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

[KarenRei]

Man, just now reading that article about the Porsche/Audi reverse engineering of the Model 3, and it's really damning.

"Now a new report from Germany’s Manager Magazin (German and paywall) includes a deep dive into the state of Audi with comments from executives and insider sources. ... The Porsche and Audi engineers have to change [the PPE] because Tesla’s Model 3 has gotten better than they thought."

Read: "Oh f***!"

"The next-gen platform called Premium Platform Electric (PPE) was greenlighted almost two years ago and it is expected to be ready around 2020 or 2021."

Read: "We don't think we can compete until at least 2022, and please God, don't let Tesla keep improving even further during that time..."

"According to the new report, the first version was coming at about 3,000 euros too expensive, which Porsche is said to be able to absorb but Audi wasn’t on board."

Read: "Even our luxury brand can't turn a profit on this thing."

"The battery cell cost is apparently the biggest factor that pushes the cost of the platform higher"

Read: "That battery plant they're building that we're partnering with for 2020/2021 is already obsolete."

"According to the report, Audi and Porsche could delay the PPE in order to improve the cost and be competitive with Tesla."

Read: "Please, for the love of God, Tesla, slow down. Wait, did they seriously just purchase a company to let them lower their electrode manufacturing costs further...?"

"The PPE is becoming increasingly important for Audi according to Manager-Magazin’s report, which describes a failing e-tron program: 'The e-tron as the first electric Audi is not only late. It does not reach some target values and has become far too expensive with more than two billion euros in development costs. The approximately 600,000 cars sold for the break-even are now regarded as an illusion.' "

Read: "You know that thing we keep hyping as a 'Tesla Killer'? It's actually killing us."

"The German automaker is still planning several other vehicles based on the same platform before the PPE becomes available."

Read: "And it's going to continue killing us until we can introduce our now further delayed replacement."

I mean... damn. Is the rest of Volkswagen Group also this clueless and behind the times?

 

[Tslynk67]

SA isn't a "source". It's where someone might write something that they want others to read, but it's not a "source" for anything. If you don't want to link what you read that in on SA, then care to mention what the author's source was?

Hey, some of the most respected and informative posters on this thread publish articles on SA!

Oh, wait...

 

[OPRCE]

Throwing out false information means your arguments are pretty weak. The S100D charges faster than 70kW and does it in the real world.

Average =/= maximum, Sparky.

However much you protest against reality, the fact remains that the e-Tron charges 0..80% about twice as fast as the Tesla 100D.

Similarly, however much @KarenRei may claim the e-Tron battery cells are more energy-dense than those of Tesla 21700, solely in order to bolster her fairly ludicrous theory that Audi are "frying" their batteries into a shortened lifetime of warranty claims, there is no evidence for any of that either.

Audi guarantees its electric vehicles' batteries for eight years or 100,000 miles [same as M3 SR], so there is every reason to believe they have competently designed and extensively tested the e-Tron pack to exceed that requirement.

 

[erha]

Glovis Cosmos is probably just waiting for it's time-slot in Zeebrugge. Only 250 NM left (about 15 hours). Looking at today's wind and waves, the current location makes perfectly sense.

 

[lklundin]

Glovis Cosmos is probably just waiting for it's time-slot in Zeebrugge. Only 250 NM left (about 15 hours). Looking at the todays wind and waves the current location makes perfectly sense.

The 'City of Oslo' is just arriving now in the port of Drammen (near Oslo),
CITY OF OSLO Current position (Vehicles Carrier, IMO 9407677) - VesselFinder

(Unfortunately, the port's webcams are not running...)

Is Elon Musk's plane still in Oslo?

 

[erha]

The 'City of Oslo' is just arriving now in the port of Drammen (near Oslo),
CITY OF OSLO Current position (Vehicles Carrier, IMO 9407677) - VesselFinder

(Unfortunately, the port's webcams are not running...)

Is Elon Musk's plane still in Oslo?

How do we know that there are model 3s on board City of Oslo? It came from Esbjerg. If you've first got cars on trucks in Denmark, why not just keep driving through Sweden?

 

[KarenRei]

However much you protest against reality, the fact remains that the e-Tron charges 0..80% about twice as fast as the Tesla 100D.

So if I made an EV with a 32km/20 mile range that could charge 0-80% in 15 minutes, would you say that's better than the E-Tron? No, seriously - would you?

Of course you wouldn't. Because the actual measure that makes any difference whatsoever to owners is how far you can drive per minute spent charging. Everything else is just marketing. 80% on an E-Tron pack is less than half of a Model S 100D pack. And yet it consumes vastly more power per unit distance.

