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

[Artful Dodger]

I'm not sure that is true. Can you really use the charger as an invertor? Or would you need an external HV invertor?

If you have solar PV, then you likely already have all the inverters you need. The only thing you'd need is a DC-DC converter to step down the Tesla pack from 400v down to whatever your house inverters expect. But that'd be mounted in the house, not the car, so yeah just an adapter to connect the pack to the house.

BTW, this was an intented feature with the Solar roof unveal 2 years ago. It would be a feature in the new Powerwall, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Again, likely to discourage abuse of free supercharging. Seems they could just meter the power coming in from the car at the powerwall, since it's already connected to the 'net and they already track your supercharging at THQ.

Cheers!

 

[EVNow]

Today it's 10 years later and Audi was finally forced to bring the E-Tron into production, but it's hopelessly outclassed by the Model 3 already (let alone by the Model S and X), which has put the leadership of Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche into crisis mode:

Here is another important point.

What legacy OEMs have perfected is large scale manufacture. But to do this methodically and in a highly planned way - they need 5 years to develop a new car. And in that time Tesla is at a new level. The above quote is the proof of this.

To beat this problem - OEMs have to figure out where Tesla will be 5 years from now and start planning to build a car that would compete with the future Tesla. That is ofcourse not possible/easy because they neither have the economies of scale nor the battery that will be available in 5 years.

They CAN catch up with Tesla by
1. greatly reducing their new car planning/design time, which would require massive organizational change OR
2. waiting till the battery development is not that fast

I expect it would be (2) - unless a recession, bankruptcy and bailout lets them execute (1).

I propose that the reason OEMs have not made a direct competitor to Tesla all these years is that they figured out they couldn't profitably compete with Tesla. Infiniti EV, shown 6 years back, never to be produced till now is a good example.

ps : Its like Prius. Industry kept talking about various Prius killers - but no one came close to actually producing one (until Model 3).

 

[sparcs]

Current SR+ take rates in the U.S. and Canada (the only market where SR and SR+ is available) over vanilla SR are probably over 90% (!).

There is some anecdotal evidence out there that SR is not as readily available as SR+. Tesla appears to be pushing customers towards SR+.

The extent as to how much this is a problem or the underlying reason is unclear. Is it a purposeful upsell? Is it due to availability of cloth seats or some other parts? or are these just isolated reports?

The take rate for SR+ should be high, but is it even higher than it should be due to some of these other factors?

 

[Fact Checking]

Adding that March number to my previous estimate for Int'l production of 52K, then my updated estimate for 2019Q1 Model 3 production is 75K. (note that this is arrived at completely independantly of the BB estimate, which is currently at 79,856*

Sounds reasonable to me.

Judging by the tweets of Tom Randal, they think the Bloomberg estimate is running "too high", but that they'll wait with tweaking the model until Q2.

It's very interesting how far apart the estimates are this quarter.

 

[Fact Checking]

There is some anecdotal evidence out there that SR is not as readily available as SR+. Tesla appears to be pushing customers towards SR+.

The extent as to how much this is a problem or the underlying reason is unclear. Is it a purposeful upsell? Is it due to availability of cloth seats or some other parts? or are these just isolated reports?

The take rate for SR+ should be high, but is it even higher than it should be due to some of these other factors?

Yeah, that's true - I was primarily looking at it from the context of Q1 margins, which was the original context 10 replies up-thread or so.

But you are right that the high take rate of SR+ is not "organic" yet. Yet Tesla was able to sell everything they make, with only SR+ and higher configurations available, in the slowest quarter of the year. Bodes well for the rest of the year.

 

[Mars ☰mperor]

Model 3 VINs

Model3Vins says 6300 this month in Norway

Tesla Registration Stats

TeslaStats says 5500

Guess Model3Vins got it wrong, it says teslastats.no is its source.

 

[EVDRVN]

Repeated unprovoked ad hominem attacks. Way to convince your audience. And you are trying to lecture Elon and Tesla about proper communications?



I have to say that your comments are proof of an "ICE bubble" and you are possibly in denial about it. Here are some hard facts:

That "EV prototype" you saw years ago must have been either the Audi E-Tron, a vaporware product announced back in 2009 as a "Tesla killer":

Audi's Electric E-tron Is Real, And Coming Soon
Watch Out, Tesla, Audi's e-Tron Is Coming​

(Or the forever delayed EQC from Mercedes which won't reach volume until 2020. Maybe.)

