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

[goinfraftw]

So, did my regular look-see at Google Trends for Tesla, Elon Musk, and SpaceX. Here's the latest (since 2004):

Also, I looked into RobinTrack and looked at the same time period chart (5/1/2018 - present) with Google Trends. Found something interesting:

Namely, Google search volatility for Tesla dropped significantly around the time of the drop down in stock price to current levels. Then, more volatility as the stock continued to plummet and, again, no volatility now. I do wonder if there's a correlation between volatility in Google Searches and major stock price movements (both upward and downwards) and then a stabilizing effect. It's worth looking into more.

Peering into it a little closer, you can better see the volatility spikes, in Google Searches for Tesla, have calmed quite a bit since 7/28/2019...which is the same 24-hour time range that Megapack and Netflix were announced. Not sure what to make of all this, thoughts?

 

[KarenRei]

 

[mrdoubleb]

Speaking of Superchargers... the first Supercharger in the Budapest area just went into construction. The expansion southeastward in Europe continues.

Probably working to connect to Romania soon, to make use of their new massive €9500 EV incentive. Also to help connect to very pro-EV Ukraine.

They now have an agreement with Auchan (a french chain like Tesco or Walmart) and will add Superchargers to several stores in major cities (well, by our standards) in the country.

The one Karen talks about is next to highway M0, a ring around the city very close to its intersections to highways M1 (towards Austria) and M7 (towards lake Balaton, Slovenia, Croatia) just outside the capital at the town of Törökbálint. You can find the pictures of the first new one under construction here. For example if you are coming from Austria or Slovakia on M1 and want to bypass the city and change to another highway (M3, M5, M7) you'd pass this by.

They are also adding one to an Auchan at the North Pest side by the town of Fót as well as the Auchan stores by the cities of Miskolc, Debrecen and Szeged next to existing Superchargers in Győr (M1 highway), Sormás (M7 highway) and an upcoming SuC by Balástya outside of Szeged at the M5 highway. The latter is kind of questionable to me due to the Szeged one, but we'll see. The Szeged store is in the city, not by the highway.

Seems like a major rollout for a country this small, but there are a few reasons why this makes sense. Hungary is geographically at a spot where we are major transit route towards the Adriatic Sea, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, while we also get a lot of traffic between Western Europe and Romania, Greece, Turkey. So our highway network is an important transit route way beyond our own population. Also, the Miskolc and Debrecen ones are very much welcome as the Eastern part of the country is really poor in terms of charging and this should also help travelers to the Ukraine or Romania.

As these are not on the map yet, I made one for you guys:

 

[AZRI11]

A popular myth, but the reality is that by and large the Soviets only got the "scraps" left behind by Operation Paperclip, and they shut them out of their rocketry programme pretty quickly. None of what the Germans in the USSR worked on ever became part of an operational system and Germans were shut out of the rocketry programme there entirely by 1951.

I think a lot of people simply had trouble coming to terms with the notion that those "turnip farmers" in Russia were capable of achieving great technological feats. Much easier to just assert that, no actually, it was Germans in Russia who did it all Especially as the US had to increasingly rely on figures like von Braun to salvage their flailing rocketry programme.

 

[DRAW]

Your launch costs replace oceanic / ground shipping costs.

When launch costs are thousands of dollars per kg, it's a nonsensical idea. When launch costs are dozens of dollars per kg, though...

Could LEO Solar sattelites be precise enough to power ships?

 

[shrspeedblade]

IIRC, he was answering a question specifically about Fremont when he stated they could get to 10,000 per week. It seemed difficult at the time, and even less likely now, so possibly (maybe even probably) he mispoke and was referring to total production including Fremont plus GF3.

It would be entirely in line with past Elon predictions for them to hit that 10k/week number......late next year when Model Y line is ramping up!

 

[KarenRei]

Could LEO Solar sattelites be precise enough to power ships?

If the ships are hundreds of meters long You could power them with smaller receiver sizes (dozens of meters), but at lower efficiencies.

