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

[Right_Said_Fred]

I know you all know there is a retirement thread: How much $ to retire and how to fund your lifestyle in retirement.

Then why take advantage of a mod’s night off? Now I had to go and pick up 40 posts and toss them in the right thread.

 

[Thekiwi]

Can you teach us how to retire on $2 million in the bank in US? Say expecting to live another 40-50 years. Family of 4. Need health insurance, pay for college, cars, etc.. Want to travel. It sounds nice until you start thinking about how to *actually* do it. I think you can start being serious at about 5M and definitely do it at 10M, but at 2M? I just don't see how realistically...

50 years in a cryo pod will solve all your money problems.

 

[OrthoSurg]

From the twitter verse...applies to $TSLA also of course, i am sure that 23 # is going to be wayyyyyy higher for $TSLA:

What they tell you: If you invested $100 in Apple's IPO and and held shares until today, that investment would be worth about $100,000.

What they don't tell you: If you invested $100 in Apple's IPO and held shares until today, you would've endured 23 declines of 20% or more.

2 weeks ago, we suffered our first out of 20

 

[TheTalkingMule]

California’s Ban on New Gas Cars Further Upends Auto Industry

Interesting quote from Morgan Stanley:

‘Morgan Stanley also predicted that by 2040 Volkswagen would be the leading electric-vehicle manufacturer, selling 11.2 million fully electric vehicles a year, followed by Toyota Motor Corp. with 6.5 million, Tesla with 4.9 million and General Motors Co. with 4.1 million.”

They don’t believe that Tesla is going to be at 20 million vehicles a year by 2030, never mind by 2040?

Edit: I can’t find a reference to when Elon stated that they wanted to make 20M vehicles a year, except for “eventually”. Surely “eventually” should mean by 2040?

In related news, the EIA just projected the US will be importing 7.6Mb/d of crude oil to go with the 12M we'll be producing......in 2050. Lol!

What a joke.

 

[Thekiwi]

There was a lot packed into this presentation. Every time I watch it I try to pull out points to get an understanding. Here are my current thoughts. Please feel free to fill in what I have wrong or missed.

Think about the 1st part about the larger cell with a 16% increase in range, "This is not just a concept or a rendering. We are starting to ramp up manufacturing of these cells at our pilot 10Gwh facility......". That means by the time GigaBerlin opens these cell should be ready to go with the casting and battery all in one design. That is not including any of the other stuff they talked about. 14% reduction in cost ramping up now.

Dry electrode. This is not needed for ranged increases. All this does is reduce the cost, drastically reduces the factory footprint and spits out cells faster. This is what Elon cautioned is still having some issues. This does not effect range or supercharging... or at least not that I see in this video. This is icing in the cake for existing vehicles.

Assembly line is again reducing speed and cost. Nothing with range or charging. Can be done now.

Formation is only reducing factory footprint and upfront investment. It can be done now. No change in range or charging.

Three piece battery/car frame adds 14% range increase.

Basically they can make a cheaper battery now (not the cheapest) without the dry coating process which will give them the batteries they need for the current lineup with a 30% range increase (or reduction in the number of cells). 21% decrease in $/KWH. 15% reduction in investment. I believe the dry process is only needed to make the $25K car (along with anode/cathode improvements. Without the dry coating process they will end up with a larger battery cell factory and higher cell prices but they still get saving from all the other bits when assembling the battery.

They will continue to use their suppliers and I don't see why they would not want the same cheap cells from their suppliers since they can have them sign NDAs. ALTHO I imagine the suppliers will supply the cells for storage and the tabless design is not needed for storage. Space and heat are not a worry with storage.

That's about the first half of this video. The last half of the video is what is in development IMO. (Anode, Cathode, lithium and other mineral acquisition.) This makes me believe they feel confident about the dry coating process coming in about a year. If they get it right by the time GigaBerlin and Texas are ready for it things will work out well. The last half then goes into the 3 year portion that makes way for the $25K car.

I think perfecting the dry process yield is necessary before Tesla can start using the new cells in mass production in the near term, due to the fact that they don't have the massive drying machines available to use existing wet electrode technology for the new cell line.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

2 weeks ago, we suffered our first out of 20

And definitely wont be our last.

 

[Artful Dodger]

how do you figure 3000Gwh/year if capacity is increasing at 90Gwh/year with 9 lines? I read it as 3250 cumulative produced at 2029, not a per year rate.

To be clear, Tesla needs to add 9 MORE new lines each year than the number of new lines it added the previous year: ie: 9 in 2021, 18 in 2022, 27 in 2023.

