2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[SBenson]

In other news, all of Europe is trying to come together to address... you guessed it... Tesla

Germany Backs European Battery Champion to Take on Tesla

The Europe Union’s biggest economy may be warming to the creation of bloc-wide battery consortium to take on the likes of Tesla Inc. and Panasonic Corp.

German industrial and automotive giants including BASF SE and BMW AG have been invited to a meeting in Brussels on Oct. 11 being led by the European Union’s top energy official, Maros Sefcovic, who has pledged as much as 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for battery development. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government welcomed the talks aimed at creating a European battery consortium, which was first reported by the Financial Times.

 

[Waiting4M3]

In other news, all of Europe is trying to come together to address... you guessed it... Tesla

Germany Backs European Battery Champion to Take on Tesla

The Europe Union’s biggest economy may be warming to the creation of bloc-wide battery consortium to take on the likes of Tesla Inc. and Panasonic Corp.

German industrial and automotive giants including BASF SE and BMW AG have been invited to a meeting in Brussels on Oct. 11 being led by the European Union’s top energy official, Maros Sefcovic, who has pledged as much as 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for battery development. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government welcomed the talks aimed at creating a European battery consortium, which was first reported by the Financial Times.

Hope their meetings move a little quicker than Brexit. It would be funny if they propose a location for a new factory only to find out Tesla has started building anew GGF there

 

[Lessmog]

In other news, all of Europe is trying to come together to address... you guessed it... Tesla

Germany Backs European Battery Champion to Take on Tesla

The Europe Union’s biggest economy may be warming to the creation of bloc-wide battery consortium to take on the likes of Tesla Inc. and Panasonic Corp.

German industrial and automotive giants including BASF SE and BMW AG have been invited to a meeting in Brussels on Oct. 11 being led by the European Union’s top energy official, Maros Sefcovic, who has pledged as much as 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for battery development. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government welcomed the talks aimed at creating a European battery consortium, which was first reported by the Financial Times.

So, what took them so long?

 

[RobStark]

Consortiums are always at an advantage vs disruptive companies led by a visionary founder.

 

[RobStark]

U.S. Senate panel approves self-driving car legislation

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill to speed self-driving cars to market without human controls and bar states from imposing regulatory road blocks.

The bill still must be approved by the full Senate. The U.S. House passed a similar version last month unanimously. General Motors Co, Alphabet Inc, Ford Motor Co and others have lobbied for the landmark legislation. Despite some complaints from Republicans, the Senate bill does not speed approval of self-driving technology for large commercial trucks after labor unions raised safety and employment concerns.

 

[RobStark]

Electrek faces criticism for giving readers Tesla discount codes

Fred Lambert's electrek.co is a headline on autonews.com hmmm.

 

[Gerardf]

Electrek faces criticism for giving readers Tesla discount codes
Fred Lambert's electrek.co is a headline on autonews.com hmmm.

Will just draw more visitors to Electrek to learn about EV's and related topics.
I fully agree with Fred's response.

 

[kbM3]

He said this specifically regarding Alien Dreadnaught and Model Y.

More specifically about the software engineering required for AD.

 

[Bgarret]

Electrek faces criticism for giving readers Tesla discount codes

Fred Lambert's electrek.co is a headline on autonews.com hmmm.

@FredLambert - if you get grief for this, use the $1,000 referrals to purchase Powerwalls and donate them to Puerto Rico. F'em if they can't take a joke.

 

[Drumheller]

Waymo’s Foes: Left Turns and the Mean Streets of Phoenix



I find this very interesting. The first fully autonomous vehicles can potentially be right-turn only, which simplifies the problem quite a bit.

Phoenix may be one of the easiest cities for autonomous vehicles. Almost the entire city is set up as a grid. The weather is clear over 90% of the time. If autonomous vehicles are struggling here, it's going to be worse for them elsewhere.

 

[DragonWatch]

Porsche is undoubtedly going after Tesla with the all-electric Mission E

Well, this assumes that Tesla is a sitting duck. Can't wait to see the so called October refresh... Wonder if we have to wait until Semi-unveil... Model S face-lift happened without an announcement and any fanfare though. So not clear if it will be a silent refresh or a full song and dance on the stage type refresh.

Porsche only made sports cars off glorified VW engines and DisneyLand go cart designs back when I was a kid/young man. At that point the Tesla roadster would be their only dog in the fight, had Tesla been around. Since those days Porsche decided They wanted more of the family vehicle share, but were never ~ ever on my radar. Now they, Porsche, wants to take on Tesla? I guess okay, but based on the recent German fun with emotions I am not sure they mean anything by their desire to take on Tesla. I am never buying a German car again, and the emissions issue was only the icing on the cake, and I am not talking German Chocolate cake My first VW had a lever on the floorboard that if flipped by your toe would give you access to another ten miles.

Like many auto manufacturers, today they all talk big, but until they deliver, they are nothing more than the high school ball jock, all talk and hot air.

For Tesla to succeed they had to provide top notch quality; and yes, without question they have had their bumps in the road, but have always come up for air and kept on moving. You cannot say that of Porsche or any other auto maker.

As I told my story about the smash and grab of our MX, and the superior repair and personal customer treatment, a friend said, "why is that not the norm, instead of exception."

Porsche can wag their tail all they want, but until they produce a product of equal or better quality, establish an infrastructure of SCs, and excite the public, well then it is just another want 2B auto manufacturers article and a waste of hot air. They will probably never be on my radar

 

[FredTMC]

Electrek faces criticism for giving readers Tesla discount codes

Fred Lambert's electrek.co is a headline on autonews.com hmmm.

