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

[Singuy]

Rob Mauer just commented in his Tesla daily that the gigafactory render in Mexico looks like 2 gigafactory in 1 comparing to the render of gigatexas.

 

[MC3OZ]

The only thing that makes me nervous about Gen3 is the inevitable "____ turned out to be much harder than we anticipated"

IMO the most difficult part is the final car assembly stage.

They don't want to scratch the paint or damage anything already installed, some material might need to be added on a temporary basis to form a protective buffer, but I would expect that most of that can be reused for later cars.

This could be tested out in advance at Austin, if they have sufficient space and resources.

Most of Gen3 should be able to be tested out in advance, and often that should not require a lot of space.

The new drivetrain/electronics can be tested and some of that testing can probably be done in Model 3 test mules.

Nothing on the Gen3 presentation seemed to me like it would be hard to test out in advance.

 

[Maarten]

If I am correct I have read that for the new Monterrey plant processes Tesla has agreed to use waste water.
That would mean that Tesla will also build a Waste Water Cleaning Installation, because the techniques being used to clean water to an extent where it is really clean, are likely not yet or rarely being used in Mexico.
This can be done by special hyper filtration techniques, making the water even drinkable.

A couple of years back I was invited to drink sewer water that was cleaned in this way.
Try to imagine a cup being held under your nose, would you drink it?
I did, but that didn't come easy...

So, we may expect Tesla to have to build this facility, with storage, ducts etc., etc.
Really great, setting quite an example here.

 

[Singuy]

The only thing that makes me nervous about Gen3 is the inevitable "____ turned out to be much harder than we anticipated"

Tesla went from "we don't really know what we are doing" to "I can't believe Tesla is doing that!" Said by other automakers. They behave like trained neural nets, once the AI figures out GO for the first time, a few years later people start studying what the AI is doing.

So yes, they haven't figured out FSD, but manufacturing they are in a different league now acknowledged by pretty much all the big auto except GM.

 

[FSDtester#1]

Tesla nets massive Nevada tax breaks for electric vehicle factory expansions

Nevada awarded electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla over $300 million in tax breaks as the company plans to expand its manufacturing efforts in the state.

finance.yahoo.com

Nevada awarded electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla over $300 million in tax breaks as the company plans to expand its manufacturing efforts in the state.

 

[Nolimits]

GigaMexico will be 2x the size of GigaTexas, ground breaking in 3 months.

Site of Tesla Mexico factory near double size of Texas plant, local official says

Tesla Inc's planned factory in Mexico's northern border state of Nuevo Leon will be built on a site spanning several thousand acres, almost twice the size of its factory site in Texas, with construction slated to start in three months, a Mexican official said on Thursday.

www.reuters.com

They have said factories can be built cheaper and smaller

 

[Cosmacelf]

Hmmm. Maybe the Mexico factory is where they’ll make all their 48v parts … and also sell them to any other OEM that wants to move to 48V. Point being is that it’ll be more than just a vehicle factory. Oh, and of course, they’ll make cells and batteries there too. Maybe Teslabots too. We really have no idea what Tesla’s plans are here…

 

[Ogre]

If I am correct I have read that for the new Monterrey plant processes Tesla has agreed to use waste water.
That would mean that Tesla will also build a Waste Water Cleaning Installation, because the techniques being used to clean water to an extent where it is really clean, are likely not yet or rarely being used in Mexico.
This can be done by special hyper filtration techniques, making the water even drinkable.

A couple of years back I was invited to drink sewer water that was cleaned in this way.
Try to imagine a cup being held under your nose, would you drink it?
I did, but that didn't come easy...

So, we may expect Tesla to have to build this facility, with storage, ducts etc., etc.
Really great, setting quite an example here.

A while back California mandated that all livestock pens filter their waste fluids. A buddy of mine would sell and install these projects. He would hook a hose up to a giant pond filled 10 feet deep with liquid cow excrement suck up some of it, run it through their filters and drink it on the spot.

That’s how he sold their system. These advances treatment and filtration systems are crazy good. But… Yeah I’d have trouble with it too.