You can also launch solettas. Basically solar mirrors for adding or blocking light to a given area - far lighter than space-based solar (more like solar sails), so they can intercept much greater amounts of light. Even at current launch costs, there've nearly been multiple projects launched already to add solettas to brighten up arctic municipalities during the winter (in theory, even warming them to more temperate temperatures) or replacing electric street lights (like having a bright full moon every night), and one small test project actually launched (Znamya). The inverse could be done in equatorial climes, blocking part of the light to cool an area.

All pure sci-fi stuff, but actually economically plausible with Starship. And the larger the scale you go, the more "fantastical" the sort of things you can do, like boosting crop or timber yields with extra light and warmth, preventing glacial melt by casting shade, redirecting / dissipating hurricanes by altering sea surface temperatures ahead of their path to affect shear or competing vortices, etc etc. But of course, the more the questions you raise about the side effects of such geoengineering.

 

[gene]

Rental agencies here are also so incredibly backwards on EVs. Impossible to rent an EV from most of them. One place had one Zoe for rent, and didn't bother to tell customers that it can't charge at our (DC) fast chargers.

Everyone, every time they go on vacation, even if they ultimately have to settle for an ICE, should complain to the rental agency about their lack of good EV options.

In recent years I have switched over to using Turo rather than traditional rental companies. With Turo, EV's are available in most USA markets.

 

[KarenRei]

In recent years I have switched over to using Turo rather than traditional rental companies. With Turo, EV's are available in most USA markets.

Huh... I was about to say "Turo isn't available in Iceland", but apparently, they've changed that since I looked last, and now it is... hmm...

 

[gene]

Huh... I was about to say "Turo isn't available in Iceland", but apparently, they've changed that since I looked last, and now it is... hmm...

If I ever come to Iceland (I'd love to but I stopped flying a few years ago) I would be looking for your Tesla for rent on Turo.

 

[Curt Renz]

MarketWatch - 6 hours ago: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars

 

[sparcs]

In April 2015 Hibar had 140 employees
It looks like their battery manufacturing equipment expertise is focussed on electrolyte filling of cells, but they also have some additional expertise in the cell manufacturing process.
Seems like another Grohmann style acquisition to me (Grohmann also made cell manufacturing equipment btw). Hibar's focus on vertical integration also looks like a good fit for Elon.
“So, being vertically integrated means that we have every-thing from the pre-order, conceptualization, mechanical engineering design and electrical engineering design. We have our own integral machine shops where we make the parts for the machines right here in-house. We assemble them; we wire them; we program them, test and commission them – all essentially under one roof.”.

Do you think Hibar is enough for Tesla to make their own end to end high volume battery cell production? I imagine there are many more steps than just electrolyte filling and Tesla wanting to avoid a long and painful learning process.

I know from your previous posts about Panasonic that there was a logic to a Tesla buyout: Link to posts from July (multiple posts in that line of discussion)

Even still, there is probably a logic to at least a Tesla buyout of Panasonic's portion of GF1 to get full control of the factory

 

[kbM3]

It would be entirely in line with past Elon predictions for them to hit that 10k/week number......late next year when Model Y line is ramping up!

Actually no, because he broke it down to 8500 M3 and the rest SX.

 

[Navin]

Do you think Hibar is enough for Tesla to make their own end to end high volume battery cell production? I imagine there are many more steps than just electrolyte filling and Tesla wanting to avoid a long and painful learning process.

I know from your previous posts about Panasonic that there was a logic to a Tesla buyout: Link to posts from July (multiple posts in that line of discussion)

Even still, there is probably a logic to at least a Tesla buyout of Panasonic's portion of GF1 to get full control of the factory

Wonder if the recent credit lines opened up with China local bank have to deal with working capital for battery production via Hibar.. Perhaps they have lines setup as Fred Lambert speculated in their factor in China.. This could be huge if true.

