Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[Johan]

LOL! Even if you were the first to point that out, you won't be getting any greens on this forum for that one Overstating book value of SC by more than its real value isn't a positive for TSLA. You have to sing the chorus with the choir to be up-voted, so the choir gets stronger and the chorus gets louder Some sample themes below:
a) Go TSLA Go! Death to the shorts and "market manipulators" keeping the stock down.
b) Tesla $400 by June. $1000 coming soon.
c) Hold TSLA till death! Pass it on to your grand children.

Posting factually correct data or singing your own song probably won't help you much. But honestly, I care a lot more about the "green" in my portfolio than the green bars next to my alias.

As in investor I thank anyone looking hard for errors in Tesla's reporting, strategies, sales and services and products and makes them public! This pushes Tesla to be even better, even more correct, even smarter and to excell as a company. How well of do you think companies are that no one cares about, where no one would ever find a error in a quarterly report? How well off is AAPL, GOOGL who have investors that will collectively fine-comb every aspect of the company and expose any weakness? I prefer TSLA to be in the same group as AAPL and GOOGL.

 

[Lessmog]

Alright, but 72 points, second green, sounds suspiciously like Golf. Isn't that an ICE car (mostly)?
Tee you.

 

[brian45011]

There's definitely more constructions going on. I think I read somewhere (probably one of their filings last year, can't remember which) that 2016 phase 2 should be completed and phase 3 should begin.

Tesla filed the Nevada documents (redacted) with the 2015 second quarter 10q. Tesla Motors - Quarterly Report

The phase info is in Attachment E to Exhibit A of Exhibit 10.1

 

[Fallenone]

I just gave Zhelko a rep.

LOL! Even if you were the first to point that out, you won't be getting any greens on this forum for that one Overstating book value of SC by more than its real value isn't a positive for TSLA. You have to sing the chorus with the choir to be up-voted, so the choir gets stronger and the chorus gets louder Some sample themes below:
a) Go TSLA Go! Death to the shorts and "market manipulators" keeping the stock down.
b) Tesla $400 by June. $1000 coming soon.
c) Hold TSLA till death! Pass it on to your grand children.

Posting factually correct data or singing your own song probably won't help you much. But honestly, I care a lot more about the "green" in my portfolio than the green bars next to my alias.

- - - Updated - - -

Thank you, this was the document I was thinking.

So phase 2 should have been completed already and they should be working on phase 3 and 4 now. All the "***" treated as confidential makes it hard to assess what these different phases actually refer to though.

Tesla filed the Nevada documents (redacted) with the 2015 second quarter 10q. Tesla Motors - Quarterly Report

The phase info is in Attachment E to Exhibit A of Exhibit 10.1

 

[mmd]

I just gave Zhelko a rep.

I added one too. If it makes him feel happier, why not? The guy seems to have lost some good chunk betting on TSLA, and Jesse is not here to guide him

 

[dc_h]

The article is expected and I guess so are the comments. Lot of high fives to the most ignorant comments. Holman conveniently forgets about billions for GM and Ford, ethanol and the oil and gas industry. He only uses numbers to point out subsidies for EV's, but doesn't use numbers to compare pollution levels for EV's vs ICE, only that EV's still depend on fossil fuel based electricity production. Nor does he note that superior carbon capture in electricity generation lowers EV pollution versus ICE cars. He also doesn't mention the trend in electricity production where coal has declined from 50% to nearly 30% and that will continue with coal likely falling below 20% in 20 years, with renewable and natural gas filling the gap.

