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

[jbcarioca]

I see a lot of improvements in the last year. At first when the communication channel transitioned to being 100% through the Tesla app, it was a bit unclear how to contact service, which caused some months of confusion. Now we know that if you need service, you book an appointment, Tesla triage the request and contact you back, usually same day, then if possible solve with a Ranger appointment (or remote diagnostic). I had one booked last week on Friday for a loose wheel-arch trim, got a call on Thursday from the Ranger who "had some spare time, was in the area and could pass by, do it today", to which my answer was "sure!"

Since when did things like this ever get resolved sooner than planned, it's top-notch service, and having the foresight to have the necessary parts in the ranger's car (MCRed P85) ahead of time is smart

I also suspect that we here in this forum have probably experienced the worst of Tesla Service in the past, not least because many of us were early adopters, early build cars which needed some attention more than would be considered normal, also during the period when the company was scaling fast and through long periods of parts shortages, so our perceptions are skewed somewhat negatively. On Twitter, I interact with a lot of Tesla owners who've bought their car in the last three years and other than accident repairs, seems very few require any service these days. The build quality of the cars is way ahead of where it was

Well said! I still stand my my earlier less positive comments, but also recognize that the vast majority of issues are those 'early adopter' ones, collision repair or a dose of 'out of warranty' issues.

 

[jbcarioca]

Whats so unique about autobidder? I'm currently going through planning permission to build a small 1MW solar farm with 500kwh stationary storage. I have a contract with a company called gridserve to handle power pricing arbitrage for me here in the UK. Basically autobidder.
AFAIK that company is just 3 people. A UK startup.
There is nothing patented or secret about what autobidder does. I suspect every single major storage provider has similar software. The one I'll be using is called GridIMP.

At present rapid response grid services (e.g. frequency stabilization, momentary load stability, both in both directions, supply and load) has been the differentiator to Autobidder. The primary limitation in practice is that the wholesale markets ahem been developed considering responses in hours or minutes, while autobiddexr can respond in nano-seconds and has done so in service in Hornsdale, quite copiously documented.

Almost all competitive systems are built around the prevailing wholesale market structure, which is itself design to supply either load or feed in several minutes.

The question of Autobidder success is the question of restructuring wholesale power market pricing and monitoring.
The massive developments in wind, solar and storage will end out decimating the 'peaker plants' whereupon fast response will gradually be adopted in most markets.

Competitors can duplicate Autobidder. What they are far less likely to be able to do is integrate almost infinite distributed sources into the nano-second response structure.

For the moment I agree there is little to no advantage to Autobidder for a residential solar/wind/storage grid integration.
Once the South Australia structure becomes replicated in projects such as the Austin and South Florida developments, it si highly likely that grid services may begin to be a significant factor. The constraints are almost all political, regulatory and utility inertia.

In the meantime there are several dozen pretty good grid-tied monitoring/management systems. Until Tesla ramps up they really cannot deliver broad based advantages.

There are dozens of discussions and links in the TE Forum and other places, so I did not link any of them here.

 

[jbcarioca]

@neroden you should come back and see all this service talk. Like a father proud his children have grown up.

He was irritating and condescending, but I really miss him anyway. he was usually quite competent, just a bit obsessed with Upstate NY deficiency, mostly itself a product of New York State anti-competitive laws.

 

[dm28997]

I amazed how many Teslas are going up I5. About every 15 minutes on one hour of driving.
Many new Happy Tesla owners coming up.

 

[dhanson865]

Gotta disagree with you on one point. I owned a Chevy Volt for years. Hardly ever used gas at all. I think most owners used it that way whenever possible.

Dan

I googled it and was surprised on the answer

A sample of 1,154 Chevrolet Volt drivers participating in The EV Project drove 73% of their total miles in electric vehicle (EV) mode over an 8-month study period. x 70% of vehicles were driven more than 70% of their total miles in EV mode.

https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/5883310.pdf

I though it'd be a lower percentage of EV miles.

 

[BigDawgz]

I googled it and was surprised on the answer

https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/5883310.pdf

I though it'd be a lower percentage of EV miles.

It's way higher than I thought it would be, but the Volt owners who are participating in The EV Project are absolutely not representative of Volt owners as a whole.

 

[Lessmog]

At present rapid response grid services (e.g. frequency stabilization, momentary load stability, both in both directions, supply and load) has been the differentiator to Autobidder. The primary limitation in practice is that the wholesale markets ahem been developed considering responses in hours or minutes, while autobiddexr can respond in nano-seconds and has done so in service in Hornsdale, quite copiously documented.

Almost all competitive systems are built around the prevailing wholesale market structure, which is itself design to supply either load or feed in several minutes.

The question of Autobidder success is the question of restructuring wholesale power market pricing and monitoring.
The massive developments in wind, solar and storage will end out decimating the 'peaker plants' whereupon fast response will gradually be adopted in most markets.

Competitors can duplicate Autobidder. What they are far less likely to be able to do is integrate almost infinite distributed sources into the nano-second response structure.

