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

[scaesare]

80% was always plenty here. Slows after that and hurts the battery.

Ostensibly, the charge taper avoids damage to the battery...

 

[Navin]

Isn't it likely the completion of the Shanghai factory structure? That seems like the most obvious to me. I don't understand all the rumors circulating about some mysterious reveal possibly happening in China. That just doesn't make sense to me, and I would not have any expectations of something like that.

Could be and don’t want to overhype but the text of invite says surprise. The completion of the factory was a given based on what was said earlier. What’s the surprise here?

 

[Krugerrand]

NOA data:

After navigating a very tricky 43 ramps in 62 different directions section of highway flawlessly, NOA did two new things that impressed the crap out of me.

1. I was in lane two from the left of 6 lanes. Put the signal on to move one lane right. NOA prepared to move, had the blue line and then it suddenly went red, though no ‘cars’ appeared on the screen in neighboring lanes.

I looked over my right shoulder and there’s a speeding SUV coming across multiple lanes from the right - but still two lanes over and behind me. The SUV hit the lane next to me just as it got beside me.

I got the distinct impression my car had anticipated this would happen and thus why it held its lane until the SUV passed. In reality it likely picked up a fast moving object coming on a trajectory toward the space it wanted to go - or some such.

2. I was in the right most lane of 4 lanes. A new merge lane was forming to my right with two cars that were going to merge into my lane. There was a very short merge distance. My exit ramp was right after this merge ended.

The two cars coming on the merge lane were close together. My car and those cars were going to meet at exactly the same time, causing my car to prevent both from being able to merge.

Just as I was about to disengage NOA to take over and yield to those cars, my car slowed enough to create my preset follow distance (7) and let those two cars merge in front of me seamlessly. It was like the car read my mind/knew my driving style.

Gobsmacked.

 

[MP3Mike]

Potential solution to the 80% supercharger thingy; increase price progressively (and significantly) for every minute after the 80% level has been reached.

Even ten times free is still free.

 

[RobStark]

This translates to 50,000 cars for VW then.

At 100 kWh per car. Probably closer to 65 kWh per car. They plan to make many "affordable ID.3" Golf sized/type cars with ~165 miles of EPA range with a battery pack much smaller than 100 kWh.

VW Group also has contracts with SKI and LG Chem. Even though LG is suing SKI and threatening VW supplies if they go ahead and build a Gigafactory in partnership with SKI.

VW Group also has deals with Swedish startup NorthVolt.

And with CATL in China.

Buy cells everywhere and see what shows up at the battery pack assembly factory?

 

[printf42]

Link to the official Weibo account:
微博
(weirdly I couldn't figure out how to link to an individual weibo...)

Tesla China already have Model Y, Roadster, and M3 SR+, but it seems they don't have Raven S & X yet, so this announcement could be for that, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Let me correct myself, seems Tesla China already have Raven S & X:
新款特斯拉Model S/X正式上市：72.28万元起，最快2.6秒破百 - Model S,Model X,特斯拉 - IT之家

 

[printf42]

Could be and don’t want to overhype but the text of invite says surprise. The completion of the factory was a given based on what was said earlier. What’s the surprise here?

Where is the text of the invite?

 

[TheMrX]

Potential solution to the 80% supercharger thingy; increase price progressively (and significantly) for every minute after the 80% level has been reached. Apply progressive price increase to the idling fee as well. Warn the user every X minutes about the elevated price and the accumulated fee.

This is already in place here : we pay by the hour so the cost per kW/h goes up as the supercharger tapper off past 80%. So for 20% of charge to 80% of charge the price is the same than 80% to 100% (approx).

Aren't all superchargers paid by time of utilization everywhere (apart for those with free supercharging)?

 

[larmor]

Let me correct myself, seems Tesla China already have Raven S & X:
新款特斯拉Model S/X正式上市：72.28万元起，最快2.6秒破百 - Model S,Model X,特斯拉 - IT之家

So now I am more inclined to this May 31 announcement would be about GF3.

Chinese usually have a "factory completion" ceremony when the structure of a factory is completed, depending gov support level, local officials could attend, and it would be reported on national news.
This is different than "production start" which usually happens much later.

