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

[hobbes]

Tesla has sold 'thousands' of Model 3s in Australia, making it the best selling EV in the country - techAU

“..as one small team, are all working tirelessly to accommodate for the thousands of orders we have currently.”

I will not be surprised if September 2019 sets a record for Model 3 deliveries in Australia that stands for some time...

There is an initial backlog of demand and some indications they may have the cars here, delivering them is the challenge....

And the delivery team I work with is much less responsive than they were 2 weeks ago.

Here are some numbers to back that up - unnamed source to but seems plausible. Note this is arrivals into the country, not deliveries:
Tesla vehicle arrivals into Australia per month. Note August was our first month of Model 3 arrivals! : teslamotors

So about 900 cars arrived in Australia in August, about twice that many coming in Sep according to the post. As the Model 3 bump in the plot only begins in August, it looks like there was no significant number of 3s shipped to AUS in July, so IMHO we can pretty much equal the arrivals to deliveries, maybe even a bit less delivered if Sep ships don´t arrive too late. So estimate for Australia for Q3 (Tesla total) should be 2500-3000.

If this is true, the headline I quoted of thousand sold is misleading - it should then be thousands ordered (but not yet delivered).

 

[Fact Checking]

LOL! I hope Nico takes his wife for a lap. That'd be more fun than a new record!

With English captions:

 

[Artful Dodger]

With English captions:

Lol, thanks for the translation. Yeah, I had a spanish girlfriend, but that was some time ago, so all I could pick out was "Ricardino nonononono por favor mamma mía NOOOOO \SLAP/ YOU vomito divorce".

 

[-=buzz=-]

Once patented, other car makers can use it without any license fees. That was part of Tesla's "open source patents" (aka All Our Patents are belong to you).

Keep in mind the "in good faith"-clause, which some interpret as an unconditional cross-licensing, because you couldn't sue Tesla for use of your patents without immediatly losing access to theirs..

 

[LN1_Casey]

To thicken the plot even more: the guy who spotted the Model S on the trailer said it had Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R race tires. Not what you would expect on a 70D, or on a car used for local driving around Ramstein AFB.

LOL, you'd be surprised. You get the weirdest mix of people in the military. A lot of them make very stupid purchases that'd otherwise have people scratch their heads. I've even met people in the military who had legitimate race cars and they carted them around whenever they moved.

However, I'm more inclined to to disbelief about those specific tires on that car. If it was an American spec car, it likely had American spec wheels, and it could be a confusion over appearance. Pics or it didn't happen.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Won't happen. S has to be faster on the track to justify its higher price. 3 might have some better driving dynamics than S in some regards, but S needs to be getting better track times.



That's... rather pathetic, really. Their plan is to be 4 years behind Tesla?

It's a great first step. 16gWh should be enough for a few hundred thousand e-ups, that will provide a meaningful reduction in ICE sales.

Also, VW will have the same teething problems Tesla had when scaling their gigafactory. Its unwise financially to scale too fast. But, as with Tesla, they can scale as their knowledge improves.

 

[Fact Checking]

I’ve been to the Ring many times. They’re pretty hard up for cash. They built a huge mall with a roller coaster inside it that was never turned on. Elon or Tesla simply buying the track would be far from impossible and quite hysterical. I’m guessing Elon wasn’t quite up on how these record attempts work and are scheduled. Sucks but I hope he figures it out.

That’s a pretty big assumption. Do you really think they went through all the trouble of planning this, prepping a car, testing it, shipping it, timing it right with the Taycan reveal, just to find out at the last moment that they had to book a spot? And only because ‘Elon wasn’t quite up on’ how this works? You do know they are not building toasting irons in Freemont, but the best car in the world?

Whoa whoa. Slow down oddly aggressive moderator. I’m full on Tesla and Elon fan boy to the max. However, the fact that the Ring isn’t aware of any time scheduled is an issue. I’ve been to the Ring many many times. I know how this works. There are only certain days for these things and they get scheduled quickly. Hopefully the spokesperson was just stupid but I’m just saying it doesn’t look good. I’d be very happy to be proven wrong this week.

The basic premise in your first comment was false, as evidenced by the now Updated Car & Driver article, with Tesla PR's response:

Editor's Note: This article was originally published Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, at 2:39 PM EST. On Saturday, Sept. 7, a Tesla spokesperson provided Road & Track with the following statement: "Tesla is excited to be a part at the Industry Pool testing community next week at the Nürburgring. Our participation is confirmed and contracted by the Nürburgring."​

So it's been confirmed that Tesla is going to be on the Nürburgring next week.

Tesla is going to share the Ring with other manufacturer cars, so hot laps and official timings are not possible - you can only drive as fast as traffic safely allows, but I'm pretty sure Tesla will know next week what kind of lap times they could achieve by taking multiple laps and looking at the telemetry.

Then Tesla can rent the track for an official run with only Tesla on the racetrack (weather permitting), done either directly as Tesla, or under an entity not generally recognized as Tesla, or they could rent from some company or person who already has a Nürburgring reservation and is willing to sub-rent it to Tesla for a fair payment.

So there was nothing aggressive about @Right_Said_Fred's reply, and he was right in fact, it was your original claim that jumped to conclusions, and it was your followup reply that was unnecessarily confrontative.

