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Nothing will happen with it. The world will have a shortage of battery cells for quite some time to come.

Just like everyone was asking what would happen with the 18650 supply when Tesla started making 2170s. The answer to that was: nothing. It was extra supply. They used it to make extra vehicles.

That said, if the new cells are 2170 format and make for better vehicles, and they can get enough capacity to do so, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Panasonic production get entirely moved over from automotive to Tesla Energy.

There may be some strange things coming to deal with the legacy supply issue. I could imagine new base versions of S & X continuing to use 18650s from the existing Panasonic lines (while offering the current range), while new pricier LR and Plaid versions get entirely new pack designs with new cells, whatever the cell format turns out to be. The margins would be enormously better on the LR and Plaid versions in that case. But Tesla energy is also a good bet to absorb the legacy capacity as long as it makes financial sense. Tesla under Musk seems to be less susceptible to the sunk-cost fallacy than any other company, so this may not be an issue for long.
 
Articles like this one on Tesmanian with claims of sources familiar with the matter (leaks?) are no good IMO, could result in people canceling their orders to wait for the new battery tech to hit production.

Edit: see one of the comments to the article:

View attachment 509669

depending upon timeline, if true, I’d have to hold off on a purchase until I’m able to buy a vehicle with this level of improvement
 
Tesla vehicles sell themselves. Always have. Like any superior product unavailable through any other source, they are the winning combination of technology, efficiency, convenient fast charging, future proofing, and ultimate safety together in one unbeatable package. People know a good thing when they see it. No advertising required.

Cybertruck will only increase Tesla's lead in the market, as it brings all of Tesla's signature advantages to the stagnant US Truck market. Texas will soon be awash in space-age Tesla Cybertrucks. They may even have to make some more room. Maybe send some off-planet? :D

Cheers to the Longs!

P.S. Anybody else planning on participating in a Starlink IPO?
 
Someone at the SEC has to make a determination of what complaints to investigate - and which ones not to.
Since a number of investors have complained about this week's TSLA SP manipulation, a FOIA request (see foia.gov) could shed light on exactly what the SEC did with complaints over this. I mention this because I can imagine the current state of affairs will not hold up well to daylight.
I have confidence, based on the SEC's past actions, that they will do nothing. If they are forced to do something, I'd guess a maximum $10K fine or some similar non-punishment.
 
Several folks here have interpreted this quote to mean the total cost of the new batteries will be several times cheaper.

The quote might mean that, but more likely it means the manufacturing cost, not including raw-material cost, will be several times cheaper. If the latter, then the new batteries will be cheaper, but not several times cheaper, because the raw-material part of the total cost will not drop that much.

I mention this so we don't get our expectations too high. :)

When it comes to batteries, people always get their expectations too high :Þ
 
I have confidence, based on the SEC's past actions, that they will do nothing. If they are forced to do something, I'd guess a maximum $10K fine or some similar non-punishment.

Even if the SEC only slaps on wrists, the wrongdoing and identities are disclosed, and that's often enough of an opening for class action lawsuit lawyers to start prying ...
 
When it comes to batteries, people always get their expectations too high :Þ

I have been investing in li-ion companies since VLNC in the 90s, and have been actively working with li-ion cell suppliers since 2007. No industry has more vapor or hype, something that Musk and Staubel have commented on publicly before. Tesla has been a voice of sanity amidst the hype on cell issues, and I hope that continues.

Also, I took the reduction in battery cost much like you, but also not specifically focused on cell cost. I think the new packs coming are going to be a lot less expensive to build than current Tesla pack designs.
 
Even if the SEC only slaps on wrists, the wrongdoing and identities are disclosed, and that's often enough of an opening for class action lawsuit lawyers to start prying ...
Indeed, these bad actors saved themselves $1.2B in Options contract payouts by robbing shareholders of $38.5B in market cap. Either the SEC investigates this massive fraud, or they are complicit in it. There is no longer any middle ground in this clear-cut case.

#SEC #DOYOURJOB
 
A friend of mine in Dallas Texas went for a test drive of model 3 yesterday. They are really interested in an SUV but their current SUV ( Highlander) is on its last legs, so need a car by 3Q. The estimate for Model Y they got was July 2020 delivery, if they place order now!!!

How’s that possible? I know Model Y is ahead of schedule, but didn’t realize they were this far ahead. This is sort of worrisome to me as I ordered May 2019, but don’t really want the delivery till about end of the year. The Clarity lease is till Feb 2021, and we currently have 3 cars. Getting the Y so early would be 4 cars for 2 of us.

The sales guy in Dallas (not sure if that’s the right term to use for Tesla design center guys) did mention that it is likely some folks in the current list would delay their delivery dates, so my friend would get the car early.

Just very surprised. Good for out Stock price if true.
 
My broker called at about the $850 and rising point and asked what I was going to do. I replied that the value was not even one tenth of what it would be a few years down the road, and that there would be plenty of ups and downs in-between.
I imagine a lot of brokers have been calling retail stock owners. I told mine when he called his firm should not have shorted the stock forcing him to call around and beg for share. My price target is when there are zero shorts left.
 
depending upon timeline, if true, I’d have to hold off on a purchase until I’m able to buy a vehicle with this level of improvement

You could be waiting for years. Tesla’s will need to build enough production capacity, which cannot be done overnight. The new battery tech will probably first find its way to Semi, Cybertruck and Roadster, which judging by their pricing and required battery volume need a lot of cheap batteries. S3XY will probably have to wait. But that’s just my $.50.
 
Are you willing to change your mind based on contrary evidence?

