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

[RobStark]

Is MB X-Class shipped from Argentina to US?

MB X-Class is a rebadged Nissan Frontier.

MB doesn't sell X-Class in the USA.

If MB did it would be much cheaper to rebadge them at Nissan's Mississippi factory rather than Nissan's Barcelona factory or small scale factory in Argentina whose only purpose is to manufacture inside Mercosur's tariff fortress.

BTW IF Nissan had to import all Frontiers from Japan,Spain,or Argentina into the USA it would be far less profitable or Nissan would have to raise prices and suffer market share loss. Nissan sells about 80k Frontiers per year in the USA and makes them all in the USA.

 

[uselesslogin]

Great ad for Ford F-150 electric, and for electric vehicles in general.

They just upped the ante for the Tesla pickup

I love this kind of thing. We had painters at our house and one of them just casually mentioned you couldn't build an electric truck because the motor wouldn't be strong enough. I told him it is the opposite and that is why trains are diesel electric hybrids. This would be the perfect video to point him to. Especially since it is a Ford video and not a Tesla video.

 

[RobStark]

You are right - I edited my comment to point out this mistake.

Nevertheless I think the other side of the argument is valid: the EU car industry wants a 10% import tax on U.S. sedans, and Detroit is exporting few sedans so they don't want it gone badly.

I.e. neither side truly wants the 10% tariff on U.S. sedans gone.

I'd be glad to be wrong on this though.

IF GM could export duty free to Europe then Cadillac would be much more competitive and GM would open up Chevy dealers in Europe.

It would not need to sell 1M vehicles per year in Europe to break even.

It could be profitable selling 100k units per year.

I agree for Ford and FCA it would probably be a net loss because they have trouble keeping their European factories running at over 50% capacity.

It would be a net benefit to American workers.

It would benefit GM,Tesla, and all the American based startups like Rivian, Lucid, and Bollinger.

I would like to see a Democrat candidate for President of USA explain to auto workers how (s)he plans to cave to the EU as soon as (s)he enters the White House on Auto Tariffs.

 

[SpaceCash]

Ok I officially just got back in in premarket. Straight shares no options. Largest purchase I've made in at least a year. Just for the record. Love you all

 

[Fact Checking]

So I was looking at Tesla's Model Y wire harness patent:

US20190217794 WIRING SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE​

Very interesting design! The key part is a presumably pre-manufactured, modular, rigid wire structure made of various isolation, shielding and conducting material layers sandwiched together in a compact rectangular form:

​

124 and 132 layers are plastic insulators, 130a/b are power conductors.

Note that 132a/b are metallic shields which might even wrap the conductors "130 a/b", forming a complete Faraday cage (not depicted).

I.e. the automotive wire harness reinvented which Elon's been hinting about for years, but Tesla's patent doesn't actually limit to this automotive applications, and I've not seen such a complex few-wires design before.

The pre-fabricated segments are clipped together almost in a LEGO fashion, as shown on Figure 8:

One application I haven't seen Tesla mention in this patent is to share the power bus and the signal bus over a single pair of conductors - this is very viable in the stable DC electrical regime of EVs and simplifies the myriads of electronics over a single unified central bus (or a hierarchical set of buses) with shielded cables.

Also reduces manufacturing expenses and maintenance - electrical faults are a primary source of trouble and expense.

Tesla's Claim 1 covers this sandwich structure and their claims are not limited to the 'rectangular' layout.

So unless there's prior art which invalidates it this could be a very valuable generic patent.

 

[KarenRei]

The comments are amusing

 

[T@oo]

US20190217380 MULTI-DIRECTIONAL UNIBODY CASTING MACHINE FOR A VEHICLE FRAME AND ASSOCIATED METHODS

Car frames stamped in one piece?

3xaprn (@3xaprn3) | Twitter

 

[Fact Checking]

OT politics,

I would like to see a Democrat candidate for President of USA explain to auto workers how (s)he plans to cave to the EU as soon as (s)he enters the White House on Auto Tariffs.

