First up, a little gloating.
Up-thread, while speculating on M3 pricing, I wrote a too-long post about how I arrived at a cost of $150/kWh today. (I honestly can't figure out how to link, but it's post #7460).
Given this week's comments, I still think that price is basically right. There's no way they would have been comfortable saying "lower than $190" unless they were meaningfully below $190.
Now for the on-topic part!
Tesla will have to give better clarity on battery pricing during the upcoming analyst call. There's no way an analyst is going to let them get away with asserting the below-$190 number and not following up on it.
Elon or JB will either re-assert the same vague number or they will give a more precise number. (They're not going to disown the below-$190 assertion -- legally, in fact, they would have had to disown it by now).* Either way, Elon or JB comments will create more publicity around their actual, very low battery costs.
Coupled with a GF progress report, a current price of <$190/kWh could be a huge short-term catalyst.
I don't think the market has yet to fully absorb this news. It's been too isolated in our little forum and only covered by niche media. For example, best I can tell, the WSJ never picked up the story.
The short-term catalyst could be amplified when a bullish analyst (I"m looking at you Andrea) then publishes an update based on the earnings call and arrives at a post-GF $/kWh in the $100 range.
Remember, a 30%+ cost reduction from $150 gets you very close to $100. Even a 30% reduction from $190 gets you to $133.
*Unless of course, the media reports of what Jeff Evanson said on the UBS call are terribly incorrect and Tesla didn't feel they needed to clarify. I'm actually wondering if there is a Regulation FD issue here, btw. If Evanson really said below-$190 on the UBS call, I'm not sure Tesla has properly disclosed it under FD (unless the media reports themselves satisfy their FD obligaiton).
