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

[Cosmacelf]

I like that given this is the BASE cell, as you said with room for improvements, we are already at parity on energy density with the 2170s.

Things I quickly gleaned that are not yet in the design, which can improve over they next 1-2 years:
1) Only the Anode is DBE currently, leaving improvement in the cathode when it moves to DBE
2) Decrease shell thickness moderately (currently 500-600 um, vs. 125-250 um thickness for 2170).
3) Add silicon for anode (5-10% immediate boost)

No silicon, only graphite in the anode? Wow, current 2170s do have silicon so that’s interesting. It might have something to do with using DBE since silicon is used in the 2170 anode. Since they aren’t using DBE in the more complex cathode, it appears that, currently, DBE has problems when mixing in different elements. This … isn’t bullish.

 

[willow_hiller]

Say questions are live for Q2 2022 Earnings Call: Say

I don't know how people jump on these so quickly. 77 questions already at time of writing.

 

[Usain]

Since this cell is at least 6 months old, Jordan rightly points out that once he gets the new cell from Munro's 4680 Y teardown, they will repeat the testing and do additional testing.

This is really important. Shortly after releasing his first video, Jordan indicated that he was not interested in obtaining a cell from Munro. I'm so glad he changed his mind because one way or the other, Jordan is going to make all the data available to the public where Munro probably would not.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

I'm disappointed he left as he's the real tech AI leader there, and probably the #1 in the world. It must be burnout, exhaustion, etc. b/c he did take sabbatical. I'm sure there are super smart people like him already at TSLA, but the optics are just not so favorable. Hopefully it's a small blip in the road, b/c Elon just tweeted they are still rolling out V11 soon, but when I first heard this I was very disappointed (and still am).

FSD was supposed to be working back in 2017. The share price should be going up, do to Andrej's departure.

 

[Cosmacelf]

This question has come up a bit of how Giga Berlin would be affected by a rationing of natural gas to industrial users in Germany. So I thought I would do a bit of research to assess the likely impacts. Btw my background is in building services mechanical engineering so I have some knowledge of natural gas systems.

Thanks!

[battery building] Various equipment that may directly use natural gas - there's no way to tell if and how much of this there is as details aren't provided (eg the battery cell building has a large gas meter room but no large boilers).

Seems that current 4180 cells are going to need natural gas to fire the drying ovens for the cathode. No substitution available here.

No.1 is potentially the biggest problem as these furnaces [casting machines] are likely to rely on gas. The most logical solution I can see is to import excess rear giga castings from either Fremont, Shanghai or Texas. Based on installed capacity, stored parts and current utilisation, there is likely to be some spare capacity across the other giga factories that could keep production going at Berlin during it's ramp. It will add logistical cost and complexity but nothing Tesla can't handle and no harder than getting battery packs and drives from Shanghai.

Yes, but it's going to add cost, reduce margins. I mean, in the limit, Tesla can substitute all Berlin manufacturing from the rest of the world since that's what they've been doing up until now. It's just going to put a damper on Tesla profits and manufacturing capacity (if they can't produce 4680 cells in Berlin). So both a growth and profit hit.

Do note that while Germany may be able to obtain more natural gas within a year (LNG, etc.), it is going to a lot more expensive. Berlin may end up as the most expensive plant Tesla has going forward. It isn't an epic disaster since Tesla has Fremont, Austin and Shanghai (although Shanghai is going through its own problems). But it bears watching as a possible limit to rapid growth and profits in the next year or two.

Presumably Tesla will be paying a lot more attention to geopolitics and energy supply when they site their next plant. Don't be surprised if it's in the US again.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

To give you an idea of how bad the natural gas crunch is going to be for Germany this winter, here’s a forecast study that assumes people will start resorting to burning wood as a replacement. This is de facto de-industrialization. Hopefully this will be fixed within a year. But it highlights very real risks for Tesla’s Berlin plant this winter since I assume it uses natural gas.

I'm neither accepting Deutchebank's dystopian vision of a winter without help from their Russian oligarch clients, or the news yesterday from Chevron that recent oil futures pricing dips are only temporary.

It's in these clown's interest to scare the bejesus out of people, both from a pricing and future relevance perspective. The likelihood of that becoming reality......slim. The big concern will be industrial rationing, I'm sure that's the big demand lever in Germany.