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Many have rightly expressed concern about "paint control" when the car is painted in separate sections, versus the body-in-white. I'm willing to speculate this won't be a concern. Consider this image:
View attachment 912969

The Unboxed parts can roll through a specialised paint shop, all lined up along a flat plane, like an identity parade, together. Probably held in a special frame from the interior sides. All painted in the same session. Those pieces all get attached to the same car. In conventional paint shops, we often see paint robots performing elaborate contortions to paint the various nooks & crannies of the BIW. This requires a lot of room... a lot of cubic volume. If the Unboxed car parts are on a relatively flat plane, the paint shop itself might be physically smaller, and require less programming and less elaborate paint robots. Undercoat dipping processes might take up less room. (not sure about the actual vagiaries of Tesla paint layers) But my key point is that if a factory paint shop can be optimised for Unboxed manufacture, it can be smaller, cheaper, waste less, and still produce a car that the casual onlooker has no idea about the revised processes.

Perhaps more than one Unboxed paint shop can be fitted into the space formerly occupied by one BIW paint shop. Meaning... higher production speed. All sorts of benefits

I was going to make exactly the same point, but with one addition.

Apparently much of the size and complexity of a paint shop is the need to store the BIW between coats so that they can dry. The complexity is driven by the large size and complex shape, while the size is due to most of the BIW volume being air.

Using Unboxed parts likely reduces both of these concerns, improving the efficiency of the paint shop.

 

[SmokyPeat]

If I am correct I have read that for the new Monterrey plant processes Tesla has agreed to use waste water.
That would mean that Tesla will also build a Waste Water Cleaning Installation, because the techniques being used to clean water to an extent where it is really clean, are likely not yet or rarely being used in Mexico.
This can be done by special hyper filtration techniques, making the water even drinkable.

A couple of years back I was invited to drink sewer water that was cleaned in this way.
Try to imagine a cup being held under your nose, would you drink it?
I did, but that didn't come easy...

So, we may expect Tesla to have to build this facility, with storage, ducts etc., etc.
Really great, setting quite an example here.

Around here we call that a Shawshank shandy- with extra PFAS.

 

[Gigapress]

Agree completely my friend... when the Robots take over, they gonna want as much power as they can get!

But seriously, I think we are all ignoring a potentially huge power source that runs 24 hours a day and that's Tidal power. There's got to be an efficient and effective method to capture something that consistently rises and lowers twice a day, in some places as much as 17 meters!

I've often thought of ways we could dam certain inlets or bays, along with creating our own pools on places like the Pacific Coast on the Olympic Peninsula. With the ultra efficient generators they're currently using on the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers among others), surely this could create substantial power, 24 hours a day, eliminating the need for battery usage.

But maybe I'm dreaming...

Tidal is not cost-effective against current power generation solutions, let alone where solar and batteries are trending to.

Kinetic energy is a lot weaker than our intuition makes us believe imagines. If you lift a cubic meter of water (1 ton) 100 meters up, that's only 0.27 kWh of gravitational potential energy. Hydro only makes sense when damming river in great reservoir basins.

 

[Gigapress]

For Investor day what I feel was missing wasnt stuff hidden in the details. For analysts having more plain metrics would have been helpful for summary purposes.

What is current production volume out of Giga Texas for Model Y? What is expectation by Q3, Q4, 2024.
Same for 4680 production.
Same for Giga Berlin production.
What is planned launch Quarter for CyberTruck? Production expectation for Q3, Q4, 2024.
What is Semi production volume? How many you expect to produce in 2023, 2024.
What is Megapack production out of Lathrop? Again quarter by quarter expectations.
What is Powerwall production? Again quarter by quarter expectations.
What is Solar installation volume? Again quarter by quarter expectations.
What is Solar roof production volume?

Etc. etc.

Frankly I think that if analysts are so bad at their jobs that they can't connect what was presented last night to the trillions of dollars of profits it implies, then they should find another career where they can do less harm to society with their bad decisions.