Today it's 10 years later and Audi was finally forced to bring the E-Tron into production, but it's hopelessly outclassed by the Model 3 already (let alone by the Model S and X), which has put the leadership of Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche into crisis mode:

"Tesla Model 3 cost surprised Porsche and Audi after reverse-engineering"

"The e-tron as the first electric Audi is not only late. It does not reach some target values and has become far too expensive with more than two billion euros in development costs. The approximately 600,000 cars sold for the break-even are now regarded as an illusion."​

These are direct leaks from the top executives of Volkswagen, straight from the horse's mouth.

Here is the reason Audi, Volkswagen's luxury brand were not making EVs for 10 years, by their own admission: they were unable to make competitive EVs 10 years ago and are still unable to make competitive EVs today.

EVs are an entirely new market that the legacy OEMs are not prepared for to enter. The countless EV "prototypes" by luxury German brands are meaningless: there's 10,000 parts that go into an EV like the Model 3, but the biggest value-add and differentiator of ICE carmakers, the ICE power train with its own 10,000+ parts count alone, is missing. Everything else that isn't an ICE powertrain the big OEMs are mostly just buying from commodity car parts suppliers themselves...

See @ReflexFund's excellent post about the economics of why ICE makers are in a structural disadvantage to make EVs:

"Why ICE OEMs are handicapped relative to new EV companies"​

Today probably the only way most legacy OEMs could profitably make competitive EVs would be by liquidating their assets, writing off their ICE making capacity, paying off their obligations such as pensions and emissions fraud related legal liabilities, dissolving the company and creating a new EV company from scratch from the remaining cash and brand value. Note that chances are that "remaining funds" would be negative after such a liquidation event: i.e. many ICE OEMs are possibly already structurally bankrupt today and shareholders are bagholders. (Will probably take years for this process to play out though.)

And note that Audi and Porsche have been working on their BEV platforms for years, while Toyota is horribly, horribly late.

I'm in denial of an ICE bubble? I am very much aware and in full agreement of the points you are making here about legacy auto makers. The Tesla "bubble" I refer to is the inability of some to see opinions outside the Tesla viewpoint. I have considerable experience in the EV space including sitting on advisory boards for legacy and EV auto makers. I can assure you some ICE manufacturers were more detached from reality than you may imagine but mostly at that time from fear of the unknown. That time has passed and the reasons now are likely many including the ones you cite above and some that remain perplexing The EV I mention was not an Audi but one built by another German maker that built several on their existing platforms (common then as you know) for R&D and viability. You can likely guess who they are as they have another "conversion like" EV on the way you are likely aware of-cough. If it were not for an NDA I would share the model but I can tell you it is one you have never seen with an EV drive but it has been in production for many ICE years and it would make a horrible EV based on weight alone. I am the first person to place blame on legacy auto makers, I have had passionate discussions with a few board members on their ignorance and resistance to enter the marketplace. I think some would get a good laugh from some of their comments and questions that certainly explains where there are today. I some ways culture and conservatism played a big role here when EVs like were about to merge onto the market. I hear what you are saying and I completely agree

 

[Artful Dodger]

I believe Carsonight estimated 6.2k/week LR battery packs maximum output - limited by Panasonic cell supply.

If a LR pack is 78 kWh and SR is 54 kWh, then the maximum SR pack output (with same cell supply) would be 6.2*78/54 = 8,955 packs/week.

Yes, there are a number of ways to model production based on various constraints. The one I'm interested in right now is the max weekly capacity of the new Grohman SR bty pack building machine.

It seems reasonable that production increases are planned via replicating the first machine. Given that initial SR production target for GF3/Shanghai appears to be 3K/wk SRs then it follows that the planned capacity of the Grohman machine is also approx that.

So plugging in those 2 new constraints into my model:

1. max cells ~ 6.2K/wk LR eqivalent, and
   
2. max SR+ packs 3K/wk, then

we estimate current max. model 3 production capacity for Fremont at 7,120 / wk.

So, in many scenarios, I think it's difficult to expand Model 3 output beyond 7K/wk before GF3 comes online. I think that's also the proper place to be spending the CAPEX, given the market, the margins, and the cost of capital.

Plus, Fremont is likely already generating $1.5B/quarter from Model 3, and Models S/X are paying the bills for everything else Tesla needs. So, $6B FCF in 2019?

Cheers!

 

[Singuy]

I have a theory to why Toyota is "late".

Think about the Toyota brand and Toyota buyers. What is the brand about and what do their customers care or don't care about?

