Does anyone think an equity raise will follow the Investor Autonomy Day? Seems like that was the whole point of making it for investors to me. They had to pull many cash levers in Q1 and if things don’t go their way they need to raise.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Elon Musk on Twitter
Incorrect. Pana cell lines at Giga are only at ~24GWh/yr & have been a constraint on Model 3 output since July. No choice but to use other suppliers for Powerwall/Powerpack cells. Tesla won’t spend money on more capacity until existing lines get closer to 35GWh theoretical.
Woo hoo - as FC stated, SR+ will mean more M3s and more profit!
Incorrect. Pana cell lines at Giga are only at ~24GWh/yr & have been a constraint on Model 3 output since July. No choice but to use other suppliers for Powerwall/Powerpack cells. Tesla won’t spend money on more capacity until existing lines get closer to 35GWh theoretical.
Woo hoo - as FC stated, SR+ will mean more M3s and more profit!
Well, the typical accident is created by a bad or inattentive driver, so FSD is more about raising the minimum of driver quality to a point where the quality is good enough that accidents happen very infrequently than it is about being comparable to the best human driver (I don't think it will be hard for Tesla's FSD to reach the human average).
bdy0627
Active Member
Good points, but FSD is the tech that gets Tesla valued way way above where it is, not showing modest profits and solidly increasing car sales. Those are nice to have but they don't excite the valuation potential. The story is really about FSD and the eventual ride sharing network. If we see tech demonstration on 4/22 that allows people to quite easily see the reality happening from there, I would not rule out a steep climb in the SP. Technically, we also appear to be at a point where a decisive jump up will ignite quite a rally. Of course, Tesla has had some disappointing events lately. To be a catalyst for the stock, this event will clearly need to be impressive in terms of allowing for easily envisioning the reality of FSD and the Tesla Network in the not too distant future.
Speaking for myself, with the rollout of navigate on autopilot, I can now very easily see FSD on the highway in the near future. On a 30 minute drive yesterday, my model 3 took over as I entered the highway, very competently changed lanes multiple times to maintain my set speed, then changed lanes to exit the highway before handing off control to me. I've been using autopilot for 3 years. This latest update is rather amazing. I think we are close to getting rid of the nags or at least greatly reducing them on the highway. I'm pretty excited to see where they are at with the tech on 4/22.
bdy0627
Active Member
Not if they are bringing in several hundred million cash per quarter from FCA.
Well, in that caseHey, not knocking SpaceX and their incredible accomplishments one bit! Nobody else can touch them. They have demonstrated unchallenged mastery of the launch industry.
But... When it comes to projected time frames, they didn't meet their stated goals because they were ambitious goals and it was freaking hard work. Thinking that FSD is less difficult and will somehow meet an optimistic schedule this time just isn't believable any longer. I'm sure they'll get it and may do it first, like SpaceX, but it hasn't and won't be on time for the same reasons.
And again, I'd love to be wrong.
:Falcon Heavy was late because, when it was first designed, the Falcon 9 was crap. They had an upgrade on the table, F9 1.1, so they decided to wait until that one was flying, before going all-in on Heavy. Then, when 1.1 was flying, they made some other upgrades, and so Heavy was pushed off yet again. Etc. The Falcon 9 Full Thrust 1.2 Block 5 that's flying today is massively more powerful than the F9 1.0.
F9 1.0 had about 5,000 kN thrust at liftoff. Block 5 has 7,600 kN thrust at liftoff. It didn't make sense to develop Heavy when there were so many upgrades for the basic F9, and in fact the newest F9 can lift and deploy just about all of the payloads that were originally meant to go on Heavy. So it's not so much that it took 5 years to develop Heavy, but rather that it took 5 years to maximize the performance of F9. It was cancelled or almost cancelled 3 times, and only progressed because they had a contract with the Airforce for a launch on the Heavy.
Though to be sure, there were also development difficulties - Crossfeed was a major feature that had to be removed from the table.
SpaceX moves so incredibly fast for an aerospace company. They have made 3 rockets and two capsules since 2002. The only thing that can compare is NASA in the 60ties.
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EVNow
Well-Known Member
What I'd like to see is their process for disengagement data to be included in the training data. This will also tell us how fast we could expect improvements in the NN.
A disengagement happens. The data goes to Tesla. Then what ?
- Is it filed as an issue someone has to look at manually, decide whether it is worth adding to training data ?
- If needs to be added, someone has to manually add training parameters
- It gets get into NN training data
How long do these 3 steps take ? What is the backlog for someone looking at the disengagement data - is it days/weeks/months ? What is the backlog on step 2 ? Hopefully the 3rd is just overnight and next day's iteration would include that case.
Once FC, this will also tell us how fast we can expect NN to improve. "March of 9s" is fine, but how long does it take to go from 90% to 99% to 99.9% ? If going from 99% to 99.9% means handling 10k edge cases, and each of that needs to go through the above manual steps, we can atleast ballpark the time needed - if we understand the process.
