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

[ZachF]

On that note of NIMBYism, there is currently a bill for permitting reform here in the US. This would probably do more to advance renewables than just throwing more public money at the problem that will end up in lawyers’ and bureaucrats’ pockets while projects get delayed for years and years.

 

[SmokyPeat]

California’s grid is a dumpster fire of cronyism and NIMBYism. It massively underserves it customers in almost every way.

California (pop.38m) produces ~200TWh of electricity every year. This is less than Alabama +Mississippi produces with ~8m people. California has to import ~100TWh from neighboring states. Texas (pop.30m) is on track to produce ~550 TWh this year.

Now you might say this is because California is superior on renewables? No. Texas produced 117 TWh of wind+solar generation last year, and so far this year generation is up 33% YoY (solar generation is up a whopping 70% this year!). California produced 69 TWh last year and YoY H1 it’s only up ~13%, which is half the YoY national average. Hell, next year Texas will likely produce more wind&solar electricity than Californian *total* production of electricity!

If California really wants to go EV, they are going to have to pull their heads out of their NIMBY asses. Outside of chronically underserving their power needs requiring roughly double the national average prices in order to drop demand to the level of supply, California has much less heating/cooling requirements than other states, and much, much less energy intensive heavy industry. This means however, that on a percentage basis production increases to supply a fully electric car fleet are going to be much harder for Cali than Texas:

Switching both CA and TX to full EV will probably require both states to increase electricity generation by ~150 TWh. This is equal to 3/4s of CAs current total generation! 150 GWh is only a 27% increase for Texas. It gets even worse for Cali though when you compare that number to the rate that Wind+Solar generation is increasing. W+S generation will likely be up by about 36TWh in Texas this year, but only 10TWh in California, meaning it’d take Texas about 4 years to make enough generation at today’s rate of increases to power their entire vehicle fleet… it’d take Cali 15 years!

NIMBYs right now (mostly on the left) are currently the single biggest obstacle to decarbonization.

NIMBYism is a problem, without a doubt. If you take wind out of the equation, California produces about 3x as much solar generated electricity as Texas, though.

Additionally, Californian homes use electricity more than twice as efficiently as their Texas counterparts. Texas is moving toward a greener grid at a very impressive rate. I'm sure the regulatory environment is a big part of that.

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[Chenkers]

New site plan for Giga Berlin via Tobias Lindh, showing how the recently aquired land will be used to expand and simplify site logistics. This site plan shows the large new rail sidings and parking areas that would be used for the reported up to 10 trains per day, carrying 250 cars each.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1568960246042828800

 

[woodisgood]

0.0% chance Tesla is working on a VR headset. This is like the rumors they were making a phone.

Doesn‘t necessarily need to be marketed or sold to consumers. If it’s related to training bots, it might be something that is kept in-house indefinitely or commercialized at a very later time point.

 

[Discoducky]

Sorry if this has been posted here.

I can see Munro falling on the floor when he sees this jungle of wires. I am no car guy, but OMG what a mess!

This is how I felt about the R1T Rivian when it was torn apart. A mess of wires, hoses and connectors.

Spoiler: Quick story

Quick story, in college I interned as a civil engineer and built a medium security jail in Dalhart, TX. I arrived on-site for the completion of the first of 4 control rooms. The wiring was a complete mess and I couldn't believe my eyes as I had studied the diagrams prior to being on site. The main civil on-site who was mentoring me said "Well, what do ya think?" and I said "Can I have some sauce with my spaghetti! Is this a joke?" He laughed and said they had already fired the electrical contractor and were bringing in someone new that was going to be on-site next week. Over the course of 3 months I worked with Wasatch Electric to ensure the final 3 were laid out in a much more coherent way (I learned so much from those guys and how to deliver quality, on-time and under budget). I wish I had a pic of how beautiful it was and yes, we went back and ripped out Control#1 and re-did it as we were able to recover the funds from the bond-out of the previous contractor.

 

[The Accountant]

As Semi is coming in a few months, there will be an infrastructure required.

They will break and need fixed. Will rangers add this to their duties or will it be something new. EMs recent tweets seem to reflect vehicle service is getting a fresh look in North America.

They are hiring technicians at the moment. Here is snippet from a job posting:

I believe this has been posted here but posting it in case it was not:

 

[HellsKitchen]

It's not a sexy topic, but the lithium refinement news seems like a big deal.

 

[brantse]

That PG&E requirement to have the gas meter and solar meter 3 feet apart for solar is costing me over $5000+ it’s ridiculous.

Our local utility (Penelec) tries to require that an AC disconnect be installed near the meter. This is not required by the NEC and serves no purpose, as UL requires that the inverter drops off immediately upon loss of grid power.

I've now done 5 systems where I pushed back against Penelec's unnecessary requirement, as most of those would have required hundreds of feet of trenching and thousands of dollars in wire.

 

[Ogre]

Robert Scoble is claiming Tesla has been working on a virtual reality device.

Let me guess… he’s already showering with it?

