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

[larmor]

What is the status for the Buffalo Gigafactory? Are they making solar roof tiles in volume? Have they got an OEM option for new home company construction? There was of course a lot of analysis of the model three and model Y production lines but wanted to see if there’s any more detailed analysis on solar roof tile production.

 

[ThisStockGood]

Pretty significant spike right now premkt. Any news?

 

[Stormy24]

Pretty significant peak right now premkt. Any news?

Worlds end delayed another day?

 

[Cobbler]

Remember:

Tesla's production speed is at all-time record high for the moment...

I continue to buy at these levels.

 

[matejpi]

I have prepared some dry powder for market scare today and for the following weeks...

 

[FEERSUMENDJIN]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1536740302324629514

Mayor Goodman to discuss Vegas Loop public safety concerns during city council meeting

Mayor Carolyn Goodman plans to address several safety concerns regarding the Boring Company’s Vegas Loop possible tunnel expansion during an upcoming city council meeting. The mayor tweeted on Tuesday that she and her team have heard several safety concerns from the public and plan to address...

news3lv.com

Classic blocker garbage. Note the lack of any specific details of safety aspects.

 

[willow_hiller]

What is the status for the Buffalo Gigafactory? Are they making solar roof tiles in volume? Have they got an OEM option for new home company construction? There was of course a lot of analysis of the model three and model Y production lines but wanted to see if there’s any more detailed analysis on solar roof tile production.

It's been radio silence on Buffalo, NY since Tesla released a short video of a robot assembling tiles around October 2021. No mention of it I can see in the quarterly slide decks, and no mention on Twitter. Plus from what I've seen on Reddit, most customers with pending Solar Roof orders have been told their projects are delayed for part shortages.

We know that Tesla also uses Buffalo for Supercharger assembly, so my theory is they may have shifted their floor space and workforce to assembling more Superchargers (and possibly V4/CCS equipped Superchargers) while supply chains for solar get sorted out.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I've done lots of research and installed a half dozen systems. It's pretty simple and will clearly happen that way, unless something changes. Here in PA, we're net-metered and my connection fee is like $10. That fee won't cover the utility's fixed costs, and as each customer who installs solar that results in one less customer to cover those costs and the costs for everyone else will need to go up. Similar to electric vehicles, the last people to adopt and convert over will be the ones who are most impacted, as they're typically lower income and the costs not to adopt will continue to rise.

I do think something will change, as we've seen in some states. There will need to be a larger connection fee (maybe $40 a month) to cover the utility's costs to maintain the grid. I just hope that gets worked out and applied fairly, rather than making drastic changes and penalizing those who made large investments in solar systems.

Static grid charges/fees don't necessarily replace cost covering shortfalls, most of the time they simply replace lost profits as utility production is displaced by solar.

As I mentioned up thread, and especially true in Pennsylvania, regions with lower solar adoption rates definitely save money for the first 1-5% of solar supply that comes online. Solar shaves the afternoon peak, and therefore limits the need to build new power plants.

The problem then is that peak shaving also eats into peak demand, and that's where utilities derive a lot of their profits. Selling peak supply from gas peaker plants.

In the US it's considered perfectly acceptable for a utility to expect that new profit shortfall to be filled. Hence static fees get passed by corrupt PUC boards. That doesn't necessarily happen in other countries as renewables start disrupting the grid.

 

[Discoducky]

What’s an ECO and why does Rivian need so many?

Is this why they have so much cabling spaghetti and how would they fix it?

If I remember correctly when you worked at Tesla on the Autopilot team you were working closely with most of the other electronics systems in the car so I’m really interested to learn your perspective on this.

I should always explain acronyms. Engineering Change Order (ECO). This is how you change something on the production line. ECOs are usually done by legacy ICE in big batches usually occurring quarterly at a maximum or yearly at a minimum. Tesla does several per day; Elon has mentioned this publicly.

Spoiler: Engineering stuff

The cabling looks a bit crazy in Munro's Rivian teardown. I'd bet that there are significantly more cables than even the original Model S. In terms of overall distance of cabling, routing points and terminations/relays. These add cost, complexity and manufacture time. And overtime, additional points of failure lead to a lower quality product. They are indicative of a set of engineering and design challenges that could have had better outcomes. And it will get better for them, they will make big changes, they have to and very quickly. To change such a massive amount of issues with cabling means several teams need to work together better. You need design goals like reduce overall cabling by X%, reduce cooling/heating loops to a single loop or reduce weight by Y%. Major changes like these need to be done in layers or you risk massive problems with endless diagnostic tracing (I wonder how long it will take for Ford to trace how the Mach e contactors are failing and I wonder if the Lightning uses the same parts/design? I wonder how well these parts communicate and at what depth verbosity? How easy is it to see the whole data picture and then pinpoint an area to dive deep into to find root cause? What kinds of diagnostic tools have they developed?)

