How quaint! Did you read about CATL in the newspapers? Maybe you could telegraph an order?
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
How quaint! Did you read about CATL in the newspapers? Maybe you could telegraph an order?
Well, whatever we wish to argue here, on tesla.com it states (and this in in Europe where we don't have smart summon yet and still have to confirm lane-changes under NoA). Even if the car was technically capable of it all, the regulations don't allow it:
Coming this year:
Recognition and reaction to traffic lights and stop signs.
Driving assistance in the city.
Improved Auto Exit - from your parking lot, your vehicle will come to meet you in the parking lot.
CNBC = See now, before collapse ?
One of my personal conspiracy theories is that we have the shorts driving the price down, then some other funds buying low in order to a) hedge the shorts to get out at a reasonable price if needed, b) dump shares on the open market at below market price to stop the up-swings.
With all the money in the fossil-fuel industry, wouldn't take much for them to setup a billion$ "fund" just for this type of trading, as long as they don't accumulate 5%, then nobody's the wiser.
Most funds would trade the stock for profits, they are trading it for manipulation - and yet could still be profitable from it.
For those of you who don't check these sort of things, futures are looking a bit ugly this morning, 0.35%, with most pre-market stocks the same.
Whether this impacts $TSLA in open market is unclear, as $TSLA often follows its own mysterious path.
Whether this impacts $TSLA in open market is unclear, as $TSLA often follows its own mysterious path.
I received the same message, but the guy is not banned yet.Good news!
bhtooefr
Active Member
To expand on what others have said re: lithium stocks... a lot of it is supply. The plans to open up Bolivian lithium supply would have depressed stocks in existing lithium miners in places like Chile, and LIT has a whole bunch of those and AFAIK no or minimal exposure to Bolivian supply.
Lately it feels like the only violations that Twitter cares about are copyvio.
Dan Detweiler
Active Member
Slightly off topic but not really.
I will be selling some of my TSLA over the next week. Not because I have concerns about the stock or the company, but to allow me to purchase 4 acres of heaven that my wife and I can build our dream house on and retire to. SO EXCITED!
This dream come true is all because of Tesla and TSLA and would not have been possible without both of them. (Yes, I will make sure the garage is big enough to fit our Cybertruck when it gets delivered!)
Dan
I will be selling some of my TSLA over the next week. Not because I have concerns about the stock or the company, but to allow me to purchase 4 acres of heaven that my wife and I can build our dream house on and retire to. SO EXCITED!
This dream come true is all because of Tesla and TSLA and would not have been possible without both of them. (Yes, I will make sure the garage is big enough to fit our Cybertruck when it gets delivered!)
Dan
Attachments
LN1_Casey
Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
Pity you can't wait until closer to EOQ; the stock seems like it'll be greatly increasing around then, either during run up or after results.
But congrats!
Dan Detweiler
Active Member
I'll still have a holding, just not nearly as large. I'm a small time player anyway compared to most of the folks on here!
Dan
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
You know UBS is the largest financial institution in Switzerland, right? I think there's a better chance of getting your gold teeth back, or of them picking a side in the next war.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
Don't really need to. The Thacker Pass Lithium project, ongoing via American Lithium Corp, is a major new source near GF1 (from a company with $53M market cap)
Projects - American Lithium Corp.
"located approximately 4 hours from the Tesla Gigafactory, the TLC Project aims to offer an economic alternative to regional players such as the productive Ioneer Ltd. (formerly Global Geoscience) lithium claystone project, and even the oldest & largest lithium mine in the U.S. at Clayton Valley."
TL;dr Lithium is not the issue. It's NICKEL that Tesla will likely go after. Look for a play in Canada (Ontario/Quebec shield resources).
In my opinion Lithium Carbonate/Hydroxide and Nickel Sulphate supply are by far the largest potential bottleneck to the EV transition. The price isn't really an issue (likely $500 lithium hydroxide and $900 Nickel sulphate per SR+ pack currently), but in the future actual availability could be. Not this year, but during the period 4-10 years from now when EV penetration really does takeover. Lithium and Nickel sulphate are the slowest moving part of the EV production capex chain (Tesla can build a car factory in 1 year, likely it can build & ramp its own cell and pack factory in 1-3 years, but new Lithium plants take 5+ years to ramp). Elon has said Tesla should get into Nickel and Lithium processing. He is right and I really hope they will.
None of the leading Lithium and Nickel companies believe in an EV transition anywhere near as aggressive as Tesla, so they are not investing in the 2025-2030 capacity required to meet Tesla's goals. For example ALB is expecting demand from EVs of 700kt LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent) in 2025 (which is equivalent to a 4x increase in Lithium market size from 2018 levels). This is enough for 13 million EVs at a 56kwh average pack size (size of the SR+ pack) and market average 0.93kg LCE /kwh (I think Tesla's is closer to 0.7kg/kwh as it has more advanced chemistry). This is what the industry is building towards, but it is not enough. Tesla alone will need around 10x the current Lithium market to supply its 2TWh cell production target, or c.2x more than the entire global lithium capacity targeted by the industry by 2025.
There is no lack of actual resources in the ground, but there will be a lack of mines and processed high purity metals unless capex is quickly ramped.
