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

[KarenRei]

Thanks for your efforts. The above listed Twitter accounts seem to belong to people who are not in the market for a Tesla, in fact they look like they could be short sellers.

... huh? Where are you getting that from? Looking over them, I think EnerTuition is actually a parody, and JasonHashmi not an owner, but the others are very much real. Here's the first several:

... and so on.

People these days (wrongly) turn to social media when they have issues, and that makes them vulnerable to this sort of manipulation campaign.

 

[Fact Checking]

You can estimate how much index money will be buying TSLA based on:
how much money is in S&P500 index fund
Tesla's market cap 60B
Total S&P 500 index market cap 27 trillion

At this price, TSLA should have a weight of 0.22%. So every $1 trillion of S&P 500 index fund should buy 6.6 million shares of TSLA. I couldn't find out exactly how much money is following S&P 500 index, how much is shadow following. I used 3T as a rough estimate, could be too high. Some shares will be pre-purchased by active funds to take advantage of index funds, some index funds will take time to gradually add. So we may not see a sudden purchase of 20 million shares.

Also, some funds could also be buying out-of-the-money call options, to limit the downsides of late buying, for a fixed price.

Say they could buy 66k contracts for a ~$10 premium and a $66m fixed cost, instead of the risky business of preemptively buying millions of shares in a company with a very volatile stock that might not get included in the S&P 500 after all.

 

[KarenRei]

This sort of thing is a problem:

This person had no clue that the person they're talking to is a short-seller. They had no clue that "#TeslaServiceIssues" is a carefully curated list of cherry-picked negative hashtags managed by short-sellers. It's a person who knew little of Tesla, had a relatively minor issue during an order, and the shorts successfully converted that minor issue into a fear that Tesla is horrible and customers are broadly dissatisfied (broadly contradicted by the Bloomberg survey) and got them to cancel their order. Thus profiting off of their subterfuge.

 

[Tslynk67]

I wonder which way we’ll go today. Macros looking ok, with futures slightly up.

Hard to tell how this stupid pedo trial will influence. Sure it has nothing to do with Tesla, but I only see negatives coming from it.

in any case, I’ve just transferred €10k to my trading account and I’ll be looking to add at $330 during the MMD

 

[uselesslogin]

1-2 customers every few days? Did you not click on the "tweets and replies" button? In the past 24 hours they've targeted:

EnerTuition on Twitter
Lindsay Ellis on Twitter (multiple tweets)
Michael Rihani  on Twitter
Edward Hodge on Twitter
Nancy Knupfer on Twitter
Carlo Costanzo on Twitter
Jason Hashmi on Twitter
Antoin on Twitter
TezLab Supercharger Bot on Twitter
Sunny Walia on Twitter
Shawn Nag on Twitter
Carol Scherer Murphy on Twitter
Mike Frank on Twitter
Miguel Colom on Twitter (multiple tweets)
greg stasko on Twitter
Alex Roy on Twitter (multiple tweets)
Shehzaad Nakhoda on Twitter (multiple tweets)
Shary Nassimi on Twitter
John S on Twitter
Ben on Twitter
Ahmed Farag on Twitter
Sean Gorman on Twitter
Steve Perkins on Twitter (the person they're targeting literally says they're cancelling their order)
Scot Work on Twitter (original tweet deleted)
JK4K on Twitter
Veritrope on Twitter
itsjustkev on Twitter
Scot Work on Twitter (original tweet deleted)
Nick Schwab on Twitter
Zero Carbon Capital on Twitter
Robert Scoble on Twitter
Can Quach on Twitter
KK B on Twitter

That's ***one day*** of their targets. They do this every single day.

I just went through and wrote tweets on each one informing them that they're being targeted, but I can't spend my whole life doing this. When you talk to their targets, 95% of the time the target doesn't realize that the people they're speaking to are short-sellers.

OK, but all I see on most of these threads is haters hurling insults at Tesla owners. Their own “service issues” tweet gets buried by tweets telling people they’ve been Musked and then calling the cars sugar boxes and calling the tweeter a Teslemming. I don’t know about you but I usually don’t take advice from people who insult me.

 

[TradingInvest]

This sort of thing is a problem:

View attachment 483824

This person had no clue that the person they're talking to is a short-seller. They had no clue that "#TeslaServiceIssues" is a carefully curated list of cherry-picked negative hashtags managed by short-sellers. It's a person who knew little of Tesla, had a relatively minor issue during an order, and the shorts successfully converted that minor issue into a fear that Tesla is horrible and customers are broadly dissatisfied (broadly contradicted by the Bloomberg survey) and got them to cancel their order. Thus profiting off of their subterfuge.

We should grab that guy's twitter history, then send him a warning for lawsuit. He is actively hurting potential customers and Tesla.