If this had come out with the Leaf in 2010 then great, but the world this truck enters now has higher EV standards (e.g. Octovalve, Superbottle, same/shared infrastructure/design between major parts)

 

[SarahsDad]

NHTSA report coming soon. Data likely shows Teslas on Autopilot crash more than rivals obviously Tesla gathers data immediately, while other automakers wait for field reports. Tesla is penalized for being a smartphone on wheels.

Interesting quote in that article, very negative regarding Tesla.

As always, follow the money.

 

[Singuy]

What is the status for the Buffalo Gigafactory? Are they making solar roof tiles in volume? Have they got an OEM option for new home company construction? There was of course a lot of analysis of the model three and model Y production lines but wanted to see if there’s any more detailed analysis on solar roof tile production.

Drew recently in an interview said solar tile manufacturing is not a
problem, current hold up is still installation. V4 of solar tiles in the works.

 

[Discoducky]

Classic blocker garbage. Note the lack of any specific details of safety aspects.

Yep, if it was said with the word "relevant" or "reasonable" or "material" then that would mean there actually is something to talk about. However, if the 'concerns' are from flat earthers and how could tunnels possibly work then that is a different 'concern'.

 

[traxila]

U.S. Retail Sales Declined in May as Inflation Stings Consumers

Americans’ spending at stores, online and in restaurants declined 0.3% in May as consumers felt the pinch from inflation, higher gasoline prices and rising interest rates.

www.wsj.com

Signs of dropping economic indicators abound. Given the considerable acknowledged lag time between Fed moves and impact, why are all the financial players so thirsty for reckless aggressive rate hikes? Follow the money…

 

[BornToFly]

NASDAQ futures are way up, and TSLA isn't following.... Beta only 0.3X

 

[Discoducky]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1536856757732974592

https://twitter.com/x/status/1536859640985661440

Happy to see these two talking (they both highly respect one another), hope to see Francois post something publicly after they talk.

Francois is reasonable, to a point (let's say he can be very opinionated about his code), he's also a genius, super smart and currently employed by Google (helping make customer AI chips like TPUs, but also GPUs work better for AI training and inference) and wrote Keras which revolutionized Python (he's very well respected in the AI community).

 

[Max Plaid]

Come on! Get with the Program.
Anything less than 0.75% tanks the market.
Anything more than 0.75% tanks the market.
In fact, exactly a 0.75% increase tanks the market as well.
The media will parade out their “experts” minutes after the rate announcement to tell us how this is all horrible.

Unless the Hedgies see that everyone is short and loaded on puts, then we'll get a surprise BMRR*...

*Bear-Market Relief-Rally

 

[ZachF]

German automobile industry ain’t doing too hot…

Motor Vehicle production, 1950-2021 (red area is East Germany)

 

[Featsbeyond50]

Premarket was just at 666.66. sorry, I was too slow for a screen shot.

 

[bkp_duke]

I'm guessing the NHTSA report is out?

U.S. safety agency says Tesla accounts for most driver-assist crashes, but warns data lacks context

Federal safety officials stressed that the data is not meant to portray whether one advanced driver-assist system is safer than another.

www.cnbc.com

Surprised the CNBC article is so tempered.

 

[JRP3]

In the Convention Center People Mover bidding process, Mayor Goodman voted for the Doppelmayr train bid that scored far lower on their objective rating formula and was going to cost the government 4x more money. All 13 other officials voted in favor of the Boring Co Loop design instead. At the time (2019) Mayor Goodman cited Boring's lack of experience as the reason. This is documented in the meeting minutes of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Board of Directors from 14 May 2019 and 22 May 2019.

Mayor Goodman also was the sole dissenting vote in the 10 Dec 2020 meeting where Boring Co was granted a non-exclusive right to operate a transportation system in the Las Vegas Monorail non-compete zone.

Maybe she’s just corrupt or maybe there’s another reason; it’s not clear from the information I’ve seen.

I'd say the information you provided answers the question.