You can keep ignoring this fact all you want. That won't make it go away. People will continue to be only affected by how far you can drive per minute spent charging. And charging network distribution too, of course

Similarly, however much @KarenRei may claim the e-Tron battery cells are more energy-dense than those of Tesla 21700, solely in order to bolster her fairly ludicrous theory that Audi are "frying" their batteries into a shortened lifetime of warranty claims, there is no evidence for any of that either.

No evidence like the fact that power-dense cells would weigh the same or more than the entire battery pack - ignoring the fact that the pack contains the car's crash structure? No evidence like the fact that their partner which claims even faster charging times has openly disclosed their cell density?

What planet do you live on, seriously?

Audi guarantees its electric vehicles' batteries for eight years or 100,000 miles [same as M3 SR]

Which says absolutely nothing whatsoever about what they're budgeting for warranty replacement costs, which are relative to the percentage of people who actually do a reasonable number of fast charges. In this regard, the terrible state of high-power CCS networks actually strongly works to their advantage. Customers in most of their markets can't fast charge even if they wanted to

The warranty costs won't hit them for years down the road. And since they're only planning on selling a few tens of thousands of vehicles per year worldwide, they could eat the cost even if they had to replace every battery under warranty. Which makes pointing to warranty costs utterly meaningless as a counter. Nissan Leaf has a 100k mile battery warranty, and its degradation is terrible, particularly for those who fast charge often. Why? Because they let their cells get too hot. Nissan just eats the costs, and relies on statistics to ensure that the degradation to still be inside their warrantied bounds for "most" customers until after 100k mi.

 

[Fact Checking]

The theory that they have focused on international M3 deliveries for the first weeks of this quarter and switch to domestic for the last weeks doesn't seem supported by the firing of two thirds to the domestic delivery team.

You are missing four basic things:

• Tesla guided for Q1 production to outpace deliveries by 10,000 units due to sending ships to Europe and China even in the second half of the quarter. This means that U.S. deliveries will be significantly lower in Q1 than Q4 deliveries were. Fewer deliveries, fewer delivery staff required.
  
• There was no "delivery hell" at the end of Q4, even in the largest delivery centers reports suggested a smooth workflow. It is reasonable to assume that Tesla over-allocated workforce to delivery centers in Q4, to make sure no delivery hell occurs. Tesla increased their workforce by 30% in 2018, many of which increases were temporary over-allocations - part of which are reduced now to increase overall efficiencies.
  
• Tesla switched all S+X production to 100 kWh battery packs, which given the supply constraint of 8 GWh/year means annual S+X production is reduced from 100k units to about 80-85k units. Fewer units made means fewer units delivered.
  
• The seasonal pattern is for there to be fewest S+X deliveries in Q1, for example Q4 2017 had 28.3k S+X deliveries, while this dropped to 21.8k in Q1 2018 - which then caught up to the 100k supply in the rest of 2018. (But you should know this perfectly well, you were spreading disinformation about this back then as well.)

I.e. the reduction in Q1 U.S. deliveries and the reduction by the workforce required at the end of Q1 by all these factors is a mathematical necessity that should be easy to comprehend even for empathy free, parasitic, math and logic challenged Tesla shorts.

In the past 3 quarters Tesla has been running an operating profit of $1.3b-$1.5b per quarter, with a matching billion-dollar free cash flow in the last two quarters: Tesla is executing very efficiently now and is generating as much cash per quarter as some of its largest secondary stock offering rounds of equity financing were in its 13 years of corporate history.

Every single quarter. With no dilution.

 

[lklundin]

How do we know that there are model 3s on board City of Oslo? It came from Esbjerg. If you've first got cars on trucks in Denmark, why not just keep driving through Sweden?

We don't know that. But City of Oslo was in Zeebrugge, and left after Glovis Captain had unloaded its Model 3s there.
Transporting cars per ship should be faster and cheaper, and with Elon Musk (still?) in Oslo, the speculation is that there is going to be a special delivery event for the first Norwegians to get their Model 3.

After all, the Norwegians have been major supporters of Tesla, and received Europe's first Supercharger stations.

PS. I was looking for better info on a Norwegian forum, but nothing so far,
Båt transport fra USA til Europa/Norge med TM3'er.

 

[lklundin]

Karen, I run an IT project in the maritime sector and I can tell you that the big players are pushing heavily towards getting rid of fossil fuels as much as possible, for three reasons: Port access in emission control zones, future emission regulations, and fuel cost. If they could go full electric today, they would. They are much like the trucking industry in that the cost of operation is the main driver. Imagine using several tons of fuel just to get going, that is what they are doing, many times during a voyage.

