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

[nativewolf]

@petit_bateau
"I sense that the USA factories getting built for LFP manufacturing are going to have a customer shortage. I'm sure Lathrop can help, theeby getting the full US-IRA. And the China-LFP going into Lathrop can go to a China-storage factory. Wild guess ... Nanjing (easy to get to on the high speed line from Shanghai; good industrial city; lower cost than Shanghai; excellent logistics). Probably in 2024-2025 as that USA-IRA LFP stream becomes available for Lathrop use. There might be similar EU-LFP streams coming available as well in that timeframe and judging by the travails of VW/etc perhaps they too wil be seeking customers - top candidate surely is Poland."

Could not agree more on the battery factories in the USA needing customers. It's why Tesla needs to ramp the megapack quickly because in 4 years the battery factories (and many are not even LFP but L Iron or Saltwater etc) are going to be fighting for customers...it will get to be a bloodbath and quickly. They won't be able to export it away either, China will have the same issue-massive capacity and a protectionist world with few export options. Folks will be fighting over Latin America and Africa both much higher risk and difficult to support.

 

[MartinAustin]

...in 4 years the battery factories (and many are not even LFP but L Iron or Saltwater etc) are going to be fighting for customers...it will get to be a bloodbath and quickly.

Do you think Autobidder will help differentiate Tesla products? What is to differentiate all the BESS makers from each other apart from price? Quality corners could get cut if there is just an old-fashioned price war.

 

[UltradoomY]

I don't know much about options, but this seems like a good thing to me...

$TSLA's option chain is DEAD! Implied volatility is 43%, easily 10-20% lower than it has been historically and what would be consistent with realized volatility.There is NO manic and delusional call buying. No bubble. Stock is simply grinding higher in a very healthy manner.

View attachment 959286

source :

https://twitter.com/x/status/1683576078747725824

No offense meant here but IV always crashes after a binary event like earnings - this contrasts with IV last week on the day of earnings (prior to release) of almost 100.
IV steadily builds towards binary events like P&D, Earnings and most of the Tesla events like AI day, or Product launch events.

In addition, just because IV is at it's lowest after earnings does not mean that the option tail is not wagging the dog. It simply means that bets need to be made closer to the money (the current share price) to gain the same amount of premium.

This allows Hedge Funds and certain Market Makers to steam roll retail options buyers and sellers and take shares or cash.
You can look at sites like Maximum Pain dot com - and see the amounts there. If you look at just the $270 strike Puts for this week are over 53K contracts - if we multiply 53,000 x $270 = $1.4B dollars just for that one strike and side of the equation.

You can imagine that if we add the rest of the Put and Call "Walls" that it quickly gets into the tens of and most of the time hundreds of $Billions (on monthly expirations like last week) of dollars for this single stock.

This leads to an incredible incentive to manipulate the stock by front running (like last week) or shorting to achieve a share price that is favorable to the end.

But that doesn't mean that they always win, when real investors buy and hold it leaves less shares to manipulate and they have to use the Madoff rule to short invisible shares that can cost them a lot of money. So it's a losing battle they fight as Tesla executes, however the options market for TSLA is far far from dead or low at the moment and is still thriving even with lower IV.

For more in depth discussion please visit the "Other" thread.

 

[unk45]

... it makes perfect sense for Tesla to branch out and create a different subsidiary that caters nothing but EMS (Electronic/EV Manufacturing Services)...

This seems logical but...the 'badge engineering' industry has a long and checkered history. I will only list Toyota/GM NUMMI that produced badge-engineered Chevrolet Nova and Toyota Corolla which were virtually identical. The warranty history showed the Chevy had much worse reliability than the Toyota (old printed source, I cannot find it online) although they were identical, produced in the same factory, same car but for badge and the audio.

Were Tesla to go that route we should expect similar results. It will not happen this way, but very well might be similar to the Toyota RAV4, Mercedes Benz B-Class that used Tesla powertrain. They'll license FSD, according to recent statements, and license or sell various things, but they will almost certainly never do badge-engineering. From Bentley Continental/VW Phaeton to the NUMMI ones, badge engineering rarely works very well.

 

[cliff harris]

Do you think Autobidder will help differentiate Tesla products? What is to differentiate all the BESS makers from each other apart from price? Quality corners could get cut if there is just an old-fashioned price war.

Autobidder is nothing magical. Pretty much any BESS you buy will provide software that dynamically uses the asset to maximise revenue, and looks at futures prices and weather predictions to gauge future products. When I was shopping for a utility BESS this seemed to be available everywhere.
The real competitive edge for BESS will be purchase cost and ease of install. The cost of a megapack unit is only part of the story. The final commissioned and connected price is what matters.

 

[MartinAustin]

Barra on CNBC. To be perfectly honest it's a pretty tough interview. Between UAW and BEV ramp issues, it reads like her back is against the wall. He even asked her if she might be due to leave GM. FYI they decided to not discontinue the Bolt EV/EUV after all. (has saved their ass on BEV sales numbers) Not explicitly clear if it will get NACS.

