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

[Singuy]

Now the few thing missing from yesterday's investor meeting that would have made investors rejoice

1. $ instead of Twh. Tesla didn't really explain the TAM in dollars
2. Tesla didn't make any forward guidance using the 1TWH storage/2TWH transport in the form of expected revenue, margin, etc etc.

Most investor day presentation explain things in dollars which Tesla didn't even bother, perhaps trying to give people the sense that Tesla is philanthropic as Elon alluded to before. So instead of saying "we are going to print lots of net income and this is our goal of expected EPS ____ by 2030", it was "we are going to revolutionize the world economy away from fossil fuel and human labor".

I guess it was a diplomatic move. Perhaps not the best time to put trillion dollar revenues on slide when the people thinks corporations are greedy and should be taken down.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

Bed bath rallied 20+% after they announced insolvency possible. Maybe that's what investors wanted from Tesla.

I would ignore this clown market and focus on the fundamentals.

Maybe they want Elon to pull a Mary-build a prototype, then spend millions of dollars advertising it two years before starting production-only to not actually be able to build more than a few hundred a year. At the rate GM builds EVs, they will have to sell the EV Blazer and Equinox for 5 years just to pay for the advertising they have done already.

 

[FSDtester#1]

Snip>
We live in Idiocracy.

Sounds like someone is grouchy and hasn't had enough Brawndo today.

You might be craving electrolytes....

 

[gene]

I am happy to say that I’m doing well and you guys will have to put up with me for years to come! Thank you all for such support! Really, I was very touched.

 

[MC3OZ]

This video from Dave Lee explains a lot of things.

Coupled with some comments from Dave in another video that Gen3 seems to be "designed to be built by Optimus".

So what I now expect for Gen3 is:-

1. Monterrey - very few Optimus bots, slowly increasing - target markets Mexico and South America.
2. China and/or Thailand (or somewhere similar) - more Optimus bots, increasing over time, - target markets Asia Pacific
3. Berlin and/or Poland - lots of Optimus bots - target markets Europe/UK.
4. Austin - as many Optimus bots as possible - target markets US and Canada.

Target markets are simply the main markets where the vehicles are headed. Small numbers might be imported in the US/EU, but there is no Osborne effect because only excess stock form Mexico/Asia will be available for order.

I now doubt that we will see a single bottom casting, because 3 piece construction means more bots in the frame, More bots in the frame means faster construction.

So IMO the initial phases of construction (the GA parts) are designed to be manual steps performed by humans, because the long term hope is that Optimus can take many of the steps.

It makes sense to do these tasks initially in Mexico, because initially a lot of workers are needed and wages are an important component of cost.

The final stages where the car body is put together involve heavy industrial automation and very few workers.

The pre-stages like paint, casting and some parts and subassemblies are heavily automated.

Aside from the assembly of the car, the intention will be to make heavily automated steps generic

So less automation via industrial robots and more generic processes except for the final car assembly process = lower cost.

Optimus training at building more Optimus is good training for building cars, it doesn't matter how slow this initially is...

Factory workers assembling the Gen3 cars can wear a video camera to capture vision of them building the car, this video can be used to produce some initial training data for Optimus.

I doubt that Tesla will backflip on this process, where parts of the GA process are too hard for Optimus to perform, the design / parts will be modified to make it easier, or humans will continue to do those tasks.

 

[Chunky Jr.]

I am happy to say that I’m doing well and you guys will have to put up with me for years to come! Thank you all for such support! Really, I was very touched.

Congrats!

 

[bkp_duke]

I think the point your argument does not take into account is that an EV isn't just an inferior backup to a power wall, but that rather it is in the most important ways....VASTLY SUPERIOR. Drastically higher capacity and drastically lower(0) cost. A single M3 has the capacity of 6 power walls. So a 2 EV household could have the emergency backup power of having 12 power walls, and at literally zero extra cost.

I keep seeing this, and these arguments are incredibly short-sighted.

Does a car battery have MORE storage than a powerwall? Yes.