 

[MikeAtkinson]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1568961459207503872

The future train shuttle to GigaBerlin: up to 40 trips per day. Approximately 400 employees per train. This will require 550m of new track. Planned opening spring 2023.

 

[MikeAtkinson]

The first Supercharger V4 is coming:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1568998731407654915

 

[Usain]

If TeslaBot can be operated or observed via VR remotely there is about a million useful tasks you could use this for. Literally millions.

VR teleoperation will probably also be the best/fastest way for users to teach it tasks.

This one I can see as an application with immediate need. I think you might be onto something here.

 

[Bouboule]

I find interesting that Tesla gives access to its patents and lets others use their technology. Sharing the 4680 cell design (or part of it) with other companies is one of the examples that I had trouble understanding. I found this article about sharing patents very interesting: https://www.vennershipley.co.uk/insights-events/does-teslas-open-source-patent-philosophy-mean-they-are-free-to-use/

One paragraph in particular:

Using Tesla’s technology would essentially make any other company’s own intellectual property rights redundant. On the other hand, Tesla benefits from the arrangement because it appears that Tesla is free to use any improvements made to its technology by another party

It shows how opening patents can actually accelerate the pace of innovation at Tesla even faster as more and more companies share their improvements with them.
If Tesla were to close their patents, you would have competing technologies. By opening up its patents, Tesla is just making sure that they always have the BEST technology.

 

[ZachF]

NIMBYism is a problem, without a doubt. If you take wind out of the equation, California produces about 3x as much solar generated electricity as Texas, though.

Additionally, Californian homes use electricity more than twice as efficiently as their Texas counterparts. Texas is moving toward a greener grid at a very impressive rate. I'm sure the regulatory environment is a big part of that.

California produced ~3x the solar Texas did last year, but you need to look at the trends. Solar generation is up a whopping 75% in Texas this year, while California is up ~18% YoY, lower than the 28% national average. Capacity planned and under construction in Texas according to the EIA is ~double that of California, with the average Texas project being further along because of lower bureaucrosclerosis. So while CA produced triple what Texas did last year, this year it will be double, next year it’ll be 1.5x, then sometime in 2024 it’ll be less.

And CA homes aren’t really “twice as efficient”, CA just has a close to ideal climate that requires far less heating or cooling than just about anywhere else in the country. Homes are also a bit smaller, but again that’s because of NIMBYism that makes building new housing extremely hard, leading to high housing costs that give California the highest COL-adjusted poverty rates and homelessness in the country.

NIMBYism is cancer.

 

[MikeAtkinson]

We have previously seen an application for a Boring Company tunnel at Gigafactory Austin (a few month ago), but I have not seen a map of where it was going. Jeff Roberts thinks this is to connect the Ecological Paradise to the factory.



At 11:27 in

 

[MP3Mike]

Sorry if this has been posted here.

I can see Munro falling on the floor when he sees this jungle of wires. I am no car guy, but OMG what a mess!

Munro has already done a full tear down of the F-150 Lightning, but Ford paid them for it, so it hasn't been shown as a YouTube series.

But yes, Munro "fell on the floor" when they opened the Mach-E and saw a similar scene of wires, hoses, and pipes.

 

[Ogre]

I find interesting that Tesla gives access to its patents and lets others use their technology. Sharing the 4680 cell design (or part of it) with other companies is one of the examples that I had trouble understanding. I found this article about sharing patents very interesting: https://www.vennershipley.co.uk/insights-events/does-teslas-open-source-patent-philosophy-mean-they-are-free-to-use/

One paragraph in particular:


It shows how opening patents can actually accelerate the pace of innovation at Tesla even faster as more and more companies share their improvements with them.
If Tesla were to close their patents, you would have competing technologies. By opening up its patents, Tesla is just making sure that they always have the BEST technology.

Tesla’s open source patents has a similar infectious component to many Open Source software licensing schemes. The GPL for example allows you to use and change the software but have to share changes back to the community. This has been a cornerstone of some of the best software out there. Linux, and much of the internet is based on this software. It will be interesting to see if Teslas patent portfolio has a similar effect on automotive hardware patents.

 

[Stretch2727]

For those of you looking for an alternative Elon investment.

Search Results | RR Auction

www.rrauction.com

Mementos and photos from his girlfriend in college.

 

[cab]

John Mc Elroy speaks on how legacy OEMs are on "the Eve of Disruption" due to their archaic organizational strategies.

This would be a good video to share with anyone curious about discovering more of what it is that sets Tesla apart from the rest of the pack.

Knowing just how painful trivial "make it look like we are doing something" re-orgs are in big companies, the disruption of a MATERIAL re-org will be huge in these companies. His comments about employees not wanting to be "stuck in the ICE division" was particularly telling.

 

[shrspeedblade]

Anybody who has worked on their own cars a lot knows that for many automotive manufactures complexity and service difficulty is not an accident but a feature. Amongst other things I think it will be a hurdle for them to overcome in the design and production of EVs.