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@unk45 i have a fuzzy memory of you mentioning a few months ago that Mexico has some kind of preferential access to the major Latin American car markets like Argentina, Brazil and Chile, all of which are in MERCOSUR. I did a bit of research and saw Mexico is not a MERCOSUR member state but is an “observing” party, though I couldn’t find a definition of that.

Can you (or anyone else) provide any insight on this? Will GigaMex avoid tariffs or have an easier time with marketing in general in Latin America?
Yes, Mexico has a trade agreement with Mercosur. Mexico has duty free access to Mercosur countries but there are offsets beyond specific quotas intended to maintain rough trade balance. That is why I've logically linked buying, for example, Sigma Lithium or other suppliers to export to Mexico so maintain rough balance and assure preferred access. Mercedes Benz, GM and Stellantis(the EU parts) have all used those to great effect as have Boeing and countless others. Elon and other Tesla/SpaceX people have been discussing these issues with Brazil (far more than half of Mercosur) for some time.

In Brazil there is active BEV development and use, albeit small, although there are bus and truck BEV factories and one BEV car in production with plans for several more this year and next from several Eu and Chinese companies. In major cities charging infrastructure is growing rapidly. I, for example, mostly charge my Volvo in shopping centers, and at home if I haven't spent enough time elsewhere.

In Brazil there are also significant tax incentives for BEV, at State level, but including the largest markets of SP, RJ and MG.

The Northern South America countries and Central American countries have no significant auto markets or manufacturing base, All of them are accessible but infrastructure for BEV would be from a base of zero.
 
Of course everyone thinks only cheap sells, after all we're all unwashed down here. I suppose the reason my local shopping center BEV charging is filled with Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Volvo BEV's cannot possibly be an indication of a larger market.

You got me curious so I googled a little. The 90th percentile is 100k PPP Euros in Mexico

One answer for why a GF in Mexico is to bring cost of production down to local PPP levels
 
It's planned obsolescence. Their new models don't have any real improvements, maybe a new cupholder or 5 more HP. Nobody wants to upgrade for just that. So they just come out with a new model that instantly makes the current version look "old" and nobody wants to drive an "old" car.

I think the constant small changes model is working just fine. Most of the "the cars are aging" narrative comes right from TSLAQ and it's BS.
Although I’m personally tired of the plastic nose, I frequently get compliments from people about the classic lines of my 2015 S.
 
Personally, I would love to see Tesla make a van similar to the Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle based on the Gen 3 platform and I think that's what's under the cover. Can also be used for the RoboTaxi (eventually).

IMHO that Canoo is one trick little rig. Here's their site:

Fully agree @wipster - The Canoo is an excellent concept, but the practicality of it does not quite fit my lifestyle...and my experience says some of the photos on their website might be difficult or very inconvenient to replicate in some of the more enjoyable wilderness areas I prefer to go. The pictures show the Canoo camping deep in the snow-covered woods, yet the vehicle is advertised as having around 200 miles of range. "Danger Will!" We struggled in our Model X to simply go north-south in Idaho on the highways with 295 miles of range. And I had to take the factory tanks off my KTM 990 Adventure (4.5 gallons total and 225 miles of range) and replace them with a Safari Tank that held almost 12 gallons on a hot day when the tanks expanded so I could get to the end of the Forest Service roads and trails in Idaho and Montana....and back out, because 225 miles only gets you a little over 100 miles from the gas station/charging station on a round trip. The advertised range of the Cybertruck is imperative for an adventure lifestyle IMO. Personally I'm hoping a Tesla service-style van will be available on a Cybertruck frame with Cybertruck range so we can convert it to a formidable RV - an EV Sprinter on steroids.
 

Dave Lee with a good tweet:
“What’s the rationale from Tesla in choosing Monterrey, Mexico as the site of the next Gigafactory? Why not just double the footprint of Austin instead?” Dave asks a Tesla exec yesterday.
1. Tesla will expand in Austin and Mexico Gigafactory is not taking away from Austin expansion plans.

