Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[jhm]

Well, I take it as a positive sign that the market seems to be dismissive of TMP2. It would not be a truly visionary plan if everyone was prepared to see its merits and embrace it immediately. I am content to see that Tesla will move into many new markets. There is little need to convince the skeptics at this point. Rather I am happy to wait for strong financial results years from now to finally settle the matter.

Note that the current Tesla to SolarCity spread is at $5.25. This is narrow enough that I believe savvy long-term investors are buying SolarCity as the lower cost way to accumulate Tesla shares.

 

[30seconds]

Imagine a skateboard frame semi that has a small cab plus a rack for 1 to 6 200kWh battery packs that are easily loaded and unloaded like intermodal shipping containers. I truck pull into a swap station and loads as many fully charged packs as needed for the next leg of its trip. The swapping is all automated and takes less time than filling a tank of diesel.

So there is a large inventory of battery packs and a network of swap stations. Each battery pack is used in transit a few hours per day, the rest of the time it sits at a swap station charging and balancing the grid. So at any point in time 10% to 20% of this inventory is in transit. Another 5% is fully charged and ready to be deployed for transit. The remaining 75% or so is charging and discharging to balance the grid and to maintain the 5% inventory fully charged and available for swap.

Why swap? With autonomous driving the trucks can go for many more hours/ day than current. If the truck had 600-1000kWh onboard it could probably charge to 80-90% levels quickly and get going again. If the swap took 10mins vs. 30mins for the charge, but the truck can be "driven" for 16 hours a day vs. current 10/11 hours then there is a huge net gain. Commercial trucking has regulations with respect to breaks, sleep, continuous hours, etc. I think the current rule is no more than 11hours which must include a 30min break.

 

[drinkerofkoolaid]

I've asked many "experts" about their view on all vehicles going electric. Almost every one of them mentioned they were very skeptical because of Trucks. If Tesla can produce a competitive Electric Truck, the market for the product will be huge.

The product mentioned in the Master Plan reminded me of this.

 

[Earlian]

Elon talks in really simple and easy to understand, but again, the most people don't see the whole picture and the huge market this new MP2 is adressed to.

Sell the news for quite a time.

Then, after hard brain work, some analyst gets it and -out of nowhere- boom, you miss the real deal.

That is the problem, when old world analysts, reporters, etc. try to valuate digital opportunities. The stock doesn't do, what it's supposed to do.

 

[winfield100]

To all the luddites panicking about a jobless future: By freeing up drivers we gain human capital to go tackle something else that we humans deem "too hard, too expensive". we are working on interstellar spacecraft, coral reef rehab, pure science, whatever.Pick up Peter F Hamilton's "commonwealth" books.

so, way OT. will you austinEV be at the worldcon in KC in mid-late august?

 

[winfield100]

the ultimate aim in all this is to revert to an agrarian society, purely organic . Is Wholefoods investable?

well, after you terraform Mars, maybe Europa and Callisto and Ganymede, perhaps Ceres. then agrarian (also remove a lot of Venus atmosphere)

 

[bookfast]

At this point are you not just building a trackless electric train?

yes, but a micro train with infinite depots

 

[jhm]

Why swap? With autonomous driving the trucks can go for many more hours/ day than current. If the truck had 600-1000kWh onboard it could probably charge to 80-90% levels quickly and get going again. If the swap took 10mins vs. 30mins for the charge, but the truck can be "driven" for 16 hours a day vs. current 10/11 hours then there is a huge net gain. Commercial trucking has regulations with respect to breaks, sleep, continuous hours, etc. I think the current rule is no more than 11hours which must include a 30min break.

The problem here are demand charges for high power charging. We are talking about charging at around 1000 kW. With demand charges around $20/kW/month, you would wind up paying about $20,000 in demand charges per month to the utility just to charge one truck at a time. If you want to service 10 trucks at a time, now $200,000 per month. And this does not even include the energy cost per kWh. So current state, this is very expensive. Moreover, it does put major strain on power grids. End state (100% renewable plus ubiquitous batteries), the power surge needed for this sort of charging would require lots of stationary storage. So you are using battery stored power to charge huge mobile batteries. This is very inefficient.

So the swapping solution allows trucking batteries to be charged directly from surplus renewable energy, not stored energy. Moreover, this creates benefits for the grid rather than imposing higher costs on the grid.

