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Back on topic, I am looking forward to the SP reaching escape velocity and crossing back into the norminal space beyond the Chicken G Event Horizon. After falling into that singularity it seemed we were destined to swirl around inside forever.

Despite what folks say about light and sound being unable to escape, I am still hearing that "tink, tink, tink" sound 😏
 
The other thing that gets no press is that any casting from these machines will warp thus needing jigs. Tesla avoided this by tapping joint ventures with SpaceX by developing their own alu composite that does not warp after casting. Thus so even if there was somebody out there, they'd still need to tackle this problem. If the Chinese have a shortage of designers, what about their material scientists?

Any company can buy a Tesla and analyze the composition of the alloy (they can probably just buy a report from Munro too). No doubt, there is some learning necessary to use these big casting machines efficiently, but they'll figure it out with time. If this Gigapress is not going to Tesla, I would expect to see 2025 MY cars from it in late 2024.

I don't know why people feel threatened by this, Tesla is the technological leader and people can copy all they want but they are copying what Tesla was doing years ago. The Cybertruck is going to exhibit a bunch of new technologies and they will (eventually) copy those innovations too but it's not going to hurt Tesla's bottom line because you can't get in the lead simply by copying. Tesla's cost advantages are not limited to Gigacastings, nor are they limited to manufacturing efficiencies, they have impressive corporate efficiency for an auto company which becomes more impressive when you understand how many projects they have in R&D (that we know about). Their overall corporate efficiency is going to be hard to match.
 
Any company can buy a Tesla and analyze the composition of the alloy (they can probably just buy a report from Munro too). No doubt, there is some learning necessary to use these big casting machines efficiently, but they'll figure it out with time. If this Gigapress is not going to Tesla, I would expect to see 2025 MY cars from it in late 2024.

I don't know why people feel threatened by this, Tesla is the technological leader and people can copy all they want but they are copying what Tesla was doing years ago. The Cybertruck is going to exhibit a bunch of new technologies and they will (eventually) copy those innovations too but it's not going to hurt Tesla's bottom line because you can't get in the lead simply by copying. Tesla's cost advantages are not limited to Gigacastings, nor are they limited to manufacturing efficiencies, they have impressive corporate efficiency for an auto company which becomes more impressive when you understand how many projects they have in R&D (that we know about). Their overall corporate efficiency is going to be hard to match.
I didn't write anything about copying tech or being afraid of competitors. :rolleyes:

And speaking of copycats, look at the BYD Seal. It's a literal copy of the 3. However the things they cannot copy is the expertise Tesla has, which is wrapped up in technologies that are significantly complex enough that they cannot copy it one for one. And just like with the Giga Press, sure they all can talk about wanting one or moving to one, but they haven't yet cuz it's not as easy as it sounds. And that's backed up by the boss of LK.
 
Report from Germany:

If you order a Model 3 now it says expect delivery Jan-Mar. But if you look at the immediately available cars (58 of them) they are offered with a price adjustment of EUR 3,000 to EUR 5,000.

Inventory for Y, S and X are zero, so no price adjustments, delivery also Jan-Mar except for some colors (e.g. the new cherry red) and the standard range MY (Feb-Mar).

My take on this:

Perhaps price for M3 need to be reduced. Make the prices part of the order process.

Supply matches demand for all cars - no buildup of inventory to be seen here.
 
Well, since it seems on topic tonight to blather endlessly about the 9000-ton gigapress that's going to Asia, here's my equally ignorant contribution.

I think Tesla has figured out that having a competition/cooperation between Austin and Shanghai in ramping the Cybertruck line will essentially pay for the Shanghai line in its entirety. Just from the speedup that Austin will get. After that the Shanghai line can produce Cybertrucks at whatever rate makes sense for their market, and proceed in whatever direction they like with whatever other dies and castings make sense.

Now I have no idea whether this pencils out because I have no good sense of the various costs. But I think it's perfectly on brand for Tesla to do something clever like that to reduce their costs.
 
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Sometimes it takes some time to see the opinionated reporter in disguise when a piece is written.
Today on MarketWatch by Therese Poletti a piece on Ross Gerber and Tesla.
It starts more or less factual, but at the end the bad 'monkey comes out of the sleeve' (a Dutch saying, that I for fun literally translated) in her piece:

"Gerber has not acted like a dissident shareholder thus far. Despite his recent actions, he has supported Musk for years while the CEO lied about Tesla’s path to self-driving cards, made the self-serving acquisition of Solar City and continuously shot the company in the foot with his outbursts on social media, especially Twitter.

The Tesla board is notorious for rubber-stamping all of Musk’s edicts, so it seems unlikely that a longtime, uncritical investor like Gerber would have any different impact if he got the votes from shareholders. Hopefully, however, just this effort from a loud and proud Tesla bull will make Musk realize just how far he has strayed from his mission at Tesla."
 
Simplest explanation is... one machine casts a part for the front of the Cybertruck... another one casts the rear. That way, they eliminate the steps of changing out dies and storing a bunch of cast parts all around the factory. Did anyone ever ask Tesla how many they were ordering, or planning to use?
But but but... ...there's only one 9000 ton Giga Press in Austin as far as I know and now IDRA revealed that they are about to ship second one to Asia?
 
But but but... ...there's only one 9000 ton Giga Press in Austin as far as I know and now IDRA revealed that they are about to ship second one to Asia?

Someone pointed out in Youtube as Highlander - There can be only one

More detail:

"There can be only one" is the belief and motto among the immortals in the original Highlander film, its sequels and spin-offs. It implies that all immortals must fight and kill one another until only one remains standing; this "one" shall receive The Prize.

highlander.JPG
 
Another hypothesis. Maybe they want to introduce the cybertruck to their export hub in Shanghai to sell a smaller number of slightly smaller cybertrucks to Australia, Thailand and China etc, to prepare their supply chain for an exoskeleton stainless steel cyber-robotaxi/half the price of Model 3 car that later will go in high volume.
 
Someone pointed out in Youtube as Highlander - There can be only one

More detail:

"There can be only one" is the belief and motto among the immortals in the original Highlander film, its sequels and spin-offs. It implies that all immortals must fight and kill one another until only one remains standing; this "one" shall receive The Prize.

View attachment 894129
This makes most sense to me. It could fit nicely the timeline of "Project Highlander". And Tesla China just denied introducing "Model 2", for now.
 
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You seem to be missing the point here. Tesla does not order a GigaPress if there is nowhere to put it.

If the Gigapress is being shipped to Tesla, there is a factory built or space to install it. Tesla isn't going to wait until after the GigaPress is en-route to start thinking about where they are going to install it.

That is what is most interesting about this announcement. It either means someone other than Tesla has figured out how to use a GP like this. Or it means that Tesla has managed to find or build enough factory space and is preparing to launch a new vehicle out of China that requires a 9kTon JigaPress.

If this is the case (huge IF), then Tesla would be announcing a vehicle which will be going into production in Shaghai in 9-12 months. What vehicles would make most sense to launch in China first which would require a 9k Ton Gigapress? The list is fairly short here.
The only other though I had is that Tesla may want a longer lead time to test that they can make a single casting work reliably at speed. From the Berlin/Austin ramps we saw a lot of waste over the first few months even though Tesla was already familiar with the casting process at Shanghai and Fremont.

Doing this would shorten the ramp time of the gen 3 vehicle once it is announced, and Zach said they are now planning for scale wrt their capex spend rather than doing partial purchases.

It wouldn't be difficult to find room at Shanghai if the current position is just for testing purposes.

I doubt there could be any real progress on a gen 3 factory without us getting wind of it, there are too many eyeballs on Tesla for that to happen.