Thx. I have NO problem with Fred L or Electrek or Seth mac9to5 using referral codes

Electrek is a EV site focused on Tesla Developments and is biased towards EV adoption and is Pro Tesla. You'd have to live under a rock to read Electrek and not realize that.

Electrek is NOT a general news outlet and folks writing articles for Electrek are not registered with professional Journalists orgs (as far as i know)

I LOVE when actual national media outlets get pissed for Electrek having better coverage than these traditional media outlets.

Bottom line, fine by me!

Thanks Electrek and FredL and Seth for all you do!!

 

[vgrinshpun]

So, what took them so long?

Seriously?? You do not know that it takes a lot of planning to organize get together to put forth a ... plan?

 

[EinSV]

So, what took them so long?

Seriously?? You do not know that it takes a lot of planning to organize get together to put forth a ... plan to form a committee to .... plan to form a consortium to .... start planning ....

FTFY

 

[Ulmo]

This is my last post on this subject. If you want a reply to anything else, please PM me.

My comment was about TMC, not Tesla. ... the herd mentality.

I'll voluntarily stop posting for a while before I risk getting moderated. I had HOPED to find reasonable discussion based on facts and figures, not emotions.

I'll post this publicly because I think a lot of people can benefit: I think there are a lot of herd-group-think postings, but they aren't 100% of the posts, and if someone is able to filter them out mentally, they can focus on the interesting posts and gain quite a bit. That does ebb and flow, though, and for a while, TMC was uninteresting because we were between Model X and Model 3. TMC has definitely picked up again lately, and in between Model 3 spurts, we get to talk about Tesla Energy products too.

 

[Ulmo]

5:37 am. Local coffee shop. Conversation with a random coffee drinker who happens to own a Model S.

Me: What made you first look into buying a Tesla? Environmental reasons or that it was a very good car?

Random coffee drinker: My wife wanted it.

Excellent answer.

 

[Ulmo]

Sterling Anderson had a speech about his autonomous research before he joined Tesla. His approach was that the self driving car keeps running in this imaginary tunnel, only react when it's interrupted. I think that's a completely wrong approach to solve autonomous driving. I can't believe Elon hired him. The vehicle should pay attention to the environment, react before it's too late. Just like how a good human driver drives.

I agree, and by the way, I had already guessed that they had used that approach.

I much prefer my method of driving which is able to plot every course and condition. If there's the slightest reason I feel unsafe, I totally slow down to the new condition; I don't continue in any sort of "uninterrupted tunnel". Today I did respond to non-optimal conditions many times in my early morning commute. For instance, while in a work zone (I was already going a few levels slower), I came upon the actual work, and slowed extremely for that much more. Another example is a very bumpy 87-like freeway segment going from 85 to 101 North in the #1 lane (carpool lane bridge interchange): max speed on that is a lot lower than the rest of the entire freeway. But, if I were using the "uninterrupted tunnel" approach, both of those, for instance, would have been horrendously unsafe.

 

[Snapdragon III]

Can anyone with actual auto manufacturing experience comment on this please? Does it look like the guy is speaking truth?

View attachment 251740

The related article and comment source can be found here:

S3X Appeal

Add: My key point is if this guy is speaking truth (which I don't know) with respect to Dodge Ram assembly then he is saying the line is producing more than 420K/annum back in 90's with so many variations of the vehicle.

Then even when Tesla achieves the 500K rate in Fremont, that doesn't feel like a significant achievement.

Elon claimed that in the long run (automated) manufacturing capability is what will be the key competitive advantage to Tesla. That proposition looks dicey if the Dodge Ram assembly info is actually truthful.

Unless that was the situation in the Dodge plant during the first 3 months of it's operation when it was brand new, I would not be too worried.

As an aside, About 5 years ago I was in the market for a full sized Diesel truck to pull a large fishing boat I had built. I drove a number of 2-5 year old Dodge ram trucks, and was shocked by the incredibly terrible build quality. I drove multiple trucks that were under 5 years old, that had dozens of huge cracks in the dashboard presumably from the sun eating the plastic? I ended up buying a Chevy Duramax, which had a great drive train, and everything else was complete garbage. It was embarrassingly bad for a $60,000 truck. Google image search "Dodge Ram cracked dash" to feel better about the cut throat competition Tesla is facing.

 

[neroden]

In TE related news from Australia: Greens push for national energy storage target

Nice. Won't happen (because the national government in Australia... ugh) but they've just changed the conversation. With this on the table, I suspect state governments in Australia (which are less insane than the national government) may start implementing such policies independently.

 

[neroden]

Don't mean to make this a 2 way discussion with Al, but most analysis of the impact of electric/autonomous on shipping has railroads as one of the big losers - ARK Invest recently posited that electrification will reduce cost/mile of shipping from$.12 to $.10/mile and autonomy will reduce it further to $.05/mile, undercutting much rail freight at that price.

A socially deleterious outcome, driven by biased subsidies.

Obviously, this only happens because the roads are subsidized by the government and the railroads aren't. Make track maintenance a government responsibility (like road maintenance) and you'd watch the pricing on railroads drop well below trucks. (Or, make the trucks pay for road maintenance and watch the pricing of trucks go sky-high above railroads.)

But the US, Mexico, and Canada are the only industrialized countries in the world which retain the broken privatized model of railroads. :-(

At some point, facing huge road maintenance costs, states may decide to redress the imbalance.