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

[Skryll]

I do think Starlink is a natural fit for providing wifi at Supercharger locations.

But it baffles me that you think people will be watching movies (much) while charging. Our Model 3's charge so fast there is simply not time to pick a movie to watch, let alone watch it. Our Model 3's don't need a charge until we have been driving for hours on the Interstate and by then we need to relieve our bladders and get a quick snack. By the time we are able to do that, the car is charged and ready to go on the next leg of our journey.

When are people going to find time to watch movies while Supercharging?

First stop breakfast, overfill, next stop bladder break, final stop to fill up before being mobile locally without destination charger, movie time.

 

[johnnybgood888]

I have some bad news to report.... I've gone bearish on Tesla. Sorry, guys - I've gone off and sold off a chunk of my assets to diversify my portfolio.

I'm now only 99,7% in Tesla.

I spent the first trading hour this morning trying to leverage down and diversify my portfolio a bit and somehow I manage to go from being 115% in TSLA to 120%.

 

[ninpb]

I was only thinking long-term (as with the battery concern given the 500K+ vehicles next year guidance). Recycling would eventually help global supply unless another chemistry emerges. Plus, it's for a good cause. And like oil, there is a limited supply of materials on the planet.

I was more concerned with the cost of recycling vs mining, because costs tend to win the bid. Would be interesting to know how much recycling would be needed to justify costs. And maybe there's another way to build the battery that makes it easier to recover materials down the road... just curious is all.

I thought reusing cells from older cars to powerwalls was Tesla recycling or do they not do that.

 

[bhtooefr]

Technically, am I wrong that a 12% range increase ought to enable a few tenths second better 0 - 60? Not that they would unlock that faster acceleration right away.
While the MY details on Tesla.com now show 315 for PYD, 0 - 60 is unchanged at 3.5 s. P3D shows 3.2s and we've heard reports it may be as low as 3.0 in the real world. When I put in reservation for PYD I wasn't thrilled it would give away a full half sec to it's sedan brother. I'm hoping that down the line, in the real world, a PYD will be able to get to 3.2 or better.

It depends on why the range increased - some improvements (charging, regen efficiency, and vampire drain) have no impact on 0-60 performance, and some have minimal or only the possibility of impact on 0-60 performance (better aero, as most of the impact is at high speed, better motor control during acceleration, lower rolling resistance come to mind).

Supercharger connections (the first actual stat that matters): +34%. Why do you care about the number of Supercharger stations, rather than the number of stalls?

Back to Superchargers. Here's the things you're not including:

• Power was upped from 120kW to 145kW (ignoring the relatively small % of V3s out there). In ideal circumstances, that's an extra 20% throughput. In practice, you're probably averaging more like 10% of an increase in throughput. But in general: the sooner you move out a car, the sooner a stall is free.
• Pack preheating as you approach a Supercharger (to accelerate charge rates) is now enabled. This also speeds up Supercharging, and thus frees up stalls.
• Most of the world's Supercharger stations spend most of their time idle. There is no need to increase the density in these areas until they hit their limits; the amount of vehicle growth just moves them from "mostly idle" to "not as idle". Supercharger growth is only needed to A) expand the geographic extent of the network, and B) in areas where the existing network needs more capacity.
• They're now switching to V3 stations. With a 250kW peak and no throttling between "shared stalls", V3 will have much higher throughput per stall than V2.

Overall, I think these numbers are great, all things considered.

ED: Whoa! Just checked Supercharge.info... they're already building in both Macedona and Bulgaria? Awesome! They'll be in Greece and Turkey soon!

Isn't that exactly an argument for why number of stations is a more important metric than stalls - low-stall count stations improving the geographic distribution of the Supercharger network?

 

[Skryll]

I thought reusing cells from older cars to powerwalls was Tesla recycling or do they not do that.

Source for that information other than 'I wish it was true' ?

What I actually find interesting is that JB Straubel is on that issue since 2017: Tesla's former CTO JB Straubel is ramping up his stealthy recycling business

 

[Intl Professor]

"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya.
You killed my father.
Prepare to die."

