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

[Krugerrand]

Just curious, how long would a "copy" of an existing die take, with minimal "tweaks" - weeks or several months? Is there some chokepoint that slows down the process - such as foundry capacity for high quality casts, or availability of CNC machines?

Also, how much extra time would "new" dies take typically - a few months on top, used mostly as human time - or are there material or machine dependencies as well? Very interesting topic!

Months and months for copies. Body sides are the most difficult to make and that time frame is yearish for a brand new set.

Just making the castings alone is about 5 weeks long time frame.

Every stage will be validated before going to the next. First they have to make Styrofoam forms that are digitally scanned (after feasibility checks and others from the designs). That’s at least a week ON TOP OF the 5 weeks for a full die set. There will be multiple forms for each die.

Then the Styrofoam forms are put in boxes and the forms are packed with sand. The packing process alone takes like a week and a halfish.

Then they pump in the molten casting material, the Styrofoam melts. Takes a day or so.

Then it takes a week and a half+ for the castings to cool. Not a typo. The castings can’t cool too quickly or they are junk-will be brittle or too soft. So they let them cool a bit, then open the boxes and let them cool a bit, then take away a bit of sand and let them cool a bit, then take away more sand, etc...

Then when the castings are cooled they have to cut off the extra bits; ie. pipes in and pipes out. Then the castings have to be digitally scanned and verified again.

The castings will have ‘over cast’ so next they go in a CNC machine to be ‘rough’ machined. Then there they will be ‘fine’ machining. Rough machining is a dayS long process, fine machining is much long. A single piece of cast can take 100+ hours to fine machine. Times that by multiple pieces of cast PER die.

Then everything has to digitally scanned again.

Then surfaces have to be heat treated. Then more scanning and fine machining because heat treating can cause distortions. Then more digital scanning and and and.

At certain stages, you can speed up the build process by throwing bodies at it, but a lot of the stages take the time they take and there’s no way to make it go faster without ruining the die/part of the die and then you get to start all over.

So, yeah. Months and months. And then when the dies are done, you’re looking at weeks to months to trial them and bring them up to optimization.

Copies save you time at the beginning during simulations and feasibility studies and the like, and should save time at the end during trials and getting the dies to run rate.

 

[MP3Mike]

You are actually driving a water powered car.

Actually wouldn't that be a gravity powered car? (The water doesn't actually get used up.)

 

[RobStark]

Fisker wants another shot at Tesla with a new Model Y fighter

Amazing how everyone wants to "take aim" at Tesla, but they are just a small player doing nothing novel, everyone will be able to make what they make, yada yada.

 

[dc_h]

Per Fidelity:

LATEST UPDATE: 03/25/2019 11:28 AM ET
Correction: The expiration date was not accelerated as previously announced. The expiration date is 04/02/19 not 03/28/19. .​

4/02? Now we're all in trouble, obviously Elon has dyslexia and meant 4/20.

 

[mongo]

Actually, this is what Pete Bannon, Director of Hardware had to say about it a couple of months ago:

Peter Bannon:

"Hi, this is Pete Bannon. The Hardware 3 design is continuing to move along. Over the last quarter, we've completed qualification of the silicon, qualification of the board. We started the manufacturing line, in qualification of the manufacturing line. We've been validating the provisioning flows in the factory. We built test versions of Model S, X and 3 in the factory to validate all the fit and finish of the parts and all the provisioning flows."

"So we still have a lot of work to do. And the team is doing a great job, and we're still on track to have it ready to go by the end of Q1."​

Tesla is making their own boards and I am 95% sure they were talking about Fremont here. And yes, I believe Tesla's boards carry a "made in the USA" sticker somewhere.

I think they are talking about assembling the PCB assembly into the housing, then loading firmware and testing. But they could do their own SMT line without too much trouble.

"Made on Earth by humans" on a Roadster circuit board This is the secret message Elon Musk sent to space on his cosmic Tesla

When you start to see Battery Park filling in with PowerPacks...

View attachment 391031

...that’s when you can watch for solar panels to proliferate on the roof.
Not before. Because that’s how you deploy gigs of solar without wasting it.

Change my mind

Batteries are only needed once the real time solar generation significantly exceeds the real time power demands of GF1. (assuming no net metering)

 

[Causalien]

Just had a tour of most of the major financial forums in "progressive" Canada.

I am kind of in disbelief on how most view TSLA.

TSLA definitely has an image problem. Ponzi Scheme due to the way it raises funds (This should be rectified by having positive cash flow all the time. I believe even a tiny little negative for 1 quarter for the foreseeable future will be weakness to be exploited).

SEC headlines further reinforces the Fraud appearance. It is best if SEC future meddling can be shutdown once and for all.

The reason why this raises an eyebrow is because Canadians are usually not very interested in these things. For such FUD to reach into Canadian investors's mind for an American company means it is a pretty strong message.