 

[Christine69420]

Norway:

November S/3/X: 24/453/69
October S/3/X: 19/122/29

YTD S/3/X: 1120/14436/1848

Source: Tesla Registration Stats

Tesla deliveries in Denmark 2019:
November S/3/X: 120/1852/78
October S/3/X: 6/23/4

Bilimp.dk - Vis nyhed
Bilimp.dk - Vis nyhed

PS. November deliveries for Germany do not seem to be out yet, for October they were 293, for Jan-Sept 9008.

Tesla deliveries Sweden 2019:
November S/3/X: 75/104/51, YTD=1067/3612/482
October S/3/X: 15/47/21, YTD=963/3537/431

(NB: The November YTD numbers do not seem to match November sales + October YTD numbers...)

Fortsatt uppgång på bilmarknaden i november - främst laddbara bilar ökar
Höjd prognos och fortsatt uppgång på bilmarknaden i oktober

 

[UncaNed]

If all owners of this Forum make a complain on twitter I think twitter delete this account
KerenRei I help you If you want every link you send on this post a make a complain to twitter to delete this account.

Won't another account just pop right up whack a mole style? better we all just contact those targeted?

 

[lklundin]

... huh? Where are you getting that from? Looking over them, I think EnerTuition is actually a parody, and JasonHashmi not an owner, but the others are very much real. Here's the first several:

View attachment 483814

View attachment 483815

View attachment 483816

View attachment 483817
View attachment 483818
View attachment 483819
View attachment 483820
View attachment 483821
View attachment 483822
View attachment 483823

... and so on.

People these days (wrongly) turn to social media when they have issues, and that makes them vulnerable to this sort of manipulation campaign.

I guess I was unlucky with _my_ spot checks of your list, these do not seem to be in the market for a Tesla:
Sean Gorman on Twitter
Veritrope on Twitter
itsjustkev on Twitter

 

[uselesslogin]

Won't another account just pop right up whack a mole style? better we all just contact those targeted?

Or do more of what TSLAQ alert bot does and insert positive information into their service issues stream. Either way, most people wouldn’t even tweet in the first place and will get most their information from current owners. We just need more owners.

edit: The best part is they won’t even know we are messing up their hashtag feed because they already blocked us all lol.

 

[ReflexFunds]

I wonder if we have any consensus here on exactly how Panasonic measures its 30GWh current and 35GWh final capacity?

Is this before or after scrap rates?

It would seem to make most sense for reported production rate to only count cells they are actually able to sell to Tesla, and total cell production before scrap is higher. This seems even more likely given that Elon also talks about these same numbers - Elon surely only cares how many good cells he actually receives to the Tesla side and has no interest in how many good + bad cells are initially produced on the Panasonic. Hard to know for sure though.​

Exactly what Wh do Tesla and Panasonic rate each individual cell and pack?

• Ricard measured 17.3wh while the UBS funded teardown measured 17.52wh for Model 3 cells.
• I think in a pack using the BMS cells can achieve higher wh than the individual tests however and the EPA documents suggest 18.229wh per cell and 17.724wh useable. The initial 2017 EPA documents show a useable capacity in a LR pack of 80.5kWh ("Battery Energy Capacity" of 230Ah x "Total Voltage of Battery Packs" of 350V) on page 3 here https://iaspub.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=42148&flag=1. They also show 78.3kwh useable capacity (this is the End-Soc number disclosed at the bottom of page 6 in the EPA document). We know from teardowns there were 4416 cells in a LR pack, hence the 18.229wh/17.724wh per cell numbers. And my assumption would be both Tesla and Panasonic rate the cells at 18.229wh.
• SR+ has 54.5kwh useable capacity (search 54523 in this document https://iaspub.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=48305&flag=1) but the total capacity is not disclosed. I would guess it is 56.0kwh total or 3072 cells (Carsonight claims 2976 but this would imply a total capacity lower than the useable capacity measured which doesn't make sense).

So in summary, I think Tesla rates LR packs at 80.5kwh and SR+ at 56.0kwh and Panasonic's 35GWh production target will be after scrap, and these are the numbers we should use when estimating cell constraints on Tesla production capacity. Anyone agree/disagree?

Further to this, @JPR007 on Twitter has been claiming Tesla recently upgraded its GF1 cell chemistry to higher energy densities over recent months. He is suggesting he has evidence to believe this, but I haven’t seen anything myself except a listed weight reduction to Model 3s sometime in November (which he didn't know about). The weight reduction is significant but could still be explained by other production changes such as adopting Model Y design changes. However the weight reduction together with JPR007's independent comments and with the abrupt ramp up in GWh capacity at GF1 during Q4 does make a chemistry change seem feasible - maybe towards 50% probability.

During November Tesla reduced the advertised weight of Model 3 AWD by 18kg and SR+ by 33kg.

