, cars cutting in front of me, passing on the right at high speed, all kinds of dangerous driving and road rage. Stuff which could have seriously killed me. Happens at least once a WEEK around here. I particularly remember the people who sped around me on the right side, cutting me off, in a lane which was ending. Happened *four times* in the same place.

Public transportation? Way safer. I've had far more scary, violent encounters while driving than in person. There are maniacs in cars all over the roads.

 

[Carl Raymond]

& don't let the SEC people get away unpunished from the building. The justice should prevail.

Sorry, had to disagree with that, despite the wink, despite agreeing with the sentiment. We have to back the legal system. If people start for a moment to think that it’s their role to dish out justice, it’s a small step from there to recent events in Christchurch.

 

[neroden]

They did expand, which allowed them to turn the converted TE lines back into TE lines...
Unclear if they hit the 35GWh end of 2018 target Tesla Gigafactory 1 Timeline & Results — CleanTechnica Deep Dive | CleanTechnica

From carsonight's comments, I got the impression that cell production expansion was more or less continuous until they ran out of physical factory space, and now they have to build another unit of building. So look for heavy construction building more of the building as the next sign of cell production expansion.

(I wonder what the next bottleneck is. I do not want them to hit the raw materials bottleneck, because starting up mines is slooow.)

 

[sundaymorning]

April 4th at 2:00? Is the judge a joker?

Oh God 420, I love this judge’s sense of humor.

 

[neroden]

OT

Sorry, had to disagree with that, despite the wink, despite agreeing with the sentiment. We have to back the legal system. If people start for a moment to think that it’s their role to dish out justice, it’s a small step from there to recent events in Christchurch.

Oh, in the US the legal system has already lost credibility and large portions of the population feel that their only option is to dish out justice themselves. But that's due primarily to massive police abuses (for which the criminal cops almost never get punished, and usually they even keep their jobs) which are associated with (but not limited to) racism. #BlackLivesMatter is *trying* to fix that.

Respect is earned. The justice system can't demand respect while being blatantly unjust. The only solution is to actually *make* it just. Nobody sane is going to say "We must respect the system to prevent vigilante killings" when most people agree that the system is just a bigoted abuse of power -- that's just not how it works. "No justice, no peace", as the bumper sticker says.

One of the Supreme Court justices wrote about the danger to respect for the court system due to rulings which are seen by the public as a whole as unjust and biased, and wrote fairly recently. I don't think it was during the blatantly corrupt Bush v. Gore ruling; it was later...

Marijuana bans are now being recognized as a danger to the credibility of the court system as well.

 

[neroden]

Why not just pack up and head to Europe instead?

Have you seen European immigration restrictions? They don't WANT most Americans.

 

[neroden]

I could do it but would be good to know if I can realistically get into the court room. I am sure it will be just lawyers from both sides and no Elon.

You can. You just have to dress nice, promise to be very quiet, and sit in the visitors' gallery. Also, get there early and listen to all the cases before that one (they sometimes start cases early). Just explain that you're a freelance reporter.

Also, you typically can't record anything, and they might make you check your phone (I don't remember this particular court's rules). You can take notes on a legal pad with a pen though.

 

[neroden]

I am considering going up for the case. I have contacted another TMC member for advice (thanks!) and been on the Court website. NO CELL PHONES allowed in court so may get nothing till after the case is over which I suspect could be around 3pm.

I just hope if I go up there are enough seats in the courtroom......

Many courtrooms do not clear visitors (who are often reporters) between cases. Hint hint.

(i.e. go early and listen to the previous cases. it can be interesting if you find the legal system interesting.)

 

[neroden]

Pack the house and wear Tesla hat and shirts.

They can kick you out for wearing clothing partisan to one side, so don't do that.

If you actually want to get in and take notes, look like the most anonymous person-in-a-suit you can and show no emotion through the entire proceeding.

 

[neroden]

So there is no way the Judge can rule immediately following the hearing on the 4th? That would kill the FUD cycle you describe. If it’s clear cut, a fast ruling saves a lot of heartache.