But the big GOTCHA with this is the following:
1) the Inverters in the car are NOT designed to run that power in the opposite direction for any significant load. This means:
-- a) Tesla will need to design new bidirectional inverters.
-- b) Those inverters will likely add some cost to the car, as they are not are simple as what Tesla has honed in on and produced now
2) you have to have a house setup designed to accept this power - you guys expecting Tesla to put a bunch of 240V connectors in and you string some massive cables back to your breaker box? Even the Tesla wall charger is not designed to accept the power required for something like this. And here is an example:

Our house has 4 x PW 2.0 in it, each one is on a 30A 240V circuit (120A 240V total). That's the BARE MINIMUM to run our electric oven and either one AC, or the two AC units alone (but not the oven), and then various other lower-power devices. To run that kind of power that 4 PW2s provide you would need at minimum a set of 1-gauge copper wires connecting from your entry point from the car to the house. THAT IS NOT small. It's a lot larger than the wires in your wall charger (4-gauge).


People here are looking at STORAGE CAPACITY (the size of the swimming pool) and completely forgetting POWER OUTPUT (the thickness of the hose).

For any meaningful power output, the inverters need to be beefed up, and you need a substantial mechanism to access that power (i.e. thick wires back to a bidirectional wall charger or a lot of big ports on the car).



If Tesla implements V2G/H I would expect it will be limited to something like 5-7kw output (i.e. one powerwall power output). It will be helpful for something like a disaster, but it's not going to replace powerwalls unless someone is willing to pay for a VERY beefy inverter + cabling setup.

Things like the Ford F150 aren't setup either to run a whole house. They are "partial home" backup solutions.

 

[Artful Dodger]

BTW, having Zach as the first ^^and last^^ speaker at Investor Day bodes well for his potential future leadership role at Tesla. Jus' sayin'...

FTFM.

Cheers!

 

[Ogre]

There are another 8 years to ramp to the 20 million run rate figure.

A factory build and subsequent volume vehicle ramp takes 2.5-3 years.

Do we even know what the maximum capacity of existing facilities is? Basing Texas production on Fremont number or even Shanghai numbers seems short sighted. Every production line at Texas is more advanced than the more advanced on at Fremont. Cybertruck line is likely smaller and more productive yet. There is a strong chance they can start a Gen 3 line in Texas in addition to Cybertruck and Model Y.

I think baseline assumption should be something like 500k+ Model Ys, 500k+ Cybertrucks, and 1m+ Gen 3 vehicles out of Texas.

without knowing end capacity, we can’t put a number on how many new facilities they need.

 

[Ogre]

I think the point your argument does not take into account is that an EV isn't just an inferior backup to a power wall, but that rather it is in the most important ways....VASTLY SUPERIOR. Drastically higher capacity and drastically lower(0) cost. A single M3 has the capacity of 6 power walls. So a 2 EV household could have the emergency backup power of having 12 power walls, and at literally zero extra cost.

It is not “zero extra cost”. Neither to Tesla, not the consumer. At the very least the consumer need panel integration and grid isolation. Ford charges $3800 for that piece and that’s not installed so likely $5k minimum and that’s just for V2H, not accounting for V2G which requires even more electrical work and essentially the brains which are part of the Powerwall.

So the consumer has dropped $5k+ to shave a few dollars off their power bill occasionally? Not a ton of people are doing this.

On Teslas side, costs are likely a lot lower, but non zero, and those costs apply to every vehicle they produce, even though only a small number of people will actually pay the $5k+ they need to in order to make their home compliant.


And the payoff isn’t that great because that extra power is unreliable. So unlike a PowerWall where the power company can lean on you in times of need, it’s guesswork whether that capacity will be online or not.

 

[FSDtester#1]

Sorry if this was already posted, I am still 10 pages back trying to catch up.
Farzhad had a great youtube video of last night's presentation and had Sandy Munro. if you haven't watched the whole thing. Let's just say Sandy had a few drinks in him and was swearing like a sailor and made me almost pee my pants he was so funny. He was asked if he owned TSLA and he said he isn’t allowed to buy or recommend any stock, however, his "agent called him and said"... paraphrasing... you better buy some TSLA... he said, fine do it to the agent. He justified it by saying it wasn't his idea, but his agents which made it okay. Later he said TSLA will be $1000 in the next 2 years... Cory was onstage with him and had to tell him multiple times not to answer questions and cut him off a few times after Sandy started answering something they obviously weren't supposed to talk about. It runs 90 minutes and I highly recommend watching it. They pointed out 2 things they have never seen before during the factory tour that blew their minds and have never seen on any Tesla teardown. They said they were huge changes and were almost speechless. He also called Elon a genius multiple times and he is the "Einstein of our time"
Watch the video if you haven't. I am certain someone already put a link, just in case:

