2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[MitchJi]

Australian battery price war resumes, with Powerwall 2 delivery just ‘weeks away’

Competitive Powerwall market is emerging in Australia. The rooftop solar market is a few years older than the US, so it is good to watch how it evolves. This price war is definitely a good thing.

Tesla, whose Powerwall 2 battery is reportedly due to hit Australian shores in a matter of weeks, and almost certainly in the first quarter of 2017 according to one industry source, has been a major pace setter on pricing, having essentially doubled he capacity of its home battery offering, while halving its price per kilowatt-hour, and reducing its physical size by one-third – all in less than 12 months.

The US EV maker has two Powerwall 2 energy storage units on offer to Australian residential customers: both 14kWh; one an AC version and one a DC, fully integrated model that can work in island mode, continuing to deliver stored solar energy to the home if the grid goes down.

According to Chris Williams of Natural Solar – a certified Australian Tesla reseller – adding a Powerwall to an existing solar system will cost around $10,000, while the DC fully integrated system starts at $15,000 with solar panels included.

LG Chem, meanwhile, is keeping up appearances as the Australian distributed battery market leader with deals surfacing that offer its 6.4kWh battery plus inverter and energy monitoring system for just under $5,900.

A good thing for Tesla. For the competition not so much!

Edit Addition:
I'm assuming that most people will prefer 14 kWh for $10k including the inverter to 6.4 kWh plus the inverter for $5.9k.

 

[jhm]

That's part of how we were able to do this site in such a fast response time, literally if we had to ship things from overseas, that would have taken up a third a third of the available time for the entire deployment," Straubel explained at the ribbon-cutting event. Tesla's scalability and rapid deployment will be "key to advancing energy storage on the grid," Straubel said.

This really is quite important to grasp. Tesla was able to respond rapidly to a crisis situation when the natural gas storage facility was compromised. Across the globe utilities have to respond to unexpected disruptions, and this creates a golden opportunity for Tesla to step in. They can command a firm price and get beyond institutional obstructions, if they can deploy rapidly. Solar can be deployed rapidly as well. So whatever price competition there may still be between gas peakers and batteries w/o solar, gas peakers can take years to deploy while batteries take months and maybe less. So in a crisis, batteries win. Diesel gensets are also rapidly deployed but often too expensive for longer-term use. Batteries and solar will continue to create value well past the crisis. Remember the political adage, "Never let a crisis go to waste."

 

[zdriver]

By 2018, Tesla is planning for the Gigafactory to support 350 gigawatt-hours of annual cell production for its vehicles and energy storage products combined.

Uh, did I miss something, or did someone add a zero where a zero doesn't belong?

 

[WarpedOne]

No, this is error.
35GWh in '18 is already a win.

 

[erthquake]

According to Chris Williams of Natural Solar – a certified Australian Tesla reseller – adding a Powerwall to an existing solar system will cost around $10,000, while the DC fully integrated system starts at $15,000 with solar panels included.

LG Chem, meanwhile, is keeping up appearances as the Australian distributed battery market leader with deals surfacing that offer its 6.4kWh battery plus inverter and energy monitoring system for just under $5,900.

A good thing for Tesla. For the competition not so much!

Edit Addition:
I'm assuming that most people will prefer 14 kWh for $10k including the inverter to 6.4 kWh plus the inverter for $5.9k.

And according to a commenter on that article, the $5,900 price is wholesale, not retail.

 

[jhm]

A good thing for Tesla. For the competition not so much!

Edit Addition:
I'm assuming that most people will prefer 14 kWh for $10k including the inverter to 6.4 kWh plus the inverter for $5.9k.

Well, the competitors are learning what tradeoffs are willing to pay for. So that helps them grow in the right direction. I suspect that consumers will want enough power and capacity to run air con. So a small battery might not be compelling even at a lower cost. We see that happing with EVs where the range really needs to be more than 200 miles for most consumers to take it seriously. Some batteries on the market may be too small in capacity and bulky in physical size to be taken seriously. So once the market figures out the right capabilities to have in a home battery, then competition can focus on price.

How this market evolves is really important because it will test out lots of product designs. The products that survive stand a good chance of flourishing in other countries too. Tesla is really good at advancing the product design. That's their edge. Maybe Powerwall 3 will be the iteration that cracks the US or European market.

 

[MitchJi]

Tesla's mission is winning!
Audi tells dealerships to get behind electric vehicles because it will dominate the market within 10 years

The executive expects that most of the industry will go entirely “battery-electric” within the next 10 years (via WardAuto).

“All this fright about where am I going to get a charge is going to go away extremely fast. The technology on this front is moving at a staggering pace. You’re going to be looking at a marketplace in the next seven, eight, nine, 10 years where for 30 or 40 some brands their entire business is going to be battery-electric vehicles.”

“We have to look at alternative channels and start to make money. These cars are going to have to be fixed less. But you’re going to have a host of opportunities around the battery and helping the customer in their home. You have the customers, you have the scale, you have the (marketplace) presence. You need to become the 1-stop shop (on electrification). You need to be a part of their whole electric ecosystem.”

 

[winfield100]

Tesla, whose Powerwall 2 battery is reportedly due to hit Australian shores in a matter of weeks, and almost certainly in the first quarter of 2017 according to one industry source, has been a major pace setter on pricing, having essentially doubled he capacity of its home battery offering, while halving its price per kilowatt-hour, and reducing its physical size by one-third – all in less than 12 months.

