TSLA Market Action: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Fact Checking]

UBS appears to have reversed their stance on TSLA

Possible reason for the delay: they first needed to reverse their short position!

 

[HG Wells]

Any word on what that meeting was between RBC and Tesla yesterday at 12 ?

Correction RBC not UBS

 

[Fact Checking]

Any word on what that meeting was between UBS and Tesla yesterday at 12 ?

Wasn't it (rumored to be) between RBC and Tesla?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Do we know why and how long Tesla's growth is battery constraint? And what growth can we expect from the cell production?

Is it just a scaling, capital and ramp topic or is it constraint because of raw materials?

Revised estimate for 2019 bty cell production capacity at GF1: 35 GWh/yr

• 10 lines @ 2 GWh each: +20 GWh/yr
• 3 lines @ 3 GWh each: +9 GWh/yr
  • 1st installed during Oct 2018
    
  • 2nd installed by end of 2018 Q4
  • 3rd installed by end of 2019 Q1
• 2 more lines @ 3 GWh each: +6 GWh/yr
  • 4th installed by end of 2019 Q2
  • 5th installed by end of 2019 Q3

That pace would bring us to 35 GWh/yr capacity by Oct 1st, 2019. Personally, I'd prefer if Panasonic just kept adding 1 line per quarter indefinately. Unless it's convenient to add one new line per month.

From Nov 2nd discussion. HTH.

 

[Fact Checking]

U... Ubiquitous? Universal? Ugly? Ulterior? Ultra? Unadulterated? Unapologetic? Uneducated? Union? Unsophisticated? Unwelcome? Utmost? Utter?

I thought UBS stands for "Unfiltered Bull-*Sugar*"?

 

[Tslynk67]

New SEC filing: 0001288257-18-000026 | D | Tesla, Inc.

I assume this is the $20m issue to Elon to cover the SEC fine?

 

[Artful Dodger]

They are almost doubling their Gigafactory 1 cell output right now in three waves with three new Panasonic 2170 cell making lines:

• Capacity expansion is from ~20 GWh/year to about ~35 GWh/year.

No. The 3 new machines have 3GWh/yr capacity. They will bring cell production to 29 GWh/yr by the end of 2019H1.

To get to 35 GWh/yr will take 2 more new lines, say end of 2019H2 if Panasonic continues at their current pace.

It doesn't look like Panansonic has the ability to increase the pace. The first new line took over 3 month to install during 2018Q3.

 

[Fact Checking]

No. The 3 new machines have 3GWh/yr capacity. They will bring cell production to 29 GWh/yr by the end of 2019H1.

Indeed - and I forgot that you already corrected me on this a couple of weeks ago!

I have deleted my original comment, because the numbers are badly skewed due to the 5->3 GWh mistake.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Indeed - and I forgot that you already corrected me on this a couple of weeks ago!

I have deleted my original comment, because the numbers are badly skewed due to the 5->3 GWh mistake.

Commenter 'carsonight' over on DISQUS lives in Carson, NV and is my go-to guy for everything GF1. You can view his Profile or see his latest comment from 2 days ago:

carsonight 2 days ago

• Panasonic at GF1 currently has 10 lines of machines with 14 machines in each line, and each machine capable of ~20k cells per 24 hour day
• They have just finished installing 3 lines of machines, at 14 machines per line, and if what I am told is true those machines will be able to produce ~30k cells per 24 hour day
• When completed, Panasonic intends to have 77 lines of machines at GF1, with a 78th line for training
• Each of the cells is 18 wh
• Those are the numbers that lead me to believe Panasonic will produce more then 150 GWh per year, at the cell level.

Now, carsonight is not perfect, and says his info comes from his 'shop floor' level contacts. In the comment above, he says "They have just finished installing 3 lines of machines" which clearly contradicts what JB Straubel said less than 4 weeks ago during the 2018 Q3 Earnings Call:

"And we continue to bring online new production lines. So even just in the last several weeks, we've started off yet another cell production line with Panasonic. And through the end of the year, there's another line coming on and then one shortly after that."​

So I think carsonight misspoke when saying that 3 new lines are already running. JB says 1 is already running, 1 more to follow by end of Q4, then 1 more (likely in 2019 Q1).

Cheers!

 

[Anstandswauwau]

In the process of doing some back-of-the-napkin math.

Are there some good estimates of how many Powerwalls are produced per 24h?

20/50/100ish?

 

[Electroman]

And indeed, Tesla has already stated that all of its current vehicles can take more than 120kW

The Model 3 can draw up to 525 A from its charger so with its battery voltage at 350 V it can at a low SoC charge with 180 kW.

