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

[Singuy]

Every word of this.

That said, I do think Tesla will start out GF3 with purchased cells, on short-term contracts. But I've been saying for a long time that they'll cut out Panasonic out of future products the very first chance that they get. And that chance may be coming sooner than I expected. I don't see them necessarily forcing Panasonic out for existing purchase agreements (at least in the near to mid term), for capital reasons - I just see them not getting picked up for future supply needs, once Tesla feels that it's in a position to make its own cells.

Tesla's ultimate objective is to own giant factories that buy only raw materials (in mass quantities), produce only finished products (at lightning speed), and retain all of the profit therein for themselves. Sharing is not in their nature.

Who wants to wager a bet that Grohmann has been working on cylindrical cell lines?

Also lets not forget Panasonic is making deals with all other automakers, can potentially have more bargaining power in a cell limited world against Tesla.

Toyota and Panasonic Form Joint Venture to Make EV Batteries

 

[Tslynk67]

Option_Sniper on Twitter

 

[AlexS]

Also lets not forget Panasonic is making deals with all other automakers, can potentially have more bargaining power in a cell limited world against Tesla.

Toyota and Panasonic Form Joint Venture to Make EV Batteries

Toyota deal is not for cylindrical cells it's for pouch type batteries.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Toyota deal is not for cells it's for pouch type batteries.

Pouch cells to be precise. There isn't too much difference between pouch cells and cylindrical cells in the guts of the manufacturing process. The major steps are the same.

 

[humbaba]

Agreed. This is the best way to lock down the IP. The only reason to purchase the company rather than just licencing the tech is to stop other from using it.

No, another reason is to make sure someone else can't buy the company and block you from using it. I'm not expert on this behavior, but Apple has used prior acquisitions to ensure some measure of control over something they decide to rely on, even without any intent to lock others out.

 

[mongo]

No, another reason is to make sure someone else can't buy the company and block you from using it. I'm not expert on this behavior, but Apple has used prior acquisitions to ensure some measure of control over something they decide to rely on, even without any intent to lock others out.

Yah,
@CorneliusXX
License fees are lost profit margin. Tech you don't own is risk. Suppliers are harder to work with than internal groups. Buy the company, get the tech, modify it to fit you needs, make the most money. Tesla's part purchasing is way more than the $200 something million they are paying. That isn't even one quarter's R&D budget.

 

[avoigt]

Lots of evidence now to suggest VW are serious on EVs.
1) Sharing MEB platform to increase scale
2) Buying Powerpacks - that takes guts/loss of pride
3) Taycan, Audi, cheaper VWs - got all bases covered
4) Moving away from hybrid for Golf GTi - back to gas only. They aren't going to kid themselves with hybrid stepping stone for too long.

Not a bad effort compared to the rest of the pack.

Allow me to be a little bid more critical here. So far VW did not bring something on the road that makes a difference. The eGolf has high sales in EU which is great but at cold weather condition like we have not driving about 110 km/h which not fast you have a range of about 87 miles. I guess you agree that's far from decent.

Sharing MEB is a sign that they do not really know how how to managed the CapEx and a good move but a sign to be serious is something different. VW has a long history of sharing parts and services with the company to reduce costs the MEB platform is nothing new or remarkable.

Buying Powerpacks is great news but this is Electrify America and not VW directly. Lets not mix that up. At the end of the day they did not have a chance anyway as none in the market except Tesla can provide the packs they need for EA to keep it affordable. So ist cost reduction again.

Last not least I have not seen a single VW BEV on the road that can compete against Tesla. Allow me to put Porsche and Audi separate as they are independent companies within the group and BTW they need first to prove that they can deliver on their promises. So far the e-tron seems not to cut it not to mention that VW has the requirement for mass production to make money and both the e-tron and Taycan will not be mass produced cars.

A huge investment in Battery technology and building battery know-how as well as a production facility would make a difference. Also I said it before that VW should take the smartest people within VW and start a NewCo financed with $50bn. The culture within VW is not good to compete against Tesla and I fear that they make one strategic mistake after the other.

Why did they not decided to keep VW as the one for ICE until that business die and have a NewCo just and only focussing on BEV and with their growth take over parts of VW and grow into it.

To have Managers who are measured on both ICEs and BEV has been proven to not work in the past so why should it in the future?

I may be wrong but that are my thoughts.

 

[lklundin]

No, because that's not going to happen. Too many people seem to have zero understanding of capacitors yet are speculating about their impact.

My use case is regenerative braking using both 3P motors at full power (211 kW + 147 kW = 358 kW [Wikipedia]) in increments of 1 second. Doing this with the battery alone would lead to a charge-rate of 358 kW/80 kWh = 4.475/h, which seems a rather unhealthy charge rate for the battery and one that could not be fixed simply by increasing the battery capacity by a realistic amount.