 

[Hock1]

According to the first rule of TSLA price action it could absolutely happen!

As long as both the Wall Street analyst scene and the business media is dominantly bearish and hostile towards Tesla that's a big filter on potential investors and also provides a steady inflow of new shorts. It's a bigger and more stubborn filter I expected it to be.

Eventually there might be a point of no return (to $3xx levels), and a rather significant upwards correction, in a potentially non-linear event, but I don't dare predicting anything to its timing other than it will be in this century, most likely.

If the market were a zero-sum game, the stock would be twice what it is today. IMO.

 

[Big Blue 1011]

Probably way off topic but I'll never forget when I did strip mine enforcement and some over zealous enforcers wanted me to bring an action against some poor locals who went to an abandoned strip mine to fill gunny sacks with coal to heat their homes. Obviously without a permit.

Now I'll try to connect the dots. I would never ever ask a court to hold someone in contempt without a good showing of harm and intent. It is hard to find "clear and convincing" evidence of contempt when there is no harm or the act could easily be unintentional or a mistake. This case makes me think that the SEC lawyers or staff were embarrassed by the 60 minute clip and maybe the short enhancement commission joke and were looking for an opportunity. I said originally this is one of the weakest arguments for contempt I have seen and I would be embarrassed to present it to the judge.

With that said they might be able to use their considerable authority and deference to construct a technical violation. One concern is the retweet justification. Yes I love FC's optimism but my cynicism age and experience tells me that the SEC will not be punished but maybe chastised. The Court will not reach a constitutional issue unless it is necessary for the decision which would be incredibly unlikely.
Again we will see but I would not be surprised with anything in a range of EM technically violated the CD with no harm and a very minor penalty or none, to a finding that the SEC failed to prove contempt including some instructions going forward. Everyone needs to remember that even if the SEC loses badly there is no statutory authority to my knowledge, but hey I'm old and out of date, to fine or exact penalties against the government. In that regard maybe some of the lawyers out there can see a way to make 42 USC 1983, 1988 civil rights case but I cannot get past the scope of authority. It seems that if there were possible sanctions EM's lawyers (who are better than me) would have forcefully claimed that relief. On board in spirit with Al

To repeat, much more eloquently than anything I could muster. In other words, "what he said".

 

[Off Shore]

Actually wouldn't that be a gravity powered car? (The water doesn't actually get used up.)

In the PNW (when I'm there) we call it salmon-powered electricity. We get our power by preventing salmon from spawning.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Months and months for copies. Body sides are the most difficult to make and that time frame is yearish for a brand new set.

Just making the castings alone is about 5 weeks long time frame.

Every stage will be validated before going to the next. First they have to make Styrofoam forms that are digitally scanned (after feasibility checks and others from the designs). That’s at least a week ON TOP OF the 5 weeks for a full die set. There will be multiple forms for each die.

Then the Styrofoam forms are put in boxes and the forms are packed with sand. The packing process alone takes like a week and a halfish.

Then they pump in the molten casting material, the Styrofoam melts. Takes a day or so.

Then it takes a week and a half+ for the castings to cool. Not a typo. The castings can’t cool too quickly or they are junk-will be brittle or too soft. So they let them cool a bit, then open the boxes and let them cool a bit, then take away a bit of sand and let them cool a bit, then take away more sand, etc...

Then when the castings are cooled they have to cut off the extra bits; ie. pipes in and pipes out. Then the castings have to be digitally scanned and verified again.

The castings will have ‘over cast’ so next they go in a CNC machine to be ‘rough’ machined. Then there they will be ‘fine’ machining. Rough machining is a dayS long process, fine machining is much long. A single piece of cast can take 100+ hours to fine machine. Times that by multiple pieces of cast PER die.

Then everything has to digitally scanned again.

Then surfaces have to be heat treated. Then more scanning and fine machining because heat treating can cause distortions. Then more digital scanning and and and.

At certain stages, you can speed up the build process by throwing bodies at it, but a lot of the stages take the time they take and there’s no way to make it go faster without ruining the die/part of the die and then you get to start all over.

So, yeah. Months and months. And then when the dies are done, you’re looking at weeks to months to trial them and bring them up to optimization.

Copies save you time at the beginning during simulations and feasibility studies and the like, and should save time at the end during trials and getting the dies to run rate.

Elon tweeted about this once. Something about it only taking 9 months to make a human baby, should be able to make a die in less time.

 

[CyberDutchie]

Or perhaps a lot of clients are in TSLA and they are controlling risk?

Exactly. I only have TSLA in my E*Trade account. I have other stocks but not with E*Trade.

I asked them why this action and they said a government body FINRA issued this order—not them— to help protect investors. Where have we heard that before? Isn’t the USA government great? They are so concerned about investors that they want to make sure their portfolios are diversified, lol.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Actually wouldn't that be a gravity powered car? (The water doesn't actually get used up.)

