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

[2daMoon]

Fuel cells for cars have been discussed extensively here and the common sentiment is that they are clearly inferior to electric cars. However, I haven't seen much nearly as much discussion about hydrogen with regard to clean energy storage on an industrial scale.

I read an article today on a local newspaper where the CEOs of two large European energy companies were interviewed and both mentioned hydrogen as a future clean energy storage medium. To my astonishment, large batteries were not even mentioned even though I know that one of the companies experimented with batteries already ~5 years ago.

Ever larger battery projects seems to be popping up around the globe but I haven't noticed articles about large scale hydrogen-based energy storage solutions. Anyone care to give a link to a relevant article or give a quick summary about the viability of hydrogen in clean energy storage in comparison to batteries?

As I understand it, the logical bottleneck for Hydrogen use is the inefficiency of production. It requires the use of energy to produce the Hydrogen.

By comparison, renewable plus battery is very lean as there is no energy loss to create the end product once the generation and storage is in place.

Add in the explosive nature, the difficulty to contain the second smallest atom in a bottle, additional energy required for compression and cooling and whatever else is needed, plus the complexity of making it safe. The valid arguments against it pile up pretty quickly.

Every indication, to me, is that Big Oil is the one pushing for Hydrogen because they would be the source of the raw material from which it would be derived. I'm sure they also push for petroleum powered Hydrogen production facilities as well. Another good reason not to do Hydrogen.

 

[Nocturnal]

Why does Tesla need to switch to CCS? It should be fine to stay with current connector with an adaptor.

More options to charge. Also, in Europe cars have both standards. Why not here?

 

[jkirkwood001]

I'm not sure if this has been asked, but is it possible to know the proportion of TSLA retail stock ownership by nationality? In particular, what proportion of recent US stock owners may need to cash out to pay large tax bills? How significant will this forced sell-off be? @FrankSG ?

 

[jbcarioca]

The newest V3 Superchargers here (EU) only have CCS. You can only charge your S or X by using an adapter. I guess the imminent refresh will have a CCS socket.

Oops, I was about a year out of date. When I was last driving there nearly all had both types. I'm sure you're correct about the refresh.

 

[printf42]

I'm not sure if this has been asked, but is it possible to know the proportion of TSLA retail stock ownership by nationality? In particulier, what proportion of recent US stock owners may need to cash out to pay large tax bills? How significant will this forced sell-off be?

I wouldn’t expect a sell off. For US investors here who didn’t sell, there is no realized gain so no tax.
(Many only trade in tax free accounts)

For people who did sell in taxable account, they should have already set aside cash for expected taxes.
Also, they already sold, how could they sell again? Short it?

For option players, most of winning 2019/2020 options play became so ITM it make more sense to exercise instead of sell, taxes wise, so I expect that’s what people did.

 

[jkirkwood001]

I wouldn’t expect a sell off. For US investors here who didn’t sell there is no realized gain so no tax.
(Many only trade in tax free accounts)

For people who did sell in taxable account, they should have already set aside cash for expected taxes.
Also, they already sold, how could they sell again? Short it?

Gotcha. Assuming they prudently set aside cash to pay their future tax bill, you're right, @printf42 .

Crazy hypothesis: assuming they didn't leave profit on the table, how many will have to sell off TSLA to pay their bill? Of the total shares, what impact does anyone think this might have on the SP?

 

[Tslynk67]

Which one of you here is Nancy?View attachment 630154

Do you really think any of us would waste our money on Apple, Disney and AB (whoever the hell they are)?

 

[CorneliusXX]

Kelvin Yang has a nice pic of the Y single piece casting. While I have only seen a couple of pics of these castings, this one looks like it has a cleaner finish that earlier versions - presumably the experience is paying off.

 

[st_lopes]

Gotcha. Assuming they prudently set aside cash to pay their future tax bill, you're right, @printf42 .

Crazy hypothesis: assuming they didn't leave profit on the table, how many will have to sell off TSLA to pay their bill? Of the total shares, what impact does anyone think this might have on the SP?

I agree with @printf42, shouldn’t be a material amount that would actually move the price. Too many other ways to access capital needed to pay for a tax bill... sell covered calls, asset backed loan, sell other positions (if they’re crazy enough to have any). That of course assumes most holders are doing so outside of a tax free account.

 

[H Mak]

Another Space X launch in 20 mins for anyone interested

 

[JohnnyEnglish]

Kelvin Yang has a nice pic of the Y single piece casting. While I have only seen a couple of pics of these castings, this one looks like it has a cleaner finish that earlier versions - presumably the experience is paying off.

Is this a MIC Y casting? I can't remember seeing a picture of one of these before. It may also account for the cleaner finish.

 

[dgodfrey]

Isn't it obvious that (some) U.S. taxpayer money should be spent on adding Supercharging sites? 80% of BEVs on the roads the USA are from Tesla. It would seem stupid to be only spending public money on CCS.

It may seem obvious when considering how to benefit the most number of taxpayers but it's far from that simple. In a perfect world, the SAE would have adopted Tesla's protocol from the outset when Tesla presented their standard in 2011ish. It wasn't until 2014 that the CCS standard was officially adopted. But, as a taxpayer, I would be annoyed knowing that my taxes were used to promote a private entity. I'm not so naive to believe it doesn't happen but on the surface, subsidizing Tesla's private network is hard to support.
That being said, I fully expect that Tesla will eventually open up the Supercharger Network to non-Tesla's and when that happens, I fully expect Tesla to be on the receiving end of taxpayer funded subsidies intended to accelerate the build out.
While on the topic, I would expect the Tesla official CCS adapter here in NA to show up this year and a reverse adapter soon to follow that will usher in the initial non-Tesla members to the Network.