Listed weight had never changed previously. The weight reduction could be made by changes to the body/powertrain or to cell count (and corresponding module packaging).
If the weight reduction is driven by cells/module size alone, that implies 196 cell reduction in AWD pack to 4224 and around 350 cell reduction in SR+ (given packs are likely a multiple of 96, this looks like either 288 cell reduction to 2784 or 384 cell reduction to 2688).
If this is the case, then it implies Tesla has indeed rolled out an energy density upgrade to cell chemistry in the SR+ packs of either 10.3% to 20.12wh per cell or 14.3% to 20.93wh per cell.
Given the weight reduction in the AWD pack is less, this suggests the pack capacity has actually increased either to 88kwh or 85kwh which would imply range of 352 miles and 340 miles respectively. If this is all true, I think it is likely Tesla is currently software limiting the range of the new AWD Model 3s until existing pre chemistry upgrade inventory is all delivered (to reduce need for discounting/osbourning older cars). So in the next month or two we should see an upgrade of AWD range to 340 miles or 350 miles of range. If this doesn't happen by early Jan I will reduce my probability estimate of a chemistry change. SR+ range should remain unchanged because cell count was reduced to keep kwh constant.​

I'll also note Tesla recently increased the range of both SR+ and AWD Model 3s in October and November, however I think this was almost certainly driven by powertrain efficiency increase rather than pack kwh usable capacity increase. However this improved efficiency may have been helped by rolling out the new chemistry/module size with reduced vehicle weight.

Model 3 SR+ was upgraded from to 133MPGe (25kWh/100 mile) with 240 miles range to 142MPGe (24kwh/100 mile) with 250 miles range in October. So a 6.8% range increase from a 4.2% increase in MPGe.

Model 3 AWD was upgraded from 116MPGe (29kWh/100 mile) with 310 miles range to 121MPGe (28kwh/100 mile) with 322 miles range in November. So a 4.3% range increase from a 3.9% increase in MPGe.

These numbers are very suggestive that the recent range upgrade was driven entirely by Powertrain efficiency and the battery useable capacity was unchanged.​

 

[lklundin]

Yes. I doubled checked that the numbers are as listed along with their definition. Model 3 market share for Denmark that month is about 40%, with e.g. the Kona getting a good 10%)

An additional DM points out to me, that the Denmark November deliveries _really_ seem like YTD numbers.

I looked at the similar spreadsheet for September. Unlike October and November, the September one has a tab for the month and an YTD-one:
September S/3/X: 19/437/12, YTD=87/1770/65,
Bilimp.dk - Vis nyhed

Compare that to two most recent months:
November S/3/X: 120/1852/78 (YTD!!!)
October S/3/X: 6/23/4

- and these sources _really_ do claim that the numbers are for those calendar months:
Bilimp.dk - Vis nyhed
Bilimp.dk - Vis nyhed

- so it could very well be that the November ones are YTD ones...

Edit: I called the person who created the spreadsheet on the phone:
The November numbers for Denmark are indeed YTD ones (as actually stated in the spreadsheet), although the web-page says differently. I have corrected it above in the numbers in this post.

 

[EVMeister]

Model 3 Short Range was upgraded from to 133MPGe (25kWh/100 mile) with 240 miles range to 142MPGe (24kwh/100 mile) with 250 miles range in October. So a 6.8% range increase from a 4.2% increase in MPGe.

There's no such thing!

 

[KarenRei]

Or do more of what TSLAQ alert bot does and insert positive information into their service issues stream

Bots are not allowed to use @Username tags unless the user has first contacted them. Bot replies will also tend to be invisible unless the user has first contacted them. One could get around this by not using the Twitter bot API, but rather writing a bot that uses GET / POST requests, but needless to say Twitter highly frowns on that.

Either way, most people wouldn’t even tweet in the first place

Lots and lots and lots of people do.

edit: The best part is they won’t even know we are messing up their hashtag feed because they already blocked us all lol.

A bot that tweets positive things using the short hashtags?

https://twitter.com/TslaqA/

Downside: Twitter highly deemphasizes bot posts in hashtag feeds. That said, they can be boosted by people following the bot and liking / retweeting its posts.

 

[KarenRei]

Also: completely offtopic, but today I just discovered the sport of extreme ironing for the first time, and my day is already complete.

 

[KarenRei]

Won't another account just pop right up whack a mole style? better we all just contact those targeted?

Do you have the time to do it daily? By all means, go ahead.

If people become repeat offenders, in theory Twitter will use IP blocks and the like to stop them.

 

[KarenRei]

We should grab that guy's twitter history, then send him a warning for lawsuit. He is actively hurting potential customers and Tesla.

By all means, take point. Start a GoFundMe, contact an attorney with a focus in securities law about the short-and-distort campaign, and you'll get tons of donations to the cause (including from me).