Sandy starts at 4:43 mark

Tesla Investor Day LIVE COVERAGE | Clive Bar, Austin TX - TSLA BULL STAMPEDE #TSLA

Merch https://www.farzadmesbahi.com/merchFREE One Year Supply of Vitamin d3+k2 and 5 AG1 Travel Packs â¡ https://athleticgreens.com/farzadJoin this channel to...

www.youtube.com

 

[petit_bateau]

Sandy talked at the after party that the local Tesla club put on that the new motor was some new-to-Tesla type that provided 30% more power. That might balance out the change noted above and still give good performance (but maybe not as good as current drive trains).

Thanks.

I think what Sandy is talking about is the existing switched reluctance permanent magnet motor (pick your own acronym) that Tesla have been putting into product.

Sandy's skill set are not hugely aligned to electrical/electronic so he doesn't always pick up as fast on that side of things as some of his colleagues. Plus beers may have gotten in the way.

In this particular case Tesla were suggesting they've gotten rid of the rare earth (neo) magnets, for no performance downside (wowsers!) yet the example on screen had what is most likely to be a magnet in an aperture. Hence the supposition (which I share) that this is most likely to be a ferrite magnet. There is also Tesla talking up its in-house magnetics design suite. I don't think Sandy has realised what was on show here, at least not yet.

I guess we'll find out, and certainly Sandy is better placed to do some sleuthing than I am. (Here there are cows to the left and sheep to the right).

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

Now the few thing missing from yesterday's investor meeting that would have made investors rejoice

1. $ instead of Twh. Tesla didn't really explain the TAM in dollars
2. Tesla didn't make any forward guidance using the 1TWH storage/2TWH transport in the form of expected revenue, margin, etc etc.

Most investor day presentation explain things in dollars which Tesla didn't even bother, perhaps trying to give people the sense that Tesla is philanthropic as Elon alluded to before. So instead of saying "we are going to print lots of net income and this is our goal of expected EPS ____ by 2030", it was "we are going to revolutionize the world economy away from fossil fuel and human labor".

I guess it was a diplomatic move. Perhaps not the best time to put trillion dollar revenues on slide when the people thinks corporations are greedy and should be taken down.

20m vehicles (with FSD etc) = $700 bn revenue
1,500 GWh storage (and corresponding solar) = $500 bn revenue

But what margins ?

 

[SageBrush]

It is not “zero extra cost”. Neither to Tesla, not the consumer. At the very least the consumer need panel integration and grid isolation. Ford charges $3800 for that piece and that’s not installed so likely $5k minimum and that’s just for V2H, not accounting for V2G which requires even more electrical work and essentially the brains which are part of the Powerwall.

I was told the other day that SMA's new line of inverters will be 'hybrid' AKA battery ready

 

[LodiEVFan]

A WSJ article in the spirit of days gone past whereas their assigned writer was a clear EV/TESLA troll.

Highlights:
don’t buy the stock since it is volatile
product line is aging
EV competition is there and coming
demand may not track to burgeoning supply.

No News Is Bad News at Tesla

The investor day featured much discussion of the efficiency of Tesla’s next-generation production platform, but no hint of what it might actually build on it.

www.wsj.com

I read that this morning. Such a naive and juvenile review of an event that shows how intent and focused, not just Elon but the entire leadership team, is on achieving their goals. To me the event was the epitome of capitalism, innovation and concentration on the mission. I fail to understand how anybody could find a reason to dissuade investors from buying and holding for the long term. Another example of the media either having been bought or been drinking the big oil/OPEC and automotive industry cool aid.

 

[heltok]

Just watching the Q&A last night as I was drifting off and when Musk was asked how many models Tesla needs he says in an off-hand sort of way: “I don’t know, maybe 10?“.