 

[Stretch2727]

Interesting, GM raising guidance going forward. Low margins but rising. Cutting costs. EV production expected at 100k second half.

They said they made 50K EV for the first half but they did not sell anywhere near 50K.

They did admit they are behind with Ultium. They blamed it on the supplier that set up the automation for battery pack assembly.

Bolt will likely be about 30-40K of the 100K for the second half of the year. Which means they need to go from 2-3K on Ultium to 60-70K for the second half of the year. 3000% increase.....let see.

 

[Surfer of Life]

@petit_bateau
"I sense that the USA factories getting built for LFP manufacturing are going to have a customer shortage. I'm sure Lathrop can help, theeby getting the full US-IRA. And the China-LFP going into Lathrop can go to a China-storage factory. Wild guess ... Nanjing (easy to get to on the high speed line from Shanghai; good industrial city; lower cost than Shanghai; excellent logistics). Probably in 2024-2025 as that USA-IRA LFP stream becomes available for Lathrop use. There might be similar EU-LFP streams coming available as well in that timeframe and judging by the travails of VW/etc perhaps they too wil be seeking customers - top candidate surely is Poland."

Could not agree more on the battery factories in the USA needing customers. It's why Tesla needs to ramp the megapack quickly because in 4 years the battery factories (and many are not even LFP but L Iron or Saltwater etc) are going to be fighting for customers...it will get to be a bloodbath and quickly. They won't be able to export it away either, China will have the same issue-massive capacity and a protectionist world with few export options. Folks will be fighting over Latin America and Africa both much higher risk and difficult to support.

Too many LFP cells??

I don’t know how this rapid reversal came about without me noticing, but what a wonderful problem for Lathrop to have.

 

[Mengy]

@petit_bateau
"I sense that the USA factories getting built for LFP manufacturing are going to have a customer shortage. I'm sure Lathrop can help, theeby getting the full US-IRA. And the China-LFP going into Lathrop can go to a China-storage factory. Wild guess ... Nanjing (easy to get to on the high speed line from Shanghai; good industrial city; lower cost than Shanghai; excellent logistics). Probably in 2024-2025 as that USA-IRA LFP stream becomes available for Lathrop use. There might be similar EU-LFP streams coming available as well in that timeframe and judging by the travails of VW/etc perhaps they too wil be seeking customers - top candidate surely is Poland."

Could not agree more on the battery factories in the USA needing customers. It's why Tesla needs to ramp the megapack quickly because in 4 years the battery factories (and many are not even LFP but L Iron or Saltwater etc) are going to be fighting for customers...it will get to be a bloodbath and quickly. They won't be able to export it away either, China will have the same issue-massive capacity and a protectionist world with few export options. Folks will be fighting over Latin America and Africa both much higher risk and difficult to support.

My gut feeling is we will have a battery shortage, not an excess, in the near future. GM can't get enough batteries now, and with both Tesla cars + storage ramping exponentially I think Tesla alone could soak every excess battery produced in the US for many years to come?

 

[Todd Burch]

My gut feeling is we will have a battery shortage, not an excess, in the near future. GM can't get enough batteries now, and with both Tesla cars + storage ramping exponentially I think Tesla alone could soak every excess battery produced in the US for many years to come?

Years ago, as Tesla was ramping the Model 3 and Elon spent his days and nights in the factory, Elon told of how he, JB, and others would go on the roof of the factory at night and roast marshmallows--and discuss battery supply. They figured out at that time that Tesla was going to need a lot of batteries. A lot. A LOT. Like, a lot more than the entire world was supplying at the time.

Their foresight--that 5-10 years down the road the world would see tight supply of batteries and battery materials not only as a result of the EV/storage revolution but also significantly by Tesla's demands alone--set them down on their path of securing supply for the future far ahead of competitors who wouldn't come along for several more years.

This increased my conviction in investing in TSLA. I said to myself: "self, who is going to own or have contracted most of the battery supply chain in the future, just as demand for it is going to skyrocket?" And self replied "Tesla".

 

[jkirkwood001]

My gut feeling is we will have a battery shortage, not an excess, in the near future. GM can't get enough batteries now, and with both Tesla cars + storage ramping exponentially I think Tesla alone could soak every excess battery produced in the US for many years to come?

Imagine if there were an excess of batteries, and the commodity price got cut in half, then suddenly... BEVs would be half the price of ICEs! I mean, how else are we going to get to an S-curve for the other OEMs (Tesla's managing just fine)??

Seriously, too much battery capacity is very low on the list of world problems for the next decade IMO. How many backup Peaker and NG plants need to be replaced? Somebody smarter than me pls do the math.

 

[Hiline]

Imagine if there were an excess of batteries, and the commodity price got cut in half, then suddenly... BEVs would be half the price of ICEs! I mean, how else are we going to get to an S-curve for the other OEMs (Tesla's managing just fine)??

Seriously, too much battery capacity is very low on the list of world problems for the next decade IMO. How many backup Peaker and NG plants need to be replaced? Somebody smarter than me pls do the math.

Not to mention, as the cost of battery replacement goes down, people will be buying more used BEVs or keeping them around for longer, creating a net gain for the environment.