2. Mexico Gigafactory is for new markets, not the U.S. The idea is to build cars in Mexico for Mexico, Latin America, etc.

3. Monterrey has a lot of auto suppliers in the area, so good place for Tesla to be.

4. Monterrey is close to Austin, just a 1 hr flight.

5. Monterrey has an affluent area with good engineers.
How did he miss lower labor costs, which is the primary reason?
 
Those investment funds too stupid to exist if they haven’t figured Tesla out yet and don’t have confidence there’s more to come. Seriously. 🙄
Investment funds don't have to be smart to exist, people will still pay them lots of fees even though it is should be common knowledge that 90% of actively managed funds don't beat the market over time. Of those that do, most of that is probably luck since none of them *consistently* do it. But people still pay high fees to try to beat the market despite the over 90% chance that they won't. So it turns out they are the smart ones taking money from people who would be better off just *being* the market.

I understand the point you are trying to make though!
 
Yes, Mexico has a trade agreement with Mercosur. Mexico has duty free access to Mercosur countries but there are offsets beyond specific quotas intended to maintain rough trade balance. That is why I've logically linked buying, for example, Sigma Lithium or other suppliers to export to Mexico so maintain rough balance and assure preferred access. Mercedes Benz, GM and Stellantis(the EU parts) have all used those to great effect as have Boeing and countless others. Elon and other Tesla/SpaceX people have been discussing these issues with Brazil (far more than half of Mercosur) for some time.

In Brazil there is active BEV development and use, albeit small, although there are bus and truck BEV factories and one BEV car in production with plans for several more this year and next from several Eu and Chinese companies. In major cities charging infrastructure is growing rapidly. I, for example, mostly charge my Volvo in shopping centers, and at home if I haven't spent enough time elsewhere.

In Brazil there are also significant tax incentives for BEV, at State level, but including the largest markets of SP, RJ and MG.

The Northern South America countries and Central American countries have no significant auto markets or manufacturing base, All of them are accessible but infrastructure for BEV would be from a base of zero.
It’s a bit dated, but you might enjoy the tv series LONG WAY UP currently on Apple TV and presumably other outlets. I hope the charging network from Ushuaia to California has progressed since then!
 
Note that the graph is deliberately scary as they're choosing to show renewables as their fossil-equivalents.

For example there are estimates of 1TW/year of PV production by 2030. At 20% cf, that's adding around 1,753TWh of electricity supply per year.
But you need to multiply if displacing existing fossil generation, fossil fuel for vehicles or powering heat pumps.
Jacobsen estimated a reduction of 43% in actual current primary energy requirements if you electrify with renewables.
So, we're going to need more but not as much as the graph might imply.
Noted, and it’s true, but the distinction I’m trying to make is between the “need” for a one-to-one substitution and what will actually happen. Technology disruptions are rarely one-to-one substitutions and almost always phase changes with new properties afterwards that almost everyone underestimates. Tony Seba and RethinkX’s research has shown this conclusively in my opinion and they too are predicting we will overbuild solar capacity far beyond today’s total energy supply and use it for all kinds of stuff.

It’s fundamental economics. Markets consume more of any new substitute good if it provides more utility for lower cost. At lot of things that are not economically competitive with fossil fuel energy, such as indoor controlled-environment agriculture for anything other than sensitive cash crops like 420, could become competitive if clean electricity becomes cheap enough.

This is where I think Tesla really is missing the mark on what they’ve publicly presented for scale ambitions. I’m not just looking at solar, wind and batteries to merely replace; I’m talking about abundance orders of magnitude beyond what we have now with fossils, hydro and nukes. This planet is bathing nonstop in immense amounts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun just waiting to be harvested. I mean let’s consider the 0.2% of earth’s land area estimate they gave last night. That’s just for replacement of existing energy consumption. Why not more? Humanity will want more. Industrial civilization seems to have an insatiable appetite for cheap energy.

