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

[mickle]

It seems that Tesla was only able to announce a Plaid S, because it is a newer more expensive model and it doesn't Osbourne the other versions of the S. However, it would seem likely that if they have to modify the S to handle a different sized battery pack that they would update all the S versions to use the new battery. Otherwise, how will they fit an 80mm battery in a case size designed for 65mm?

So I'm thinking when Plaid is ready to ship, they'll announce newer versions of the LR+ and maybe Performance. Currently Performance is rated 348 miles and LR+ at 402 (15.5% more). If Plaid is good for 520 miles, then a new LR+ with the same pack might also be 15.5% more or 600 miles. They can't announce that now or many people would wait a year for it.

And there is a final problem, if they announce new versions of S with the new batteries, that will probably Osbourne the X models because people would expect those to get upgraded next. So, they'll have to upgrade S & X at the same time.

 

[jkirkwood001]

He had a big flaw in assuming the percentage of the cost of the car dedicated to the battery could remain the same for a cheaper car. It can’t. A $5k pack cost plus, motor, inverter and charger is far too expensive, because the equivalent gas car’s engine/transmission/ gas tank, emissions combined is only $3k.

Tesla will make up costs throughout the vehicle, but dedicating $5k to the battery alone just to go from 300 miles to 400 miles, just makes it too hard a hill to climb.

Oh really? How about that same $25,000 car having AutoPilot with zero incremental cost compared to zilch in the ICE? Apples-to-apples, net, I believe Tesla will be able to make a very compelling "budget" car.

Oh and you forgot the ICE's muffler.
And injection unit or carburetor.
And fuel pump.
And radiator.
And starter motor.

 

[Paul_SF]

Here we go, again....


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1308959127499014146?s=21

 

[Big Time]

You just made top gun

 

[iPlug]

Short term investors were so busy with their nearsightedness today, not seeing some immediately available product come out of battery day.

Meanwhile, California's governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order today to restrict new car sales in the state to only zero-emission vehicles by 2035 and require medium and heavy-duty trucks to be zero-emission by 2045 where possible. Other states and countries will follow as is always the case.

Long term investors will likely put 2 and 2 together - the battery day announced 4860 cells effectively mean double the range at half the cost/kWh, and just a few years away. Pair this with Governor Newsom's order, and the person who builds the most EVs and electric grid batteries with the lowest manufacturing price/kWh stands to make hundreds of billions to trillions in profit.

 

[Tim S]

Does anyone down under know if Piedmont Lithium is trading today (Thursday)? @Thekiwi? I just found this...

ASX probes Piedmont Lithium's Tesla deal

"Then on Wednesday morning, Piedmont announced what it characterised as a five-year lithium supply pact with Tesla. By no coincidence, Tesla held its annual “battery day” on Tuesday (US time).

Incredibly, Piedmont announced this supply pact on its own website but not via the ASX platform. Piedmont removed the statement from its website soon after posting it, but not before it was picked up by Bloomberg."

I'll try to find the raw materials thread now...

Edit: I posted this in The Resource Angle thread also.

 

[Paul_SF]

https://twitter.com/valleyhack/status/1308970819608023040?s=21

Ashlee looking for some “time” with Elon, again.

 

[skybluecgreen]

Along with the obligatory, 'Haven't been able to keep up here so sorry if already posted,' here is a battery day twitter thread from Karen in a easy to read format:
A thread written by @enn_nafnlaus

 

[Stinger63]

Well, I wondered if, as a Tesla trader, it would make sense for me to join this website and thread and, having just read the pre, during and after Battery Day presentation comments, I must thank you all for the good laughs. Some thoughts: Tesla fans will find no flaws in Tesla or Musk who can do no wrong as everything is calculated to have meaning... All of which is bad for a reasoned Tesla trader. But I get that many of you are long term holders, neither rich nor poor, just believers.
For people like me, who believe in Musk's grand project but looking to make money on the way there, BDay was... bidet. The only worthy part was specifically about battery tech and evolutionary accomplishment which pretty much guarantees Tesla's battery manufacturing leadership in the 10 years to come and thus justifies the 380 share price.
Getting excited about the Plaid doesn't register on the relevance spectrum. The 25K car? Meh. It will have to be a base sub 20k with all options to 25k otherwise it will miss the market.
I really like the casted front and rear units but they remind me of all in one appliances... What happens when an impact damages a part of the cast? Replacing the entire unit? Good luck with that.
No talk about million miles battery? I hate the term which should have been the million cycles battery to be meaningful but that was off the table. V2G was propped up as the next big thing, until Musk said it was pointless. So it must be.
To summarize, I think Musk needs to hire a media group to help him with presentation, controlling the message and timing information, instead of letting the fan world fluff up unachievable expectations. Tesla can absolutely satisfy both the tech and engineering geeks and the financial market to achieve Musk's worthy goal.