Toyota customers care about

1. Reliability
2. Affordability
3. Resale value

Toyota customers don't care about

1. Image for the most part
2. Fancy gadgets or forward thinking technology
3. Performance
(At least this is what Toyota thinks because they sell a boatload of boring appliances for years).

So their customers puts the value of a car being a reliable appliance that gets them from point A to point B. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

So you can bet a dollar that the Toyota board members sat around and discussed how they should jump into the EV scene. They have to make sure they engineer the *sugar* out of it to be reliable reliable reliable. Remember when everyone thought their Prius was going to die after half the miles the corolla gets because the tech is just too new but turned out it can churn out 150k miles without breaking a sweat? This is Toyota's culture.

So lets look at EVs and the brand associated with them.

Nissan: Perhaps the worst in Japanese brand when it comes to reliability
Chevy: Not ranked very high when it comes to reliability
Anything German: Not very reliable
Tesla: Again, not winning any reliability rewards

These companies are not afraid to try crazy new things and their customers know they are not buying for reliability. In fact who ship cars with heated back seats filaments installed but have this feature added after a couple of months later? You and I know Tesla cars are rushed out the door(due to wallstreet pressures) and are practically beta cars. Toyota will no way in hell do such a thing because their reputation is what I said above.

So is Toyota behind? Yes. Do they care? Nope. Their clientele are not exactly "risk takers", and the board thinks Tesla cars even at 35k will not steal their marketshare. So the question is, will trend plus enthusiasm break the mold of their customers and lose such people to Tesla? Time will tell, but they are not banking on it.

 

[MP3Mike]

If you have solar PV, then you likely already have all the inverters you need. The only thing you'd need is a DC-DC converter to step down the Tesla pack from 400v down to whatever your house inverters expect. But that'd be mounted in the house, not the car, so yeah just an adapter to connect the pack to the house.

Yeah, well that DC-DC converter is probably not going to cost a "few hundred dollars", so now we are back to an adapter that costs thousands of dollars....

 

[MP3Mike]

Model 3 VINs

Model3Vins says 6300 this month in Norway

View attachment 391771

Tesla Registration Stats

TeslaStats says 5500

View attachment 391770

Guess Model3Vins got it wrong, it says teslastats.no is its source.

Yep, and the other source, EV registration statistics for The Netherlands, doesn't appear to have data that matches either site... So there is a disconnect in there somewhere.

 

[SteveG3]

I wish they can let us connect the car to the home and use the battery like powerwall. We have a few power outages every winter - and it would be really helpful.

IIRC, you can do this with Leaf in Japan.

“Vehicle to Home” Electricity Supply System

What I've heard Elon & JB mention a couple of times are safety concerns and concern that you need the car to be a car, not have it's range used up powering a house.

I'm not in a position to evaluate the first reason, but, the as to the second... pretty obvious most people can handle balancing that (trying not to say harsh things does make for boring phrasing, lols).

I suspect at least part of the mix is that Tesla wants to sell Power Walls and solar.

A compromise that would accommodate that last point,

Include the capability for Vehicle to Grid (well, to home) in all Tesla, BUT, only enable its functioning in the event of a major blackout. That is, just as Tesla unlocked range on software limited vehicles in the past during evacuation events (hurricanes), have a tiny team at Tesla that monitors for substantial blackouts and send an OTA to customers with vehicles registered in the region to enable the vehicle-grid.

I'm sure lots of us have ideas as consumers and shareholders... if only Elon would get around to reading my repeated tweet to him (bet he's just swamped with catching up on this thread like the rest of us).

fwiw, I've been sending this to Elon periodically for a little shy of a year now, long before Galileo started promoting a similar, but much more limited idea for shareholders to have a voice during quarterly earnings call (i.e., not trying to rip off what Galileo was part of).

 

[Buckminster]

I have a theory to why Toyota is "late".

Think about the Toyota brand and Toyota buyers. What is the brand about and what do their customers care or don't care about?

Toyota customers care about

1. Reliability
2. Affordability
3. Resale value

Toyota customers don't care about

1. Image for the most part
2. Fancy gadgets or forward thinking technology
3. Performance
(At least this is what Toyota thinks because they sell a boatload of boring appliances for years).

So their customers puts the value of a car being a reliable appliance that gets them from point A to point B. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

So you can bet a dollar that the Toyota board members sat around and discussed how they should jump into the EV scene. They have to make sure they engineer the *sugar* out of it to be reliable reliable reliable. Remember when everyone thought their Prius was going to die after half the miles the corolla gets because the tech is just too new but turned out it can churn out 150k miles without breaking a sweat? This is Toyota's culture.

