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

[scaesare]

What other mid-large OEM has an answer to the Tesla tri-motor Plaid powertrain?

- Single speed no gearbox
- 0 to 20,000 RPM
- Triple permanent magnet motors
- Torque vectoring
- 0 to 200mph capable
- Deliveries starting TODAY

It's literally checkmate to ICE and every other OEM already. Every other vehicle in this price range has to somehow beat this powertrain. Nobody can say they have a quicker and better performing powertrain for a long time. Unless someone can come out with a cheaper alternative, that alternative will be DOA.

Indeed.

And a subtle point, these are actually "Switched Reluctance Permanent Magnet" (SWRPM) motors. The switched reluctance is the hard part.

Lot's of other folks have permanent magnet motors... fewer have SWPRM's, arguably nobody has them in Tesla's class.

 

[Nocturnal]

If we can get this with the "old" 1860s, imagine how amazing the 4680 cars will be. (doubt performance will push much higher but think cost/reliability/charge speed)

Torque curve for the plaid is insane. Motors are capable of 1200+ HP, currently limited by batteries. Guessing the tri motor cyber will be able to utilize full motor power

Just a guess but they will probably limit RPM on the CT which will free up that extra HP without blowing everything up.

 

[jerry33]

Other folks here have been watching more intently than me, but it feels like there's limited capacity so they're gonna sell the wildly expensive variant only. Makes sense.

Maybe it's chip shortage, maybe it's battery shortage, maybe it's a proactive plan counting on further extended shortages industry-wide. Who knows.

Throughout Tesla's history, they have always delivered the most expensive models first. This should come as no surprise, and does not reflect any kind of panic mode.

 

[scaesare]

Are you serious? Modern games like cyberpunk are in the tens of gigabytes. How much storage do you think waypoints add per temporary waypoint? 12 bytes per point? 32 bytes max? No way is it any possible technical limitation. The plaid could literally store 10 million waypoints.
TBH the lack of waypoints has always been totally stupid. Its like the idea of traveling sales reps with high end cars who would appreciate autopilot is just some sort of blind spot fore the design team.
Its not exactly difficult to code either.

Not to mention:

- The actual route calculation data is transient, and only persists for the life of the route.

- While the locations themselves are stored in the nav history, not having waypoints forces people to plot each leg of the route individually, so they all get stored anyway

 

[Chunky Jr.]

The event was much better than I originally thought when I watched some highlight videos after watching the live stream. I bet orders of magnitude more people will watch highlights and subsequent reaction videos than watched the live stream.

 

[BornToFly]

I wasn't planning on replacing my 2019 Ludicrous S until I got the Roadster. I'm worried the Roadster is going to be another couple years, so now I'm considering a new Model S.... I'm hopeless....

 

[elasalle]

Sorry to bring this up, but just realized we don't talk about Walman, Speigel, Chanos, Einhorn anymore ..... progress!!

 

[asburgers]

I think the market needs time to digest this technology. omg...it took watching a couple dozen twitter/youtube feeds to grasp the progress. Most just see the same exterior and disregard the tech.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Throughout Tesla's history, they have always delivered the most expensive models first. This should come as no surprise, and does not reflect any kind of panic mode.

Agreed....this is evident in all businesses....make the most $$$ you can and then tap into the mass audiences.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

The event was much better than I originally thought when I watched some highlight videos after watching the live stream. I bet orders of magnitude more people will watch highlights and subsequent reaction videos than watched the live stream.

Elon looked extremely relaxed and happy....you know what that means for $TSLA when he's happy ..... more tweets!

 

[asburgers]

Sandy's not so impressed with the hoses in the Mach E (or any other vehicle for that matter). Lots of components increasing costs and areas for mistakes in assembly. These connectors are prone to leaks. Octovalve solves this.

No idea what the unit that says "scrap if dropped" does. LOL.

