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

[anthonyj]

Happy holidays everyone! Sorry for the absence, been a crazy year but should be back for good now. As it relates to Tesla, think this is just the beginning. Lot of good things on the come next year.

PS I was right about this being a generational opportunity at 260! Just turned into a multigenerational opportunity at 180 first.

Thanks Cathie! Happy holidays!

 

[pnungesser]

Seems great until you realize that would devastate the other ecosystems just like the Colorado getting stripped and the famous and beutiful Colorado delta becoming a desert. You never want to shift water from one watershed to another. Period. Every part of the ecosystem is dependent upon those moisture conditions.

The answer is to move to where the water is, not to bring water to the F'ing desert. Chicago has lots and lots of water. That's a good start but hardly unique.

One of the earliest environmental lawsuits was regarding the Chicago river when St Louis sued Chicago because Chicago had turned the river around backwards and had it run from Chicago to the Mississippi instead of Lake Michigan. It kept the lake clean enough to drink and polluted the Mississippi which was the source of St Louis drinking water. They lost but Chicago eventually cleaned up the river. Lake Michigan is to this day very very clean and Chicago has a near endless supply of clean potable water. St Louis got revenge (ok, here comes a joke) they opened a bottle plant, put the Mississippi water into dark brown bottles and shipped it back to Chicago- they called it Budweiser.

Let's not forget the California water project which brought water for the northern reservoirs and the dams in the Sierra to southern Cali and the central valley. Whatever you might think about that, Cali and the rest of the US would be completely different without that project. A huge percentage of US crops are dependent upon that system. I'm glad I didn't have to write the Environmental Impact Statement for either of those projects. No way either could be construed today, even with Trump's EPA.

 

[aubreymcfato]

Thanks Cathie! Happy holidays!

Wood!?!?

 

[jerry33]

This is 100% speculation:

Tesla could consider St. Louis for production.

1. True manufacturing is HQ here. True is a large manufacturer of heavy stainless commercial kitchen equipment. (Cybertruck skill sets)

2. 2 car plants have closed in the past 15 years - Fenton (GM I believe, demolished) and Hazelwood (Ford, unknown condition). This implies both a working class and infrastructure to move automobiles.

3. St. Louis is (very) desperate for economic growth and has already shown it’s willing to throw in the kitchen sink for large companies (Amazon).

Just $.02

I recall having to chase down about 100 trucks to inspect the tires because the St. Louis factory workers left water in the tires (well over a gallon per tire). Had to scrap most of the tires. I'm not sure I would want that quality of worker.

 

[BenPrice]

I recall having to chase down about 100 trucks to inspect the tires because the St. Louis factory workers left water in the tires (well over a gallon per tire). Had to scrap most of the tires. I'm not sure I would want that quality of worker.

We’re good at watching baseball and drinking beer! Ha.

Did their air dryers to compressors fail? I’ve seen some cool air dryer failures - one time it took 2 days to drain a factories (Intralox, New Orleans) tanks and lines. Prior to draining, using a compressed air line was like a pressure washer, lol.

Prior to my current aerospace gig in Redmond I worked in nuclear medicine manufacturing in St. Louis. We have some very talented people!

 

[jerry33]

We’re good at watching baseball and drinking beer! Ha.

Did their air dryers to compressors fail? I’ve seen some cool air dryer failures - one time it took 2 days to drain a factories (Intralox, New Orleans) tanks and lines. Prior to draining, using a compressed air line was like a pressure washer, lol.

The tires were left outside uncovered--and it rained.

 

[Krugerrand]

Hmm...well I guess it will have to be like Elysium only much lower. I will have my anti gravity party right over your island.

Ship wreck survivers welcome of course.

Okay, I will purchase airspace and put gun turrets in the build plan.

 

[TradingInvest]

I always wonder about this. With such a huge float and so many shorts on the verge of margin calls or worse, couldn't a large institutional lender or a wildly wealthy individual like Larry Ellison legally induce a major short squeeze and profit wildly from it?

There are way too many potential lenders. Only if lenders act together, then there is a chance for quick squeeze. Ellison alone will make no difference. What he could have done is to buy another 20 million shares when the stock was low. I don't understand why he didn't do it. That's his chance to become the second richest person in the world.

When all shares go into strong hands, we don't need a quick squeeze. Shorts can play with themselves. Collectively they are on the hook to find those shares down the road. We probably are in this situation now.