 

[StealthP3D]

The Singapore government has quite famously been saying that EVs are overall worse for the environment than ICE, when you include construction / battery and hence there is close to zero penetration here (you see a few BYD taxis). Very smart and wealthy Singaporeans believe what the government says. I really wish there was a dedicated unit at Tesla to counter bad info, not just in the media but among policy makers around the world. It’s not just about the stock price...

It's funny you talk about Tesla needing to counter "bad info".

Your claim that the Singapore government has been actively discouraging EV adoption due to lifecycle emissions didn't ring true to me. So I tried to confirm or deny this by searching for statements from the Singapore government regarding EV lifecycle emissions. I couldn't find any. I'm not saying some official, somewhere in Singapore, didn't make such a claim, but I'm still looking for it.

What I found instead was that the Singapore Transport minister was in partnership with private companies to subsidize the installation of an EV charging network in Singapore. I also learned that residents are eligible for large tax breaks/purchase subsidies of clean vehicles.

Can you provide a link to what you are talking about? Because I found the Singapore government to be actively supporting the electrification of its cars.

 

[elasalle]

Hibar

 

[pyromatter]

 

[Prunesquallor]

MarketWatch - 6 hours ago: The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars

Interesting and disturbing for the US. It sounds like THIS time, there may be a strike resolution without dragging EVs into the middle of it. NEXT time may not be so lucky. US autoworkers are going to be yet another political force trying to slow EV adoption.

it sounds like they have no illusions regarding the lower manpower and different skill mix relating to assembly and servicing of EVs vs ICE vehicles.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Interesting and disturbing for the US. It sounds like THIS time, there may be a strike resolution without dragging EVs into the middle of it. NEXT time may not be so lucky. US autoworkers are going to be yet another political force trying to slow EV adoption.

it sounds like they have no illusions regarding the lower manpower and different skill mix relating to assembly and servicing of EVs vs ICE vehicles.

When the union plumbers got called in to plumb the Comcast skyscraper in Philadelphia they held up the works for two weeks because the plans called for waterless urinals.

This lower amount of copper lines was unacceptable so they sat on their hands until a "compromise" was negotiated. They'd run the copper lines just in case any future tenants wanted to use traditional urinals. So we now have a half mile of unused copper pipe behind the walls.

This the type of thing I believe Elon is trying to avoid.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Do you think Hibar is enough for Tesla to make their own end to end high volume battery cell production? I imagine there are many more steps than just electrolyte filling and Tesla wanting to avoid a long and painful learning process.

I know from your previous posts about Panasonic that there was a logic to a Tesla buyout: Link to posts from July (multiple posts in that line of discussion)

Even still, there is probably a logic to at least a Tesla buyout of Panasonic's portion of GF1 to get full control of the factory

I think to some extent this acquisition is going beyond what Panasonic can do - here Tesla is buying the company that makes the types of machines that Panasonic buys. Grohmann also has expertise in manufacturing cell manufacturing equipment and I'm sure Tesla has been working on many additional machine designs in-house for further steps in the cell manufacturing process. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla continues to bolt on expertise where it sees someone has an advantage though.

It would still make sense to buy Panasonic's GF1/cylindrical cell business I think, Panasonic will still have IP that's useful but most importantly they have 1,000s of experienced staff that can be used to train staff on Tesla's in-house cell manufacturing lines.

I'm starting to think that Tesla's "show and tell" battery investor day could involve unveiling a huge factory dedicated to building integrated cell manufacturing equipment - exactly the same strategy used at GF1 to get economies of scale on cell manufacturing - but here it would be to get economies of scale on manufacturing cell manufacturing equipment - hence significantly reducing the capex cost of new battery factories.

I like the idea of a factory with annual production of 500GWh of annual cell manufacturing equipment capacity - enough to supply the cell manufacturing equipment for five 100GWh Gigafactories every year. If the machines built by this “machine that builds the machine” last for 6 years, then in a way this could be considered a 3TWh factory.