Which is why these sectors are ripe for a switchover the moment someone offers them suitable fleet inventory. I believe we will see this happen without much fanfare, because there is no entrenched ship manufacturing industry that stands to lose on lucrative sales of diesel models. For them everything is build-to-order anyway.

I can understand why especially ferries that spend a good amount of time in ports are installing batteries + hybrid drive trains, so they can maneuver in and around the ports without emissions. But for their power consumption while moored, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just get the power via a cable from the port, like an air plane in an airport?

 

[OPRCE]

Can we abbreviate this convoluted tripe to understand that you still persist in wrongly claiming that E-Tron uses power-dense cells

No, you're wrong there as well: my statement on e-Tron pack power density was only relative to S100D pack. Here it is again to aid your defective memory:

You're doing the razor wrong:
Audi e-Tron 95kWh battery weighs 700kg, compared to 590kg for Tesla 100D, so it is obviously less energy dense.
However, it recharges at about twice the rate, so seems to have a much better power density.

...even though they physically couldn't give the pack that much power density because they're less energy dense than the entire pack

Do you have a figure in mind for "that much power density"? Otherwise please explain what this is supposed to mean.

your assumption that all packs should have roughly the same dead weight (even if they're of radically different designs and one is outright designed for crash prevention) is patently ridiculous?

I never made that assumption. I said the E-Tron pack is less energy dense than S100D, which remains quite true. From which I suspect, despite the different pack constructions, that the cells used in that Audi pack are also less energy dense than Tesla's 21700 at 247Wh/kg, but that remains to be demonstrated when someone does an e-Tron teardown and weighs a cell, or Audi releases that data.

Can we also continue to note that we actually have an even faster-charging Volkswagen group pack whose cells are of a known density?

Yes, it is very interesting that Porsche claims 270Wh/kg for the Taycan pack but that does nothing to assist your baseless speculation that Audi/Porsche are frying their batteries.

 

[lklundin]

Weird, is something wrong with the Glovis Cosmos? Looks like it's headed to port in the UK. It's even slowing down and has a pilot vessel with it!

View attachment 376075

Live data, frequent updates - does not look like an error.

ED: MTS Pathfinder has broken off. Cosmos turning right, but still slowing.

ED2: Okay, speeding up again, and solidly turned away from the shore. That was... weird. Did someone order a pizza from shore or something?

There is a bit more information here:
GLOVIS COSMOS - Cargo (IMO: 9707027, MMSI: 538006227) | MyShipTracking
- apparently the ship reduced its draught (from 9.4 m to 9 m). Could it have pumped out ballast water that was needed on the big seas but is not practical in port?

- or maybe it had to evade some pirates...

 

[CuriousSunbird]

You are missing four basic things:

• Tesla guided for Q1 production to outpace deliveries by 10,000 units due to sending ships to Europe and China even in the second half of the quarter. This means that U.S. deliveries will be significantly lower in Q1 than Q4 deliveries were. Fewer deliveries, fewer delivery staff required.
  
• There was no "delivery hell" at the end of Q4, even in the largest delivery centers reports suggested a smooth workflow. It is reasonable to assume that Tesla over-allocated workforce to delivery centers in Q4, to make sure no delivery hell occurs. Tesla increased their workforce by 30% in 2018, many of which increases were temporary over-allocations - part of which are reduced now to increase overall efficiencies.
  
• Tesla switched all S+X production to 100 kWh battery packs, which given the supply constraint of 8 GWh/year means annual S+X production is reduced from 100k units to about 80-85k units. Fewer units made means fewer units delivered.
  
• The seasonal pattern is for there to be fewest S+X deliveries in Q1, for example Q4 2017 had 28.3k S+X deliveries, while this dropped to 21.8k in Q1 2018 - which then caught up to the 100k supply in the rest of 2018. (But you should know this perfectly well, you were spreading disinformation about this back then as well.)

I.e. the reduction in Q1 U.S. deliveries and the reduction by the workforce required at the end of Q1 by all these factors is a mathematical necessity that should be easy to comprehend even for empathy free, parasitic, math and logic challenged Tesla shorts.

Thanks for the quick response. How does the change in S&X production lead to cuts in the M3 delivery team?

 

[KarenRei]

No, you're wrong there as well: my statement on e-Tron pack power density was only relative to S100D pack. Here it is again to aid your defective memory:





Do you have a figure in mind for "that much power density"? Otherwise please explain what this is supposed to mean.