Trends for friends Tesla fans:
Coal has declined about 40% as a percent of electricity production since 2000 (from ~ 50% to 32%)
Natural gas has replaced 2/3's of coal use
Wind and solar have replaced about 1/3, but are growing at a faster rate than natural gas in spite of fracking revolution
Tesla gets an ICE equivalent 89 MPG, in spite of being the biggest baddest high performance car on the market
*EV's are clean and getting cleaner
Federal EV tax credits end at 200,000 cars per mfr. This is policy to seed an industry, not endless or mindless subsidy like ethanol, or drilling subsidies.
Tesla customers will stop getting a $7500 tax credit in 2017 or early 2018
Tesla prospered in 2013 when their battery costs were 25-50% higher than today
Tesla is the most American car as a percentage of parts and engineering (barring batteries--which are coming to America)
Tesla never got a bailout--it did get a loan, but it paid it off early
Tesla will recycle their batteries, leaving no end of life pollution

I don't wax on about Tesla as often as I did in 2013, but I think its good for everyone to have solid talking points to counter the Holman Jenkins of the world. Additions and corrections welcome.

wsj idiocy (commuter lane stickers!):

 

[esk8mw]

To those of you bashing Tesla or the CFO for an error in the narrative portion of the 10-K...you have no idea how these things work. I draft these types of documents cover to cover (mostly proxy statements) and you would not believe the number of errors I catch. The numbers are put together by low level well intentioned accounting employees and maybe, MAYBE given a once over by an in house attorney or paralegal. The narrative is put together based off these numbers by an in house corporate lawyer and given to overworked outside counsel to revise at 1am. The CFO doesn't even look at the numbers, he assumes his employees and $650/hour 4th year corporate law firm associate can transcribe numbers. Guess what? Mistakes are made all the time, in every single filing. They get spotted when your company is constantly under the microscope. Hell, the majority of companies don't even bother to fix them when they are discovered. The fact that Tesla caught the error and voluntarily disclosed the fix tells me everything I need to know about their company ethics.

 

[Johan]

To those of you bashing Tesla or the CFO for an error in the narrative portion of the 10-K...you have no idea how these things work. I draft these types of documents cover to cover (mostly proxy statements) and you would not believe the number of errors I catch. The numbers are put together by low level well intentioned accounting employees and maybe, MAYBE given a once over by an in house attorney or paralegal. The narrative is put together based off these numbers by an in house corporate lawyer and given to overworked outside counsel to revise at 1am. The CFO doesn't even look at the numbers, he assumes his employees and $650/hour 4th year corporate law firm associate can transcribe numbers. Guess what? Mistakes are made all the time, in every single filing. They get spotted when your company is constantly under the microscope. Hell, the majority of companies don't even bother to fix them when they are discovered. The fact that Tesla caught the error and voluntarily disclosed the fix tells me everything I need to know about their company ethics.

Amen brother. We want Tesla to be this interesting and on everyone's mind, and we want them to stay on their toes.

 

[graphite]

Keep in mind they've also been expanding existing sites, and adding batteries/solar in some places. There has to be some base costs for each site, then those that are related to how many spaces they use. Which isn't to say they haven't also been having to pay more in general. Maybe they have finally gone into some locations they've known were going to be more expensive, or maybe the landlords are starting to know the Tesla name and think they can negotiate harder than before. I don't know if there's enough public information to break down where the money's going, but if it's out there, I'm sure someone here can figure it out...

He also posts on the Yahoo board. It appears the issue was first raised there by this poster:

"investor.gator • Feb 24, 2016 8:45 PM

* And one puzzling disclosure:

** A 50% increase in the number of supercharger locations (from 380 to 584) led to a 3x increase in the carrying value on the balance sheet: from $107.8 to $339.2. Is it getting that much more expensive to get new SC locations up and running.

** Looking at the 9/30 Q offers no help. The book value is listed at $152M for 536 locations as of 9/30

*** Between 9/30 and 12/31: did 48 new SC locations cause book value to increase by $187M (more than the value of all 380 combined as of $12/31/14)? "

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

LOL! Even if you were the first to point that out, you won't be getting any greens on this forum for that one

Well, I got few more reps and I got my second green bar!

Firstly, I am shocked, grateful and happy with all of your support! I want to take opportunity to thank my family, ...

 

[Yonki]

Well, I got few more reps and I got my second green bar!

Firstly, I am shocked, grateful and happy with all of your support! I want to take opportunity to thank my family, ...

