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

[dm28997]

Some comments.
4 MILLION Teslas produced in a shorter and shorter time frame from the first to the recent 1 million produced. Exponential Growth anyone?
Love my Sunroof in our MS.
Terawatts require lots of GF's but efficiency is increased and factory making the factory with Optimus making more Optimus is game changing but kind of scary.
FSD, DOJO and new chips are ongoing.
All in all very pleased and WS reaction as expected which happens for many companies esp. those with shorts.

I got my Costco credit card rebate and noticed something very interesting. They give you 4% cash back on eligible Gas AND EV CHARGING for the first $7000. I wonder if this includes non Teslas charging at Superchargers which I think it does so you other EVs use your Costco card. Congrats Costco for getting into the new paradigm.

 

[Singuy]

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.

We spend a hour talking about shrinking the production line and factory foot print so we can spend lots of capex buying more gigafactories ---said by no one at Tesla.

 

[2daMoon]

I had the same issue. I'm hard-of-hearing and I use a headphone amplifier to hear videos from the 'net, and I had to crank everything all the way up just to get a decent signal. I don't have this issue normally with TV or any computer/Internet-sourced audio.

FWIW, I cast the event from phone to TV and volume control was fine.

 

[Oveeus]

As I was expecting, Tesla went all in with "how" to achieve their vision. And I think it's a bit more than that too.

We got the see what the future looks like and the absolutely mind-bonking scale and TAM that Tesla is going into.

And it truly shows the First Principle Thinking that Elon and Tesla adhere to.

As far as how the market is reacting, I honestly think that it's faring better than what I expected. I set a limit buy at 185, but it didn't hit. Ended up adjusting it to market and loaded another 30 chairs at just under 190.

There were a lot of speculation building up to Investor Day. So, I was expecting the "sell on the news." But it wasn't all that bad everything considered.

The market was expecting a new vehicle. But I knew it wouldn't be announced as it'd totally Osborne current sales. But the FACT that we went from "not working on 25k vehicles" to "the next gen is coming, Giga Monterey is building it we just won't talk about it now" is a huge step.

And from the slides shown, we'd expect the first new vehicle using Gen 3 architecture/platform would be a van of some sort.

To dive a bit deeper into that, I believe the van is going to take the Cybertruck platform and be announced sometime between now to the completion of Giga Monterey. The way I see it is that Giga Austin will probably start the first phase of building this vehicle, with Giga Monterey taking over once it's done. And the true next-gen vehicle, the one aiming for 700M is going to be announced once the Giga Monterey and other Gigas are announced. Giga Monterey will pilot the production of that, with other future Gigas be optimized based on what they learn in Giga Monterey for Gen 3.

 

[GhostSkater]

Posted this somewhere else but might be interesting for others also

A bit on everything I've seen and though so far, might get a bit long

• Paint shop with modular approach: Will shrink the paint shop in absurd ways, instead of having a body that is mostly air and robots have to maneuver inside to paint, you now have parts that are essentially 2D, they might even be able to ditch the robots and have just nozzles like Lathrop, space for parts might be less than a meter wide vs several meters for current paints shops. Line speed might accelerate a lot since you don't have robots doing complex movements, just a continuously moving conveyor of parts (
  )

• Castings on modular approach: Looks like quite bigger and complex casting, will have fixtures for everything, thermal system, suspension, steering wheel, display, computer module, 16 V battery, drive unit, HVAC ducts and so on, everything goes into the castings, no brackets no nothing. If they integrate seatbelt into the seat, there will be almost nothing going into the stamped body other than trim.

• Cybertruck battery pack: From Rob video, pretty much confirmed that there is a dual layer 4680 pack, look how tall the floor is, same level as the door sill, that easily enables over 500 miles of range, I've been thinking in doing a 3D model of the body and the pack, but lots of work and time needed

• Almost zero fasteners: They might do what they did to the 4680 pack to the whole car, specially on a cheaper one, if you get everything reliable enough, there is no point in making parts replaceable, specially when you sell the insurance yourself. For the few ones that have a critical defect, grind it down and use as ore. Snap fits everywhere, even on metal parts, just to hold it while the glue dries, castings are already glued to the stamped parts, and fasteners are just used to hold it while the glue dries, so they are useless

 

[Nocturnal]

We spend a hour talking about shrinking the production line and factory foot print so we can spend lots of capex buying more gigafactories ---said by no one at Tesla.

Would have been nice for them to explicitly state that.

"We won't need 10-20 more factories. The actual number is TBD of course but we will be increasing capacity of current factories by X% through expansion, estimate Y% capacity increase through efficiency increases. Our current plan is 3 more factories over the next 5 years. Our assumptions are that this will get us to the capacity level to produce our 20 million target."

 

[CLK350]

I really appreciate and use my Benz CLK350 sunroof: slightly open, a deflector pops up and while in motion it provides a nice outgoing breeze on warm days. Other than that, yes I don't use it much.
Gotta give it to the Benz pre 2009: they really perfected the state of the art for the time. Even had the perfect good sense to save Tesla from bankruptcy that 2008 year, w/ EV contract.

