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

[BioSehnsucht]

It is a long shot, but I did put some thought into it...

Say be have a bank of Powerpacks - peak power output = P1
if we have N cars charging at anytime the average power each cars gets is P1/N.
So the question is if we size the Powerpacks for peak energy storage or peak charging..?.
If we have an auxiliary battery in each stall which can output P2..... (assuming it is fully charged, or charged enough)
The peak rate of charging may be P1/N + P2, or perhaps just P2 where P2 is > P1/N.

We know Maxwell cells can absorb power and discharge power at a higher rate than a normal battery....

In reality it is most unlikely to be true, the investor day may simply have been moved to promote solar..

The way V3 is designed, "paired" stalls don't share, though on a large enough scale all stalls share (in theory you could hit limiting by having many/all stalls start charging from low state of charge at the same time, as there is some limit to how much power can enter the site), so there is no need for stalls to have some kind of extra power source to maintain charge rate when sharing vs a neighbor.

Utility power comes in, gets turned into a big 400V DC power bus, and then each stall has a single DC-DC stage (vs lots of smaller AC-DC ones on v1/v2 superchargers) that uses that 400V as an input and outputs whatever DC voltage and amperage is needed by the car. If you want to give the system a battery buffer, it is better to have it sit on the shared 400V DC bus, so that you never have a situation where capacity goes unused when it could be used (you might have it go unused if it just isn't needed, but never because half the stalls are empty so half the batteries aren't usable). Plus, this way you can use the big battery for demand charge reduction and possibly even grid energy services (if they wanted to get real fancy with a real big battery). Each DC-DC stage (one per stall) can provide maximum power the car can take, so adding a battery to the stall doesn't help. Plus the DC-DC stage is in a centralized equipment area, not the stall, so having a battery there for extra oomph is going to be complicated...

 

[SageBrush]

This news is showing up in 3 articles in the 20 minutes. If thats old news then they coordinated well.

What ... you think we are the only echo chamber around ?

 

[anthonyj]

Short term traders are looking for any excuse to leave the stock, and bears love this because it can break an uptrend

 

[Dare]

Berkshire Hathaway bought 10% of BYD in 2008, later BYD issued more shares, so Berkshire's stake is slightly less than 10%.

Munger invested into BYD long before 2008, his investment did very well for a while, then it came 2008. Similar to many capital intensive companies, BYD was ready to fail. I remember this because at the time I was looking for a good EV company to invest in. Munger asked Buffett to invest into BYD. His reasoning seems to be valid: EV is the future, China will support BYD, the CEO of BYD is great, etc. However, Buffett didn't act. First of all, BYD doesn't fit Buffett's four investment criteria. Second, (this part is my guess) at the time financial crisis was going on, there were so many great and safer investment opportunities, why waste money on such a risky company? A few months later, Munger talked to Buffett again, he said if Buffet doesn't invest, he will pull his money out of BRK and invest into BYD. That was serious, he probably had never said something like that to Buffett in the past few decades. Buffett immediately sent his right-hand man Dave Sokol to China to check out BYD. Buffett decided to buy, BYD founder Wang said he was only willing to sell 10%.

I used to respect Munger a lot, studied his book carefully. Through the Tesla episode, I realize he probably is trying to protect BYD. It's his legacy. There is no way he doesn't understand Tesla's potential. In my view, Tesla will prosper. BYD will suffer a lot, it can't compete with Tesla.

I think you’re right about Charlie covering for his legacy here. He’s had an incredible run and he doesn’t want to go out on the wrong side of history while still respecting the diametrically opposed BRK investment.

I always liked what he had to say about CEO pay in this country, even though it’s an incredibly unpopular position to take:

 

[Unpilot]

Short term traders are looking for any excuse to leave the stock, and bears love this because it can break an uptrend

How is your 1880 call looking?

 

[mrdoubleb]

As a reminder, we already had a recall of 125k (!) Model S made until March 2016 related to corrosion of the bolts of the power steering. That time it was the supplier's fault (Bosch) and they paid for it. Not sure if this is the continuation of the same issue, but the problem is with the same part - the bolts of the power steering. This, however, affects only about 1/8 as many cars as the last recall. Practically a non-event.

 

[StealthP3D]

I don’t think so. Berkshire Hathaway has a large investment in BYD. So they clearly believe in EVs, but they just picked the wrong company to invest in and he’s trying (very unconvincingly) to defend that choice

Until last year BYD made more pure ICE cars then EV's and hybrids combined. That changed last year but over 50% of their cars still have a combustion engine in them. Tesla bet the farm on only pure electric vehicles, something that's probably very "risky" sounding to a 96-year-old dinosaur

 

[Fred42]

coronavirus spreading more businesses closing in china etc

Today:

 

[Cherry Wine]

Hahaha, time to sell some puts / buy back some calls. Hilarious.

On another note: if anyone has a recommendation for a tax professional familiar with the wash-sale rule as it pertains to the writing of call options (or authoritative online resources), I am seriously looking. Local inquiries are thus far coming up short. (paging @jbcarioca @EVNow )

 

[ev-enthusiast]

As a reminder, we already had a recall of 125k (!) Model S made until March 2016 related to corrosion of the bolts of the power steering. That time it was the supplier's fault (Bosch) and they paid for it. Not sure if this is the continuation of the same issue, but the problem is with the same part - the bolts of the power steering. This, however, affects only about 1/8 as many cars as the last recall. Practically a non-event.