Ultimately solar of course. The sun evaporates the water to deliver precipitation to higher altitudes.

 

[Singuy]

I disagree with this - In the 8 years that Tim Cook has been Apple CEO, there has been a more than tripling in the amount of people using Apple products (300 million -> 1 Billion), and the amount of devices each of those people use has also increased. Customer churn is also far lower than any other tech hardware company.

Yes, on the back of Job's vision for the ipod/iphone/ipad/app store. When you have accumulated a massive amount of customers(which Tesla is not yet there in the grand scheme of thing), the momentum alone can carry sales to what Apple is today. They are now nothing but bean counters just like Intel, sitting on their asses with a pile of cash not really having any home runs or the "next Iphone" product while the rest of the industry catches up and now surpassed.

I don't see Tesla ever having other companies surpass with Elon in charge, but a bean counter would maximize profits vs innovation and drive Tesla to the ground at this moment in time.

 

[ZachF]

Even in the USA we are now below 30% coal.

Coal use is plummeting in the US.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Today a RE agent just said that the electrical grids are still 80% coal so they are not very environmentally friendly?

People that think this must also think that crude oil is refined into gasoline via magic

 

[M3Rider]

Another example of FUD working.
Today a RE agent just said that the electrical grids are still 80% coal so they are not very environmentally friendly? I was stunned and speechless for a second. Then I realized that it is probably because she hasn't been Canadian growing up and doesn't know that 95% of our electrical grid uses power from hydro.

Apparently, my state on average has one of the dirtiest energy mixes in U.S.
A gas car has to have at least 34mpg in CO to have less emissions than an EV with 0.34kwh/mile efficiency.
Nice pic here:
The coal-powered EV myth; Electricity is only as clean as the method to generate it

I'm currently driving 2019 Camry rental(and hating it every day) while having my paint fixed on M3, it has 31.2mpg average, so it is worse for one of dirtiest energy mix states.

Edit: looks like the article is 2 y.o. , hopefully the energy mix is getting better, I know Xcel Energy pushes solar a lot lately, seems they had some kind of regulations/targets put on their energy sources.

 

[ClimateOptimst]

Even in the USA we are now below 30% coal.

what's powering the grid in the US varies geographically, with some states like West Virginia and Wyoming at almost 100% coal and others a varying mix of renewables, gas, nuclear, etc. Generally speaking, the West is tilted towards more renewables and the east towards more coal and nuclear. Good news is the trend through time and that renewables are providing a larger and larger share everywhere as time passes Graph Of The Day: Watch US Electricity Grid Evolve Before Your Eyes | CleanTechnica

 

[EVNow]

I do that already and I'm in my mid 30s.

I triggered a Facebook friend and former co-worker by commenting "meh, still runs on gas" on a post about the new Toyota Supra.

This is my std comment to "sponsored" auto posts on twitter.

 

[Big Blue 1011]

If only "material" or "gray area" tweets have to be pre-approved, who determines which tweets fall into these categories? If it is anybody other than Elon himself making that determination, we are back to all tweets having to be reviewed (for category determination), amounting to a constitutionally troubling imposition of "prior restraint" on Elons speech.

This does not mean Elon can't get into trouble under the consent decree: If he deems something immaterial, tweets it out without getting pre-approval, but it later turns out to be material after all (by objective standards), he would be in violation.

Think of a football game. With respect to the vast majority of plays, no one questions whether the receiver caught the ball in bounds or the runner was in possession of the ball when he was tackled, etc. That would account for the vast majority of tweets.

Then we get into the small subset of material and gray area tweets. Material tweets would be analogous to obvious blown calls by the officials. Gray area are those that you have to look at the replay several times and even then, reasonable people can disagree as to the interpretation of the rule. The closer you get to the line, the more important it is to seek pre-approval.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'll be the first to admit that mine are no better than any one else's. I am just trying to explain why I believe that the requirement that he submit some tweets for pre-approval does not mean that he has to submit all tweets.

 

[Artful Dodger]

or by having the SEC go through normal enforcement proceedings under Rule 10b-5

...the Court could require the SEC to follow normal enforcement proceedings.

SEC Rule 10b-5 Materiality

In the case of TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc.,[6] the word "material" was defined by the U.S. Supreme Court - "an omitted fact is material if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable shareholder would consider it important in deciding how to vote."There are four elements of materiality laid out in TSC: a fact must assume "actual significance" in the deliberations of a "reasonable shareholder" because the fact would have "significantly altered" the "total mix" of information available to that shareholder in making its decisions. Each of those elements is itself the subject of extensive litigation.​

The SEC doesn't seem to be particularly interested in their own rule Rule 10b-5 in the present action against Elon.