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

[brantse]

What we tend to forget is that Elon doesn’t have any regular income. In the past he has borrowed against his stock for expenses, and I suspect X plus the accumulation of debt have convinced him he has to stop that. Debt gives people power over you. It is entirely reasonable to expect him to start a regular selling program for future income needs. It’s always been my assumption.

He's getting that sweet creator ad revenue share from X now, so maybe he won't need to sell anymore.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Pre-Market TSLA Volume at 06:30 ET: 3,351,154

Cheers to the Hamptons refugees!

 

[Krugerrand]

Your position is that the video's content was falsified, with no basis for that position--other than you just don't like the content.

That wasn’t my position.

Do please advise where you have found that channel to have falsified content.

We'll be waiting . . . .

You’ve been asked to prove the content is 100% factual and can’t. It’s not my responsibility to prove otherwise. I didn’t post it as some ‘this is a serious Tesla investment risk!!!’ You did. The onus is on you. Or not. But stop with the crap.

p.s. While we are all in on TSLA, the reality is that the China Risk for TSLA is HUGE and it would be folly to not acknowledge this.

Yes, yes, of course! The same HUGE risk it has been since Tesla began to build a factory there in January 2019. We’ve discussed it to death along with the media and WallStreet and every analyst and every economist and every politician-

If you think over 4 years later that the same risk still exists or it’s a larger risk then perhaps YOU shouldn’t be all in?

Thanks so much for repeating the China risk, yet again. I’m sure there are individuals here extremely grateful for your warning and are already trimming their positions. I, for one, require a lot more factual data to raise my heart rate because not a single risk discussed to death over the last decade has come to fruition for Tesla. Not a single one.

 

[unk45]

Six Chinese companies were among top 10 global energy storage system suppliers in 2023H1 | Shanghai Non ferrous Metals

According to SMM statistics, the global energy storage system shipments in 2023H1 reached 72.4 Gwh. China’s shipments were 47Gwh, accounting for 65%; overseas shipments were 25.4Gwh, accounting for 35%; global energy storage system shipments were still dominated by Chinese integrators. Tesla’s...

news.metal.com

Turning to the substance of the news item,

"According to SMM statistics, the global energy storage system shipments in 2023H1 reached 72.4 Gwh. China’s shipments were 47Gwh, accounting for 65%; overseas shipments were 25.4Gwh, accounting for 35%; global energy storage system shipments were still dominated by Chinese integrators. Tesla’s shipments in the first half of the year exceeded 7Gwh, ranking first in the world."

This is an area that is desperately short of good data in either the public domain or in proprietary reports. Over the years I have put together a table of what I think the shipments were, plus my own forecast, but I have always been concerned about the possibility of significant under-reporting of actual shipments for all sorts of reasons. The news item is most useful and shows how industry/media are taking the topic more seriously, and can usefully be compared with my previous historical & forecasts.

View attachment 967281

The most obvious thing is that they (SMM) are suggesting 2023-H1 shipments were 72 GWh, which implies it will likely be approx 150 GWh for the full year. In comparison my forecast was only 47 GWh, so I now tend to think I have been undercounting in the past as it is not credible that volumes leap from 30 GWh to 150 GWh in one year. Also the SMM data includes 7 GWh attributed to Tesla which corresponds well with Tesla's Q1+Q2 public reports of 3.9 + 3.6 = 7.5 GWh and in turn suggests that the SMM data is reasonably solid. Looking at the list of companies and the corresponding volumes also suggests to me that the data is reasonably reliable.

The language (Chinglish) is slightly ambiguous but looking at the company list and the volumes I am fairly sure that there is no doublecounting of vehicle mobility product going on. These volumes appear to be purely stationary storage, for a combination of consumer-scale and utility-scale usage. Confusingly this also gets termed domestic storage so one needs to be careful about terminology.

The implication is that stationary market is aready taking approx one quarter of the volume versus the vehicle market, i.e. FY 2023 will be approx 150 GWh vs 626 GWh, approx. This is great news in terms of overall stationary storage adoption/scaling/deployment and further suggests to me that we are significantly underestimating the speed of the transition. I did not think that the (historical data + my projections) stationary market would reach that relative fraction until approx 2030.

Again this is the previous forecast I had, which I now think I will have to very substantially revise.

View attachment 967282

Does anyone have access to the SMM historical data to compare with my own scrapings of the various datapoints I have amassed out there, which now seem to be confirmed as a significant under-count ?