For the moment I agree there is little to no advantage to Autobidder for a residential solar/wind/storage grid integration.
Once the South Australia structure becomes replicated in projects such as the Austin and South Florida developments, it si highly likely that grid services may begin to be a significant factor. The constraints are almost all political, regulatory and utility inertia.

In the meantime there are several dozen pretty good grid-tied monitoring/management systems. Until Tesla ramps up they really cannot deliver broad based advantages.

There are dozens of discussions and links in the TE Forum and other places, so I did not link any of them here.

I suspect you are overexaggerating the timing by a factor of 1M (order of) -- but I think your point stands, as this is still an improvement on the same kind of magnitude (1M, order of) over "current" tech (to coin a phrase). Talking in my hat ofc.

 

[wws]

I googled it and was surprised on the answer

https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/5883310.pdf

I though it'd be a lower percentage of EV miles.

Then there were those of us who played the Voltstats Game. (Volt Stats! (RIP) Tracked real world usage of Chevy Volts in the wild...) Sadly the game is no more. The site was frozen early this year.

At the time Voltstats stopped collecting stats, our Volt was showing 95.2% of its miles as EV. Our EV percentage was actually even higher than that the first few years we owned it - as my wifes daily commute was 100% EV. However a couple years ago, her job changed and commute lengthened to the point where she burned a couple tenths of a gallon of gas per day.

 

[SOULPEDL]

I googled it and was surprised on the answer

https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/5883310.pdf

I though it'd be a lower percentage of EV miles.

I think Chevy Volt owners are a different crowd. They accepted that long distance travel might be challenging and adventurous, but many of the early explorers likely charged a few times long distance only to get burned by slow or disfunctional charging infrastructure. So long trips weren't so attractive anymore.

Plus, the limited range attracted the daily commuter types. This is not the same as the Tesla crowd, or at least this household. Their data is biased and outdated IMO, it's all based on old technology. We're using EVs 100% of the time AND we get away as often as before. I can't see that being the case with any Hybrid for that matter.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

some pictures of inside giga texas

https://twitter.com/x/status/1424422670750392324

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

FWIW even the tiny company I'll be using as an autobidder alternative handle frequency response as well as energy arbitrage over longer periods. As I understand it, in the UK the national grid will pay you to effectively rent some battery space from you for the next 30 minutes. They then pay you whether they dump power on you, or take it out, or both many many times...
So the activity (energy being stored/retrieved) is high frequency, but the capacity auction is way, way slower (half hour chunks). This is just UK, the US *may* work differently. Frankly I'll pay GridImp to handle the implementation details.

But my point is, all the market options (peak shaving, demand-shifting, frequency response) are available from pretty much anyone. Even small startups. This is *NOT* high frequency trading. You do not need super-fast fiber links and ASICs to trade energy (at least not yet).

I LOVE tesla energy (as an investor). I think it will be huge. I just don't think it will necessarily win the biggest market share. It seems much easier to get a container-sized battery from alpha-ess or tesvolt right now than it does from tesla. Tesla energy cannot ramp fast enough to meet demand.

 

[dhanson865]

Is it possible that this time next year, there will be 4 factories building Model 3 and Y? It seems... incredible.

I thought it will be 4 factories making Model Y and 2 factories making Model 3.

I didn't think Berlin (model Y) or Austin (model Y, cybertruck) will make Model 3 any time soon

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

I see some have taken the opportunity again to vent about Tesla's service. That's not what the investor thread is for. So stop it. The related discussion about dying 12V batteries has also been repeated for the third or fourth time. Those posts are now gone.

 

[wws]

I think Chevy Volt owners are a different crowd. They accepted that long distance travel might be challenging and adventurous, but many of the early explorers likely charged a few times long distance only to get burned by slow or disfunctional charging infrastructure. So long trips weren't so attractive anymore.

Plus, the limited range attracted the daily commuter types. This is not the same as the Tesla crowd, or at least this household. Their data is biased and outdated IMO, it's all based on old technology. We're using EVs 100% of the time AND we get away as often as before. I can't see that being the case with any Hybrid for that matter.

The Volt actually has decent EV range compared to other PHEVs. Our 2016 was rated 54 EV miles EPA when new. I've driven ours 70-80 miles in pure EV on surface streets. I think the record was like 115 miles. (He drove around a football stadium parking lot at 25 mph for several hours...) So one could easily drive it as a pure EV most of the time with no range anxiety. The Volt also has decent thermal management so battery degradation is minimal.

I would have liked to see its 18.4 kWh (a little over 14.0 kWh usable when it was new) pack to be more like 20-22 kWh. But in its day it was quite competitive as it was. A 7.2 kW charger would also have been nice - and in fact was an option the final year of production.

---

Moderator's note: let's make this the last post about the Volt.

 

[CorneliusXX]

FWIW even the tiny company I'll be using as an autobidder alternative handle frequency response as well as energy arbitrage over longer periods. As I understand it, in the UK the national grid will pay you to effectively rent some battery space from you for the next 30 minutes. They then pay you whether they dump power on you, or take it out, or both many many times...
So the activity (energy being stored/retrieved) is high frequency, but the capacity auction is way, way slower (half hour chunks). This is just UK, the US *may* work differently. Frankly I'll pay GridImp to handle the implementation details.