The Democratic candidate, once sworn in as the Democratic President of the USA, should she (or he) be elected and enter office in January 2020, is probably not going to attempt to explain anything to pushers of right-wing epithets like the constant bad faith conversion of "Democratic XYZ" to "Democrat XYZ":

Democrat Party (epithet) - Wikipedia

"The term 'Democrat Party' has been used in recent years by some Republicans on the ground that the term used by Democrats implies that they are the only true adherents of democracy."

...

Political commentator William Safire wrote in 1993 that the Democrat of Democrat Party "does conveniently rhyme with autocrat, plutocrat, and worst of all, bureaucrat".​

I do not call the Republican politicians "Repuglican" politicians either:

Urban Dictionary: Repuglican​

To answer your question: she'll try to undo the damage Trump inflicted, with the broad political mandate she'll enjoy.

 

[LN1_Casey]

Prototype. When will it be out?

I really like the fact they made this commerical, mostly because it normalizes the idea.

However, I bet it'll be out after the Tesla Pickup, and only in numbers when the Tesla Pickup has made volume production and they can see their own truck sales declining.

Edit; also, note that it was done on a rail track, which is VASTLY different than towing something on a road. That's why shipping massive amounts of heavy cargo over rail is so much cheaper than over the roads.

 

[Fact Checking]

Another new, interesting Tesla patent that was just granted:

US20190217380 MULTI-DIRECTIONAL UNIBODY CASTING MACHINE FOR A VEHICLE FRAME AND ASSOCIATED METHODS​

This is a unibody casting machine:

Note that thing in the center of that machine is a ... car. This is a huge casting machine.

This should reduce the amount of welding robots required ...

Might this huge casting machine be the "giant machine" Jerome was hinting about to @ZachShahan?

Our Interview With Tesla President Jerome Guillen, Part Deux | CleanTechnica

"He also said they are building a giant machine using Tesla’s Grohmann sub-division, something he was clearly eager to share but couldn’t yet talk much about. Hmm. He basically just emphasized that it was a “giant, giant, giant machine” that duplicates everything, is modular, is simple on the modular level, and … is gigantic. We’ll all have to wait a bit longer for more information on that."​

The giant casting machine fits all this: it would be modular (you'd have dozens of such casting machines to scale up a factory), simple on the modular level and put together it is gigantic.

But maybe he was hinting at something else though, covering final assembly as well? In any case it's an intriguing possibility to have full Body In White frames exit this new casting machine.

 

[Fact Checking]

US20190217380 MULTI-DIRECTIONAL UNIBODY CASTING MACHINE FOR A VEHICLE FRAME AND ASSOCIATED METHODS

Car frames stamped in one piece?

3xaprn (@3xaprn3) | Twitter

It's a casting machine, i.e. liquid metal cast into a single unibody frame:

"Die casting typically includes forcing or injecting molten metal under high pressure into a mold cavity."​

A bit like plastic injection molding, except that temperatures are much higher and tolerances much lower.

Casting in their own brand new foundry is how SpaceX achieves unprecedented metallurgical results in their rocket engines at a fraction of previous expenses:

Elon Musk on Twitter

"SpaceX foundry casting Raptor engine manifold out of Inconel"​

(Note that this is traditional low pressure, low speed casting for perfect crystalline structure required in rocket engine components, not high-pressure casting.)

Doing it on a whole-car level would reach ... whole new levels of quality and efficiency I believe.

 

[Joe F]

Prototype. When will it be out?

I've already ruled it out.

 

[T@oo]

It's a casting machine, i.e. liquid metal cast into a single unibody frame.

Casting is how SpaceX achieves unprecedented metallurgical results in their rocket engines at a fraction of previous expenses. Doing it on a whole-car level would reach ... whole new levels of quality and efficiency I believe.

Casting not stamping. Thanks for correction.

> would reach ... whole new levels of quality and efficiency I believe

And "precision and panel gaps your can calibrate your instruments to" ...