Oh, and by the way, this is another new-world industry where Chinese dominance is fully-locked in. It also happens to be one that is of vital strategic importance for the Chinese in their internal use as well as for Chinese exporting.

(I'll repost this on the main board as well)

(once again thanks @hobbes for snagging the original news item)

This report, even if flawed (I am Not suggesting that it is), probably still understates the reality. Stationary storage is growing globally, not all li-ion batteries, which is all this counts...
electrical-utility-oriented publications and aggregators:

Utility and Energy Transmission & Distribution News | Utility Dive

Utility Dive provides news and analysis for energy and utility executives. We cover topics like smart grid tech, clean energy, regulation, generation, demand response, solar, storage, transmission distribution, and more.

www.utilitydive.com

https://electricenergyonline.com/energy/0/magazine

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-energy-storage

...often provide a glance at alternative methods of energy storage which are also growing rapidly but do not have a singular technological focus. For TSLA we probably do not need a complete list, nor extensive analysis, although a dedicated thread(s) similar to that for competitive BEV development would perhaps be relevant.

At present it seems the cheapest and fastest speaker replacements are li-ion batteries, and innovations in grid power stability technology, pioneered by Autobidder, value nano-second responses that are dependent on ultra-rapid response, at present limited to battery storage.

The valuation of TSLA will reflect those developments to the extent that TSLA can ramp 'exponitially'. Elon is NOT engaged in hyperbolic speech when speaking of 'near-infinite demand. Bluntly, most global utilities still think in response rates of minutes or even hours. Massive power outages still happen due to those slow grid services response rates. Many, such as the recent Brazilian near-national outage, discuss many causes and solutions and NEVER EVER (can I say that more loudly?) NEVER say a word about instant response grid stability that can cope with a sudden surge in wind generation, a sudden outage in a thermoelectric plant or a sudden failure in a distribution station.

The fact is that the lessons of the Hornsdale Power Reserve are not even well-discussed in Australia, let alone in much of the world. In the EU and UK the massive availability and deployment of wind power (Vestas and Siemens the leaders) has led to much more widespread deployments of Autobidder-like offerings. The limitation for Tesla are simply lack of deployment capacity.

We must also recognize that CATL and BYD are both racing to develop and deploy solutions, even faster than is Tesla. CATL focusses on both direct and indirect supply (mimicking their automotive) while BYD makes mostly smaller scalable Powerwall/Powerpack systems. All the details are on their websites, OT to list them here.

So, just as in automotive the honest story is Tesla breaks the mould of habit, most of the world ignores it. Only Chinese companies respond quickly and at scale. Then, driven by innovative very large scale European engineering seriously scalable wind enters the fray, copied by Chinese and GE. Those are more directly responsible for the massive demands for highly scalable storage than anything else.

Once natural gas from Russia became toxic politically, the gigantic impetus suddenly exploded.

Lesson: TSLA needs more GF level Powerpack supply NOW, at least ten times current plans. CATL, BYD and everyone else is headed there, as quickly as creaking bureaucracy can do so. How fast can Tesla move? That is the question!

 

[SOULPEDL]

Still going... 237 by morning according to my "Analysis."

View attachment 967167

I’m sorry, seems I under estimated the open. It’s so hard to predict short term! (Too much fun?)

 

[unk45]

This part checks out.

Fire engulfs Golden Empire Transit hydrogen bus and fueling station (July 19, 2023)

Hindenburg?

 

[UncaNed]

What we tend to forget is that Elon doesn’t have any regular income. In the past he has borrowed against his stock for expenses, and I suspect X plus the accumulation of debt have convinced him he has to stop that. Debt gives people power over you. It is entirely reasonable to expect him to start a regular selling program for future income needs. It’s always been my assumption.

I'm no fan of a stock buyback necessarily, but next time Elon sells, it would be nice if they coordinate share buybacks with that so that it mostly goes unnoticed.

 

[NicoV]

Bot or paid comments?

Given the variety of spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and flemish dialect I doubt these are bots. Never heard of paid trolls in the flemish language either. Indirectly paid, because working for legacy auto or oil/gas industry: quite possible. Most likely just ignorance.

 

[2daMoon]

Hindenburg?

Could this be the name of a coming Hydrogen-only auto startup..., or, perhaps just a new model name from Nikola?