The US EV maker has two Powerwall 2 energy storage units on offer to Australian residential customers: both 14kWh; one an AC version and one a DC, fully integrated model that can work in island mode, continuing to deliver stored solar energy to the home if the grid goes down.

According to Chris Williams of Natural Solar – a certified Australian Tesla reseller – adding a Powerwall to an existing solar system will cost around $10,000, while the DC fully integrated system starts at $15,000 with solar panels included.

LG Chem, meanwhile, is keeping up appearances as the Australian distributed battery market leader with deals surfacing that offer its 6.4kWh battery plus inverter and energy monitoring system for just under $5,900.

A good thing for Tesla. For the competition not so much!

Edit Addition:
I'm assuming that most people will prefer 14 kWh for $10k including the inverter to 6.4 kWh plus the inverter for $5.9k.

$10,000 Australian is about $7,576 US dollars

 

[myusername]

hey you stupid shorts!... stop messing with the stock!... I'm long this week!... just let the algo do its thing... let it go to 260 and short at 265... ok... thanks.

 

[myusername]

so is there still no date set for the Q4 ER?

 

[RobStark]

$10,000 Australian is about $7,576 US dollars

Holy sugar! That is only a $576 premium over USA prices.

 

[racer26]

Holy sugar! That is only a $576 premium over USA prices.

Almost like the CEO said something about not making money on gouging international buyers for no other reason than geography.

 

[Fallenone]

Anyone want to muse about the indication of the canceled order for the German supplier? It was 100m EUR. How much units of pump (I thought the order was this) would this equate? I think part of the order would include design fee so not all pennies will go to the actual pumps. But assuming each pump costs $1000, it would be 100k units. Pretty big I guess? Anyone has better information so we can deduce a bit more?

 

[larmor]

Anyone want to muse about the indication of the canceled order for the German supplier? It was 100m EUR. How much units of pump (I thought the order was this) would this equate? I think part of the order would include design fee so not all pennies will go to the actual pumps. But assuming each pump costs $1000, it would be 100k units. Pretty big I guess? Anyone has better information so we can deduce a bit more?

More than the numbers, the cancelled order makes M3 a product really happening vs. vaporware that the market sentiment feels, both in actual delivery and volume productions.

 

[Intl Professor]

The hub bub is a lot less about what's written in the executive order, and a lot more about an inflamed left fantasizing about some war with the next Hitler where they are the golden armored angels wielding the upper moral hand. It's more narcissistic fantasy than reality. Most people vastly under-appreciate in just how many ways they can be completely wrong, and how much experience it takes to improve that situation. We should let the professionals deal with this, and focus on what we can affect, which is the size of our position in TSLA. Because the same is true with that, everyone here could be dead wrong and the company goes down in flames for something we overlooked and meanwhile we're still talking about dead unkempt Germans.

I intended the reference to mean war by a Hitler, or doppleganger, not a war with the next Hitler. Perhaps I'm wrong but if you mispoke it helps me to understand why Trump dislikes McCain/Graham and accuses them of waging world war III.

Peter Viereck who was a very influential conservative wrote about the Bayreuth Circle of Wagner in Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind. He says Wagner's work corrupted and made racist the views of Nietsche's sister who corrupted in turn the interpretation of her brother's work. He believed the romanticism/narcissism of war, implicit in Wagner's work had a great influence on Germans helping set the stage for idealization of war. Many conductors refused to showcase the music for that reason.

Books have totally corrupted my ability to appreciate our current dilemma—the fatal disease of professors—even extinguished ones. Humor helps, though it is the lubricant of tyranny, someone said. Have you ever read the old Soviet magazine, Krokodyl?

 

[AlMc]

Anyone want to muse about the indication of the canceled order for the German supplier? It was 100m EUR. How much units of pump (I thought the order was this) would this equate? I think part of the order would include design fee so not all pennies will go to the actual pumps. But assuming each pump costs $1000, it would be 100k units. Pretty big I guess? Anyone has better information so we can deduce a bit more?

IIRC was it not a 5 year contract? Suspect it was for more than 100k pumps. Also, IIRC the S and X have 3 pumps per car

 

[Intl Professor]

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! I think what Steve Bannon et allii are worried about is war with Islam, not just ISIL or Dasch, or war waged by Islam against us, er, the U.S. They must be careful and here is the danger: paranoids by their actions often create evidence of the cause of their paranoia. Paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy. (I know, I'm not qualified as I don't shrink heads for a living, but....is it nutritious food for thought, so to speak.)

Agreed, way off topic, but war will surely tank the market for a while, or at least the hyuuuge Trump surge. Wonder what Netanyahu and Trump will talk about February 15th, now that he's come out in support of the wall.

 

[mmd]

Introduction | Tesla Motors

 

[jhm]

The Oil War Is Only Just Getting Started | OilPrice.com

This is big news. BP is starting to talk publicly about the approach of peak oil demand. They reckon that the world will need produce no more than 700B barrel from now until 2035 which is less than what OPEC alone can produce. They are acknowledging that we are in an oil war. Low-cost producers will compete for market share leading up to the peak.

Let's discuss this in the Shorting Oil thread. This was such big news I had to share it here.

The oil industry knows its days are numbered.

 

[Jonathan Hewitt]

Like WTF this is not /r/nutrition.. How does this have anything to do with Tesla stock?

This is why we needed a separate thread called "market action."