I believe it is bad karma to wish ill of a combatant, probably confirmed in The Art of War. Though a non-believer now, I blame this bias on early Christian upbringing.

 

[Sancho]

I’m happy with my lot, and I don’t want to be a pig, but is it asking too much for the SP to punch through $650 to bring the call writers to their knees?

 

[Rarity]

Regarding the "capital raise" question, I think it was telling that Musk et al. were so dismissive. Seems like they discount the possibility of buying out Panasonic, at least with cash.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Thoughts on what Tesla will announce on battery day in April & how Tesla’s future battery strategy will come together:

• Use cell supply from Panasonic/LG/CATL to bridge to ramp of in-house cell production (possibly towards ~90GWh contracted from these three suppliers).
• Announce that in-house cell production has just started (Apr-20) on a small scale (likely for Semi or Plaid Model S), with plans to ramp significantly in 2021 (potentially for all future new capacity from 2021).
• Announce a roadmap to reach 2TWh of annual in-house battery cell+module+pack production capacity by 2030. Enough for ~20 million annual EV sales and ~750GWH annual stationary battery storage sales.

Possible relatively short term technology breakthroughs:

• Tesla will apply agile development to its in-house cell manufacturing as it does everything else - so flexibility for rapid upgrades and iterations of the process to accelerate cost experience curves.
• Use Maxwell dry electrode tech to reduce manufacturing cost and footprint.
• Maxwell dry electrode tech leads to better physical properties, in particular allowing thicker cathodes (higher cathode % per cell) & possibly new chemistries.
• Move to use of single crystal cathodes - possibly helped by Maxwell process/other in-house R&D. This was a big part of the 1 million mile cells tested by Dahn.
• Use very carefully selected electrolyte additives following Dahn research.
• Highly automated manufacturing process to reduce staffing bottlenecks to production ramp.
• Tesla Hibar designs systems for electrolyte insertion during the cell manufacturing process.
• Combine all this with further in-house developed cell IP and possibly third party licensed tech. (Remember there are many steps in cell manufacturing and Maxwell/Hibar are only part of this)
• Reduce cathode kg per kWh to reduce raw material cost
• Next generation in-house module/pack lines for continued reduced cost & capex.
• Build a huge factory to build in-house cell/pack manufacturing equipment at scale (the machine that builds the machine that builds the machine) - significantly reducing capex per GWh capacity

Possible Longer term breakthroughs:

• Integrated cell & pack design & manufacturing process to reduce footprint & cost.
• Dahn lithium metal anode allows for much thinner anode, higher energy density & longer electrode life (at the expense of shorter electrolyte life).
• Replaceable electrolyte design to extend lithium metal anode battery life. Develop Hibar machines for easy electrolyte replacement in service centres.
• Dahn research is used to eliminate cobalt from the cathode leaving just Nickel Aluminium or Nickel Manganese.

Note these are all just possibilities (based on acquisitions, press leaks, published scientific papers, patents & speculation):
These various steps & incremental improvements may or may not be introduced once they have been proven ready for affordable mass manufacturing.

Some things I thing would help accelerate and de-risk Tesla’s battery cell ramp plans:

• Buy Panasonic’s GF1 business for cell manufacturing employee experience (who can be used to train new employees on Tesla’s cell lines) and other cell IP.
• Buy/build Cathode powder manufacturing expertise (currently Panasonic mostly uses Sumitomo). Cathode powder is likely ~20% premium to its raw material constituents & the process can be key to cell properties.
• Buy Nickel Sulphate & lithium carbonate/hydroxide processor expertise - this will be a huge % of cell cost & Tesla’s plans require ~10x the current Nickel sulphate & Lithium market size.
• Buy other suppliers in the cell manufacturing chain

Tesla cannot trust & rely on third parties to deliver such critical components of its business plan, particularly when the metals market leaders do not believe in an EV transition as aggressive as Tesla is targeting.

You are very knowledgeable about this subject. Are you by any chance a retail investor?