 

[Cosmacelf]

glad to see KS getting a nice tech infusion. I too am wondering why Panasonic chose that location. The central U.S. location doesn't hurt. Better still as some have theorized if it's near a future U.S. Gigafactory.

Because it is close to both Tesla and Michigan (Detroit and Rivian). Panasonic doesn't want to get locked into only supplying one customer again like they did in Nevada. They have zero pricing power when they only have one customer.

 

[EVMeister]

Say questions are live for Q2 2022 Earnings Call: Say

I don't know how people jump on these so quickly. 77 questions already at time of writing.

Bunch of bots asking questions.

 

[Chenkers]

Seems that current 4180 cells are going to need natural gas to fire the drying ovens for the cathode. No substitution available here.

There aren't any ovens shown on the plans for the Giga Berlin battery cell building and not enough space for them. They have cathode, anode and Tesla Silicon mixing areas and then go to separate cathode and anode calendaring/laminating production lines. The cell Jordon tore down is an early Kato Rd production cell. Tesla are taking a step by step process to ramp the 4680 production and it's likely that the current Austin 4680 and future cells will be very different as they iron out the production steps.

Natural gas cost would be a tiny fraction of the overall COGS for Berlin so I wouldn't be concerned about the price of gas having any significant impact on margins.

 

[JRP3]

My guess is that Tesla has engineers, maybe SpaceX engineers, exploring using other materials for the shell. Maybe something like carbon fiber. Cost / weight / ease of manufacture trade offs, of course.

Seems unlikely for all the reasons you list and more. SpaceX also rejected carbon fiber for their rockets in favor of SS. Tesla has put a lot of research into creating a structural pack based on these cells so I would not expect a physical material change for the cell can in any relevant time frame.

 

[insaneoctane]

My guess is that Tesla has engineers, maybe SpaceX engineers, exploring using other materials for the shell. Maybe something like carbon fiber. Cost / weight / ease of manufacture trade offs, of course.

ZERO chance they use carbon fiber for the shell. 4680 is all about bringing price down!

 

[bkp_duke]

Don't see it reported elsewhere, although it has been mentioned as "likely".

Electrek is reporting that Tesla has official permission now to sell the "test" cars it produced in Giga Berlin, assuming they meet production specs:

Tesla is allowed to sell Model Ys produced during 'test phase' at Giga Berlin, potentially thousands of EVs

Tesla is now allowed to sell the Model Y vehicles it produced during the long “test phase” at Gigafactory Berlin....

electrek.co

That's potentially ~2000 more Performance Y's that can be added to Q3 sales.

 

[Nocturnal]

Because it is close to both Tesla and Michigan (Detroit and Rivian). Panasonic doesn't want to get locked into only supplying one customer again like they did in Nevada. They have zero pricing power when they only have one customer.

Probably a very long shot, but a near-ish city in MO offered up land for a Gigafactory as well.

Missouri city offers $1 billion in incentives for Tesla Cybertruck factory

Tesla isn't running an Amazon-style public contest to find the location for a new plant to build Cybertruck electric cars, but one public bid has already rolled in.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Drax7]

One surprising thought about Karpathy leaving is the opportunities he's actually leaving. With humanoid robot AI just starting -Optimus in its infancy, FSD still not done (opportunity to be around when it dazzles the world) and the $$ due to options/stock to what, 5x-10x, within the next decade? He would have carte blanche at Tesla to play and pursue almost unlimited interests with more resources than ANYWHERE. I wish him good luck, but am honestly surprised...

Agree it does not make sense, fsd and Optimus are probably the best AI projects in the world.
Maybe he is burnt out and needs to Chill out.

 

[Knightshade]

Don't see it reported elsewhere

Less than 2 hours ago- in this very thread

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

I have talked a bit with Karpathy, very down to earth over the top nice guy. Don’t know him too well but will just paint a story based on public posts by him and what everyone knows. He is a pretty young at his 35 years, born in Slovakia. Brilliant guy. Got a Phd(with all that means) at...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

I'm going to quote some data that will paint a pretty clear picture of just how "bogus" this oil/gas driven inflation narrative and manipulation has been.

"
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration also pointed to slackening demand, with crude inventories rising by just over 3.2 million barrels last week while gasoline stocks rose by 5.8 million barrels.