You really should also thank mmd in your acceptance speech - if it wasn't for him, the idea of giving you some rep wouldn't have even occurred to me...

 

[SW2Fiddler]

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to investor.gator again."

 

[MitchJi]

Agree with JRP3 that the existing packs can accommodate the extra height.

They will need to reduce the number of cells by about the same percent as the increased capacity that's due to the increased diameter. In other words there will not be any significant increased pack capacity due to the increased cell diameter.

Just FYI. It may be counterintuitive - but reducing the cell count on account of increased diameter has quite a considerable effect on both cell and pack level energy density. The reason for this is primarily attributable to gains in the ratio of active chemistry to passive cell components (such as the can, vents and connectors) simply because the volume of a cylinder increases by pi squared the increase in diameter. For the same reason the increase in cell capacity goes up more than just new length div old length. These things are a multiplier of the effect of increasing energy density at the cell level.....

given a fresh sheet of paper with the Gigafactory Tesla seems to have gone for a 20700 cylindrical cell with dimensions 20mm x 70mm instead of the 18650 that is 18 mm x 65 mm.

Incorrect.

FYI area of a circle is pi squared the increase in radius.
So we need to compare pi x 9 squared vs pi x 10 squared. For simplicity we can eliminate pi because used the same multiple won't effect the relative percentages, so:
9 squared equals 81 vs 10 squared equals 100 (looks like a substantial difference)

But in the area required for 10 x 10 (100 cells) 18mm cells you can only fit 9 x9 (81 cells). So 81 cells x (area 100) is exactly equal to 100 cells x (area 81).
The reason they increased the cell sizes is explained by JB here:

I have wondered why I have seen statements that the new larger cell format would lead to 30% increased pack energy density. It will not. I think that the source of the confusion is the following statement by EM:

Right. We've done a lot of modeling trying to figure out what's the optimal cell size. And it's really not much -- it's not a lot different from where we are right now, but we're sort of in the roughly 10% more diameter, maybe 10% more height. But then the cubic function effectively ends up being, just from a geometry standpoint, probably a third more energy for the cell, if you -- maybe 30%-ish. And then the actual energy density per unit mass increases,...

To simplify the calculation in the following example I used an increase of 100%. But with a 30% increase the results would be similar. A circle with twice the diameter has four times the volume. But if the cells have twice the diameter only one fourth the number of cells will fit in a given space, e.g.:
A 100mm x 100mm space will accommodate 100 cells with a diameter of 10mm (10 x 10), but only 25 20mm diameter cells (5 x 5). So it roughly evens out, four times the capacity per cell, but in a space with the same dimensions only one fourth the number of cells will fit.

The reason they are changing the cell size is to reduce the cost, probably largely due to decreased pack complexity:

Yeah. Yeah, fundamentally the chemistry of what's inside is what really defines the cost position now. It's often debated what shape and size, but at this point we're developing basically what we feel is the optimum shape and size for the best cost efficiency for an automotive cell.

The constraint under consideration here is the scale of each cell as a single point of failure. The more energy contained in a single cell, the harder it becomes to prevent a cascade pack failure commencing with failure of one cell. This is why large prismatic cells are not a great idea for vehicles and why there is enormous amounts of unused and essentially useless 'automotive cell' manufacturing capacity around the world - all large prismatic capacity. With very large cells it is typically necessary to damp down the energy potential of the chemistry as a way of achieving acceptable safety which is essentially a self defeating exercise when reactivity and energy density tend to be one and the same thing.

That is also incorrect.

First of all the cell chemistry Tesla happens to be extremely thermally stable:
Endless-sphere.com View topic - Tesla Model S 18650 Cell Test Data

So I just finished my first torture test of one of these cells (much more to come) by accident.

