Hogfighter
Professional Lurker
I’m quite bullish on TSLA right now and think that the ER will be quite good. Regarding macros, I’m worried about Trump and Brexit, but not worried about interest rates or the economy.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
About 1K higher now at 14418. The top countries now have recent orders of one or two days old.
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dc_h
Active Member
I agree it’s not going to look that cool, but launching something with the diameter of a 747 in an early stage of a rocket that could hold 100 people and with a scheduled orbital test vehicle due in 2020, I think this will help drive the crazy engineering of the Elon brand. The base should get polished up as well before the first hop.In the real world, it will never achieve that sort of perfect-mirror look that you get from CG renderings. Look at how cheap the test vehicle looks. It'll look better once it's pressurized, but never like the renderings. And there's a good chance that it will crash or explode.
Here's what it actually looks like:
The top doesn't even match the bottom - the top has a "wrinkled mirror" finish while the bottom is matte and grimy. Initially people thought SpaceX was building a water tower because they couldn't believe that that thing was actually supposed to be a rocket.
Don't expect any sort of "quality dividends" to rub off on Tesla from that thing.
The less shiny, but more metaphorically polished dragon manned pilot should be big news. Beating the better funded and more expensive Boeing solution is typical Elon performance.
I don’t think a crash will hurt either. The shorts will go ballistic, but they’ll just do their ironic marketing FOR Elon, Tesla and SpaceX.
Perhaps I'm a pessimist, but I see the government shutdown posing delays for Dragon. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it just feels like at least something is going to trip them up. Either way, I don't think there's going to be that much of a benefit to Tesla. An unmanned capsule going to the space station for the first time is news, but not really spectacular news, from a lay-person's perspective.
As for a crash... remember that this topic was about things positive rubbing off on Tesla from SpaceX's activities.
I think the main positive, if any, we'll see from SpaceX is when Musk gives his next presentation on Starliner development. That'll get a lot of coverage, using SpaceX's graphics and videos, which will highlight all the exciting possibilities and any/all positive test results they've had by that point. But as for pictures and videos of this hopper? It looks like a weird water tower put together from scrap. It doesn't scream "quality" by any stretch. And it might well crash or explode. This is not some sort of positive Tesla stock mover.
(Not like it matters, but I doubt they'll polish the bottom. Too much labour. Maybe they'll polish the top welding seams if they're stuck waiting on something to be ready for launch. Maybe. They could also paint the bottom if they wanted a low-labour way to improve its aesthetics (such as your typical yellow-and-black crosshatched "This Is A Test Vehicle" paint job).
Off Shore
Off Topic Member
It's not a test of the BFR, it's a test of the Raptor motors.
It's a test of all major aspects of the vehicle - engines, tanks, guidance, etc etc etc.
If they only wanted to test engines they'd just strap it to a Falcon and and make the necessary changes to hold CH4 rather than kerosene.
OT:
The lower part of the hopper is currently being clad in the same foil as the upper part. They're working very fast, and it's far too early to make any assumptions on how it's going to look when it's finished (when compared to the render).
Also, it looks absolutely amazing, and it's only going to be better from here on.
The lower part of the hopper is currently being clad in the same foil as the upper part. They're working very fast, and it's far too early to make any assumptions on how it's going to look when it's finished (when compared to the render).
Also, it looks absolutely amazing, and it's only going to be better from here on.
Very clearly not.
To get it to look like the render you have to have an optical-quality mirror. Even tiny bends in the "mirrored" upper part will offer significant distortion (which visually screams, "HEY, I'M BENT!"). That's why curved mirrors are so hard to make. You don't make them by bending sheet steel around a jig.
Even if they smooth out the welds - which is a big open question as to whether they'll take the time to do that - it's not going to look close to like the render.
ED: I keep saying "welds", but you know, I don't even think that the "shiny" one is even welded. I sure can't see any signs of that. I think only the matte / grimy lower part is welded. Maybe that'll be changed.
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dc_h
Active Member
Does this include commercial leasing? I thought that was done separately and could be a high percentage of total orders.
OT:
Here is a photo of the bottom part being clad: Developing the BFS - Phase 1 Big Falcon Hopper (BFH) Discussion - THREAD 2
Here is a photo of the bottom part being clad: Developing the BFS - Phase 1 Big Falcon Hopper (BFH) Discussion - THREAD 2
Yes. I played with the wayback machine (now known as archive.org) a bit. Two things are clear:
1. Bloomberg tries to defeat the wayback machine. Sometimes, you think you are looking at an old date, but somehow end up at the current version anyway (I think images in the old web page just point to the current image).
2. Yes, they did. In the screen shot below, note that the header (from archive.org) says Dec 30. But the text below it show the current update day/time (Jan 5).
Here's the current numbers:
The "per week for the last 13 weeks" has gone up nearly 600 cars/week, which accounts for the nearly 6000 cars unaccounted for in the 10000 car difference in the two weekly snapshots.
dc_h
Active Member
Both technically. Testing the raptor low thrust for landing and the controls for landing a BFR. They understand the telemetry better now, but this is a very different rocket.
Thanks for that, that's a very recent change. Still just tacks. But I suspect that it's all going to be welded together once the thing is fully assembled; I can't imagine these tacks holding during launch. Given that they're going so far as to cosmetically clad the bottom part, then they probably will polish the seams (it's a lot less work intensive to polish seams out than whole sheets).