I never made that assumption. I said the E-Tron pack is less energy dense than S100D, which remains quite true. From which I suspect, despite the different pack constructions, that the cells used in that Audi pack are also less energy dense than Tesla's 21700 at 247Wh/kg, but that remains to be demonstrated when someone does an e-Tron teardown and weighs a cell, or Audi releases that data.



Yes, it is very interesting that Porsche claims 270Wh/kg for the Taycan pack but that does nothing to assist your baseless speculation that Audi/Porsche are frying their batteries.

 

[lklundin]

Man, just now reading that article about the Porsche/Audi reverse engineering of the Model 3, and it's really damning.

"Now a new report from Germany’s Manager Magazin (German and paywall) includes a deep dive into the state of Audi with comments from executives and insider sources. ... The Porsche and Audi engineers have to change [the PPE] because Tesla’s Model 3 has gotten better than they thought."

Read: "Oh f***!"

"The next-gen platform called Premium Platform Electric (PPE) was greenlighted almost two years ago and it is expected to be ready around 2020 or 2021."

Read: "We don't think we can compete until at least 2022, and please God, don't let Tesla keep improving even further during that time..."

"According to the new report, the first version was coming at about 3,000 euros too expensive, which Porsche is said to be able to absorb but Audi wasn’t on board."

Read: "Even our luxury brand can't turn a profit on this thing."

"The battery cell cost is apparently the biggest factor that pushes the cost of the platform higher"

Read: "That battery plant they're building that we're partnering with for 2020/2021 is already obsolete."

"According to the report, Audi and Porsche could delay the PPE in order to improve the cost and be competitive with Tesla."

Read: "Please, for the love of God, Tesla, slow down. Wait, did they seriously just purchase a company to let them lower their electrode manufacturing costs further...?"

"The PPE is becoming increasingly important for Audi according to Manager-Magazin’s report, which describes a failing e-tron program: 'The e-tron as the first electric Audi is not only late. It does not reach some target values and has become far too expensive with more than two billion euros in development costs. The approximately 600,000 cars sold for the break-even are now regarded as an illusion.' "

Read: "You know that thing we keep hyping as a 'Tesla Killer'? It's actually killing us."

"The German automaker is still planning several other vehicles based on the same platform before the PPE becomes available."

Read: "And it's going to continue killing us until we can introduce our now further delayed replacement."

I mean... damn. Is the rest of Volkswagen Group also this clueless and behind the times?

I am guessing the German auto makers are now drafting a letter to the German government:

"Give us a lot of money now or else say goodbye to the German auto industry. And yes, we know we screwed you over but like so much else that is all in the past".

 

[mrdoubleb]

Far from me to tell our esteemed members whom to conducts pointless arguments with - maybe they find this therapeutic. Don't know.

I for one think the "ignore" button is very convenient.

 

[Lessmog]

Thanks for the quick response. How does the change in S&X production lead to cuts in the M3 delivery team?

Having next to no actual info (like yourself perhaps?) I don't know where it specifies that delivery teams exclusively serve M3's. Do you have that info stashed away somewhere? Because it was not mentioned afaict.

 

[CuriousSunbird]

Having next to no actual info (like yourself perhaps?) I don't know where it specifies that delivery teams exclusively serve M3's. Do you have that info stashed away somewhere? Because it was not mentioned afaict.

"Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) let 150 employees go out of a 230-person team based at the Las Vegas facility tasked with Model 3 deliveries to North America, according to a Reuters exclusive." was in the link I previously posted.

And here is the Reuters link. Exclusive: Tesla's delivery team gutted in recent job cuts - sources | Reuters

 

[Lessmog]

"Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) let 150 employees go out of a 230-person team based at the Las Vegas facility tasked with Model 3 deliveries to North America, according to a Reuters exclusive." was in the link I previously posted.

And here is the Reuters link. Exclusive: Tesla's delivery team gutted in recent job cuts - sources | Reuters

Thank you, I missed that. Maybe NA deliveries of M3 are also expected to be less this Q? Particularly considering the mad rush at end of Q4-18 and seasonal variation.

 

[Thekiwi]

The theory that they have focused on international M3 deliveries for the first weeks of this quarter and switch to domestic for the last weeks doesn't seem supported by the firing of two thirds to the domestic delivery team.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3431495-tesla-jobs-cuts-reported-deliveries-division?app=1#email_link

Uhhhhh.....that is EXACTLY what would have happened if Tesla was doing exactly as they said they would be doing and delivering most production to EU/China for the first two months of the quarter. Only a moron would keep delivery staff in the US at the same level as it was in December (when all 3 production was going to US).