I set up another 3A discharge on the cell I had just run at 10A to see how it held up.
It actually picked up even more capacity! However, in addition, my DC load decided this time to not shut off. Not only did it overdischarge below 2.5V, it kept going to 0V, and kept pulling current at 0V for three more hours!!:

The voltage reading is a separate 4-wire voltage sense, so the cell voltage was really reading 0.020V or less. Now my DC load isn't good at measuring very low current, which it was pulling once it hit 0V, so it reality, it had pulled a little more then shown... maybe 3.35 - 3.4 Ah.
Surely this cell is now trash? That's what they say about cells over-discharged this badly - dispose of them safely. Good thing it wasn't a HK Lipo in my living room...

Secondly the Tesla BMS carefully monitors the cell temperatures. Two things can cause thermal safety issues, excessive (higher than specified for a particular cell type) discharge and charge rates. In addition to carefully controlling the discharge and charge rates Tesla Packs have active liquid cooling. They carefully monitor and regulate the pack temperature to maximize cell life and to prevent thermal runaway.

Note: Maximizing cell life pretty much takes care of pack safety (cells getting close to bursting into flame are clearly outside of their optimum temperature range.)

Also using small cells "to prevent a cascade pack failure" would only be acceptable in a commercial EV if the pack still functioned correctly. How many MS users do you know with packs that have had catastrophic single cell failures?

The 18650 form factor was chosen by Tesla not just because it ticked all the boxes from thermal management, point source safety and automated pack assembly but because of low cost due to vast under-utilized production capacity at Panasonic and elsewhere bought paid for and then abandoned by the consumer electronics industry when that industry had moved on to prismatic cells to deliver thin form factors chiefly in laptops and subsequently laptop replacements like the Apple iPad. However clearly Tesla's decision has been that the 18650 is an optimization too far in the direction of point source safety and that given a fresh sheet of paper with the Gigafactory Tesla seems to have gone for a 20700 cylindrical cell with dimensions 20mm x 70mm instead of the 18650 that is 18 mm x 65 mm.

Building a Better Battery - Elon Musk - The Green Optimistic

Tesla Motors chose the Panasonic 18650 simply because it was a commodity cell with the right characteristics, including energy density, reliability, size, and price, since it is produced in the millions. Because it is cylindrical in shape, however, it is hardly ideal for placement in a battery pack.

At about 43 minutes JB downplays the differences:
2014 Energy Storage Symposium - JB Straubels Keynote - YouTube

The only doubt I had about their choice of the 18650 format (~7k cells), was if the could produce packs affordably. If Tesla started today they might choose small format prismatic cell like those used in smartphones. Anyone think that they couldn't solve the slightly different problems?

 

[BriansTesla]

There are relatively few people in this world that can *create* things, even fewer that can *create* new revolutionary things in a way never done before; and then there are a lot of people that can take things apart and find mistakes in the things created by first group.

+1
This is why it is sometimes difficult to read criticisms of Tesla on this forum.

Some people want to to be congratulated when they find a problem. Welcome to group #2.

 

[LargeHamCollider]

That is also incorrect
Note: Maximizing cell life pretty much takes care of pack safety (cells getting close to bursting into flame are clearly outside of their optimum temperature range.)

Also using small cells "to prevent a cascade pack failure" would only be acceptable in a commercial EV if the pack still functioned correctly. How many MS users do you know with packs that have had catastrophic single cell failures?

I don't think you're giving Julien quite enough credit here.

Is the potential energy of a single cell failure the primary sizing criteria? I doubt it, but don't think it wasn't considered. A NASA representative gave a presentation on exactly this issue at CAFE last May using different cell sizes including either 18650s or 26650s (I forget which one it was).

Also your Note assumes proper cell function.

While not precisely correct Julien is on the right track with most of his comments (except the diameter vs. radius thing).

 

[surfside]

how about that baird upgrade everyone??!

i'm more of a lurker but it is great to have TMC back online!

surfside

 

[glhs272]

Now we just have to get over the shock and awe of the new TMC!

 

[Gerardf]

Yup, both the TMC and Baird upgrade work for me

 

[Johan]

Nice price action today! Let's hit that $220 soon, like Jesse used to talk about it could be an important price point to cross, that could set somewhat of a domino effect.

 

[Gerardf]

We came close today, but the 200 DMA will have to wait until tomorrow.