Such as email evidence from a leading executive of Merrill Lynch, recently found by @Artful Dodger:

Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling' | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

The lawsuit between Overstock and the banks concerned a phenomenon called naked short-selling, a kind of high-finance counterfeiting that, especially prior to the introduction of new regulations in 2008, short-sellers could use to artificially depress the value of the stocks they’ve bet against. The subject of naked short-selling is a) highly technical, and b) very controversial on Wall Street, with many pundits in the financial press for years treating the phenomenon as the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories.

Now, however, through the magic of this unredacted document, the public will be able to see for itself what the banks’ attitudes are not just toward the "mythical" practice of naked short selling (hint: they volubly confess to the activity, in writing), but toward regulations and laws in general.

"F*ck the compliance area – procedures, schmecedures," chirps Peter Melz, former president of Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (a.k.a. Merrill Pro), when a subordinate worries about the company failing to comply with the rules governing short sales.
We also find out here how Wall Street professionals manipulated public opinion by buying off and/or intimidating experts in their respective fields. In one email made public in this document, a lobbyist for SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, tells a Goldman executive how to engage an expert who otherwise would go work for “our more powerful enemies,” i.e. would work with Overstock on the company’s lawsuit.

"He should be someone we can work with, especially if he sees that cooperation results in resources, both data and funding," the lobbyist writes, "while resistance results in isolation."
There are even more troubling passages, some of which should raise a few eyebrows, in light of former Goldman executive Greg Smith's recent public resignation, in which he complained that the firm routinely screwed its own clients and denigrated them (by calling them "Muppets," among other things).

Here, the plaintiff’s motion refers to an "exhibit 96,” which refers to “an email from [Goldman executive] John Masterson that sends nonpublic data concerning customer short positions in Overstock and four other hard-to-borrow stocks to Maverick Capital, a large hedge fund that sells stocks short.”​
The contents of these emails were not disputed by any of the parties. (They could hardly have done so, they were turned over in discovery and were put under seal.)

I.e. Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch didn't think much of the ban and regulations against naked short selling, and a Goldman executive sent a highly confidential list of their own clients to one of the large hedge funds that shorted Overstock.

And note that this email was from an executive at the Merrill Lynch clearing side, i.e. their back-office operations, i.e. their normally risk-averse conscience that is supposed to keep hot-headed traders and hedge funds in check...

I doubted @Hock1's views about naked short selling before, but I don't anymore: for example go and try to find out whether "Nasdaq Market Makers" specialist firms have any technological limits on intraday risk taking. You won't find any such limits (which is common on other exchanges), once they pay a couple tens of millions of dollars to be members of the Nasdaq old boy's network they can literally short out of the blue even if they don't have the collateral and borrowed stock to back it up, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of positions if need to be, mark it SHO exempt, and when they move the market follows - and then they can cover, with nobody the wiser.

So please file a SEC complaint if you were a victim of these alleged illegal acts, to get it investigated by this or the next administration. Independently of that, Tesla investors might also want to seek legal advice regarding recovering the damages caused by this daylight robbery.

Not only am I open to changing my mind, I haven't made up my mind in the first place. Papafox credits me with coming up with the idea that call writers were manipulating Tesla's SP, although I'm sure I wasn't the first in this forum to notice the correlation between capping and option expiration dates and prices. I'm fairly convinced that all sorts of cretins try to influence the market in ways that are either outright or borderline illegal.

But the bigger Tesla gets and the more this goes on, the less likely it seems to be that illegal manipulation is the primary driver of the SP moves we see. It just requires too much chutzpah; the risk of being caught is too high. And there is a simpler alternative explanation, which numerous folks here have described better than me as to the way the market adjusts to take into account of option exposures.

The evidence you proffer is relevant to whether Wall Street firms ever play these games (I'm already convinced of that!) but is not convincing as to whether this is currently happening in such magnitudes as would be required to impact the SP moves of TSLA.
 
A friend of mine in Dallas Texas went for a test drive of model 3 yesterday. They are really interested in an SUV but their current SUV ( Highlander) is on its last legs, so need a car by 3Q. The estimate for Model Y they got was July 2020 delivery, if they place order now!!!

How’s that possible? I know Model Y is ahead of schedule, but didn’t realize they were this far ahead

On the 19Q4 conference call Tesla said that they are making Model Ys right now and that deliveries will start in March. So yeah, they are way ahead of the publicly announced schedule.
 
There's a new cut of the Third Row podcast with Elon that combines parts 1 and 2 and is meant to include cuts never seen before. Haven't watched it yet (it's 3hrs 35min!) so don't know whether there is anything extra to be learnt. Edited to add: The only change I've noted so far (at 30 mins in) is much better audio.

Third Row Tesla Podcast – Elon Musk's Story - Director's Cut

Just noticed that there seems to be some new information about using LG Chem and CATL cells for local supply in Shanghai at around 41:38. A few quotes from this:

There's still a few bugs to work out with the LG Chem cells before we can use them in our module and battery pack production system
The CATL cells....the CATL situation will be more of an integrated module than it will be a cell
[My question: Does this mean that CATL will be supplying modules?]
We do expect to use CATL, we do expect to use LG, currently we are using Panasonic....when I say we expect to use, I mean literally a matter of months. By the middle of this year we will probably be using both LG and CATL in volume.
 
Recently I read an article about someone buying a used Tesla and having the autopilot disabled a couple of months after he bought it, due to the fact that he did not buy the Car himself. What is the autopilot software tied to? The car or the person that bought the car? Right now it just seems like it’s not tied to anything. Looks like it has to be bought every time there is a new owner.
 
TLSA fair value is $895.80/share based on discounted 5-yr cash flows (via SimplyWall.st)

TSLA.FairValue.2020-02-07.png


Cheers!
 
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