Another alternative is to have non-swappable batteries in a tractor. This could provide similar benefits to the grid if it were convenient to park the tractor while it balances the grid, when power is really cheap or really pricey. This inconvenience comes at the cost of a logistics company that is trying to make money by moving goods on a tight time schedule. So the tractor itself becomes a costly asset that gets underutilized, bad capital efficiency. With swapping batteries the trucking company can operate the tractor 24/7, autonomous vehicles need no sleep, while the battery packs are in circulation servicing the grid about 75% of the time and servicing freight 25% of the time. The trucking company need not tie up any capital in batteries. So this is very capital light for trucking.

 

[tanner]

We will get a hammer doji today. this is the come back day.

Can't be a hammer unless it closes near the high, don't see that happening. Moreover, since we were in a bullish trend, wouldn't it be a hanging man? Ha.

 

[W84M3]

4% drop based on what?.. Sell the news? Mmm.

 

[bookfast]

Imagine a skateboard frame semi that has a small cab plus a rack for 1 to 6 200kWh battery packs that are easily loaded and unloaded like intermodal shipping containers. I truck pull into a swap station and loads as many fully charged packs as needed for the next leg of its trip. The swapping is all automated and takes less time than filling a tank of diesel.

....

take them to another area where they can get work, and truckers are much more nimble about hauling stuff exactly where it needs to go. Especially, when the pace of change is rapid, it makes sense to bet on the most nimble technologies and flexible investments.

Thanks for the detailed response jhm. I agree with many of your points. I still think highway electrification offers cost, space, transport, and maintenance efficiencies. As battery tech continues to improve I would be happy to be wrong about this. I'll throw a few back of the napkin numbers out.

Based on your #s and the # of semi's in NA, Trucking Statistics - Truckinfo.net, the battery cost would be ~ 1000 kWh / 20% battery utilization x $500/kWh x 2.2M trucks = $5.5T. That's a lot of highway overhead charging line. Something like 90% of the trucking happens on 10% of the roadways, and main interstates and transcontinental highways are unlikely to relocate imho.

 

[yesla]

HAHAHHAHAHAHA WTF happened to SP?

 

[yesla]

What does it mean? Hammer doji? Come back?

LOL mainly wishful thinking. I even got the name wrong. This site calls it dragonfly. Introduction to Candlesticks [ChartSchool]

Rough day.

Jul29 cannot come soon enough

 

[hoang51]

HAHAHHAHAHAHA WTF happened to SP?

In the world of Yahoo message board styling: "tiiiimmmmmbbbeeeeerrrrr". Sell on the news and probably stabilizing prior to the master plan announcement. But I won't be surprised if it recovered a bit to track upwards a bit before quarter earnings.

 

[yesla]

Can't be a hammer unless it closes near the high, don't see that happening. Moreover, since we were in a bullish trend, wouldn't it be a hanging man? Ha.

yeha you are right hang man.... damn... ok lets just close a fat red instead...

 

[bulbasaur]

Not sure I understand why some people are selling low today. Any ideas? Did they expect the master plan to include a cure for cancer and a money printing press built into each vehicle?

 

[W84M3]

Not sure I understand why some people are selling low today. Any ideas? Did they expect the master plan to include a cure for cancer and a money printing press built into each vehicle?

Indeed.. Which major investor did Elon piss off with the plan?

 

[Sancho]

The shorts have a lot at stake with TSLA, and they tend to act in a loose kind of coordinated way. When they sense an opportunity to pound the stock price, they all pile on.

Some of the boviators on TV, blogs, etc, may have a financial incentive to align with the shorts, but for the most part, they just want eyeballs, and criticizing Tesla gets lots of eyeballs.

So, no matter how great Master Plan 2 might be in reality, it is also an undeniable opportunity for both the shorts and the boviators to pounce, mutually reinforcing negative pressure on the stock . This is going to happen every time Musk or Tesla says something with long-term implications which could possibly be spun negatively.

If you are going to stay long TSLA, you have to get used to this disconnect between the release of information that reasonable investors should be bullish about, and short term stock price movement.

 

[Chickenlittle]

Not sure I understand why some people are selling low today. Any ideas? Did they expect the master plan to include a cure for cancer and a money printing press built into each vehicle?

Never can tell but low volume. I expect more short selling.

 

[tanner]

4% drop based on what?.. Sell the news? Mmm.

+ macro. Take a look at basically any other stock. NFLX is down 2.7% since yesterday, ugh on that front too. Whatever, as always, the market will correct stocks that were dragged down today. Let's hope macro is up tomorrow and/or Monday.