That means Tesla needs to be able to build 1 machine per year that is capable of building 9 bty lines. So in the 2nd year, Tesla has the capacity to build 18 lines with 2 MTBTMs, and in the 3rd year 3 MTBTMs are available to build 27 by lines, get it? Lol, hope this helps...

It's easiest to see it in this table: (2nd column MWh added; 3rd col. is the Cumulative Annual Production Capacity of all lines build to date)

For this to happen, Tesla will need dedicated factories that crank out battery factories (the 'MTBTM's). Think of this industrial and manufacturing goal as a very Hi-bar

Cheers!

BONUS Q: Estimate how long it takes Tesla to eat the Galaxy.

Spoiler: No peeking

80,000 years

PRO-BONO: Elon's been thinking about this for a long time:

Elon Musk @elonmusk Aug 21, 2018
"Really makes me wanna buy Rice Krispies"

Matt Potter @MattPotter · Aug 21, 2018
"Mind blown by learning just now that Snap, Crackle and Pop are terms taken from physics (they are the 4th, 5th and 6th time derivatives of position)... and as if that wasn’t enough, we were perilously close to having a bowl of Jerk in the morning."

Snap, Crackle and Pop - Wikipedia​

 

[OrthoSurg]

And definitely wont be our last.

The good thing about these forums, we all seem to find completely normal that there are drops and obstacles on the way to Tesla complete domination in 2030.

everytime I get to work and Tesla has crashed, people are asking me if I sold everything before the total complete collapse of TSLA like if they were talking about NKLA. Talking to other longs is a bit refreshing than just talking to non investors that just want t9 make 10% overnight and run away.

 

[Big Time]

Creepin while you sleepin

 

[Singuy]

I think perfecting the dry process yield is necessary before Tesla can start using the new cells in mass production in the near term, due to the fact that they don't have the massive drying machines available to use existing wet electrode technology for the new cell line.

So the important part is that they got it to work.

When you can get it to work, you can scale it up even with bad yield. From the picture we see multiple rollers going at once. You just need more. There's a reason why their machine is working at full speed from the video and yet they are getting bad yield from their dry process. It's a matter of how much yield they find acceptable per roller machine as they improve machine to machine.

 

[Thekiwi]

Some musing from this slide from the battery day presentation:
- The savings don't kick in for Tesla right away, takes a few years
- I wonder what each of those horizontal gridlines represent? If I was a betting man I would they were $25 increments, meaning they are at ~$130 p/KW now, and Teslas cost curves down to around $60 p/KW in 2025 - which sort of fits the 56% cost reduction

 

[computerchuck]

A/H price at $393.40 (+1.45%). I like where this is going.

Edit: my short term options play has taken quite a beating! Thanks for the rest before the next wave....

 

[Xd85]

To be clear, Tesla needs to add 9 MORE new lines each year than the number of new lines it added the previous year: ie: 9 in 2021, 18 in 2022, 27 in 2023.

That means Tesla needs to be able to build 1 machine per year that is capable of building 9 bty lines. So in the 2nd year, Tesla has the capacity to build 18 lines with 2 MTBTMs, and in the 3rd year 3 MTBTMs are available to build 27 by lines, get it? Lol, hope this helps...

It's easiest to see it in this table: (2nd column MWh added; 3rd col. is the Cumulative Annual Production Capacity of all lines build to date)

View attachment 591933

For this to happen, Tesla will need dedicated factories that crank out battery factories (the 'MTBTM's). Think of this industrial and manufacturing goal as a very Hi-bar

Cheers!

BONUS Q: Estimate how long it takes Tesla to eat the Galaxy.

Spoiler: No peeking

80,000 years

PRO-BONO: Elon's been thinking about this for a long time:

Elon Musk @elonmusk Aug 21, 2018
"Really makes me wanna buy Rice Krispies"

Matt Potter @MattPotter · Aug 21, 2018
"Mind blown by learning just now that Snap, Crackle and Pop are terms taken from physics (they are the 4th, 5th and 6th time derivatives of position)... and as if that wasn’t enough, we were perilously close to having a bowl of Jerk in the morning."

Snap, Crackle and Pop - Wikipedia​

interesting. I hope the path to ramping MTBTMs is assumed?

 

[iPlug]

California’s Ban on New Gas Cars Further Upends Auto Industry

Interesting quote from Morgan Stanley:

‘Morgan Stanley also predicted that by 2040 Volkswagen would be the leading electric-vehicle manufacturer, selling 11.2 million fully electric vehicles a year, followed by Toyota Motor Corp. with 6.5 million, Tesla with 4.9 million and General Motors Co. with 4.1 million.”

They don’t believe that Tesla is going to be at 20 million vehicles a year by 2030, never mind by 2040?...