 

[ZeApelido]

Hmmm. Maybe the Mexico factory is where they’ll make all their 48v parts … and also sell them to any other OEM that wants to move to 48V. Point being is that it’ll be more than just a vehicle factory. Oh, and of course, they’ll make cells and batteries there too. Maybe Teslabots too. We really have no idea what Tesla’s plans are here…

They should really have an Investor’s Day to let us know.

 

[FlamingPIG]

Rob Maurer Investor Day take away. soooooo goooood

 

[15Peter20]

Yes. I agree. I've made the switch from ferrites to neos in a previous life. Nearest thing to a free lunch I've ever had in design terms.

That looked an awful small aperture for the magnet. One that would seem to be appropriate for a highly optimised neo design. So the implications of having a ferrite2 'chemistry' that can still deliver the job (and a key attribute of a Tesla is good performance) then, is that there is something outrageous going on there.

So ....... have there been any rumours out there of a new magic ferrite recipe ? (Because I'm no longer in that game). And if not, what else could it be, because I can't figure out anything else that it might be. It's not as if there is really much else left to do in the iron or the copper (or air gap) .... is there ?

Or this :

BMW's Magnet-Less Motor: How Does It Work?

Here's why this old-school technology is back in BMW's newest high-performance EV.

www.motortrend.com

I was sceptical at first, but if the bush friction and electrical magnetisation losses are low enough it may be a better way of eliminating rare-earths and conflict metals than switching to ferrite magn.

 

[Max Plaid]

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.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in all this V2G discussion is, and sorry if this is very dumb and/or obvious, what if you need to drive somewhere, then your house goes down - this reinforces the idea of having V2G in conjunction with a Powerwall

 

[15Peter20]

Agree completely my friend... when the Robots take over, they gonna want as much power as they can get!

But seriously, I think we are all ignoring a potentially huge power source that runs 24 hours a day and that's Tidal power. There's got to be an efficient and effective method to capture something that consistently rises and lowers twice a day, in some places as much as 17 meters!

I've often thought of ways we could dam certain inlets or bays, along with creating our own pools on places like the Pacific Coast on the Olympic Peninsula. With the ultra efficient generators they're currently using on the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers among others), surely this could create substantial power, 24 hours a day, eliminating the need for battery usage.

But maybe I'm dreaming...

Not dreaming.

Pioneering tidal turbine starts generating electricity | Orkney.com

The world's most powerful tidal turbine has begun to generate electricity from the sea in Orkney.

www.orkney.com

Still early days, but very promising.

 

[Gigapress]

Or this :

BMW's Magnet-Less Motor: How Does It Work?

Here's why this old-school technology is back in BMW's newest high-performance EV.

www.motortrend.com

I was sceptical at first, but if the bush friction and electrical magnetisation losses are low enough it may be a better way of eliminating rare-earths and conflict metals than switching to ferrite magn.

Tesla’s slide said the new motor is a permanent magnet design. The linked example is a brush design.

 

[15Peter20]

Tidal is not cost-effective against current power generation solutions, let alone where solar and batteries are trending to.

Kinetic energy is a lot weaker than our intuition makes us believe imagines. If you lift a cubic meter of water (1 ton) 100 meters up, that's only 0.27 kWh of gravitational potential energy. Hydro only makes sense when damming river in great reservoir basins.

Tidal streams are the best source of tidal energy, not tidal rise/fall, and should be competitive with wind power once scaled.

Downside compared to wind is maintenance needed in order to clean marine growth. Upside is greater power/area and totally predictable intermittency.

 

[Dikkie Dik]

Or this :

BMW's Magnet-Less Motor: How Does It Work?

Here's why this old-school technology is back in BMW's newest high-performance EV.

www.motortrend.com

I was sceptical at first, but if the bush friction and electrical magnetisation losses are low enough it may be a better way of eliminating rare-earths and conflict metals than switching to ferrite magn.

Brushed motors require regular maintenance and have a dust problem from wearing out the brushes.

The article outlines this and BMW doesn’t say what the life expectancy or maintenance interval will be.

Hard to believe Tesla will go this way.

I always thought BMW developed this motor to keep their dealerships happy.