It’s pretty clear they aren’t shipping 40 different models. But the answer to “What is under that sheet?” Might be 2-3 cars depending on what Tesla feels is appropriate to ship in volume. It might even be regional variants.

Note that the question was how many vehicles were needed TO REACH 20M. So basically the aspie answer Elon gave was

Tesla can theoretically reach 20M cars with ~10 models.
Tesla may or may not do significantly more than 10 models, but it's probably not needed for 20M.
In the short term Tesla will focus on making good cars and for that fewer models is better.
Elon thinks Apple's iPhone model more or less applies to cars.

If we do the math
SEXY=4
Semi, Cybertruck, Roadster= 3
Van, $25k, Robotaxi = 3
So that's 10. Elon thinks this is enough for 20M...

Buses will be disrupted by robotaxi. What other market segments are there? Short haul trucking?

 

[Ogre]

If you remove earnings calls, product launches, and delivery events, Tesla events almost always cause a drop in share price.

Even Tesla Shareholders meetings. Yesterday’s event seems below the typical post event drop.

Spoiler: Table thanks to @TalkingTesla on Twitter

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631400680643522561

 

[FSDtester#1]

That's no moon!

That's a space station?

 

[Southpasfan]

I was told the other day that SMA's new line of inverters will be 'hybrid' AKA battery ready

As someone who has both EV's and Tesla Solar and Powerwalls, it is not just a question of having (a) a car with unidirectional flow, and (b) some sort of home charger that is also an inverter.

To be able to have powerwalls my house needed about $10K of electrical upgrades, plus approval by the city and approval by the utility.

That's because the whole system needs to be failsafe as battery back up is treated as increasing the ability of the system to transmit load.

So being able to use my Model 3 as additional powerwalls might be nice for me, but that is because I am already in on the $10k work plus $3k technology, all I would need is utility and city approval.

Basically, you can't just plug your house into an EV.

I am interested in Ford's system, but it is absolutely an additional cost. Plus, utilities do not, by the way, generally (or at all) allow you to charge batteries from the Grid. They do not allow, basically, rate arbitrage. I think there is an argument that they should.

But V2H is not, absent already having solar and powerwalls, a feature that really can be used assuming a car even had the feature.

 

[electracity]

I keep seeing this, and these arguments are incredibly short-sighted.

Does a car battery have MORE storage than a powerwall? Yes.

But the big GOTCHA with this is the following:
1) the Inverters in the car are NOT designed to run that power in the opposite direction for any significant load. This means:
-- a) Tesla will need to design new bidirectional inverters.
-- b) Those inverters will likely add some cost to the car, as they are not are simple as what Tesla has honed in on and produced now
2) you have to have a house setup designed to accept this power - you guys expecting Tesla to put a bunch of 240V connectors in and you string some massive cables back to your breaker box? Even the Tesla wall charger is not designed to accept the power required for something like this. And here is an example:

Our house has 4 x PW 2.0 in it, each one is on a 30A 240V circuit (120A 240V total). That's the BARE MINIMUM to run our electric oven and either one AC, or the two AC units alone (but not the oven), and then various other lower-power devices. To run that kind of power that 4 PW2s provide you would need at minimum a set of 1-gauge copper wires connecting from your entry point from the car to the house. THAT IS NOT small. It's a lot larger than the wires in your wall charger (4-gauge).


People here are looking at STORAGE CAPACITY (the size of the swimming pool) and completely forgetting POWER OUTPUT (the thickness of the hose).

For any meaningful power output, the inverters need to be beefed up, and you need a substantial mechanism to access that power (i.e. thick wires back to a bidirectional wall charger or a lot of big ports on the car).



If Tesla implements V2G/H I would expect it will be limited to something like 5-7kw output (i.e. one powerwall power output). It will be helpful for something like a disaster, but it's not going to replace powerwalls unless someone is willing to pay for a VERY beefy inverter + cabling setup.

Things like the Ford F150 aren't setup either to run a whole house. They are "partial home" backup solutions.

The inverter for the house is in the powerwall. The car is just supplying 400V DC.

 

[bkp_duke]

The inverter for the house is in the powerwall. The car is just supplying 400V DC.

Sure, if you go that route. But that defeats the point that everyone here was talking about. Going without a powerwall and using the car to power the home.