So lets look at EVs and the brand associated with them.

Nissan: Perhaps the worst in Japanese brand when it comes to reliability
Chevy: Not ranked very high when it comes to reliability
Anything German: Not very reliable
Tesla: Again, not winning any reliability rewards

These companies are not afraid to try crazy new things and their customers know they are not buying for reliability. In fact who ship cars with heated back seats filaments installed but have this feature added after a couple of months later? You and I know Tesla cars are rushed out the door(due to wallstreet pressures) and are practically beta cars. Toyota will no way in hell do such a thing because their reputation is what I said above.

So is Toyota behind? Yes. Do they care? Nope. Their clientele are not exactly "risk takers", and the board thinks Tesla cars even at 35k will not steal their marketshare. So the question is, will trend plus enthusiasm break the mold of their customers and lose such people to Tesla? Time will tell, but they are not banking on it.

And note that Audi and Porsche have been working on their BEV platforms for years, while Toyota is horribly, horribly late.

If Toyota are clever, they will copy Tesla in 2 years time. Audi and Porsche are wasting money designing out of date, overly complicated, poorly designed EVs. Will Toyota be the last to be serious about EVs but the first to build a GF?

That graph just shows how much of the world does it wrong.

ISO 8601 - Wikipedia is the only logical method.

So, are we all going Chinese? Cant be worse than American system and don't get me started on the Canadian confusion....

 

[SteveG3]

Sooooo, week-end break. Last and final: got a call on Monday that the car won't make it in time (high VIN 313XXX still in California, not even sure it's actually manufactured). No other M3 RWD around, so they 'offered' me to trade-up to an AWD in inventory in a nearby state, with a rebate (about $2,5k). I took it. First time I get a discount on a new Tesla. A friend I referred got a similar deal for an inventory AWD as well this week in Denver CO.

Curious to see which delivery numbers they'll get to. Clearly all along the process they looked busy (replying to email late at night), a Service guy actually delivered the car to my home and that was the 4th time for him that day. By far the fastest delivery paperwork wise, a big improvement vs last time.

Anything about the car that was discounted that objectively explains that discount? Was it a 2018? Miles already on the car? Floor model? No issue at all with you taking Tesla up on their offer, but, they've been emphatic about not discounting on an individual basis simply to move a car here or there. Was an explicitly stated policy. Before anyone replies, lols re explicitly stated policies, a year or two ago, one of the people working at one of the stores was fired for doing this sort of thing, and my memory is that this was paired with Elon sent out a memo just after the firing re-iterating the policy.

 

[Antares Nebula]

Sorry you all. I looked at the chart and now it stopped climbing.

Does that mean it's a quantum system or a pot of water on the stove?

 

[Tslynk67]

Got it! Here, everything is attributable to “da shortz”.

Sorry, you what? Shorts have nothing to do with whether Maxwell shareholders agree to Tesla's acquisition, to not - unless they're doing something much smarter and illegal than I think they're capable of.

My point was merely that there's a sizeable number of shares sold short and these will have to be re-purchased if, as and when the deal is called-off. And if the process, the SP will rise.

As you can see, short interest is more than double the pre-acquisition announcement. those pre-announcement are deep under water, the post-announcement are all hoping the deal falls-through. If Tesla bid higher, they're all screwed...

 

[Tslynk67]

Quite like the Chinese yyyy/mm/dd
Sort by alpha and it sorts chronologically.

Indeed, when saving files, I always use a YYYYMMDD at the end for easy versioning, however, while it's great for sorting, it's less readable by humans, for that the DDMMYY format is by far the superior.

I mean if it was 9:10 in the evening, you wouldn't write it 10:21, would you? What's the sense in putting the month first in the US date format.

Is there a historical reason for this?

 

[Tslynk67]

Well, I was all by myself so that would've been a bit weird. Although I haven't tried it yet so it would've been a good opportunity.

We don't want any reports of what happened next, OK?

 

[anthonyj]

Why is Elon tweeting about lame ducks? Stepping down? And two ducks? CEO + COO? His tweets used to be bullish af but now they scare me

 

[Alphacrux]

Why is Elon tweeting about lame ducks? Stepping down? And two ducks? CEO + COO? His tweets used to be bullish af but now they scare me

View attachment 391803

Sometimes they don’t mean anything.