 

[TradingInvest]

Don't forget the water shortage. It seems very unlikely that further major growth would be possible for Reno. Substantial output increases might be were continuous efficiency improvements materialize. Probably the most important area of improvement needed is reducing need for water. Housing supply increases are obviously easy to do physically, but from whence comes the water supply? Water rights and supply have plagued this region, including Southern California since before I was born. Above all issues California Central Valley agriculture looms large.
The Reno/Sparks area gets it's water from the Truckee River:
Water Rights | Truckee Meadows Water Authority
That cryptic paper illustrates the issue. Zero new construction is possible there without acquiring water rights. Water rights actually do not convey the right to water if there is not enough to go around. The odds of inadeqaute flows from the Truckee River are rising very rapidly:
Science in the Truckee River Basin
Note that the Sierra Nevada snowpack is the primary source for Lake Tahoe which feeds the Truckee River.

Without going into excessive detail there will not be any substantial increase in water rights for GF-1 nor will there be for and major residential projects. Major conservation efforts might allow more growth, but without them any expansion will be self-defeating. There is no real disagreement about the crisis brewing but there is enormous disagreement about how to deal with it.

The first paragraph talked about Southern California only because almost the entirety of California (SFO East and South) and Nevada depends ultimately on snowpack. Wildfires happen due in large part to very dry conditions. Those happen when snowpack is inadequate to feed the rivers, streams and soil.

To be very clear about my opinions, I think both Fremont and Sparks are very challenged to have any substantial growth because of water limitations. The planning horizon for these projects is at least two decades. Thus I expect all significant growth for Tesla to be located in areas that are relatively resilient to climate change.

Is anybody in any doubt about this?
Here's a recent article about the issue, although it speaks almost entirely to the Las Vegas issues:
Water scarcity in Nevada hits 'critical mass,' state director of natural resources says

Water problem can be solved by distilling sea water. Elon mentioned it only costs 10 cents per ton. He is correct regarding cost, he probably looked into this. I'm sure he can find ways to ship the water: pipe, tunnel, truck... then re-use the water. If he decides to build a tunnel to transport water to dry places, that's going to change a lot of things, not just for Tesla usage. New cities could be built.

 

[elasalle]

Informative twitter thread by Sparks/GF1 'outsider' Carsonight:

TL;dr If his infomation is accurate, GF1 now has ~36 GWh/yr installed capacity (13 lines capable of 400K cells/line/day).

Njoy!

Carsonight 14 hours ago

I've saw a string of tweets concerning Tesla and Panasonic at GF1. I have followed this up close, with friends and family working on both sides. Some of these people I have known since they were infants, and most of what I know comes from listening to them talk shop.

Pana and Tesla had growing pains. But the majority were Tesla's according to Tesla's own SEC filing. Tsla mentions problems with its responsibilities more than Pana's issues.

Panasonic began trial runs in February with their new machinery. There were 4 lines of 14 machine each than, and each line had a theoretical capacity of ~300k cells per day. Initial cell production was powerwalls in Hawaii and Somoa, if I remember right. In June all production...

...was switched to cells for cars, which is why the cells for Hornsdale came from Samsung. There was tittering then about a break in the relationship with Tesla and Panasonic, but this was all planned. By fall 2017 it was clear something was wrong. The cells Panasonic was...

...producing were piling up by the millions, filling than empty spaces in GF1. The third party (I've heard described as Rube Goldberg) machinery Tesla installed to turn cells into batteries was malfunctioning. By winter 2017 Panasonic was lending their own employees to Tesla...

...to help sort things out. When not enough volunteered they were "voluntold". Tesla was in breach of contract and Panasonic could have walked, but instead they acted more like a real partner. Tesla went on a hiring spree and used brute force to overcome the shortcomings of the..

...third party machinery. Meanwhile Tesla tapped the German engineering firm Grohmann, whom Tesla had aquired the previous year, to create a fix. This they did, with a series of machines referred to as the Grohmann line.
By late spring/early summer 2018 Tesla outpaced the...

...Panasonic production, catching them flat footed. Panasonic responded in 2 ways, by installing more lines and, beginning around September 2018, installing lines capable of 400k cells per day. These were the last 3 of 13 lines. By early 2019 Panasonic was in process of...

...retrofitting the first 10 lines to bring them up to speed. Panasonic now has 13 lines capable of production in excess of 5 million cells per day.
Meantime on the Tesla side, I am told the second Grohmann line is going in, each line capable of a battery every 90 seconds...

...and using far less manpower. Headcount was reduced by attrition and by reassigning employees to other areas. Tesla is now in full hiring mode again; one of the people going through the process is my little grand daughter's mother.
As to capacities, I've seen a lot of numbers..