It should also be noted that with the increased production goals that will eventually hit 20,000,000 Tesla's/year by 2030, would be a 4,000% increase to the demands on the Network. I seriously doubt that Tesla is planning to increase the Network by 4,000% in the next ten years which in reality isn't a straight line interpolation when considering increases to range and charging speed would effectively decrease the ratio of stalls to cars over time.

Will Supercharger Network Support Anticipated Growth? | Tesla Motors Club

There was a table that I can't find that showed how the ratio of cars/kiosk has been steadily increasing which supports my thoughts that Tesla can not keep up with the production pace regarding superchargers.

So I suspect that the release of the CCS adapter will buy Tesla time to pace the build-out more reasonably. By opening up Tesla's to the public infrastructure could lessen the overcrowding we now experience and eliminate the Supercharger Network as a possible "bottleneck" for Tesla's hypergrowth plans.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Is this a MIC Y casting? I can't remember seeing a picture of one of these before. It may also account for the cleaner finish.

It is the Chinese version.

 

[jerry33]

It may seem obvious when considering how to benefit the most number of taxpayers but it's far from that simple. In a perfect world, the SAE would have adopted Tesla's protocol from the outset when Tesla presented their standard in 2011ish. It wasn't until 2014 that the CCS standard was officially adopted. But, as a taxpayer, I would be annoyed knowing that my taxes were used to promote a private entity. I'm not so naive to believe it doesn't happen but on the surface, subsidizing Tesla's private network is hard to support.

Unless one of the committee members involved has a submarine patent so that when the standard has been implemented enough so there's no turning back, and then they pull out the patent and start charging royalties. Bear in mind the U.S. CCS is not the same as the E.U. CCS. Submarine patents have happened before.

 

[saniflash]

viewer discretion advised

https://twitter.com/JE_Research/status/1353210657261330433

 

[PV4EV]

Check out EU Tesla products. The Model 3 came with CCS. All (I think) EU Supercharger stations are now original Tesla connector and CCS. In addition an original Tesla connector/ CCS adapter si sold in EU, although older Models S and X do require some modifications for it to work. Here is the Tesla manual for the adapter:
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/CCS/CCS_Combo_2_Adapter_en.pdf

Remember that Tesla has long been a member of CharIn, the organization that established CCS, etc.
News
FWIW, the base is J1772 in NA and Mennekes 2 in Europe:
Mennekes International
That means that the NA adapter will be different in NA and is probably the only reason it has not yet been available in NA.

Especially now I think Tesla will make the CCS available in NA also. It will be a trifle complex because the EU pin design is much more flexible than is J1772.

Why? Tesla has already been testing interoperability for other manufacturers in Europe, according to Elon.
There is a high probability of something like that happening on other worldwide markets too. Remember that the proprietary Tesla plug only happened because there was no established high power DC standard when Model S was designed and the first Superchargers were being deployed in September 2012.

Now, with a rapid growing BEV market and more rapidly growing Supercharger supply, it makes perfect sense to begin to generate income from that network. That is 100% in harmony with the Tesla mission and will also give shareholder value. Somebody smarter than am I might be able to estimate the economic value of such an activity. Tesla is already a registered public utility in the EU and UK, although everyone things that is only about existing TE products. This is happening right now, as Elon said. he just was very cryptic...as usual.

As far as I am aware, all new MS's in the UK in past 18+ months have been supplied with a CCS adapter for use at the V3 SC's. Best charge rate I've seen has been around 147KW without pre-conditioning. Snowy UK pics below :-

 

[Tslynk67]

As far as I am aware, all new MS's in the UK in past 18+ months have been supplied with a CCS adapter for use at the V3 SC's. Best charge rate I've seen has been around 147KW without pre-conditioning. Snowy UK pics below :-


View attachment 630260

View attachment 630259


View attachment 630261

I occasionally get 147kWh via Type 2 on SuC's with my old rust-bucket MX. I deliberately visited some V3 chargers in December (on the way home from Westvletern brewery) and was a bit peeved that they were CCS only, so I couldn't try them out

 

[NicoV]

As far as I am aware, all new MS's in the UK in past 18+ months have been supplied with a CCS adapter for use at the V3 SC's. Best charge rate I've seen has been around 147KW without pre-conditioning. Snowy UK pics below :-


View attachment 630260

View attachment 630259


View attachment 630261

I’ve had my 2016 Model S upgraded to support CSS, and so far I’ve used that adapter to charge at non-Tesla DC fastchargers, instead of using the klunky Chademo adapter (most chargers with a Chademo connection also have a CCS connection).

It’s amazing that Tesla provides significant hardware updates like CCS and MCU2 for 5 year old cars. I don’t see other vendors doing that, they’d rather sell you a new car. That being said, if we see a Model S update this week with a native CCS charge port and NFC/Bluetooth based smart entry (like Model 3), I’m going to be very tempted to buy one.

 

[NicoV]

I deliberately visited some V3 chargers in December (on the way home from Westvletern brewery) and was a bit peeved that they were CCS only, so I couldn't try them out

That CCS upgrade is a no-brainer. Just do it.

 

[Christine69420]

I occasionally get 147kWh via Type 2 on SuC's with my old rust-bucket MX. I deliberately visited some V3 chargers in December (on the way home from Westvletern brewery) and was a bit peeved that they were CCS only, so I couldn't try them out

I got the CCS upgrade for my TMX.

On v3 chargers you do not share power so you don't get reduced speed when the charger next to you is busy. That is nice.

But I don't charge any faster than the max speed I get on a v2 charger.

Like already said - it's well worth the money. Less than a TSLA share.