Instead of using the battery alone, a bank of capacitors could be used in parallel with the battery. The battery could for example charge with its maximum voltage (350V) and the maximum current allowed for its charging cables, 525 A, i.e. 183 kW. Let's assume the battery can manage regenerative braking at that power with no problem (i.e. the battery is far from fully charged).

So to be optimally useful the capacitors have to be able to take a charge at 358 kW - 183 kW = 175 kW.

In the absence of losses each second corresponds to 1s * 175 kW = 175 kJ, ca. 0.05 kWh that the capacitors need to store.

In order to absorb the 175 kW, 12 kg of capacitors with a (state-of-the-art?) power density of 15 kW/kg is needed.
This aggressive braking (followed by acceleration at the same power that would not be achievable with the given battery), would come at the cost of 12 kg of capacitors.

Let's say we want to do that for 2 seconds at a time (on a race-track, I guess).

Energy densities go up to about 15 Wh/kg, but with 12 kg required, an energy density of 8 Wh/kg is sufficient.

Ultracapacitors typically have low densities, i.e. they take up a lot of space. So in addition to the added weight (e.g. 12 kg), a good amount of space is required as well.

For the required energy and power density, I am unsure what the corresponding volumetric densities would be, but I would assume that e.g. 25 L of space could be found or made in lower sections of the Model 3 body.

I may be wrong or unrealistic, but I am surely looking forward to learning what Tesla will do with their newly acquired competences.

PS. Edited typos...

 

[lascavarian]

They'd go to power-oriented li-ion cells, which have several times higher power output per kilogram. Yes, they're more expensive per kWh, but nowhere near as expensive for a given amount of extra power output as ultracapacitors. And have far, far higher energy density to boot (albeit less than energy-oriented li-ion cells),

For the existing EV problem of low temperature performance, would a power-oriented portion of cells solve the performance issue? I get that there are a lot of trade offs. I agree the MXWL has interesting battery tech but I don't know if what they are researching helps low temp performance. It may.

I would gladly give up my frunk space for a "cold weather module" if it could improve low temp range fade.

It is very frustrating to see regenerative breaking diminished when I would love all that potential power be recovered instead of burning up my brake pads to no good use. Even if regen energy could be captured to just warm the pack it would be helpful it seems to me. Seems it might be a thing with the Semi's too.

Also, this could temp issue is going to be a thing on Mars as well. So I see this purchase as potentially multi beneficial.

 

[ReflexFunds]

I think it's closer to 100% chance that Tesla acquired Maxwell for the dry electrode technology. My thoughts on why here.

But you combine this along with Tesla's recent battery cell patent (since when did Tesla start patenting battery cell technology?), and you begin to wonder when/if Tesla will start to make their own battery cells and cut out Panasonic. Tesla has been kinda cagey on where the battery cells for their China plant will come from. My guess is that Tesla will make their own cells in their own China plant WITHOUT Panasonic. Do note that Tesla has completed buying all the cells from Panasonic from their initial battery supplier contract. I wonder how long the new Gigafactory 1 battery cell supplier agreement lasts?

I agree that Elon was always going to consider taking cell and cathode production in-house eventually, particularly for next generation batteries. Vertical integration to increase margin and increase design flexibility has always been such a key part of his business model for Tesla and Spacex. I expect Tesla to stick predominantly with Panasonic and Sumitomo for Y and GF3 though.

One thing in Tesla's 3Q18 10-Q made me start to think their first move could be sooner rather than later, they noted that the $2.5-3bn capex budgets for 2019 and 2020 are contingent on maintaining "our current strategy of using a partner to manufacture cells":
"Considering the pipeline of new products planned at this point, and consistent with our current strategy of using a partner to manufacture cells, as well as considering all other infrastructure growth and expansion of Gigafactories 1, 2 and 3, we currently estimate that capital expenditures will be between $2.5 to $3.0 billion annually for the next two fiscal years.

 

[humbaba]

Having a strong pace of innovation is actually a moat itself. Incumbent automakers lost their ability to really innovate and even more to build a culture to accelerate innovation.

As a German I can even testify that to bring ideas and innovate is not rewarded and supported but considered as dangerous and counterproductive .

That sounds all really sad reading what I just wrote but unfortunately not only my opinion.

About Patents : All Patents are Open to the Public to be read once filed and approved but you can’t copy them . Since Tesla does allow you to you won’t have an issue .

Here is the trick with Patents that most people have a hard time to understand:

If you have found a real innovation you believe almost impossible or very hard to copy then simply don’t file it!

Be assured and I can list them to you that Tesla has a lot of moats they take care off no one really knows much about or talks about it.