Forgot this amusing detail: Ron Barron's wife got her MX, but she complained vehemently its sunshade visor didn't have the illuminated beauty mirror she was accustomed to in her Benz(s). So Tesla made a special edition MX just for her.

Source: last Baron Capital XL event Nov 2022 NYC.

 

[Gigapress]

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!

Tesla vehicles already have a bunch of custom electronics but going 100% all-in on vertical integration of the electronics is Gen 3. Cybertruck will get close though, so I guess this is part of the “insane technology bandwagon” Elon had mentioned.

 

[Singuy]

Would have been nice for them to explicitly state that.

"We won't need 10-20 more factories. The actual number is TBD of course but we will be increasing capacity of current factories by X% through expansion, estimate Y% capacity increase through efficiency increases. Our current plan is 3 more factories over the next 5 years. Our assumptions are that this will get us to the capacity level to produce our 20 million target."

I believe they said it's a moving target as everything is at Tesla. If you look at interviews of Elon from the past, he said the world need hundreds of gigafactories and needs everyone's help to get there. I don't see Elon sharing the same sentiment today, especially when Shanghai exceeded their expectations with actual production numbers using a small foot print.

 

[jkirkwood001]

People keep saying that with no evidence. One new GF a year can easily do that, although they'll probably open two a year some years. Obviously there are many challenges along the way, and thus many people will hope it does not happen.

Tesla has been specializing in the impossible since Roadster and Model S.

Yes, @unk45 , and I would say the positive new wildcard is Tom Zhu.

There's a reason he's the new no.2 Ops person at Tesla. In fact, what Tesla reenforced from recent events, with the many other primary presenters, is that the deep brainpower in the org. is growing all the time.

I think Tom may have demonstrated - and convinced Elon - that he can do this. It was about a year ago, before Tom was promoted, that Elon said "I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth". Well, we're getting to the point where Elon may know more combined than anyone else, but there are individuals that know more about individual subjects than him - like Tom knowing how to build the best factory possible in the least amount of time at the lowest possible cost. That doesn't seem to have been the case until recently.

This is critical to me as an investor because, in the past, Tesla's success was entirely tied to Elon's drive and vision and expertise. Now, of course Elon continues to add value during strategic planning and options analysis. But he may no longer be the smartest guy in the room for everything (let's hope he never has to sleep in the factory overnight again!). And that's a good thing IMO.

 

[Oveeus]

Would have been nice for them to explicitly state that.

"We won't need 10-20 more factories. The actual number is TBD of course but we will be increasing capacity of current factories by X% through expansion, estimate Y% capacity increase through efficiency increases. Our current plan is 3 more factories over the next 5 years. Our assumptions are that this will get us to the capacity level to produce our 20 million target."

I think they basically laid out what's going to happen in the future. Gigas in the future would take a much smaller footprint but also bringing the production of the whole thing, from battery cells to the final car under one roof.

Given that they can do so much within so little space, Gigas in the future is no longer constrained by how much land there is to offer as well as labor costs since it's in an efficiency that other carmakers cannot even begin to comprehend. Furthermore, by bringing everything in-house, down to every chip needed for the car, the need for suppliers goes down further. Tesla will no longer need to select a location considering logistic of their suppliers that much and only what Tesla itself needs to bring things in and out.

 

[ClimateOptimst]

Don’t think I’ve seen this detailed walkaround video of the interior/exterior of the beta Cybertruck from Tesla Daily posted yet. Fit & finish are looking great, no more yoke steering wheel, etc.—this sucker looks ready to start revolutionizing the truck segment.

 

[2daMoon]

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.

The benefit of wireless charging is most practical for the autonomous Robotaxi fleet. It can just park itself and charge without needing a human or Optimus on staff.

 

[electracity]

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.

You don't bet the farm on one customer. During the ramp of the model 3 Musk criticized Panasonic for not more aggressively ramping battery investment. But Panasonic execs made growth decisions based on what was good for their company and their personal financial well being. A typical supplier doesn't want one customer to be more than perhaps 40% of their sales.

Tesla simply can't go to a lithium mine and buy 100% production for 10 years. That mine likely wants many customers and some unsold product for the spot market.

 

[petit_bateau]

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.

Indeed.

As a general help to folks here is a graph showing the effect of how one describes renewable energy when comparing it to fossil fuel energy. This is what they tried to explain at the start of the presentation.

With fossil fuel energy we burn it and after the conversion we get about a third of it to do something useful. So do we count the 'one' lump going in, or the 'one third' lump coming out ? That debate is academic when one is comparing fossil with fossil. But it matters greatly when comparing most renewables with fossil. This is because most renewables or non-fossil (that are relevant to the discussion) deliver electricity and the conversion efficiency therefore is practically irrelevant. If one uses the 'direct' method everyone goes 'ewk' the renewables are so little. So in order to compare these apples and oranges in a fairer way the 'substitution' method is used whereby we artifically pretend that the electric-renewables (and nuclear) are as inefficient as fossils and multiply them up by approx 3 to get a pseudo apples-to-apples comparison.