...bandied about. The numbers I accept as accurate are these:
When GF1 is finished, Panasonic has been telling employees there will be 77 lines of cell machines, with a 78th for training. Planned capacity back in 2017 was thus 150 GWh of cells per year, which checks if you...

...do the math. With the current cell lines GF1 will have 200 GWh of cells per year, if and when GF1 is finished. There lies a rub.
Reno is labor constrained like you wouldn't believe. Nobody, but nobody, saw what the local press call the Tesla effect, the flood of businesses...

...that poured into the area just because Tesla was here. Both Tesla and Panasonic are struggling to fill posi8even though they have some of the best salary and benefits in the area. Tesla is wise to source cells elsewhere.
I've been listening to stories of a rift between Tesla..

...and Panasonic as long as they have been here; after all, it is the shawties favorite dream and I grow tired of chasing such rumors down.. All I can say is that both Tesla and Panasonic have made it clear from the start that their's is not an exclusive relationship, that...

...neither company wants to be exclusively dependent on the other. That said, when the chips were down Panasonic acted more as a partner than a supplier, even though they have a lease on their area and could have made battery cells for anyone else, and this should be remembered.

All of the above was off the top of my head, and I did not bother digging up exact dates. I missed interesting details also, like Tesla switching 2 lines to Powerwalls for Puerto Rico following the hurricane. Now that I have off my chest I'm going to lay down and take a nap,...

...one of the privileges of being retired. ​

[End of Twitter Thread]

Wasn't EM in Japan recently? .. cheers!!

 

[Unpilot]

Okay, I will purchase airspace and put gun turrets in the build plan.

Phhtt.... worthless against anti gravity party barges...even a cat should know that.

 

[UncaNed]

Or to make new water from seawater with solar or wind.

There's PLENTY of clean, fresh water at Sparks 24/7 passing overhead, there for the taking. I'm not sure exactly how... Some sort of condensation technology is needed. There are many experimental systems- plastic leafy condensation structures, underground cooling tubs... Add the Elon tech magic to those systems, and a worldwide problem could be solved.

In the 1960's, cloud seeding was the new big thing. Too bad it hasn't really panned out for everyday use.

 

[nativewolf]

Let's not forget the California water project which brought water for the northern reservoirs and the dams in the Sierra to southern Cali and the central valley. Whatever you might think about that, Cali and the rest of the US would be completely different without that project. A huge percentage of US crops are dependent upon that system. I'm glad I didn't have to write the Environmental Impact Statement for either of those projects. No way either could be construed today, even with Trump's EPA.

Yeah those systems that turned the incredible river into a saline wasteland, that killed off an entire fishery, that has the entire farming ecosystem at a knife's edge due to salinization. Yes..oh it was great. Pretty soon it will completely fail because it is so freaking wasteful. It is a horrid bit of water engineering. Badly priced, heavily heavily subsidized like no other industry out there. All so people in NYC can eat lettuce in January and strawberries in February. Lots of better and less harmful ways to accomplish that objective, it wouldn't just be the environmental aspects that would kill those projects it would have been the Cost Benefit analysis (if they had been accounting for all costs). Maybe you can tell...I'm no fan of the california ag industry's subsidy and environmental costs .

 

[M3Rider]

Water problem can be solved by distilling sea water. Elon mentioned it only costs 10 cents per ton. He is correct regarding cost, he probably looked into this. I'm sure he can find ways to ship the water: pipe, tunnel, truck... then re-use the water. If he decides to build a tunnel to transport water to dry places, that's going to change a lot of things, not just for Tesla usage. New cities could be built.

My thoughts exactly

Borrow Chinese GF3 construction workers, build a few desalination plants in CA, dig Boring tunnels to transport it and screw the water rights

 

[lascavarian]

The answer is to move to where the water is, not to bring water to the F'ing desert. Chicago has lots and lots of water. That's a good start but hardly unique.

One of the earliest environmental lawsuits was regarding the Chicago river when St Louis sued Chicago because Chicago had turned the river around backwards and had it run from Chicago to the Mississippi instead of Lake Michigan. It kept the lake clean enough to drink and polluted the Mississippi which was the source of St Louis drinking water. They lost but Chicago eventually cleaned up the river. Lake Michigan is to this day very very clean and Chicago has a near endless supply of clean potable water. St Louis got revenge (ok, here comes a joke) they opened a bottle plant, put the Mississippi water into dark brown bottles and shipped it back to Chicago- they called it Budweiser.