Sure the current vehicles can take more than 120kW, but for how long, and how much will it reduce the time overall for a zero to 100% charge? maybe less than 5 minutes? The graph Karen had posted, i suspect will go up a little between 20 to 30% before getting back to the same levels, saving you a few minutes overall. And that too only for 100 kWh cars, and to a lesser extent for 3LR. S85, 3MR and 3SR will see no benefit. Constrained by cell chemistry.

Cooling the handles/plug/wires will see a much increased benefit on a hot day.

it is good that Tesla is positioning itself for Semi and Roadsters, but the current owners will not see much relief.

What is really needed is increasing the SpC density, in some choke points.

 

[pyromatter]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Inside Elon Musk's forgotten Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo

 

[jbih]

Commenter 'carsonight' over on DISQUS lives in Carson, NV and is my go-to guy for everything GF1.

Very nice discovery! carsonnight wrote so much new information for me just in the past 24 hours!

 

[KarenRei]

Sure the current vehicles can take more than 120kW, but for how long, and how much will it reduce the time overall for a zero to 100% charge?

How much time it saves you depends on how you approach charging on trips. If you stop at ~50% SoC, it won't help you one bit. If you make frequent low-SoC stops, it'll help you a lot.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Pre-market looking a tad peckish for the NASDAQ-100 this morning at 05:24 am:

View attachment 354194

-7% for Amazon, Facebook and Netflix and -5% for Apple and Alphabet. If those pre-market numbers translate into real market numbers that starts feeling like surrender, or close to the bottom.

 

[stef]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Inside Elon Musk's forgotten Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo

One has to read to whole article to find the last “semi-hidden” gem: “with Dana Hull and Kiel Porter”.
Dana is back. Now all makes sense...

 

[Electroman]

If you make frequent low-SoC stops, it'll help you a lot.

Agreed.

But I bet a full 0 to 100% charge rate, for SX100 & LR3, won't save more than 5 minutes between the proposed V3 and the current version. Nothing for S85 and MR3. And all of that savings will be in the narrow band of 15 to 35% SoC.

So if you start at a low 5% SoC there will be some benefit, but anything over 25% the benefit reduces, and nothing over 35% SoC.

We will see. I would like to be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Electroman]

One has to read to whole article to find the last “semi-hidden” gem: “with Dana Hull and Kiel Porter”.
Dana is back. Now all makes sense...

I guess Dana is a pawn in the Bloomberg's classic pump & dump scene? Although her twitter feed tells me she relishes the FUD that she spews.

 

[JRP3]

Profit margins on Model S/X will increase if their battery pack can be based on 2170-derived cells made at GF1, freeing up resources at Fremont.

Except they are production constrained on the 2170s.

 

[Chocochip]

Commenter 'carsonight' over on DISQUS lives in Carson, NV and is my go-to guy for everything GF1. You can view his Profile or see his latest comment from 2 days ago:

carsonight 2 days ago

• Panasonic at GF1 currently has 10 lines of machines with 14 machines in each line, and each machine capable of ~20k cells per 24 hour day
• They have just finished installing 3 lines of machines, at 14 machines per line, and if what I am told is true those machines will be able to produce ~30k cells per 24 hour day
• When completed, Panasonic intends to have 77 lines of machines at GF1, with a 78th line for training
• Each of the cells is 18 wh
• Those are the numbers that lead me to believe Panasonic will produce more then 150 GWh per year, at the cell level.

Now, carsonight is not perfect, and says his info comes from his 'shop floor' level contacts. In the comment above, he says "They have just finished installing 3 lines of machines" which clearly contradicts what JB Straubel said less than 4 weeks ago during the 2018 Q3 Earnings Call:

"And we continue to bring online new production lines. So even just in the last several weeks, we've started off yet another cell production line with Panasonic. And through the end of the year, there's another line coming on and then one shortly after that."​

So I think carsonight misspoke when saying that 3 new lines are already running. JB says 1 is already running, 1 more to follow by end of Q4, then 1 more (likely in 2019 Q1).

That's not necessarily a conflicting report. The way I see it, JB was strictly speaking about the time those lines go online (which from a production standpoint is all that matters), while carsonight is talking about when those lines are / were installed. An installed line does not necessarily mean an online production line. There are calibrations, adjustments and commissioning / validation procedures to be done, which can be time-consuming.

The wishful-thinking part of my brain wants that version of events to be true. Much better to have the lines already on the shop floor and waiting to be commissioned for production, than to wait for the equipment to be delivered and installed.