Yep, that hubris has served similar analysts and ICE manufacturers pretty well these last few years.

 

[Roel1994]

To be clear, Tesla needs to add 9 MORE new lines each year than the number of new lines it added the previous year: ie: 9 in 2021, 18 in 2022, 27 in 2023.

That means Tesla needs to be able to build 1 machine per year that is capable of building 9 bty lines. So in the 2nd year, Tesla has the capacity to build 18 lines with 2 MTBTMs, and in the 3rd year 3 MTBTMs are available to build 27 by lines, get it? Lol, hope this helps...

It's easiest to see it in this table: (2nd column MWh added; 3rd col. is the Cumulative Annual Production Capacity of all lines build to date)

I was wondering, why does the table assume 10 GWh per line? In the presentation Drew talks about that they want to build assembly lines that have such a high speed that they can do 20 GWh per line:

 

[Chunky Jr.]

in a few years, Tesla will have about 5M cars on the road that are paying $10/mo for the premium connectivity. That's $50M/mo pure profit that will continue to grow with the fleet, plus whatever other services they can add (eg music, apps). They will easily be making $1B/yr in profit just from services like that by 2025.

 

[Artful Dodger]

interesting. I hope the path to ramping MTBTMs is assumed?

Not certain I know what you're asking. But I think Grohmann Automation build a MTBTM a year in Germany, Grohmann China build another one, and maybe Tesla adds one near the 'mothership' in Fremont so that the engineers have 'hands-on' with the latest at all times.

Either way, Tesla needs to add capacity at a steady rate. SNAP. CRACKLE. POP. There's no cheating your way to 3TWh/yr (Trevor's need not apply).

Cheers!

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

SEC.gov | SEC Charges BMW for Disclosing Inaccurate and Misleading Retail Sales Information to Bond Investors

SEC Charges BMW for Disclosing Inaccurate and Misleading Retail Sales Information to Bond Investors

BMW AG will pay $18 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that the Germany automaker and two of its U.S. subsidiaries disclosed inaccurate and misleading information about the company’s retail sales volume while raising approximately $18 billion in corporate bond offerings.The company inflated reported retail sales in the U.S. from 2015 to 2019, which helped close the gap between its actual retail sales volume and internal targets, the SEC said in a statement Thursday.

----

ssdd

Yet Elon and Tesla each had to pay $20M for a tweet that did basically nothing. Seems legit.

 

[larmor]

California’s Ban on New Gas Cars Further Upends Auto Industry

Interesting quote from Morgan Stanley:

‘Morgan Stanley also predicted that by 2040 Volkswagen would be the leading electric-vehicle manufacturer, selling 11.2 million fully electric vehicles a year, followed by Toyota Motor Corp. with 6.5 million, Tesla with 4.9 million and General Motors Co. with 4.1 million.”

They don’t believe that Tesla is going to be at 20 million vehicles a year by 2030, never mind by 2040?

Edit: I can’t find a reference to when Elon stated that they wanted to make 20M vehicles a year, except for “eventually”. Surely “eventually” should mean by 2040?

Edit 2: 40% unit growth per year starting at 500K units in 2020 yields approx 20M units in 2031. Roughly a doubling every 2 years. Now what was Ark saying about Wright’s law?

Tesla will have a run rate of 20 million vehicles by end of 2030– have you learned nothing?! It will be 2031...

 

[Artful Dodger]

I was wondering, why does the table assume 10 GWh per line? In the presentation Drew talks about that they want to build assembly lines that have such a high speed that they can do 20 GWh per line:

View attachment 591954

That's a good question. Elon said 10 GWh/yr/line and about 200 GWh/yr/site. The Pilot Line itself is sized for 10 GWh/yr, and I think its likely they work to get it to that capacity, declare victory, and start replicating them at other sites around the world. Sounds like Berlin might get the first one, and Grohmann is very close to provide the production equipment. No time to waste once its Goodenough!

I expect China's sheer size and need will demand a local MTBTM for Bty Lines, and Grohmann does already have an office in China.

Clearly, there's advantages to having U.S. based capacity, and Tesla already owns at least two N. American robotics/equipment makers and the need at Giga Texas will be well, as big as Texas.

Nonetheless, if continual refinement of the lines results in capacity > 10GWh/yr/line it just means Tesla needs fewer lines, but the goals remain the same.

Elon did say they might be able to get to 3TWh/yr a little faster than 2030, and my simple model demonstrates that, getting there in 2029 (so a little fudge factor). But with this simple arithmetic model, there are no other solutions that include both 100GWh/yr capacity in 2022 and 3,000 GWh/yr by 2030.

UNLESS you SNAP, CRACKLE, and POP.

But like I say, it's a simple model...

Cheers!