“The large build in gasoline inventories was driven by a steep decline in implied demand over the week, which fell by 1.35MMbbls/d,” said analysts at ING, in a note. “This resulted in implied gasoline demand averaging 8.06MMbbls/d, which is the lowest level seen for this stage of the year in at least a decade.”"

Lowest level seen for this state of the year in at least a decade.........a decade...........a decade!

Most blatant wide spread market manipulation I've seen in a long time from, maybe the most blatant. Wall St needed a reason to ride the entire market down and then ride it back up to double their money. They didn't have a reason....so they made one. If you think there wasn't massive amount of collusion behind a huge number of broad trades, I got a bridge to sell ya.

It's not just oil. Commodity prices across the board have been tumbling in the past 2-3 months. These reversals take time to work in the CPI and PPI numbers. Just look at nickel......the hysteria over out of control battery costs (usually FUD geared towards Tesla). Wanna guess where the price of nickel is today after that massive run up just 2 months ago?

Same price it was in the beginning of January this year.

Meanwhile, you have retailers who massively over ordered across the board for a mixture of items. The anticipated "shortage" of things for people to buy never actually materialized. You have legacy auto manufacturing their own "car shortage" by just simply not producing, using chips shortage excuse quarter after quarter.....even when chip producers across the board were saying chip supply level is making big improvements, quarter over quarter. But even that "car shortage" is showing signs of running it's course......at least for ICE vehicles that is.

 

[mongo]

Since it's part of the structural integrity of the pack I wouldn't expect that to change.

Drew said on the earnings call they started conservative on the pack design. Can is probably overthick.

No silicon, only graphite in the anode? Wow, current 2170s do have silicon so that’s interesting. It might have something to do with using DBE since silicon is used in the 2170 anode. Since they aren’t using DBE in the more complex cathode, it appears that, currently, DBE has problems when mixing in different elements. This … isn’t bullish.

Seems that current 4180 cells are going to need natural gas to fire the drying ovens for the cathode. No substitution available here.

Like others said, this was an early cell which may have been part of machinery test during the dented roller period, as opposed to current production level tech.
Also, Tesla had issues with high levels of silicon in the 90kWh packs so they may be starting conservatively with carbon only. Again, Drew's comment on conservative ramp up.

 

[Ipcress]

This question has come up a bit of how Giga Berlin would be affected by a rationing of natural gas to industrial users in Germany. So I thought I would do a bit of research to assess the likely impacts. Btw my background is in building services mechanical engineering so I have some knowledge of natural gas systems.

I watch all of the Giga Berlin drone videos that come out each week and have also gone through the detailed architectural and services plans for Giga Berlin that were released for planning. The main uses for Natural Gas that I can so far determine for Giga Berlin are as follows:

1. Giga Press furnaces - Used to melt the aluminium ingots to the required temperature to be fed into the gigapress to form the rear underbody castings (2 operational, 2 in progress, 4 more planned).
2. Natural Gas Boilers in the main central thermal plant building (the shed next to where new cars are marshalled for loading). Used for general heating requirements through the heating hot water pipework reticulated throughout the site. (there are also chilled water pipes for cooling but these are from electric chillers, not gas)
3. Domestic Hot Water - Bathrooms, showers etc. This could be electric or gas depending on the system but there are some hot water plantrooms on the plans in places.
4. Various equipment that may directly use natural gas - there's no way to tell if and how much of this there is as details aren't provided (eg the battery cell building has a large gas meter room but no large boilers).

No.1 is potentially the biggest problem as these furnaces are likely to rely on gas. The most logical solution I can see is to import excess rear giga castings from either Fremont, Shanghai or Texas. Based on installed capacity, stored parts and current utilisation, there is likely to be some spare capacity across the other giga factories that could keep production going at Berlin during it's ramp. It will add logistical cost and complexity but nothing Tesla can't handle and no harder than getting battery packs and drives from Shanghai.

No.2 doesn't appear much of an issue as the main boilers in the central utility building are still being installed (flues still being connected this week) and not on-line yet. Tesla have made do so far with various temporary heat pumps scattered around the outside of the building so I expect they could keep these running or use more if needed. The main ventilation plant has air to air heat exchangers and there are also a lot of localised heat pumps used so the demand for gas boilers should not be that great.

