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

[heltok]

To me, Autonomy Day was done in desperation to keep investors from bailing and seeing the bigger picture. Battery Day is being done to flex their muscles and announce that there's a new sheriff in town.

Imo Autonomy day and Battery day were primarily recruiting events. The amount of top engineers wanting to work for Tesla must have exploded after Autonomy day. If you have any interest in Machine Learning and watched that presentation your interest in Tesla probably went from ”Startup everyone says is overvalued I would never work at...” to ”Please please hire me, I would work for free just to be able to play with HW3 and do ML together with Karpathy!”. I assume the same will be true for all automation engineers and battery chemistry engineers after hearing Battery Day...

And imo having the best talent is what will help Tesla get to 20M cars per year, not if new batteries are out in 2021 or 2022...

 

[mickle]

I cringe a bit every time I hear this term "tabless cell". I believe this will become the common way cells are made in the future. We don't go around calling cars "horseless carriages" anymore. And I don't think this will become a religious war between the tab and the tab-nots. As a programmer, I have a severe dislike of tabs, and generally replace them with 2 spaces. So unless someone has a better idea, I would like to suggest the new term "space cell".

 

[jhm]

This is just an example of my point that analysts are focusing on the million mile battery rather than the speed and volume of battery production that is coming. It should sink into their thick skulls eventually.

It only sinks in after it has added profitability to four consecutive quarters and the stock price has shot up four-fold. Even then, the analysts are skeptical that it might just be a flash in the pan.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Ya know how when you shift gears, there's a moment you can rev it up a bit? Then reality sinks in when you dump the clutch and ur back to just 3,000 rpms but have a clean 2 mile stretch ahead.

EM tweet watered down tomorrow's headline "Tesla.... more promises, sounds like GM - 2022?" I do think we needed to tamper all this short term hype. Otherwise, the day traders take advantage of the market short term, which plays into the bear thesis.
I have not traded in a couple weeks, and just HODLing though it. Men and boys might get separated this week.

 

[Chocochip]

What was his speculation for end-cap connection that handled both electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity?

I don't recall that being discussed specifically. There's also the idea that only one of the electrodes (in the patent application, it was the Cu anode) can be tabless and connected to the bottom of the cell, while the opposing electrode remains tabbed. That configuration may be sufficient to significantly increase both the electrical conductivity and the cooling of the cell, particularly if the tabless current collector is the Cu anode.

That being said, the thin wire connection at the top of the cell was Tesla's implementation of a failsafe in order to remove the internal fuse that each cell was traditionally equipped with, and which added unnecessary complexity. It is possible that, having had sufficient experience with hundreds of thousands of battery packs over the last few years, Tesla concluded that even that thin wire fuse is unnecessary and they can connect multiple cells in series and provide a smart fuse (through the BMS) for each cell group in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. Again, the power of huge data feedback might help them eliminate complexity. And should they conclude the wire fuses are not necessary, the cell top end caps might be brought in direct contact with metal plates which would, again, act as both electrical contacts and heat sinks.

 

[Singuy]

And so it looks like the impact of Battery Day on investors will be in the same vein as Autonomy Day. IIRC, I got a bunch of dislikes when saying that months ago, but it's already started. Heck, even here there were several posts speculating that the new tech would be in Model Ys this year.

Remember, Tesla showed great technology potential in April 2019, but near the end of the session when the analysts asked Musk about the business model for robo-taxis he didn't have a crisp answer and so the stock tanked. And most people to this day (not here of course) do not think Tesla is ahead of anyone in terms of getting to actual practical autonomy - some still think Tesla is near last. And, remember, this was even with Musk saying that the new FSD computer chip was already in production vehicles and that free upgrades to prior vehicles were on the way. So, no Osborning there.

And now we have Battery Day. History won't repeat, but we're already seeing it rhyming. The "million mile" stuff has been perverted by know-nothing analysts to be anything from being able to charge a million times to driving a million miles on a single charge. And even for the few that get it right, it's discounted because CATL has already announced such a thing themselves, so Tesla is merely "catching up."

If we were to analyze based on First Principles, what is Musk's intent with Battery Day? It's certainly not about stock price pumping. It's not about getting more people to buy Tesla vehicles. With Autonomy Day, I believe Musk was intending to show the world that Tesla was on the right track, and to get others on that track as well. In that regard, Autonomy Day worked - a number of articles in the days after were quoting others in the field agreeing that Lidar wasn't as necessary.

So, think about what Musk's intent with Battery Day really is. It's not about the stock price, it's not about selling more cars, and I don't think it's about getting everyone else to make better batteries. If anything, it's about Musk showing the world where the industry as a whole should be heading, and why BEVs are better than fool cells or any other tech. But, don't expect Mr. Market to understand and react with a long term vision understanding.

No there's a huge difference if Tesla announce plaid and initial semi using such batteries with some crazy specs. Those are real physical products.

FSD as intended for robotaxis is still vaporware until we get the rewrite and see this quantum leap. If that happened last year, if Elon pressed the launch button on the day of autonomy day and we see this magically FSD in everyone's car, the company would be a trillion dollars over the next few weeks.