Making a car factory shell from scratch in five months is actually an achievement. However in todays post truth internet world where doctored videos can make the impossible seem normal, no one in the market is impressed with actual hard work. If tesla released a press conference and a few pictures of a car factory that would be made in the future in China, then the market would be excited...

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

This video is amazing in so many ways.

After watching this - how can anyone seriously say that certain segments of the media are just flat out lying about Tesla. Question is who is influencing and paying for this type of journalism?

Wow. Unreal.

I’m assuming you meant aren’t just flat out lying. It’s a debate between a bull and bear. The she-bear was clearly full of bull. Frustrating to watch, but clearly shows how weak the bear case is.

 

[Compton]

The 80% appears to be overridden if you are going further. What I have an issue with is the idea of charging more as you get closer to 100%, because from previous posts it appears that the 80% has been implemented across the board (at least on holiday weekends). Implementing a surcharge across the board penalizes everyone who travels in areas that are not even close to being filled out with SCs.

Tough titty, you can't please everyone. Case in point, the upcoming disagrees to this post.

I guess one could also make exceptions for SC's in the middle of nowhere.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Ostensibly, the charge taper avoids damage to the battery...

"Taper", so the charger backs off controlled? I assumed it was the battery slowing things down. Still, taper wastes my time

 

[RobStark]

Aren't all superchargers paid by time of utilization everywhere (apart for those with free supercharging)?

No, where allowed Tesla charges by kW.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

No, where allowed Tesla charges by kW.

kWh

 

[Navin]

Encourage everyone to watch this video a couple of times and reflect on what this says about Tesla in its current state
Tesletter on Twitter

 

[sundaymorning]

Here is an idea that someone should tweet out to Elon or Zach.

Tesla should very seriously consider cross listing it's shares in Hong Kong. This has been done in the past by a handful of firms, but I'll get to this further below. The basic idea is once listed in HK, the shares become accessible to mainland Chinese investors.

This plan has many advantages. China is a huge market and is shaping up to be the manufacturing base of Tesla for potentially all of Asia if not more. The government did a huge favor by letting Tesla own 100% of their factory. It's only fair that mainland investors get to put their $s or RMBs in this opportunity. So this will:

• Let Tesla widen it's shareholder base. Having concentrated ownership is not healthy. Just look at how TRP and fidelity dumped their shares, because a new manager didn't like the story
• Greater Chinese ownership will immunize Tesla from trade wars. China wants to end it's oil dependence and clean up air. So the government already loves Tesla. This will reduce any further reason for China to tilt the scales in favor of Chinese competitors like the Germans are doing
• China will also be a huge R&D base for Tesla with a lot of white-collar workers who like to get stock based compensation. This opens up an opportunity to do that

Tesla would not be the first company to do it. Coach, the handbag maker did this to much fanfare about 8 years ago.
Coach eyes dual listing in Hong Kong - Reuters

Then they ran into, well, nowhere. They had very little liquidity, because they did not do a HK IPO and simply listed their shares in HK. Without a wide base, the liquidity eroded. I don't think this will be a problem for Tesla, as other tech listings have gone on to do well. Especially if they did an IPO in HK. Something tells me Tesla will not be a dull low volume stock.

In any case, if Tesla is going to produce in the order of a few million cars in the next 3-5 years, I see very few ways of doing this with organic cash generation. I think it's a no brainier for them to do an HK IPO later this year or early next year after a couple of good quarters paint a better picture of what they can do.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like they should have done it last year.

Maybe this will be the announcement on May 30th, since it’s for China only. And if @TSLA_Hopeful translation is correct, then the China announcement will cause some kind of “explosion”, or Short squeeze?

 

[RobStark]

 

[Navin]

actually hope Elon tweets about it tonight so it can help catch short sellers off guard. Why give them a chance and runway to cover?

 

[printf42]

Where is the text of the invite?

Haha I get it.
Fred said the text reads “surprise is coming” which is completely incorrect.
The text is “蓄势，待发 2019.05.31 敬请期待”。
Now you can copy and paste in google translate and see what it means, which won’t be as far off as Fred.

My translation is “Spring loaded, about to release. Hold my beer.”

Where more literal translation is “Gaining potential, ready to start. Please look forward.”

 

[geometro]

Encourage everyone to watch this video a couple of times and reflect on what this says about Tesla in its current state
Tesletter on Twitter

Great link!