As another example, last night Elon proposed that potentially there might be more Optimi than people. 10 billion bots each using on average something on order of 10 kWh/day (420 watts continuous average) would consume 100 TWh every day or about 40 PWh per year. That’s more energy than the entire transportation sector consumes today, just for bots. Just one example that might not even happen but it serves to illustrate the kinds of energy consumption opportunities out there. Desalination, direct-air carbon capture and methane synthesis, the list goes on.

In the longer run, if SpaceX succeeds in drastically cutting the cost of accessing and working in space, hypothetically we could harvest yet more orders of magnitude larger amounts of power far in excess of the tiny portion that’s intercepted by our little Pale Blue Dot. The economics of that are far less certain from the vantage point of today, but it’s at least plausible and doesn’t violate the laws of physics. Our actual total solar power budget in this solar system is 4 * 10^26 watts.

I think in the long term we ought to be thinking a lot bigger than even the “extreme size” Tesla presented us with Master Plan Part 3.
 
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Whilst this might appeal to some markets, the last power cut I can recall at home was years ago, and was only for a few minutes. by the time I would have gone outside and plugged my car in the power would have been back on!

I would like a powerwall/solar combo one day to save on bills and to do the right thing, but the V2G thing for my needs seems pretty unnecessary.
@JupiterMan
I would invite you to visit SW Florida (I live near Sanibel/Captiva/Fort Myers Beach (a sandbar)
hurricane Irma cut power 4.5 days, hurricane Ian cut power 11.25 days, and we were lucky, house survived _this_ time
(the universe has gotten my attention, so skedaddling fairly toot sweet for inland/higher ground)
 
V2G is extended outage insurance FOR FREE. If all you had to do was tick a box at purchase to get it, no one would turn it down. Heck, if Tesla charged $250 for it, they’d probably get greater than a 10% take rate.


How are you getting the "2G" part for free? How is the car connecting to the grid without you having paid for hardware (and possibly install) to connect to the grid safely and legally?

I mean I agree this route is still cheaper than a powerwall- but it still costs something. (I think Ford gets like $3900 for their F-150 EV home integrated setup-plus another $1300 for the charger you need to make the vehicle work with it so a bit over 5k all in)


The sunroof in my Lexus, I opened it on the day I bought to check it out and then two more times to demonstrate to someone... a total of 3 times in 16 years and 160K miles.

FWIW I occasionally used my Lexus sunroof to vent hot air when first getting in if it had been a really hot day and I'd had to park outside.

My Tesla offers a much better solution for this- I have cabin overheat turned on- and then I just set climate via the app to what I want the car to be a couple minutes before leaving. Thus I never get into a hot car needing to be vented while I'm in it in the first place.



Aren't inductive chargers quite lossy? Since the cheapest I can get a kWh in Southern California is $0.22, I am not interested in any lost kWhs...

Yup- that's why I mentioned earlier I don't see much use for the thing other than- if the pads are super durable- installs in apartment complexes so you don't have cables tripping everyone
 
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Sasha does bring up good points.

Although the future looks bright, the amount of expansion going on right now (even with Giga Mexico announcement) are not enough and will take years to come to fruition which means the 20 million by 2030 is questionable.

Unless they start announcing capacity expansion at a faster rate. Just because they announced a factory yesterday doesn't mean they won't announce another one or more later this year. IMHO, its sort of time to start undoing 'the wave' of factory construction -- just starting them in an overlapping sequence rather than waiting for one to be done before they start the next.
 
Aren't inductive chargers quite lossy? Since the cheapest I can get a kWh in Southern California is $0.22, I am not interested in any lost kWhs...
I'd much rather we get that robot snake thing...or I just keep plugging in manually. Wireless charging is very helpful with cell phones as we are constantly picking them up and using them. For cars I don't get it.
 