 

[Rockster]

What was weird to me is the analyst pushed again specifically on the ultracap technology and Elon said that is actually part of the puzzle. I'm confused on that piece, didn't seem like that sort of ultra high energy density made sense anywhere in the automotive space. Will have to think on this more.

I wonder if an ultracap would be a suitable replacement for the 12v battery, which has been an ownership pain point?

 

[SOULPEDL]

I thought reusing cells from older cars to powerwalls was Tesla recycling or do they not do that.

Oh ya, recycling was taking in to GF1 just last year but was outsourced prior. Tesla launches battery recycling at Nevada Gigafactory

So which mineral is the "shovel in the goldrush" with batteries, only Cobalt and Lithium? Maybe I should make some side bets there, also long.

 

[Ameliorate]

This is pretty wild, I expected some real swings today. VWAP is going to be very high! I'll be keeping an eye on feb 21 700 calls into Friday, if MM's can manage to contain TSLA at 650 until then. Maybe some feb 7's (lower strike)
As for today, meh my account was higher when we touched 597 a week ago lol. No complaints though!
Thought I'd be offloading most of my calls today, nope

 

[electracity]

As for the surge in After Hours, I read the report before checking the price and was pretty surprised to be honest, as the results and guidance were largely par versus my expectations.

The faster model Y ramp was apparently not priced into the stock

 

[kbeckley]

Musing re batteries. I expect that Tesla is trying to optimize a very difficult problem when you have multiple enhancements you can do on something that requires both significant lifetime testing and capital expenditures for production. Some of the new improvements will be ready before others. When do you pull the trigger on a new line? What improvements make the cut which do not? What extra allowances do you inefficiently design in today to allow a really promising improvement that is not ready yet to be incorporated later? Super hard N-axis optimization problem. Especially because Tesla will be always looking at ALL aspects of the cell->pack production. I can imagine proponents of various improvement lobbying for inclusion in the next generation cell and pack lines.

I will be very interested to see when (if?) Tesla breaks ground on a new section at GF1. Their kWh produced per m^3 of factory volume must be so far ahead of what they originally planned.

This price break out really feels like vindication. Cursing myself for not buying more shares but the ones purchased just after IPO have a nice return.

 

[SOULPEDL]

I believe it is bad karma to wish ill of a combatant, probably confirmed in The Art of War. Though a non-believer now, I blame this bias on early Christian upbringing.

Just an old inside joke, and the prior comment to that effect reminded me of the Princess Bride movie.

 

[Swampgator]

I wonder if an ultracap would be a suitable replacement for the 12v battery, which has been an ownership pain point?

That would be the opposite use case.
12V is gone in Model Y anyhow according to rumors.

 

[EVNow]

At $180, you had a little less than 50% of your original investment. At $645, the guy who shorted at $180 has $-258% of his original “investment”

Actually his investment was probably much less - depending on margin requirements. And it depends on whether he shorted 100, 1000 or a million shares - its the total that matters.

Ofcourse, most likely the bots who shorted at $180, turned long the next day and made a nice profit.

 

[mongo]

I wonder if an ultracap would be a suitable replacement for the 12v battery, which has been an ownership pain point?

Not as a direct replacement. What could be done is pair an always on 12V source from the pack and an ultra cap bank for handling load steps.
Or potentially an always on 48V source as @Swampgator mentions the Y may have.

 

[sparcs]

Unlikely. Cells will be needed from more than one source and in more than once chemistry. Lines that are producing now are not going to get shut down for a while, chemistry and purpose may be adjusted. The bonehead institutional investor with all those blatantly wrong assumptions baked into the battery question was basically given that answer, too.

i think Tesla's scale that they are announcing at Battery Investor Day is just way too big. If they don't buy Panasonic cylindrical cell business, obviously they will keep that running just like 18650s. However at some point, Tesla's ambitions will finally catch up making it easy to dump some of these smaller guys.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Actually his investment was probably much less - depending on margin requirements.

Ofcourse, most likely the bots who shorted at $180, turned long the next day and made a nice profit.

Which would, of course, mean losing an even higher percentage of it