That BTW is not a contradiction to what Elon said about Patents and Moats.

And, interestingly, doing so still results in legal protection (trade secrets) -- though the extent and nature differs from patents. I'm not a lawyer, but keeping information as a trade secret seriously limits your legal recourse. But, for a company like Tesla that doesn't seem all that interested in suing competitors, it could make a lot of sense. OTOH, if it ever came out that this was their practice then it would make Tesla a target for serious espionage.

That kind of makes sense. I believe the main reason Tesla patents anything is not to keep it to themselves but to prevent other companies from patenting Tesla's innovations whos motive is to slow or stop the pace of innovation in electric car, battery, and energy products. Splitting hairs a little here, but wouldn't Tesla want to patent even things no one else can do to prevent some company from identifying the innovation, patenting it, and then forbidding Tesla from doing it?

The thing is, prior art can be used to invalidate patents. If Tesla tried to submarine their inventions through not filing for patent protection and keeping them as trade secrets, if someone else tried to patent it they could present their own prior art. Tesla would not be able to secure a patent themselves (I believe the US was the last to move to first-to-file), but neither could anyone else.

 

[Buckminster]

OT
Maxwell:
This thread was begun earlier.

I predicted Supercapacitor announcement for Tesla in 2022 here. I'm sticking with that. Clearly they're not ready yet. Maxwell is a small part of the puzzle with cheap graphene (I am Buckminster - I am Groot) the main need. If battery tech only doubles in performance, supercapacitors might have a chance. The roadster would be even better without the need for 200 kWh in acceleration. 380 leading edge staff on the west coast plus electrode tech - what is not to like. Also, in 10 years, could Maxwell assist with embedding a thin supercap into a solar panel for instance?

 

[MP3Mike]

380 leading edge staff on the west coast

Is their entire staff on the west coast? How many people are in the other locations? (Switzerland, Germany, Shanghai, and Korea)

Not to mention their manufacturing center is in Arizona.

 

[RobStark]

I doubt it. That commercial was intended to make people wait for the future for an Audi EV. Think of the explicit message - don't buy an EV now, you'll die. Just keep dreaming, it'll come eventually.

The literal message at the end is you can reserve an Etron SUV right now.

Deliveries start in Q2 2019.

 

[Buckminster]

Allow me to be a little bid more critical here. So far VW did not bring something on the road that makes a difference. The eGolf has high sales in EU which is great but at cold weather condition like we have not driving about 110 km/h which not fast you have a range of about 87 miles. I guess you agree that's far from decent.

Sharing MEB is a sign that they do not really know how how to managed the CapEx and a good move but a sign to be serious is something different. VW has a long history of sharing parts and services with the company to reduce costs the MEB platform is nothing new or remarkable.

Buying Powerpacks is great news but this is Electrify America and not VW directly. Lets not mix that up. At the end of the day they did not have a chance anyway as none in the market except Tesla can provide the packs they need for EA to keep it affordable. So ist cost reduction again.

Last not least I have not seen a single VW BEV on the road that can compete against Tesla. Allow me to put Porsche and Audi separate as they are independent companies within the group and BTW they need first to prove that they can deliver on their promises. So far the e-tron seems not to cut it not to mention that VW has the requirement for mass production to make money and both the e-tron and Taycan will not be mass produced cars.

A huge investment in Battery technology and building battery know-how as well as a production facility would make a difference. Also I said it before that VW should take the smartest people within VW and start a NewCo financed with $50bn. The culture within VW is not good to compete against Tesla and I fear that they make one strategic mistake after the other.

Why did they not decided to keep VW as the one for ICE until that business die and have a NewCo just and only focussing on BEV and with their growth take over parts of VW and grow into it.

To have Managers who are measured on both ICEs and BEV has been proven to not work in the past so why should it in the future?

I may be wrong but that are my thoughts.

My intent was to compare VW to Toyota etc., not Tesla. Do you agree that VW are best placed to be number 2 behind Tesla at the moment? if not, who?

 

[KarenRei]

The stock seems determined to fade into the red by the end :Þ Trying at least... not much time left.

ED: Well, at least it was in the green. Glad I pared my theta back... +$0,68 days don't cut it when you're leveraged.

 

[ZachF]

I want 100π close

 

[ZachF]

I want 100π close

denied

 

[SO16]

Here is the trick with Patents that most people have a hard time to understand:

If you have found a real innovation you believe almost impossible or very hard to copy then simply don’t file it!

Elon has said this very thing in regards to SpaceX.

 

[EVNow]

+$0,68 days don't cut it when you're leveraged.

Not even that - its the falling IV. Infact falling IV is accounting for 90% of my Call's fall in value. But, of course, little movement in stock price contributes to low IV.