 

[aubreymcfato]

(This might be an interesting topic for CleanTechnica and @ZachShahan to cover? Norway offers us a time machine: a 5-10 years jump into the EV future.)

I'd love to see also data about:

• CO2 and other car pollutants concentrations in urban areas (eg. Oslo)
• respiratory diseases in urban population

There might already be a story (and an important one) in the data.

 

[Fact Checking]

OT safety of hydrogen fuel cell cars,

Liquid hydrogen is a whole different can of worms - explosive mixes of vaporized liquid hydrogen are first ground hugging (due to the low temperature), then buoyant. It freezes oxygen solid; solid oxygen crystals in liquid hydrogen are explosive. Liquefied air pooling in random spots on hydrogen-fueled spacecraft is a constant bugbear. Liquid hydrogen takes hydrogen's property of embrittlement via intercalation, and adds to it embrittlement via cold, and takes gaseous hydrogen's properties and amplifies them by the increased density. Also, hydrogen also comes in two phases (ortho and para), and the equilibrium ratio varies based on temperature - but the conversion is not instantaneous (takes days). Conversion from ortho to para gives off heat, can be unintentionally catalyzed in some circumstances, and thus creates an overpressure hazard, and even in the best case, means you have to spend more energy making LH2 and/or face significant boiloff problems.

Fantastic description.

Another fun (but scary) fact about hydrogen gas: when permeating metallic containers H₂ molecules IIRC disassociate into individual hydrogen ions which can tunnel through crystalline structures: which is just a tiny, tiny proton+neutron nucleus which is about 10,000 times smaller than H₂ molecules which will already leak out of a regular rubber balloon wall in no time ...

 

[ReflexFunds]

It's a casting machine, i.e. liquid metal cast into a single unibody frame:

"Die casting typically includes forcing or injecting molten metal under high pressure into a mold cavity."​

A bit like plastic injection molding, except that temperatures are much higher and tolerances much lower.

I guess this is the model Y design Elon mentioned on the ride the lightning interview.
They are moving from 70 stamped steel and aluminium pieces on Model 3 to just 2 aluminium castings and 2 joiners for Model Y. This will then move to a single casting in the future.
I guess the 4 part design for Model Y is v1 of this new casting machine and the single casting will be v2.
Do you think this will be built in the new Lathrop facility? It would significantly reduce the space required for Model Y production at Fremont, better explaining the location change from GF1.

 

[Dig deeper]

Ok I officially just got back in in premarket. Straight shares no options. Largest purchase I've made in at least a year. Just for the record. Love you all

Good to see you back. She is looking bullish AF isnt she?

 

[MP3Mike]

Prototype. When will it be out?

The video said in the coming years.

 

[Fred42]

Another new, interesting Tesla patent that was just granted:

US20190217380 MULTI-DIRECTIONAL UNIBODY CASTING MACHINE FOR A VEHICLE FRAME AND ASSOCIATED METHODS​

This is a unibody casting machine:

View attachment 433152
Note that thing in the center of that machine is a ... car. This is a huge casting machine.

This should reduce the amount of welding robots required ...

Might this huge casting machine be the "giant machine" Jerome was hinting about to @ZachShahan?

Our Interview With Tesla President Jerome Guillen, Part Deux | CleanTechnica

"He also said they are building a giant machine using Tesla’s Grohmann sub-division, something he was clearly eager to share but couldn’t yet talk much about. Hmm. He basically just emphasized that it was a “giant, giant, giant machine” that duplicates everything, is modular, is simple on the modular level, and … is gigantic. We’ll all have to wait a bit longer for more information on that."​

The giant casting machine fits all this: it would be modular (you'd have dozens of such casting machines to scale up a factory), simple on the modular level and put together it is gigantic.

But maybe he was hinting at something else though, covering final assembly as well? In any case it's an intriguing possibility to have full Body In White frames exit this new casting machine.

This looks like something from Things to Come (1936).

 

[jerry33]

The video said in the coming years.

Unless they can avoid making it altogether.