But my point is, all the market options (peak shaving, demand-shifting, frequency response) are available from pretty much anyone. Even small startups. This is *NOT* high frequency trading. You do not need super-fast fiber links and ASICs to trade energy (at least not yet).

I LOVE tesla energy (as an investor). I think it will be huge. I just don't think it will necessarily win the biggest market share. It seems much easier to get a container-sized battery from alpha-ess or tesvolt right now than it does from tesla. Tesla energy cannot ramp fast enough to meet demand.

I agree that the services provided by Tesla *should* be able to be replicated relatively easily as it is not an overly complex system - however I thought the same with charging stations and the competition seem to be a mess of unintegrated difficulty. It will be interesting to see if the same occurs for energy storage when people start mixing and matching parts made by different companies.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Video from inside Giga Berlin

https://twitter.com/x/status/1424436880733507585

 

[SOULPEDL]

The Volt actually has decent EV range compared to other PHEVs. Our 2016 was rated 54 EV miles EPA when new. I've driven ours 70-80 miles in pure EV on surface streets. I think the record was like 115 miles. (He drove around a football stadium parking lot at 25 mph for several hours...) So one could easily drive it as a pure EV most of the time with no range anxiety. The Volt also has decent thermal management so battery degradation is minimal.

I would have liked to see its 18.4 kWh (a little over 14.0 kWh usable when it was new) pack to be more like 20-22 kWh. But in its day it was quite competitive as it was. A 7.2 kW charger would also have been nice - and in fact was an option the final year of production.

---

Moderator's note: let's make this the last post about the Volt.

Agree, they were good "in it's day", (not sure why this would be off topic).

What I expect from the media, (and possibly see in this article then followed by amazement at the 70% solution), are attempts to show that Hybrids are a good direction for (Toyota and others) the country. Maybe I read into this too deeply, but Hybrids just buy more time for the auto industry and it's entire supply chain, especially for anything engine related. If that wasn't the intent of the article or comments, my appologies and applaud your early involvement. It was likely driven before I even considered any battery mobility, so who am I?

 

[ZeApelido]

We might have some unique insight into Tesla lurking on TMC.

Should I ask him if Elon should be considered a co-founder?

 

[capster]

It was intended as a humorous look celebrating the astounding achievements of the Giga Shanghai workers who apparently average only 26 years old - it was not meant to apply to your kids or any other persons kids in particular. It was humor.

I'm not understanding your point about getting into the same college I went to. I had no money to go to college except what I could earn working my butt off at low wage jobs, many of them dirty, nasty and/or dangerous affairs. I had no college fund set up, my father was a teacher and my mother was a home-maker and part-time pre-school teacher so there was no money set aside for me. So I went to the local college, whenever I had saved enough money for tuition and books and could afford living expenses on the reduced work hours a full credit load entailed. Those high-falutin schools that were difficult to get into cost too much money to even consider. After going to college over a 6 year period and only getting half-way to a four year degree I figured out that the whole system was rather political and biased, people were generally stupid and inefficient and everything I needed to know I had already learned in kindergarten. So I quit going to college. I'm pretty sure I could still re-enroll in the same school. But why would I want to?

The college I went to had a large percentage of MBA's. I considered those students, who I found very distasteful as a group, as well as their professors, a central part of what was wrong with the world. Because they measured the worth of everything in money (and were very shallow and stupid in general). Elon is my friend because he doesn't like them either! ;-) But, rather than become bitter and disillusioned, I decided to live my own life, to not buy in to the BS I saw playing out around me. So, rather than struggle to save money for college expenses while trying to take classes, I started saving and investing the money and focused on running my own life in a manner that required me to rely on me, and coordinate with others, as little as possible (and when possible, only with people who were generally competent). And I'm glad I did.

What Elon has done required an amazing amount of tolerance and patience and working with others. I'm humbled and amazed at the idiocy he had to work through to get where he is today!

My point was simply that getting into college has become something of a grueling rite of passage for many of our kids today. It is a lot more work to get into many colleges now than back when I applied.

To your original point about work, is mandatory 996 (996 working hour system - Wikipedia) the same as a strong work ethic or is it a kind enslavement?

If something like 996 were to become prevalent in our society, I would feel that our society had failed its people. Such a failure would be on par with the failure by our meritocratic elite to prevent the economic hollowing out of wide swathes of our nations’ communities and regions over the last three decades or so. That immense failure was due in no small measure to their overly roseate view of China’s likely economic and political trajectory as well as myopia when viewing the America beyond its "coastal archipelago" cities.

 

[gene]

Can you imagine the hit Tesla would take to the stock price if solar connection fees becomes $16 / kW per month! How about the end of net metering? This is being proposed for rooftop as well as commercial solar by the utilities to the PUC. We can't let this happen, it will decimate all solar businesses and with spread nationwide.