In my global energy model I keep track of this stuff both ways so I can talk either. I'm pulling the corresponding variables straight out of my actual global energy model to explain this. Here you can see that going forwards even though energy demand keeps on growing (blue line, leftaxis, TWh as in the legend) because of both population growth and energy/person growth. Yet the actual energy burnt goes down (orange line). The orange line is the 'direct' count of how much energy is being put into any of the generators and it reduces as we progressively eliminate wasteful fossils from the mix. But by still keeping count of the blue line (the substitution method) we can counter any accusations that we are planning to go green only by inflicting energy-austerity on everybody.

If you look down at the grey line (right axis, %) you'll see that we deliver an increasing share of our energy as electricity as we go through this transformation, ultimately nigh-on 100%. That is the electrification of vehicles, delivering heat using ASHP or other forms of heat pump, etc. And the yellow line shows that increasingly the source of that electricity is non-fossil in nature.

So what Tesla showed yesterday is not some radical new idea. It is what is simply going on in any case. But Tesla are fully aware that like all these exponential-nature changes it speeds up as it proceeds. And of course - rightly - they are pushing to make that go faster.

(It may be that a side-effect is that we subsequently go on to use even more energy per person, but that remains to be seen.)

===========================

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

But that is going to be some magic ferrite ? We can see in their slide that the ferrite package is about the same size as a neo package. So they've made a breakthrough and kept it secret if they are going to use ferrites like this. So is it ferrite2 or is it something else ? I can't think what it might be other than a magic ferrite.

 

[ggies07]

Bah-hahaha.

Definitely #3. also, you could really tell Drew was having a good time the whole presentation.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631353250128486400

 

[Gigapress]

You don't bet the farm on one customer. During the ramp of the model 3 Musk criticized Panasonic for not more aggressively ramping battery investment. But Panasonic execs made growth decisions based on what was good for their company and their personal financial well being. A typical supplier doesn't want one customer to be more than perhaps 40% of their sales.

Tesla simply can't go to a lithium mine and buy 100% production for 10 years. That mine likely wants many customers and some unsold product for the spot market.

I’m wondering to what extent Tesla could overcome this with brute force financial power by either offering high prices per ton or offering to acquire the mine outright. In the end the mining companies are just trying to get the biggest lifetime earnings out of the mine, so I imagine that if Tesla made an offer that’s more lucrative than the alternatives are expected to be then the mining companies would go for it.

Tesla’s cost reductions could help enable significantly better negotiating leverage for securing mineral supply, because they have more margin to give.

 

[Ogre]

Loved all of the Cybertruck references in the event. No “Reveal”, but lots of details about how it’s made. For example we now know exactly what the inside of the Cybertruck will look like. We’ve seen it before, but Tesla just confirmed It. (Image below)

We know it’s not the Gen 3, but something sort of between generations. Lots of Gen 3 features and assembly methods, but some throwbacks. Or perhaps a better way of looking at it is building the Cybertruck taught them how to build Gen 3.

They also reaffirmed the Cybertruck is on track for this year.

Incidentally, it doesn’t look like this Cybertruck is being manufactured using their new out of the box method, but has the parts of the final.

 

[Knightshade]

Some comments.
4 MILLION Teslas produced in a shorter and shorter time frame from the first to the recent 1 million produced. Exponential Growth anyone?
Love my Sunroof in our MS.
Terawatts require lots of GF's but efficiency is increased and factory making the factory with Optimus making more Optimus is game changing but kind of scary.
FSD, DOJO and new chips are ongoing.
All in all very pleased and WS reaction as expected which happens for many companies esp. those with shorts.

I got my Costco credit card rebate and noticed something very interesting. They give you 4% cash back on eligible Gas AND EV CHARGING for the first $7000. I wonder if this includes non Teslas charging at Superchargers which I think it does so you other EVs use your Costco card. Congrats Costco for getting into the new paradigm.

FWIW US Bank and PenFed have several cards for a while with EV charging as a bonus category in the 4-5% reward range.

The benefit of wireless charging is most practical for the autonomous Robotaxi fleet. It can just park itself and charge without needing a human or Optimus on staff.

Wireless will be slow L2- terrible for robotaxi fleets unless you're ok with your cars being out of service for half the day every day charging (or a majority of the day if your fleet averages more than 20-25 mph, since that'll be your max charge rate to add range wirelessly- probably less)- so pretty useless for this purpose.

 

[CLK350]

Yesterday Tesla showed a plan to convert the world off of fossil fuels. They had numbers, costs, engineering, and answers to common questions. Best plan, by far, anyone has shown to convert to sustainable fuels.

Hardly anyone is talking about it today and wall street is pitching a fit that they didn't get a shiny toy instead.

We live in Idiocracy.


Also, good to see @Krugerrand back.
View attachment 912988

Apologies if I miss other posts emphasizing this HUGE point my head still hurts trying to figure out its consequences.

I follow Tesla/ Elon v. carefully but have never seen Master Plan 3 revealed in such fine details.

A future w/o the current incredibly inefficient and polluting (planet destroying) effects is entirely feasible AND within reach.

Tesla is helping make that transition AND will make sure it happens by pitching in if they have to.

I see Martin Vieccha emphasized this point today

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631152328312082432