Unless they start announcing capacity expansion at a faster rate. Just because they announced a factory yesterday doesn't mean they won't announce another one or more later this year. IMHO, its sort of time to start undoing 'the wave' of factory construction -- just starting them in an overlapping sequence rather than waiting for one to be done before they start the next.

Tesla can't source enough inputs to rapidly build new factories. Musk points this out repeatedly in various was. Tesla is rate limited by the stuff they need arriving at the loading dock.
 
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I'm sure oil companies, LNG companies, exxon, etc were paying attention. Seeing that is actually possible to pivot away from oil and gas is detrimental to their business. Seeing that there is math behind it, and can be done cheaply is notable. Just me but large algorithmic trading by companies whose entire product and business model is about to be made obsolete is going to use capital markets to work very hard to hold TSLA down. Yesterday's goal was to change ALL energy for the earth to solar and wind with batteries...
These claims have been made over and over on this board. Never even a shred of evidence. First, how does it help Exxon if TSLA's share price is marginally lower? Second, where are all the losses these companies would have made in any attempt to suppress the share price? It would have resulted in tens of Billions in losses that are required to be reported in a public company's financials.
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Some random thoughts:


The share price is down today because a bunch of engineers (not MBAs) did the presentation. Too hard for the analysts to convert what they heard into earnings projections. They laid out how they make the sausage instead of how profitable the sausage is going to be.

I loved the presentation. (Even after a brief nap in the middle.) Easy to see that Tesla is the best managed company in the world ... that's my main takeaway.

MP3 is genius ... it'll take months or years for it to sink in with most investors ... but sink in it will.

On moats: I liked the carrot slicing analogy for cost cutting. Tesla doesn't have a moat, it has a swamp. Not filled with one alligator but a million piranha.

It wasn't said, but I don't think the new gen 3 manufacturing process can be implemented without castings. Without everything in exactly the right place you can't wait till the end to put the big pieces together.

Loved the discussion on working with suppliers. A lot of cost can be taken out at the supplier level if they are given the incentives and ability to do so.

Lithium refinery up and running in one year ... wow.

They avoided financial projections. (This was Investor Day after all.) Not sure why. Maybe they just felt like it's unseemly to make hundreds of Billions of dollars from making the world a better place. Didn't want to conflate the mission with the profit motive. "Musk laid out the path to 100B in annual profits for 2026" would have been a catchy headline today in the WSJ.

Sandy M loved the presentation. That means the competition isn't catching up and demand is secured.
 
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Sasha does bring up good points.

Although the future looks bright, the amount of expansion going on right now (even with Giga Mexico announcement) are not enough and will take years to come to fruition which means the 20 million by 2030 is questionable.


How did "Tesla f*cked Up"? The points Sasha makes have been obvious for several years. Tesla scouring the world for the stuff they need has also been happening since 2015. There are many aspects of Tesla's business that they don't control. Hence Part 1 of the presentation.
 
Perhaps it was just poor phrasing during the call, but that's generally not what one understands when they hear "permanent magnet motor", especially as switched-reluctance motors aren't nearly as common.

Interestingly, the label Tesla uses refers to the motors as SWRPM (switched reluctance permanent magnet motors). So the new acronym would ostensibly be SWR?
In my opinion, the motor topology will be the same as it is right now, Synchronous Permanent Magnet Reluctance Motor, which is basically the baby of a PM and a reluctance motor and you can operate them in either regime, but they will change the Neodymium magnets to Ferrite or some other low cost abundant cheap material alternative

For those that never saw it, this is a good video on how this type of motor works and why it's a big deal, you get the advantages of induction and permanent magnet in one motor and can chose how to operate.