They should still raise capital and put this whole issue to bed. At this point virtually all of their top shareholders have been urging them to. Raising 2 billion would be easy for them to do and would lower their cost of capital massively by doing so (would probably get upgraded by Moody’s on the credit side and the stock would go ballistic). Look at what happened last time they raised equity. It’s pure hubris and “trying to prove a point” that they haven’t already.
Elon’s latest tweet is important. Panasonic is nowhere close to 35GWH. That is a complete lie. They have installed the machinery but it’s not close to actually achieving that sticker output (takes a long time to optimize the production throughput to its theoretical capacity). They have been the impediment to higher production levels for two quarters now, which Tesla has been reluctant to highlight given that they don’t want to throw their partner under the bus.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Following the Nikkei short & distort piece earlier this week, we had some discussion regarding the run-rate of the battery production at GF1.
Elon Musk just made a statement regarding this:
"Incorrect. Pana cell lines at Giga are only at ~24GWh/yr & have been a constraint on Model 3 output since July. No choice but to use other suppliers for Powerwall/Powerpack cells. Tesla won’t spend money on more capacity until existing lines get closer to 35GWh theoretical."
Elon Musk on Twitter
PS. An annual battery production rate of 24GWh equals 300k 80 kWh battery packs, equivalent to 6k LR packs per week. With Tesla's recent focus on SR(+) they may be able to produce more than 6k Model 3s per week.
Elon Musk just made a statement regarding this:
"Incorrect. Pana cell lines at Giga are only at ~24GWh/yr & have been a constraint on Model 3 output since July. No choice but to use other suppliers for Powerwall/Powerpack cells. Tesla won’t spend money on more capacity until existing lines get closer to 35GWh theoretical."
Elon Musk on Twitter
PS. An annual battery production rate of 24GWh equals 300k 80 kWh battery packs, equivalent to 6k LR packs per week. With Tesla's recent focus on SR(+) they may be able to produce more than 6k Model 3s per week.
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All of your posts today have given me warm fuzzies as an investor. Sometimes I think Elon is just not raising to light a fire under employees with the near death stuff.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Can't remember Elon pumping any single event more than the 22nd!
Material!!!
SebastianR
Active Member
Sorry, I still don’t get it. Today I take my phone, walk up to the closest DriveNow or GreenMobility car which is parked anywhere on the street. If it is dirty, I could reject it in the app and chose another one (never happened).
In future I summon a car and sit in the backseat instead of driving myself.
Aside from the autonomy thingy - how are these scenarios different?
He had better deliver something mind-blowing on the 22nd or else at this point.
At least as mind-blowing as the first time he landed the rockets at SpaceX. That's the threshold we're at here.
"Several hundred million per quarter" is just not a realistic haul from FCA. FCA earned a net profit of $3.6b in 2018, most of which comes from North America. It would be cheaper for the automaker to shutter European operations entirely rather than pay several hundred million ($250m-$300m) per quarter in pooling fees to Tesla.
I would expect something like a total contract value of ~$300m-$500m, paid out over the course of the next 3-4 years.
To be fair to Mr. Buffett, he "has input" into every company in which Berkshire invests. His actions appear to be be benign , mostly, because he chooses to invest with management he trusts. One should never confuse that with lack of involvement or influence. Factually, he seems placid but is obsessive about detail and understanding those details. That said his techniques are financial rather than technological as he regularly repeats.
RFernatt
Solar/EV Owner/Enthusiast
Well, in that case
Falcon Heavy was late because, when it was first designed, the Falcon 9 was crap. They had an upgrade on the table, F9 1.1, so they decided to wait until that one was flying, before going all-in on Heavy. Then, when 1.1 was flying, they made some other upgrades, and so Heavy was pushed off yet again. Etc. The Falcon 9 Full Thrust 1.2 Block 5 that's flying today is massively more powerful than the F9 1.0.
F9 1.0 had about 5,000 kN thrust at liftoff. Block 5 has 7,600 thrust at liftoff. It didn't make sense to develop Heavy when there were so many upgrades for the basic F9, and in fact the newest F9 can lift and deploy just about all of the payloads that were originally meant to go on Heavy. So it's not so much that it took 5 years to develop Heavy, but rather that it took 5 years to maximize the performance of F9. It was cancelled or almost cancelled 3 times, and only progressed because they had a contract with the Airforce for a launch on the Heavy.
To be sure, there were also development difficulties - Crossfeed was a major feature that had to be removed from the table.
So, you're saying there were unanticipated issues and design decisions that didn't pan out as expected that caused the FH launch to slip from 2013 to 2018? I'm sure those types of things would never happen with something like FSD ... AP1, AP2, AP2.5, AP3, do I hear AP4?
Not knocking anything, just noting the reality of change to project schedules, especially Elon's overly optimistic and aspirational schedules. But, when he hypes things up like Apr 22 and it's another hopefest of this year maybe, next year definitely, then yeah, I'm not getting too excited just yet. Just like those FH customers were saying show me the vehicle for 5 years, I'm saying show me the FSD and let it be verified by others, then you can take my money. And my money says they aren't there yet.
SW2Fiddler
We Are Cognitive Dissidents
I for one ain’t letting it get within a block of me until I live-view the inside via the hailing app.
It ain’t rocket surgery (that was last week).
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