Things don't happen unless someone takes point. Nobody ever wants to.

 

[Fact Checking]

I wonder if we have any consensus here on exactly how Panasonic measures its 30GWh current and 35GWh final capacity?

Is this before or after scrap rates?
It would seem to make most sense for reported production rate to only count cells they are actually able to sell to Tesla, and total cell production before scrap is higher. This seems even more likely given that Elon also talks about these same numbers - Elon surely only cares how many good cells he actually receives to the Tesla side and has no interest in how many good + bad cells are initially produced on the Panasonic. Hard to know for sure though.

I agree that there's a discrepancy here that we don't understand.

Let's attempt to estimate this from Tesla's Q3 reported figures side, assuming that all Model 3 cells and all PowerWall cells were sourced from Panasonic's 2170 cells at GF1:

• Q3 update letter: 477 MWh storage deployed in Q3, up from 415 MWh in Q2.
• production & deliveries report: 78,837 Model 3's produced. If all are Model SR+ then this is ~4,300 MWh, if all are Model 3 LR pack based then this is ~6,300 MWh. Assuming a 60%/40% mix this is ~5,100 MWh.
• Mystery GF3 battery packs leak from CleanTechnica, if there were 7,000 SR+ of the, would be another 385 MWh of cells.

Total Q3 cell consumption was thus, with realistic product mix assumptions and the GF3 speculation included, 5,962 MWh - annualized to 23.8 GWh.

That's too low IMHO, if we back-calculate end-of-Q3 Panasonic output of 30 GWh by 20% then the Q2 exit rate would have been 25 GWh annualized - and an average production ramp and output for Q3 of somewhere around 27-28 GWh and way too many cells and 3-4 GWh of cells nowhere to go.

So either Panasonic ramped from 25 GWh to 30 GWh at the end of Q3 in an almost binary fashion (hard to imagine this in a complex factory), or there's something going on we don't understand.

In any case, it's hard to make these numbers work at all without assuming around 5-7% of scrap rate - but I do agree with you that it's almost absurd to report production output that gets scrapped a day later when it fails in testing...

 

[ReflexFunds]

I agree that there's a discrepancy here that we don't understand.

Let's attempt to estimate this from Tesla's Q3 reported figures side, assuming that all Model 3 cells and all PowerWall cells were sourced from Panasonic's 2170 cells at GF1:

• Q3 update letter: 477 MWh storage deployed in Q3, up from 415 MWh in Q2.
• production & deliveries report: 78,837 Model 3's produced. If all are Model SR+ then this is ~4,300 MWh, if all are Model 3 LR pack based then this is ~6,300 MWh. Assuming a 60%/40% mix this is ~5,100 MWh.
• Mystery GF3 battery packs leak from CleanTechnica, if there were 7,000 SR+ of the, would be another 385 MWh of cells.

Total Q3 cell consumption was thus, with realistic product mix assumptions and the GF3 speculation included, 5,962 MWh - annualized to 23.8 GWh.

That's too low IMHO, if we back-calculate end-of-Q3 Panasonic output of 30 GWh by 20% then the Q2 exit rate would have been 25 GWh annualized - and an average production ramp and output for Q3 of somewhere around 27-28 GWh and way too many cells and 3-4 GWh of cells nowhere to go.

So either Panasonic ramped from 25 GWh to 30 GWh at the end of Q3 in an almost binary fashion (hard to imagine this in a complex factory), or there's something going on we don't understand.

In any case, it's hard to make these numbers work at all without assuming around 5-7% of scrap rate - but I do agree with you that it's almost absurd to report production output that gets scrapped a day later when it fails in testing...

Only a small difference but at 80.5KWh and 56.0KWh for LR/SR+ it would be 6,346KWh at 100% LR and 4,415KWh at 100% SR+. I actually think the mix is more like 50-50 which puts total Q3 production including storage/GF3 at 6,188Kwh or 24.75GWh annualised.

The 30GWh was as of late October according to Reuters, not September. So I think these numbers do all add up, particulary if Panasonic achieved an abrupt production rate step up (in GWh terms) in September/October from an energy density increase.

 

[Fact Checking]

The 30GWh was as of late October according to Reuters, not September. So I think these numbers do all add up, particulary if Panasonic achieved an abrupt production rate step up (in GWh terms) in September/October from an energy density increase.

Ok, if that's true, then a binary step-up function would in fact be the 99% probable scenario: there is no way to introduce a new chemistry 'gradually' - it takes a lot of time to validate the new chemistry, and when it's introduced all new cells are using it and are not mixed with old cells.

It's a 100% all-or-nothing for a given production line - and given that production lines share material preparatory steps it's also probable that it's a 100% all-or-nothing chemistry switch in the whole factory.

So this would support the energy density change hypothesis.