I think average Lithium capex of around $700-1,400m per 1 million EV capacity will be required. Likely less than 20% of capex is used for buying the resources in the ground plus buying the equipment to dig it up (or pump it up for Lithium brines). Nearly all the capex is for highly complex processing - crushing equipment, processing, refining or electrochemical plants etc. For example, look at Nemaska Lithium's project (https://www.nemaskalithium.com/assets/documents/NMX_NI4301_20190809.pdf) Page 394 shows pure mine capex at just CAD$28.5m (total mine site CAD447m) vs total capex of CAD1.27bn including the electrochemical plant.
These are highly complicated value add processes and it takes 5-6 years to ramp up a new lithium plant. The purity and consistency of the metal (particularly lithium carbonate/hydroxide) is also critical to battery energy density, cycle life, power density and safety. So it is not easy to substitute new lithium producers into your cell supply.
There has been one main reason for Lithium Prices crashing the past 18 months.
China EV sales are far far below plans this year following the economic downturn and huge subsidy cuts. Battery metal capacity had been built for a supply ramp which didn't happen and this supply is now flooding the market. The price impact of this has been exacerbated by two factors:
So Lithium Prices have crashed due to a short term subsidy adjustment in China, not due to a long term setback to the EV transition story. However, the lower prices have caused lots of lithium companies to fail to raise financing and cancel production plans that would have brought on new capacity after 5-6 years in the 2025+ timescale. So I think it is important for companies like Tesla that actually do still believe in the EV transition, and have the cash to finance it, to step in to fund the capacity required to match their battery cell production ambitions.- Lithium Supply had been built for low quality low range batteries with low tech cell chemistries. The Chinese subsidy change means there is very little demand for these low range subsidy driven cars anymore. The Lithium purity ordered for these cars is not good enough to build high quality high energy density cells, so this low grade product is finding no buyers any more. Hence the price of low grade lithium products finding no floor, while at the same time cell supply for high quality battery cells is still limited.
- Lithium Carbonate and Hydroxide cannot be stored and stockpiled for long. The product quickly spoils, so unlike most commodities, a producer cannot simply stockpile when the price is low - they have to sell quickly no matter the price. This means prices are always going to be volatile and will always be driven by very short term supply and demand dynamics rather than longer term considerations. To some extent this is more similar to the volatility you see in short shelf life agricultural commodities.
Its a very big mistake to take a short term lithium price correction the past 18 months to mean there is no need to bother helping to build future capacity.
Note my argument is utterly different to the false FUD narrative that there are not enough lithium, cobalt and nickel resources for the EV transition. There are plenty of resources. And it is relatively easy to build the new capacity to get to a 100% Clean Energy society. But this takes time and cash. I'm just saying Tesla needs to be masters of their own destiny and not rely on an array of half incompetent junior metals startups and conservative larger metals corporations who believe in a slow EV transition to deliver on a product so critical to Tesla's own extremely aggressive battery production targets.
Nickel Sulphate is a similar story, but I'll discuss that another time .
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i don’t even know what that meansHow quaint! Did you read about CATL in the newspapers? Maybe you could telegraph an order?
Don't really need to. The Thacker Pass Lithium project, ongoing via American Lithium Corp, is a major new source near GF1 (from a company with $53M market cap)
Projects - American Lithium Corp.
"located approximately 4 hours from the Tesla Gigafactory, the TLC Project aims to offer an economic alternative to regional players such as the productive Ioneer Ltd. (formerly Global Geoscience) lithium claystone project, and even the oldest & largest lithium mine in the U.S. at Clayton Valley."
TL;dr Lithium is not the issue. It's NICKEL that Tesla will likely go after. Look for a play in Canada (Ontario/Quebec shield resources).
While I wouldn't go so far as to say that lithium isn't an issue for scaleup rates, I do agree that nickel sulfide is probably a more critical factor. That said, I don't expect the focus to be on nickel sulfide deposits, like in Ontario / Quebec. I fully expect it to be on HPAL-processed limonitic laterites. The former aren't abundant enough and are geographically concentrated in specific areas. Limonitic nickel laterites can be found abundantly around the world (though most commonly in lower-latitude areas) and are a very cheap raw material (it's always been processing them economically that's been the challenge).
Lithium limitations are surely a solid #2 for scaleup limitations, however. Rare earths would also be up there for the automotive side (GF1 will obviously be a major customer of Mountain Pass, at the very least!). Battery-grade graphite might be, but if it would be, Tesla might just choose to go with synthetic graphite / amorphous carbon / etc anodes. Cobalt reductions (and potential elimination) will eventually bring it to the point where you're getting all your cobalt needs just from nickel production (limonitic nickel laterites are usually particularly cobalt-rich). Nothing else is used in great enough quantity relative to how abundantly it's already used by other industries to pose raw feedstock limitations (not sure whether Tesla actually makes all of the components of the electrolytes themselves - I really doubt that at present - but the raw feedstocks used to do so are just commodity petrochemical compounds, hydrofluoric acid, simple boron and phosphorus compounds, etc, all of which are abundant in industrial usage compared to Tesla's needs). Tesla's needs are also relatively insignificant to copper and esp. alumium markets.
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hacer
Active Member
It's not just the headline, the whole article is carefully written to make it appear that the SEC may be investiging Tesla. Every single time they mention investigation it is of "the firm", never UBS nor Tesla. Totally reads like a FUD piece.
Same here.
We know you’re reading this, $TSLAQ, we will keep reporting until it sticks...
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