That said, it's still not going to look like an optical mirror like in the rendering.
A curious process for the bottom portion - assembling the loadbearing structure and then cladding it. I guess they can't get the sort of optical qualities they want (which are not just about aesthetics, but also heat rejection) with their structural steel alone?
ED: Something just occurred to me. And it really should have been obvious, but... the reason for the bottom portion being built so much more sturdy than the top is... this is a Starship hopper they're making, not Super Heavy. Starship's passenger / cargo volume is huge. That whole** "flimsy" part on the top is the passenger / payload enclosure. Tanks are only on the bottom, aka the "sturdy" part. The final Starship will have bigger tanks, but both the test and final version are having a full-sized passenger / cargo area. Geez that's a lot of cargo space....
** - Even if you assume that the upper bulkhead will arch upward from the bottom structure and eat up part of the space.
This should have been obvious, but it just now occurred to me as to why tanks wouldn't fill up a lot more of the structure: the cargo section is sized the same as in the final version, and it's monstrous.
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Just like Munro said about panel gaps, millennials don't care about CR's reliability ratings.
shlokavica22
Member
I'm also disgusted with this parody of a rocket. It's like looking in low vin model 3 or something. Typical Elon.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
RobStark
Well-Known Member
What evidence is there of this? Beyond anecdotal "my cousin" stories.
CalX
Member
The Bloomberg tracker is a fraud. Analysts and armchair investors point to the Bloomberg estimate and the reported prior accuracy and post bearish estimates. The estimate is really low just up to Tesla's announcement and then revised up the day of to match. Then they claim that they were right all along. If you look at the current page it looks like their model is spot on every time. However, days before the announcement their estimate was way off. I don't know how Bloomberg can condone this kind of activity. Just check reddit or other forums for the estimates prior. They did the same thing in Q3.
From Reddit
level 2
Bartek2858
1 point·6 days ago
What do you think about Bloomberg Tracker?
Bloomberg estimates ~53500 Model 3 production in Q4. Almost the same as in Q3. Their prediction from 4th December for Q4 was ~60k.
If that ~53k is true then it differs a lot from other predictions.
PS. Bloomberg messed up with Q3 data right after releasing official numbers. They were hugely wrong on daily production but they changed it backwards.
level 3
Teslike
1 point·6 days ago
My data also suggests less than 53K production for Q4. I use a few different methods and they change between 45,800-53,500. I'm trying to decide on a final estimate.
level 4
Bartek2858
6 points·5 days ago
Bloomberg did that again. They messed up with tracker again backwards changing their estimates to ~61k (8k difference).
Now there is no evidence that they were estimating much lower values (daily and quarterly) for months.
They are cheating like VW.
-------------------------
and then today Bloomberg has on their site:
Tesla production Bloomberg estimate Difference
2018 Q1 9,766 9,285 -5%
2018 Q2 28,578 27,957 -2%
2018 Q3 53,239 53,457 +0.4%
2018 Q4 61,394 61,113 -0.5%
Source: Tesla, Bloomberg
From Reddit
level 2
Bartek2858
1 point·6 days ago
What do you think about Bloomberg Tracker?
Bloomberg estimates ~53500 Model 3 production in Q4. Almost the same as in Q3. Their prediction from 4th December for Q4 was ~60k.
If that ~53k is true then it differs a lot from other predictions.
PS. Bloomberg messed up with Q3 data right after releasing official numbers. They were hugely wrong on daily production but they changed it backwards.
level 3
Teslike
1 point·6 days ago
My data also suggests less than 53K production for Q4. I use a few different methods and they change between 45,800-53,500. I'm trying to decide on a final estimate.
level 4
Bartek2858
6 points·5 days ago
Bloomberg did that again. They messed up with tracker again backwards changing their estimates to ~61k (8k difference).
Now there is no evidence that they were estimating much lower values (daily and quarterly) for months.
They are cheating like VW.
-------------------------
and then today Bloomberg has on their site:
Tesla production Bloomberg estimate Difference
2018 Q1 9,766 9,285 -5%
2018 Q2 28,578 27,957 -2%
2018 Q3 53,239 53,457 +0.4%
2018 Q4 61,394 61,113 -0.5%
Source: Tesla, Bloomberg
Sparky
Member
This is not "evidence of PGI"; Panel-Gap-Indifference; but I found it slightly interesting.
The Millennial Car Buyer and How to Sell to Them
Snippets...
- More than half of Millennials said they would buy an autonomous vehicle, with almost 75 percent saying they would be comfortable having artificial intelligence system drive their vehicle. Millennials are not as interested as other generations in raw engine horsepower or torque, instead they want affordable, environmentally friendly, sleek design, and high-tech features.
- Seventy percent of Millennials say they are willing to pay more for quality vehicle maintenance/service. Millennials have a higher proportion of vehicles with extended warranties, and owners with extended warranties are typically more likely to use dealerships for service.
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
Fixed that for you.
Anyway, demand should increase non-linearly with every reduction of the base price, plus Tesla should take the highest value new orders first.
I.e. it's more important to introduce lower priced Model 3 variants carefully, in small jumps - not with a large, $9k jump.
Note that a significant part of the negative press is motivated or egged on by short sellers, who want Tesla introduce lower priced options too fast ...
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