 

[MartinAustin]

They did admit they are behind with Ultium. They blamed it on the supplier that set up the automation for battery pack assembly

Something about a robot that was trying to fluff a soft layer of insulation that was hard to grip...

 

[nativewolf]

My gut feeling is we will have a battery shortage, not an excess, in the near future. GM can't get enough batteries now, and with both Tesla cars + storage ramping exponentially I think Tesla alone could soak every excess battery produced in the US for many years to come?

That's until the factories start producing in 2027 or so. Until then a few shortages but disappearing. GM does not have enough capacity to significantly transition. Ford does starting in 2026. Stelantis..forget it. Hyundai has moved to build factories here. Japanese are all laggards but are building.

Clearly Tesla planned to not need the capacity for auto but the 4680 ramp has bedeviled things. Seems they slowly are ramping. How they plan to fulfill megapacks is of interest but the factory capacities overwhelm the projected sales there. The semi is a bit of a wild card as the capacity/cell needs for that product can consume all of the current Reno 2170 production which is so coincidental that I find it hard to be a coincidence.

 

[nativewolf]

Imagine if there were an excess of batteries, and the commodity price got cut in half, then suddenly... BEVs would be half the price of ICEs! I mean, how else are we going to get to an S-curve for the other OEMs (Tesla's managing just fine)??

Seriously, too much battery capacity is very low on the list of world problems for the next decade IMO. How many backup Peaker and NG plants need to be replaced? Somebody smarter than me pls do the math.

Petit did the math, go look back at his threads...great threads.

 

[Maarten]

The action on TSLA this morning looks like a classic shorties-fest between 9:30 and 11.
Four till five times clearly pushing the stock price down.

 

[Opus BC fan]

As a long-term investor, I wonder why anyone plays the stock market short.
If the house can manipulate the price based on the bets then why do you play the game?

 

[petit_bateau]

Too many LFP cells??

I don’t know how this rapid reversal came about without me noticing, but what a wonderful problem for Lathrop to have.

My gut feeling is we will have a battery shortage, not an excess, in the near future. GM can't get enough batteries now, and with both Tesla cars + storage ramping exponentially I think Tesla alone could soak every excess battery produced in the US for many years to come?

Because ....

Barra on CNBC. To be perfectly honest it's a pretty tough interview. Between UAW and BEV ramp issues, it reads like her back is against the wall. He even asked her if she might be due to leave GM. FYI they decided to not discontinue the Bolt EV/EUV after all. (has saved their ass on BEV sales numbers) Not explicitly clear if it will get NACS.

They said they made 50K EV for the first half but they did not sell anywhere near 50K.

They did admit they are behind with Ultium. They blamed it on the supplier that set up the automation for battery pack assembly.

Bolt will likely be about 30-40K of the 100K for the second half of the year. Which means they need to go from 2-3K on Ultium to 60-70K for the second half of the year. 3000% increase.....let see.

...... it is not obvious that the auto companies that these other LFP cell lines are being set up to supply to, are going to be alive long enough to take any. Of if they do survive it is not obvious that they will be able to absorb the full contracted LFP capacity.

But those LFP cell plants will still need a client for that excess capacity.

The good news is that the better Tesla automotive performs, the more likely that it will cut the ground from under the feet of the other US/EU manufacturers, and thus the more excess LFP capacity comes onstream and is therefore available for Tesla energy to mop up.

 

[aubreymcfato]

Because ....





...... it is not obvious that the auto companies that these other LFP cell lines are being set up to supply to, are going to be alive long enough to take any. Of if they do survive it is not obvious that they will be able to absorb the full contracted LFP capacity.

But those LFP cell plants will still need a client for that excess capacity.

The good news is that the better Tesla automotive performs, the more likely that it will cut the ground from under the feet of the other US/EU manufacturers, and thus the more excess LFP capacity comes onstream and is therefore available for Tesla energy to mop up.

LFP is great because cells can go in Tesla Energy.
Elon has stated many times that demand for Megapacks is quasi-infinite. It seems to me that this segment is very scalable: you produce Megapacks, you streamline installation processes, you hire people to install them around the world. It's not rocket science, Tesla does much more difficult things.
Tesla Energy big projects are great because you can concentrate months of production in a single site: not great bureaucracy-wise (and probably even financial-wise) but doable. Easier than doing Powerwalls and Solar roofs at scale.

I'm increasingly worried about current manifestations of climate change. In Italy we have 45° in Rome, hail big as watermelons in the North, 100km/h winds in Milan, tornados outside Milan, wildfire raging in Sicily. Every summer we smash previous bad records.
Europe is currently paying police in North Africa to leave Sub-saharans refugees to die of thirst in the desert, or just drown in the Mediterranean.
If we want to give hope to current generations we need to decouple very, very fast from oil.

 

[GhostSkater]

First "public" Semi Charger?

A bit misleading because it's not connected or ready to go, but looks like it will be installed soon, no other reason to leave a Semi charger laying there

https://twitter.com/x/status/1683865013814177792