 

[thx1139]

One other simple thing for waypoints is a round trip. When I take my son to college I would love to let system know that I am going to my sons address at school. Then heading back home. This is about 500 miles round trip. So currently we put in his address at school and away we go. It just gets us to the destination and typically not a lot of extra juice to do things around town. There is a SC in Bloomington IN. So we end up ignoring and changing to go to the SC 1st to get some juice. Would be nice if we indicated round trip that system would say hey we need to stop at Bloomington SC. What also typically happens is that the system tells us to charge longer at previous stop then we need to. If it took it as round trip it would know that we are going to juice up in Bloomington.

Also would like if we could let system know we desire more frequent charges after we get low so that we charge faster because we have lower SOC. You know the dont try and skip chargers if faster to stop more often.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Throughout Tesla's history, they have always delivered the most expensive models first. This should come as no surprise, and does not reflect any kind of panic mode.

I think it's purely a positive. This is the situation we're in, fortunately demand is high enough we can afford to only make the mega-margin version.

Maybe there's a battery delay due to execution on the Tesla side. More likely this is just chip and other pandemic related production limitations. Model S is not the priority, it's barely even a priority.

My hope is that Elon doesn't burn out or piss off too many employees during this post-pandemic period where things simply aren't going to flow easily for anyone. Tough balancing act for someone like Elon.

 

[Prunesquallor]

The event was much better than I originally thought when I watched some highlight videos after watching the live stream. I bet orders of magnitude more people will watch highlights and subsequent reaction videos than watched the live stream.

Agree 100%. It was those dead-air pauses between slides/videos that really killed the momentum. The “SMR Cut” is great.

 

[Beltsbear]

If we can get this with the "old" 1860s, imagine how amazing the 4680 cars will be. (doubt performance will push much higher but think cost/reliability/charge speed)


Just a guess but they will probably limit RPM on the CT which will free up that extra HP without blowing everything up.

They could get more HP out of the CT battery due to the battery size for sure. But 1000 HP is plenty for the tri-motor and would easily push it to 4.5 0-60.

 

[Nocturnal]

They could get more HP out of the CT battery due to the battery size for sure. But 1000 HP is plenty for the tri-motor and would easily push it to 4.5 0-60.

It's rated at 2.9 seconds 0-60.

 

[UncaNed]

How many KWH is the Plaid S battery pack? Are we expecting the same for the Plaid X?

 

[Krugerrand]

Totally disagree. Talking like an engineer is one of the things I admire about Elon. Look at the popularity of Sandy Munro. Every other car company in the world makes the same, stupid commercials and presentations written by the same bloated, cookie-cutter PR departments and ad men. The last thing Tesla needs is some slick, too perfect, Apple-like presentation either. Over-produced and refined, those have become absolute snoozers. Tweak the technical issues, sure, but leave Elon's rough edges, thank you. He's doing just fine.

This is what happens. Elon busy guy. Fly in at last minute. Fight traffic to event. Show up a bit late looking disheveled and confused - because you are disheveled and confused - take a few moments on stage to find your mark, cue cards etc... then begin.

Read the teleprompter slide, nod to yourself that you recall those talking points and remember how freaking awesome the tech is, interact with the audience, laugh when they want a feature you think is dumb, then shrug and concede to their whimsy, search for the next teleprompter slide because your mind is momentarily lost still wondering why the masses want such a dumb feature, regain your place, rinse and repeat, rush off to say a few words to the media, fight traffic back to the airport, take off to your next destination. Elon busy guy.

Man, how I love this company and its peeps.

And that motor - what a work of art. The whole car is a masterpiece. Did you see the cupholders!?

 

[Artful Dodger]

If we can get this with the "old" 1860s

I'm not convinced that Plaid has the "old" 18650s. The 2021 Owners' Manual lists maximum pack voltage as 450v. I think this pack uses more than the previous 4.2V cells @ 96S (more cells with higher peak voltage, ie: 98S @ 4.6V)

 

[M|S|M MYP]

This is why you just can't hate on Elon....