So until we see this FSD that has been promised since 2016, it's going to have very little credibility until it's out. And it's not like Tesla upload videos monthly to show us progress of FSD alpha to give investors confidence. All we get is Elon talking about it...for 4 years now...

So if we see Tesla cells being scaled up, in real products, and it's almost as good as solid state batteries without being solid state, then yeah I see it spiking the stock.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Electrek - Tesla slashes the price of the Powerpack by 27% on Battery Day

This is interesting, I think.

Hmm, I wonder if Tesla is making the switch to LFP cells for T.E. products? That change alone pays for the entire price reduction, while likely doubling demand.

The other benefit is it frees up other strategic minerals like nickel, manganese, and cobalt for use in automotive cells.

This opens up a whole new supply chain, and instantly puts price pressure on expensive minerals. Now if Tesla could just buy a memeing mining company....

Cheers!

 

[Cherry Wine]

Interesting. On my P3D I no longer have any upgrades available to purchase either (EAP and FSD were available yesterday).

All upgrade options available on my Model X. (EAP/FSD)

 

[jhm]

I cringe a bit every time I hear this term "tabless cell". I believe this will become the common way cells are made in the future. We don't go around calling cars "horseless carriages" anymore. And I don't think this will become a religious war between the tab and the tab-nots. As a programmer, I have a severe dislike of tabs, and generally replace them with 2 spaces. So unless someone has a better idea, I would like to suggest the new term "space cell".

Everyone knows "EV" stands for "Engineless Vehicle." But "Electric Horseless Carriage" would be quite charming.

 

[Drumheller]

As a programmer, I have a severe dislike of tabs, and generally replace them with 2 spaces.

You monster

 

[Artful Dodger]

I thought the report showed a decline in August, and nothing for September. (Of course it also showed nothing for October, so September numbers might not be available yet.)

Yeah, September's not over, so shouldn't be any report for it yet. On the other hand, if they were reporting daily cumulative numbers throughout the month, then it should be non-zero for September at mid-month. Still, it's a 3rd party info source, and not verified elsewhere.

 

[jw934]

I would think that Elon has (or will) spoken to the suppliers directly. Why would he let them know via tweet

Perhaps he did, and was asked to tweet about it to avoid Battery Day depressing their stock price. (Sky blue idea. I didn't check. Just hunting around to provide one possible explanation).

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Randomly popped up in my head, but I expect will see a range bump in the Semi(both versions) today. Maybe even see the final "Production" model with all the tweaks Elon's been talking about over the past year

Edit: Looks like test drives..... https://twitter.com/alex_avoigt/status/1308385815672664066

 

[Drumheller]

If there is a "one more thing" today, perhaps it will be an update on the roadster and its spacex package.

 

[Nocturnal]

Everyone knows "EV" stands for "Engineless Vehicle." But "Electric Horseless Carriage" would be quite charming.

My electronic horseless carriage has 500 horsepower and 550 foot pounds of torque, and has a white dashboard and glovebox. The trunk will hold 3 bushels of widgets.

If there is a "one more thing" today, perhaps it will be an update on the roadster and its spacex package.

Plaid S comes out on stage, after they are done talking the roadster casually flies over the stage.

 

[JRP3]

And so it looks like the impact of Battery Day on investors will be in the same vein as Autonomy Day. IIRC, I got a bunch of dislikes when saying that months ago, but it's already started. Heck, even here there were several posts speculating that the new tech would be in Model Ys this year.

People always lose their minds around Tesla events.

 

[MP3Mike]

Plaid S comes out on stage, after they are done talking the roadster casually flies over the stage.

A big hint would be if they hand out hearing protection to people as they come in.

 

[humbaba]

Randomly popped up in my head, but I expect will see a range bump in the Semi(both versions) today. Maybe even see the final "Production" model with all the tweaks Elon's been talking about over the past year

One point about range and the cybertruck is that the range is listed as "plus" and Elon commented at one point that those numbers were what they could achieve with the batteries they had at the time. It always struck me (and others here, I've noticed) that the plan for the cybertruck was to do better than that. But he hedged in case whatever internal battery development they had in the lab didn't pan out for production scale and I believe today's announcement will be confirmation that the hedge will not be needed leaving only the question of how much the improvement will be.

And increasing the range of cybertruck without increasing the price point will definitely shake things up (though I expect such an announcement will be met with disbelief).

I'd forgotten the Semi, but that makes plenty of sense. When was production of the first units (for Tesla's use) supposed to start?

 

[Artful Dodger]

3. Life cycle. This battery lasts 1 million miles. People can understand that.

... and this increasingly hypothetical person would NOT be a guest on CNBC.

Cheers!

 

[Tes La Ferrari]

Had a dream last night ...

Battery day is happening and 2:15 rolls around as Elon is in stage. Elon casually checks his phone and says - oh and by the way, my kid has suddenly started eating with a SPoon.

the crowd goes wild.

He shrugs and continues talkIng about kick ass battery tech, the plaid S&X while a roadster hovers by. No big deal.