 

[RobStark]

How Many Electric Vehicles Will Tesla, Volkswagen, & Nissan Sell In 2020–2025? | CleanTechnica

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

How Many Electric Vehicles Will Tesla, Volkswagen, & Nissan Sell In 2020–2025? | CleanTechnica

Zach seems to be conservative with these estimates for Tesla. Especially when it comes to 2022, 2023 and 2024, where the growth trajectory is stalling (also in comparison to VW), during a period when Tesla sales should get an extra boost from the introduction of the pickup truck and the startup of GF4 in Europe (which will result in considerably cheaper Model 3's and Y's for Europe).

 

[CorneliusXX]

In addition, there's not a lot of profit in charging stations anyway because people can always charge for less (sometimes much less) at home (and more conveniently). Yes, there are places where there is free charging (L2), but those are like advertising for the business or community that is supporting them.

Another problem with charging stations at the moment is the utilisation of the network. Some high speed non Tesla networks currently only run at about 6% utilisation. At that low usage there isn't enough ability for the profits from electricity sales to cover the capital cost of installing the network.

Additionally, if you want a proper high speed network (150kW+) you either have to get lucky with the location or fork out tens of thousands of dollars to install a high powered grid connection.

 

[EVMeister]

Any idea why LA Times re-posted this little short video about the Model 3 from 2018? With information on wait time that's clearly outdated now (12-18 months).

.

 

[RobStark]

Any idea why LA Times re-posted this little short video about the Model 3 from 2018? With information on wait time that's clearly outdated now (12-18 months).

.

Dude in thumbnail jogging in Air Jordan 13s. Might as well jog in work boots.

 

[Tslynk67]

Looks like it may well be Nico - totally freakin awesome!

Elon Accepts Nico Rosberg’s Offer To Drive Model S On The ‘Ring

 

[RobStark]

Zach seems to be conservative with these estimates for Tesla. Especially when it comes to 2022, 2023 and 2024, when the growth trajectory is stalling (especially in comparison to VW), during a period when Tesla saless should get an extra boost from the introduction of the pickup truck and the startup of GF4 in Europe (which will result in considerably cheaper Model 3's and Y's for Europe).

In 2024 Tesla should have two USA auto GF pumping out 1M cars per year. One in China and one in Europe pumping out 500k each for a grand total of 2M. But Musk has kept mum for almost two years about 2nd American auto GF.

VW says they plan to sell at least 1M BEVs in 2025 and Zach has them at 1.2M.

 

[pyromatter]

 

[Fact Checking]

Looks like they are building new foundations (starting at 4:23):

 

[Intl Professor]

LOL! I hope Nico takes his wife for a lap. That'd be more fun than a new record!

This is one of the funniest video clips I've seen, augmented by not understanding a word of what's she saying. My take: they must have a great marriage. One of my buddies says he often practices a unique talent: wife deafness.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Realize these are lower energy density cells than Tesla is currently using in vehicles, and as the paper points out are not appropriate for passenger vehicles, which is what Tesla is currently selling. Semi and Robotaxis could take advantage of this, as could grid storage.

This has nothing to do with Maxwell DBE technology.

I don't think this is necessarily correct. These cells are clearly designed to be used in Robotaxis which are passenger vehicles.
The exact NMC532 used for this experiment is ahead of the industry average EV cells, but would be a step back for energy density, cost and cobalt usage for Tesla (in return for the significantly improved cycle life). However I don't see any reasons why the key new methods in this paper can't be used to make NMC811 or NCA cells with similar improvements to cycle life.

While Maxwell's technology wasn't used in the cells in this paper, I think there is a good chance Maxwell's electrode manufacturing process has an advantage for manufacturing the single crystal coated cathodes described in the paper.

Electrek reported the cell in the paper "is going to be Tesla’s new million-mile battery [mentioned by Elon in April], according to a source familiar with the matter." I'm very sceptical this is the exact cell Tesla will introduce, but a cylindrical NMC811 or NCA cell based on the ideas in this paper seems plausible.

 

[KarenRei]

I don't think this is necessarily correct. These cells are clearly designed to be used in Robotaxis which are passenger vehicles.
The exact NMC532 used for this experiment is ahead of the industry average EV cells, but would be a step back for energy density, cost and cobalt usage for Tesla (in return for the significantly improved cycle life). However I don't see any reasons why the key new methods in this paper can't be used to make NMC811 or NCA cells with similar improvements to cycle life.

While Maxwell's technology wasn't used in the cells in this paper, I think there is a good chance Maxwell's electrode manufacturing process has an advantage for manufacturing the single crystal coated cathodes described in the paper.

Electrek reported the cell in the paper "is going to be Tesla’s new million-mile battery [mentioned by Elon in April], according to a source familiar with the matter." I'm very sceptical this is the exact cell Tesla will introduce, but a cylindrical NMC811 or NCA cell based on the ideas in this paper seems plausible.

How exactly would you create single crystal electrodes with Maxwell's dry electrode process? Maxwell's process is binding powdered electrode materials with ultrafine fluoropolymer heated during calendering.

And re: all of this, people are reading way too much into a research paper.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Anybody else posted this twitter thread about tesla battery changes:

Ric Fulop on Twitter

1/ New chemistry breakthrough just published by Jeff Dahn. @Tesla lead battery researcher. 1M vehicle miles, 795Wh/L, with fast charge and subsequent 20yr durability projected in grid. The data is amazing.

mods: please delete if I'm like 100 years late to this party