Induction is efficient at low torque and high speed, such as highway cruising since you control the field strength, thus your rotor magnetic field is only as strong as you need at a given time, leading to lower core losses, but suffers at higher power since you use energy to create both the rotor and stator magnetic field

PM you can have high efficiency at high speed and torque, but you can't be efficient at high speed and low torque since your rotor magnetic field strength is constant and way more than needed at most situations, so that generates higher core losses

For example, it would be impossible for a Plaid or even a LR to have the power and efficiency with either kind of motor, but mix the two and you achieve magic

 
Yes, Mexico has a trade agreement with Mercosur. Mexico has duty free access to Mercosur countries but there are offsets beyond specific quotas intended to maintain rough trade balance. That is why I've logically linked buying, for example, Sigma Lithium or other suppliers to export to Mexico so maintain rough balance and assure preferred access. Mercedes Benz, GM and Stellantis(the EU parts) have all used those to great effect as have Boeing and countless others. Elon and other Tesla/SpaceX people have been discussing these issues with Brazil (far more than half of Mercosur) for some time.

In Brazil there is active BEV development and use, albeit small, although there are bus and truck BEV factories and one BEV car in production with plans for several more this year and next from several Eu and Chinese companies. In major cities charging infrastructure is growing rapidly. I, for example, mostly charge my Volvo in shopping centers, and at home if I haven't spent enough time elsewhere.

In Brazil there are also significant tax incentives for BEV, at State level, but including the largest markets of SP, RJ and MG.

The Northern South America countries and Central American countries have no significant auto markets or manufacturing base, All of them are accessible but infrastructure for BEV would be from a base of zero.

I would assert that any place with reasonably reliable 220v power already has a base far above zero, especially for anyone who drive less than 300kms a day.

I've averaged about 50,000 miles a year over the past 5 years (and yes, I do supercharge, but I'm also an extreme outlier). If I drove 300km/186 miles a day I would practically never supercharge.
 
These claims have been made over and over on this board. Never even a shred of evidence. First, how does it help Exxon if TSLA's share price is marginally lower? Second, where are all the losses these companies would have made in any attempt to suppress the share price? It would have resulted in tens of Billions in losses that are required to be reported in a public company's financials.
------------------------------
Some random thoughts:


The share price is down today because a bunch of engineers (not MBAs) did the presentation. Too hard for the analysts to convert what they heard into earnings projections. They laid out how they make the sausage instead of how profitable the sausage is going to be.

I loved the presentation. (Even after a brief nap in the middle.) Easy to see that Tesla is the best managed company in the world ... that's my main takeaway.

MP3 is genius ... it'll take months or years for it to sink in with most investors ... but sink in it will.

On moats: I liked the carrot slicing analogy for cost cutting. Tesla doesn't have a moat, it has a swamp. Not filled with one alligator but a million piranha.

It wasn't said, but I don't think the new gen 3 manufacturing process can be implemented without castings. Without everything in exactly the right place you can't wait till the end to put the big pieces together.

Loved the discussion on working with suppliers. A lot of cost can be taken out at the supplier level if they are given the incentives and ability to do so.

Lithium refinery up and running in one year ... wow.

They avoided financial projections. (This was Investor Day after all.) Not sure why. Maybe they just felt like it's unseemly to make hundreds of Billions of dollars from making the world a better place. Didn't want to conflate the mission with the profit motive. "Musk laid out the path to 100B in annual profits for 2026" would have been a catchy headline today in the WSJ.

Sandy M loved the presentation. That means the competition isn't catching up and demand is secured.
Re suppliers, my WAG is many of them are capital-constrained and struggle to meet Tesla’s increased needs. Wonder if any of the long-term supply agreements come with expansion financing.
 
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  • Digital twin and digital thread principles are deeply embedded in everything Tesla does, and the shift to using exclusively custom Tesla-designed microcontrollers is the final step to unleashing the full power of this strategy because Tesla engineers will now have total control over the brains of the car. Tesla showed a deeper glimpse than ever into their incredible data management and end-to-end software integration.

Great summary and comments! Did you catch whether they already have the custom Tesla microcontrollers (are they in 2023 cars), or is that Gen3? I have a Y on order, arriving in a few months...

It was tricky to know what was far out in the future and what was already being implemented at times, since they went back and forth a bit. The future sure is bright, though!