Thanks very much for your reply and great joke. These concerns are valid and need to be resolved. Messing with nature is really unwise in almost all situations.

The problem is that we already _have_ greatly messed with nature. It seems to be so much of what we do. We have burned the forests to make iron and heat our homes. Depleted the ocean whales to make light, burned the dead (oil) to make energy (ok maybe overly dramatic).

My musing would not remove water from the midwest, there is already (in the works-future) an increase in global humidity which means far more fresh water falling on certain areas. Climate alterations ongoing for more than a hundred years have already started a change that will likely (not certain but highly likely) cause drought in certain areas and flooding in others.

This is not nature's work but humanities work. As you suggest that humanity should move to where the best resources are (the water is in this case) but that will be potentially destructive also in the form of vast expansions of housing and highways and all that goes with that so I am musing about a solution that would avoid moving millions of people to an area where they are likely not welcomed.

What I am musing about is accepting that humidity is rising and additional rainfall is coming to certain areas. Where I am, our annual rainfall has been up about 50% over the last 2 years by my personal measurement (and rusting my 420 mailbox!!). Our bridges and streets are melting away to be replaced by insufficient replacements costing a LOT of money.

Where this excess humidity results in excess rainfall, we could consider moving that damaging water to where it could be exchanged for something (energy) that can be used to run our basement dehumidifiers etc

Correspondingly, where there is a drying cloudless sky coming, we should use that excess solar resource to make the energy that will be welcomed by areas encountering more cloudy weather.

What I am musing about probably isn't the answer but it is worth pondering. Again, thanks for your comments because we are wise to be thinking about these things and what the options might be.

 

[TradingInvest]

Even if SP is $4204.20 (double 420) by the end of the week, I'm not selling a single share. I'd probably buy one to celebrate again

When we reach $10,000 wake me up and I'll start thinking about trimming down my position.

Warren Buffett said if you get right on a stock, sell slowly. I would make selling decisions based on the underlying business, not based on how much I have gained or lost. I wouldn't sell just because it hits $4200. I would take a close look at that time.

In 2002, a guy spent 2 million dollars bought 5% of a public company. A few years later he gained 200 fold and sold. Sounds like a great trade. A few years later the stock went up another 12 fold plus dividend. He made a nice gain, in reality he only took 7 cents out of every dollar he could get.

Recently there was a Peter Lynch interview, he said if a growth company is disrupting a slow growth industry, he wants to own that growth company. Also he said like a baseball game, if you missed the first two innings, you can still have the remaining 7 innings. In early years he missed Walmart, because by the time he noticed the company, it's already up 10 fold. So he didn't buy. Then the stock gained another 50 fold.

 

[goinfraftw]

Just a look-see on the chart:

TSLA just touched ~180 4 times (as a downtrend):
1. 3/2015: Tesla announces hands-free driving (i.e. Autopilot) Search
2. 1/2016 - 3/2016: Paris Climate Accord was signed in 11/2015 - 12/2015, Operation of Giga1 started, Model 3 unveiling Search
3. 11/2016: Trump elected as POTUS
4. 5/2019: 1/2019 - 5/2019 was the main building phase of Giga3, car insurance, safety features, massive FUD Search

Just wanted to share. Don't know what to make of it right now (in a general sense all of the dates kinda make sense from a market reaction standpoint).

 

[ZeApelido]

With respect to water wars, whatever happens do not let Elon Musk go to Chinatown

 

[JRP3]

Yep...moving water is a bad idea already. The idea should be to move people to the water.

The idea should be to remove people from battery manufacturing. Alien Dreadnought.

 

[JustMe]

Just a look-see on the chart:

View attachment 492753

TSLA just touched ~180 4 times (as a downtrend):
1. 3/2015: Tesla announces hands-free driving (i.e. Autopilot) Search
2. 1/2016 - 3/2016: Paris Climate Accord was signed in 11/2015 - 12/2015, Operation of Giga1 started, Model 3 unveiling Search
3. 11/2016: Trump elected as POTUS
4. 5/2019: 1/2019 - 5/2019 was the main building phase of Giga3, car insurance, safety features, massive FUD Search

Just wanted to share. Don't know what to make of it right now (in a general sense all of the dates kinda make sense from a market reaction standpoint) other than I'm bored.

Think of it as successive attempts of an early aircraft. Each attempt gets a bit more altitude before coming back down. At last it has gathered enough momentum to take flight. Now, the sky is the limit!

How’s my TA?