No.3 Not much of an issue (cold showers anyone). Temporary electric units are easy to install and would be used to date along with the temporary heat pumps so not a drama for now.

No.4 is harder to predict as it's a bit of an unknown. It's not likely that much modern plant would directly use gas, particularly if trying to be green. Drying etc in the paint shop would be the biggest risk but then the Geico Taikisha paint shop is supposed to be their Zero Environmental Impact version. I can't see this being heavily reliant on a fossil fuel like natural gas. The battery cell production could use gas for process heat but that won't be online for a while yet.

So overall I don't see the imposition of natural gas restrictions in Germany being a major impediment to Giga Berlin continuing to ramp. It could create some headaches but not anything beyond the Tesla teams ability to overcome.

I'd sure like to think that the smart engineers and designers at Tesla can contrive to use the waste heat from step one to fulfill the needs of steps 2 to 4.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I'm going to quote some data that will paint a pretty clear picture of just how "bogus" this oil/gas driven inflation narrative and manipulation has been.

"
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration also pointed to slackening demand, with crude inventories rising by just over 3.2 million barrels last week while gasoline stocks rose by 5.8 million barrels.

“The large build in gasoline inventories was driven by a steep decline in implied demand over the week, which fell by 1.35MMbbls/d,” said analysts at ING, in a note. “This resulted in implied gasoline demand averaging 8.06MMbbls/d, which is the lowest level seen for this stage of the year in at least a decade.”"

Lowest level seen for this state of the year in at least a decade.........a decade...........a decade!

Most blatant wide spread market manipulation I've seen in a long time from, maybe the most blatant. Wall St needed a reason to ride the entire market down and then ride it back up to double their money. They didn't have a reason....so they made one. If you think there wasn't massive amount of collusion behind a huge number of broad trades, I got a bridge to sell ya.

It's not just oil. Commodity prices across the board have been tumbling in the past 2-3 months. These reversals take time to work in the CPI and PPI numbers. Just look at nickel......the hysteria over out of control battery costs (usually FUD geared towards Tesla). Wanna guess where the price of nicket is today after that massive run up just 2 months ago?

Same price it was in the beginning of January this year.

I think rather than a grand conspiracy, sometimes incentives simply align. And as @Krugerrand constantly reminds us, people are garbage. This is simply wealthy traders willing to paint the narrative, media and politicians willing to go along for payment.

The supply update last week is actually far crazier than you mentioned. Gotta remember we also dumped 6Mb of crude from the SPR into the commercial market.

Total commercial supply increase for the week was around 22Mb. Here's the last 6 weeks of rise.

2022-Jun	06/03	1,165,620	06/10	1,170,567	06/17	1,174,293	06/24	1,180,641
2022-Jul	07/01	1,185,767	07/08	1,207,511

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

I think rather than a grand conspiracy, sometimes incentives simply align. And as @Krugerrand constantly reminds us, people are garbage. This is simply wealthy traders willing to paint the narrative, media and politicians willing to go along for payment.

The supply update last week is actually far crazier than you mentioned. Gotta remember we also dumped 6Mb of crude from the SPR into the commercial market.

Total commercial supply increase for the week was around 22Mb. Here's the last 6 weeks of rise.

2022-Jun	06/03	1,165,620	06/10	1,170,567	06/17	1,174,293	06/24	1,180,641
2022-Jul	07/01	1,185,767	07/08	1,207,511

No I genuinely believe it's coordination a mass scale. You saw so many different commodities go through essentially a squeeze, one after the other......all followed by a media narrative of crisis ahead.

"Look at how much lumber rocketed up! "
"OMG Iron/ore is through the roof!"
"Nickel is going to triple in another year!"

All of it was BS. Price of practically every commodity out there has been in constant decline after that squeeze/peak. Wall St knew the market as a whole had limited upside in terms of the gains that they have enjoyed for the past 2 years. So the only to keep that level of money making is orchestrate a mass sell off to ride it down. It was all so easy to lay out too. You have the mass population coming out of quarantine. You know the demand for everything is going to see a temporary hike.

All they had to do was orchestrate squeezes on commodity after commodity to create inflation hysteria, force the Fed into action, then run with the fear of interest rate hikes.

If I'm willing to put my conspiracy theory cap on.....I'd say there was collusion between the bigger funds on Wall St and Putin himself. I don't put anything past Wall St trying to make it's money