 

[dl003]

Well, I wondered if, as a Tesla trader, it would make sense for me to join this website and thread and, having just read the pre, during and after Battery Day presentation comments, I must thank you all for the good laughs. Some thoughts: Tesla fans will find no flaws in Tesla or Musk who can do no wrong as everything is calculated to have meaning... All of which is bad for a reasoned Tesla trader. But I get that many of you are long term holders, neither rich nor poor, just believers.
For people like me, who believe in Musk's grand project but looking to make money on the way there, BDay was... bidet. The only worthy part was specifically about battery tech and evolutionary accomplishment which pretty much guarantees Tesla's battery manufacturing leadership in the 10 years to come and thus justifies the 380 share price.
Getting excited about the Plaid doesn't register on the relevance spectrum. The 25K car? Meh. It will have to be a base sub 20k with all options to 25k otherwise it will miss the market.
I really like the casted front and rear units but they remind me of all in one appliances... What happens when an impact damages a part of the cast? Replacing the entire unit? Good luck with that.
No talk about million miles battery? I hate the term which should have been the million cycles battery to be meaningful but that was off the table. V2G was propped up as the next big thing, until Musk said it was pointless. So it must be.
To summarize, I think Musk needs to hire a media group to help him with presentation, controlling the message and timing information, instead of letting the fan world fluff up unachievable expectations. Tesla can absolutely satisfy both the tech and engineering geeks and the financial market to achieve Musk's worthy goal.

so you are saying when my brokerage account says I have 5x my money in less than a year, its not real?

 

[S3XY]

outlook:

LT: obv fine
ST: is anyone other than me thinking that it’s inevitable that the market is going to juke us downward with election FUD, whether warranted or not. it’s what market does.

i am thinking that it will happen. when, dunno. soon?

if so, this will obv impact tsla.
and we have factors coming up, P&D, earnings that many take a wager on.

but with the underlying stuff going on it’s not the same playing field as normal circumstances.

then again, could also melt up, taking tsla with it.

any thoughts?

If election worries bring down the overall market then what's the safe harbor? TSLA seems as good as (or better than) any.

 

[BriansTesla]

Tesla can absolutely satisfy both the tech and engineering geeks and the financial market to achieve Musk's worthy goal.

I completely disagree, and I think that despite the tremendous time we spending debating the facts here, the market is largely irrelevant to the success of the company. The stock goes up $100, it goes down $100 and the construction continues.

 

[ZsoZso]

However, it would seem likely that if they have to modify the S to handle a different sized battery pack that they would update all the S versions to use the new battery. Otherwise, how will they fit an 80mm battery in a case size designed for 65mm?

As explained by Elon yesterday on the presentation: by removing multiple layers of casings and structural elements.

Old design: cell -> module -> pack -> structural frame. There is extra layers of metal and other material that takes up space in each of these packaging levels.

New design: cell glued directly to bottom and top plate acting itself as structural element, i.e. going from 4 layers to 2 layers. There is the needed 15mm gain!

 

[johnm6875]

I understand Cato Rd. can't ramp-up until "yields" improve, but there must be thousands of batteries being produced as they perfect the process. What happens to the batteries that are good? If I were Tesla, I'd be tempted to put them in a hand-built sports car. Maybe several of them. It'd certainly be good practice before putting them in the MS.

 

[mickle]

As explained by Elon yesterday on the presentation: by removing multiple layers of casings and structural elements.

Old design: cell -> module -> pack -> structural frame. There is extra layers of metal and other material that takes up space in each of these packaging levels.

New design: cell glued directly to bottom and top plate acting itself as structural element, i.e. going from 4 layers to 2 layers. There is the needed 15mm gain!

Is there anyone here that has an open Model S pack and can tell us how much space is available?

Besides this space issue, I'm guessing a new battery pack will require new power electronics (inverter and charger) and might be running at higher voltages. That could be another factor in just updating all the versions of Model S at the same time.

 

[S3XY]

"If i was a CEO of a big OEM...id be wetting my pants right now" - Sandy Munro

Oh boy....music to our ears

Most of them are old enough that it probably was already an issue for them. But it depends.

 

[S3XY]

Something to cheer up this crowd:
https://twitter.com/YingShirleyMen1/status/1126781819074965504

Someone needs to retweet that to Elon.

 

[gabeincal]

I read the other day that the price of Powerpacks came down dramatically ($170k -> $125k). I've confirmed this to be true via the Tesla Commercial Solar website.

What is interesting though, is if you look into the pricing, Tesla is willing to give an even greater deal with volume purchases.

2 Powerpacks: $101k each
3 Powerpacks: $93k each

Considering we're at about $120 / kWh cost (?), and assuming that 80% of the Powerpack's cost are the packs themselves (232kWh), the worst deal above for Tesla (3 Powerpacks @ $93k ea.) nets about $58.2k / 63% profit.

The buyer of a single Powerpack is giving Tesla a profit of $97k / 77%.

For a single Powerwall, these profit numbers are: $4.5k / 70%.

And this is before battery day improvements are counted.

Now I guarantee that I made mistakes in my math, but man it's profitable to be in the stationary energy storage business.

Soon, quarterly car deliveries (by which they are measured by Wall Street) are only going to be a shrinking chunk of the solid quarterly revenues...

 

[CorneliusXX]

very suspicious timing...

Tesla: look at this buffet of proprietary technology we have

Chinese Government/hackers:

 

[S3XY]

Am I remembering wrong, but didn't Elon say that the Kato Rd facility will be at 10 GWh by the end of next year. Wouldn't that cover all the current S/X production and some Semi? Seems like when they get the cells ramped up, the refresh and Semi get released. Probably Semi first.

Generally Elon speaks about run rate for ramp ups. So my take is that around the end of next year Kato production will reach a 10 GWh/yr run rate. They wouldn't have produced a total of 10 GWh by then.