/s

 

[aubreymcfato]

I know that many here don't like Fred Lambert, so in the past few years we've seen very few links towards Elecktrek. I seldom read it myself.
But in a couple days he broke some news I did not see anywhere else:

Tesla changes its solar strategy, lays off workers, bets on certified installers

Tesla is evidently changing its solar strategy by starting to move away from having its own installers and relying more...

electrek.co

Hopefully this means that at least Tesla Solar has a strategy, so this is bullish to me ;-)

I'll pretend it's 2019 again and restart reading Electrek.

 

[Atomsla]

Given the variety of spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and flemish dialect I doubt these are bots. Never heard of paid trolls in the flemish language either. Indirectly paid, because working for legacy auto or oil/gas industry: quite possible. Most likely just ignorance.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by.. 'ahem' ignorance.

 

[Atomsla]

I'll pretend is 2019 again and restart reading Electrek.

Please don't, I've been suffering reading that website and I don't recommend you join in. If you must, make sure you block every single ad.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

One interesting trend a few of us are seeing here on the local social media rags is the thought process that it’s best to wait a year or two before buying an EV until one can buy a GM, Ford, Rivian etc etc with a tesla plug. Especially the ford Mach E guys. The idea being that you’ll get a real car from a real company that can access the Tesla supercharger network. Best of both worlds etc. My suggestion to them is to take a Tesla model Y for an extended test drive and then compare it to a Mach E (or whatever). Those who do get a wake up call pretty quick on the fundamental differences in software, climate control (heat pump octovalve) etc etc.

Anyway, I can’t help but wonder if these companies announcements of switching to the Tesla plug hasn’t Osborned their products somewhat

The lots here are full of Mach e’s and lightnings.

Just an observation. No idea.

 

[bkp_duke]

Please don't, I've been suffering reading that website and I don't recommend you join in. If you must, make sure you block every single ad.

Brave browser (a Chrome clone) does this automatically. Has moved to my preferred browser now.

 

[MartinAustin]

It seems most here have gotten the wrong take of why I posted the serpentza video.

It wasn’t to show Tesla’s weakness. In fact, they have already resolved it in some cases by keeping the data in China.

It was to show that people in the rest of the world better think twice before buying a Chinese EV because there are no safeguards in preventing their spying with their vehicles. For the same reason that TikTok has been banned in several cases, so too may Chinese EVs. Hence, probable increase of Tesla sales.

...why are you posting this in the Tesla stock investor's thread

 

[hitchhiker]

Anyway, I can’t help but wonder if these companies announcements of switching to the Tesla plug hasn’t Osborned their products somewhat

They're not really producing that many yet -- so if you're going to osborne yourself, doing it now rather than later makes a lot of sense.

 

[Max Plaid]

I was convinced of that too, but recently I haven’t been convinced of that anymore. The main reason is the attitude of a certain part of the population. These people a convinced that EV’s are just a phase, and that everything will revert back to ICE, or in the worst case, to hydrogen. These people will be willing to pay way too high second-hand prices for out-of-lease cars, convinced that it is The Right Thing to do.

Where do I find these people? Mostly on Facebook comments. You have to be pretty delusional to start repeating 10 year old FUD in the comment section of ads for EV chargers, but that’s pretty much the only kind of comment I see in ads for EV and EV-related stuff on FB. Pro-EV commenters stopped commenting or left FB, making the comment sections an echo chamber for ICE-addicts.

This is the part of the population that will only buy EV’s when they are forced to, most likely because of range anxiety because the density of gas stations will get too low. In Belgium I think this will be around 2030: by then, almost no ICE cars will get out-of-lease (because the new car market is mainly the company car market that has been forced to EV with tax rules) and the volume of gas sold will have plummeted (because most of the consumption also comes from company cars).

Yeah, but FaceBook is for boomers! Erm, like us

 

[Max Plaid]

Lee, "The Tesla Economist" mentioned that Elon has indicated he would sell some shares in 2024. Does anyone here know what he is referring to?

Here is the comment in the middle of his video:

Elon has not said he will sell shares in 2024, but in a <redacted> Spaces end of 2022 he said he wouldn't sell in 2022 and "probably not" in 2023, so selling in 2024 is an inference only

 

[2daMoon]

Yeah, but FaceBook is for boomers! Erm, like us

Are you dissing AOL?

Must be a rebel boomer...

 

[Usain]

Anyway, I can’t help but wonder if these companies announcements of switching to the Tesla plug hasn’t Osborned their products somewhat

I think you are right to some extent. To find out, we might not need to wait until NACS is fully integrated. It will be interesting to see if sales pick up a bit once there is an adapter and these products can use the Superchargers.

If not, we may have to conclude that EV buyers simply want a Tesla instead.