A blog post or a statement from Tesla might be a great response and give some context to this issue.

 

[Dennisj00]

IMHO, Ark Invest, Gali and similar commenters all seem to build their TSLA $7,000 thesis on autonomous related services. It seems to me, that the whole of Tesla's future growth and ability to fulfill its stated goal, is based on its ability to accelerate power storage capacity (Battery) production into the multiple terawatt territory. All of the other stories hang on this thread. Tesla Semi production has been pushed back for lack of capacity as stated during the Q4 call. Every other manufacturer/wanna be are starved of storage and while Solar roof closes the cosmetic issues associated with rooftop, PV and wind only work as a solution in combination with robust storage capacity. At the power wall roll out Elon talked about how much storage/renewable power it would take to power the world and he does so continuously always subtly, but always addressed.

We as investors, desperately need to insert ourselves into "Tesla April Company Talk" whether it's by portion questions (Think "SAY") to a known attendee or one of us attending otherwise we're stuck with the mostly ridiculously uninformed questions of a bunch of automotive analysts! In any case, IMO the trillion dollar value, much less "mission accomplished" ain't goin anywhere with out the power storage manufacturing capacity. This is what we need to know. The path to Terawatts of power storage. If that is clearly teased out of company talk day, IMO, alpha launch will be unstoppable.

Elon has stated over and over again that TE is where there is at least... at least, the FULL value of automotive. So many folks seem to be myopically focused on the autonomous mobility as the prime mover. IMO it is tangential to Tesla Energy which is the path to displacing the ENTIRE fossil fuel industry. Many words have been written here as to the immense daily net profits, never mind revenues, pulled in by this industry. Given a successful path to hundreds Terawatts per year, those kinds of revenues will belong to Tesla. Unlike the fossil fuel industry, Teslas costs are decreasing and even at lower margins, the scale of the commodity cells in combination with the high margin BMS/ distribution system will produce "gushers" of cash that will make ARAMCO look like a corner candy store business.

(and oh yea, we don't ruin the joint for ourselves and our offspring)

Fire Away!
(It's the batteries, Stupid!)

I agree, it’s the BATTERIES!
I’d like to see a GF on every continent that has a grid for TE production. Work with the governments to help finance but SPEED up the adoption of TE and the semi.

Any excess batteries can always go to powerwalls or cars.

 

[Unpilot]

A blog post or a statment from Tesla might be a great response and give some context to this issue.

They need that twitter dude back that was handling PR for awhile...forgot his name.

 

[Woop-D-Woop]

Another SilLion/Tesla connection, but not one that proves anything other than perhaps SilLion has been preserved as a subsidiary of Tesla (consistent with the SilLion currently having a President but no CEO):

View attachment 510571

Both co-founders (Daniela and Tyler) have Tesla as one of their company interests... and no other auto manufacturers...

 

[StealthP3D]

Damn, we let(?) the bastards get us down...

I didn't let them do anything...I still have every share! They can't mess with me!

 

[wipster]

What’s going on AH?!?!?

Watch the bouncing AH Tesla ball!

 

[wipster]

I didn't let them do anything...I still have every share! They can't mess with me!

Me too but I just had to bitch about something...

 

[Steve m]

Background information on SilLion: SiILion | Company Week

It certainly seems like something that Tesla would want to own, if the technology worked. The former CEO noted improvements were needed in charge rate and cold-weather performance, as of 2018.

So Maxwell provides higher density, dry cathodes cathodes and sillion provides higher capacity anodes. Plus the Canadian company specializing in battery manufacturing equipment. This could get interesting.

 

[Unpilot]

Me too but I just had to bitch about something...

I feel your pain.

 

[Curt Renz]

Agreed...I pointed this out a few days ago and it was lampooned as a nothing burger. But....FUD/shortsters are looking for anything to grab a hold off and attack the SP.

Indeed, the recall notification on the Tesla website began circulating explosively this afternoon and was picked up by unwary traders and algobots. It's really much ado about nothing. Some bolts need to be replaced on just 15,000 2016 Model X's. There have been no crashes or injuries, nevertheless the precaution is being taken.

The rather low cost of the repair in the company's own service centers would be minuscule compared with the dollar value of the drop in share price during after hours trading. Far cheaper than having this done by franchised dealerships.

EDIT: A few years ago my Chevy Cobalt was recalled to replace the 79-cent ignition switch. The dealer's mechanic accomplished this task in about one minute. I asked my friend the service writer how much they would charge General Motors. He answered, "about $200." Such won't be the case in any recalls of Teslas.

 

[flabellina]

A blog post or a statement from Tesla might be a great response and give some context to this issue.

Not if it is a non-issue and the news don't go crazy with it.

Talking about something attracks attention to it. They call it the Streisand effect. It's the same reason why Elon and Tesla should, and mostly don't, acknowledge shortsellers' wild accusations.
If you want to talk about something you frame it with your own narrative. For instance, with the last blog post about safety they implicitly responded to a lot of past accusations, but they did it without mentioning them and by only stating what they have been doing.

You respond when everybody is already talking about it, like they did with the unintended acceleration thing, or if it is indeed important.