Can, probably won't. Good judges like to deliberate.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Could be. But my guess: they're selling too many more expensive cars. Tesla has ALWAYS let people paying more jump the queue. I suspect the factory shifted back to higher-end-model production a bit earlier than the sales team was told they were going to, and here we are.

I suspect you’re right about the factory and sales not having the same info. But this goes beyond “jumping the queue” because these people had deliveries scheduled, then cancelled. It’s not like they needed to retool the whole production line for the SR-. Why not just throw in some cloth seats and deliver on time? Or maybe the cloth seats are the issue?

 

[AZRI11]

Yeah. 100% agreed. We have to use everything we've got which doesn't make things worse, and EVs are a huge part of that. (As are electric *buses*.)

By the same token, we should not use "autonomous cars" or "future Hyperloops" as an excuse to stop building important train lines or as an excuse to promote sprawl or ban tall buildings. And they are being used as excuses for that sort of sabotage of public transportation and sabotage of urban living, which understandably gets public transportation advocates and urbanists irritated.


Childhoold lead poisoning from gasoline; it's the only thing I can come up with to explain it. Sigh.

Sen. Lee forgot to use this one

 

[neroden]

I suspect you’re right about the factory and sales not having the same info. But this goes beyond “jumping the queue” because these people had deliveries scheduled, then cancelled.

I'm not reading too much into that because Tesla's done that soooooo many times before. I mean, I *wish* Tesla would get its act together on the shambolic delivery scheduling. And this is evidence that Tesla has *not* yet gotten its act together. (So in that sense it's bad news.) But I wouldn't read anything more into it than that.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

Never mind, printf had the info. It really does seem to be battery energy divided by *car* weight. And apparently Tesla scores very well and will get lots of subsidy.

Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019 Investors' Roundtable

For the Model 3 pack, 75kwh / 478 kg = 157 wh/kg. For the whole car it would be 75kwh / 1600kg = 47 wh/kg. The 160 wh/kg you referenced still refers to pack specific energy. The pack specific energy is referenced in the subsidy calculation as "battery system energy density adjustment coefficient". If all other variables are equal, >160wh/kg gets the full subsidy and 140-160wh/kg gets 90%. They're trying to incentivize lighter/more advanced packs, not just lighter cars.

 

[Carl Raymond]

FWIW, I fully expect them to switch LR packs to a Grohmann machine... when they build the NEXT Grohmann machine. Right now, they need all the production capacity they can get. Once they build another Grohmann machine in Nevada, then the priority will be to empty out the space used by the old production lines.

My recollection is that in early 2018, pack making was the pain point of the model 3 ramp. Then around March or April they flew in 6 plane loads of Grohmann equipment, then spent the next month assembling and commissioning it. This was one of four lines, but the Grohmann line did the work of two ‘Tesla’ lines in half the space.
Thus end of June, we had the 7,000 cars in 7 days tweet, followed by profitable Q3 and Q4.
So that makes at least one LR pack line using Grohmann smarts.
My assumption was that the other lines would have been given equal treatment by now. Though I admit to hearing nothing to support that.

 

[Singer3000]

From carsonight's comments, I got the impression that cell production expansion was more or less continuous until they ran out of physical factory space, and now they have to build another unit of building. So look for heavy construction building more of the building as the next sign of cell production expansion.

(I wonder what the next bottleneck is. I do not want them to hit the raw materials bottleneck, because starting up mines is slooow.)

I find this quite a puzzle actually. It makes sense that Tesla is cell constrained, because how else to explain the lack of progress on Tesla Energy? Is this because Tesla didn't build out the plant and infrastructure at GF1? Or because they couldn't persuade Pana to commit to its share of capex? Or some other bottleneck entirely (doubt it's raw material supply but who can say). There seems to be a slight contradiction between an apparent inability of Tesla Energy to get close to matching demand and the repeated statements that Tesla is not capital constrained.

 

[CyberDutchie]

I hope volatility next week will be kept in check. E*Trade just raised the margin requirement on TSLA today from 35% to 45%. It cannot go under $250 or I will get a margin call

Seems everyone is conspiring to go after the small retail investor who has been there from the beginning believing and supporting Tesla’s mission to save the planet...