Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[bkp_duke]

Anyone know the power draw for various 12V components in a modern car? 70W may very well be way too little.

When you go up in voltage, you don't need to pull as much amperage. Telsa had a slide on this Wed, but most cars are doing something like 250W, and that can get cut by about 75% when you move to 48V.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I was sceptical at first, but if the bush friction and electrical magnetisation losses are low enough it may be a better way of eliminating rare-earths and conflict metals than switching to ferrite magn.

But what's the BMW electric motor's power density? Is it Plaid, or Flannel Fleece? ( h/t @Ogre )

The article outlines this and BMW doesn’t say what the life expectancy or maintenance interval will be.

Yeah that's the rub! Visit the Stealership required to change the brushes. Why not upgrade the battery fluid while ur here?

Cheers!

 

[AndrewZ]

So EM and Tesla are engaging in real estate speculation without having concrete plans for the land?

Maybe. Not convinced.

Still believe the plan is the largest car factory ever built producing 5 million plus vehicles per annum.

I think land size would cease being a limiting factor at a certain point in lieu of things like the logistics of bringing in materials, labour availability, moving 5million+ vehicles annually out of a single factory, and then you need to consider which markets you'd be shipping 5million+ vehicles to and the costs of doing that from one spot.

 

[Ogre]

Now a non-humorous post more on the Investor level...
Me and ELON both remember the debacle at Fremont concerning making the "Automated Dreadnought". I feel as though him not mentioning it during investor day has those "Investors" that know Tesla as well as we do thinking he is trying to hide from his failure of doing so.
He should have prefaced the automation future of Tesla by recognising the previous failure. By doing that it would have made the plan more believable.
Sort of a, "We were naive when we tried it at GigaFremont with the limited brain trust we had, and it was premature. Now technology has advanced at lightspeed over the last 10(?) years, and with our acquired knowledge and companies (that manufacturing company he bought a couple of years back) we have advanced to the point where we have confidence in becoming automated."
That is what I was waiting to hear when he was on the subject of the "next" big thing. I did not. Did I miss it?

And near full automation has always been science fiction at the level Telsa feels it can do. At least that is the view of the common intelligent person. It is pie in the sky. And for decades it has not been doable. Don't expect Investors to go, "Elon said it so it is going to happen."
He tried it once. Why is he trying again.

They sort of covered this. It wasn’t Elon, but during the unboxed section, they said it was a mistake trying to so deeply automate production of a car which was engineered to be built by humans. Then they emphasized that Gen 3 was designed from the ground up to be machine built (and Cybertruck as well).

I’d have to watch the segment again, but there was nod to the mistakes made with the Model 3 engineering. Just not by Musk.

 

[UncaNed]

It's a good thing Elon didn't say that...

Yeah!

2 weeks.

 

[Ogre]

But what's the BMW electric motor's power density? Is it Plaid, or Flannel?

Cheers!

Its BMW, so fleece of course.

At least the only BMW product I’ve owned I felt like I got fleeced.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Many of us have Power over Ethernet (PoE) in our homes which delivers 48V at up to 70 watts or so depending on the specific variant over twisted pair cabling (cat 5). There are special variants for automotive use. So I wonder if Tesla is using some variant of this standard for combined communications and power cabling?

Anyone know the power draw for various 12V components in a modern car? 70W may very well be way too little.

Ive also heard rumors that in the future Tesla may use wireless communications for some of the internal car module communications. Afterall, the tire pressure sensors are already wireless…

That 70W rating is accounting for the resistive losses over 328 ft of cat-whatever, the injected power can be up to 100W depending on line length, and number of pairs used to transmit power. Though, that's up to 57V not just up to 48V, and over 4 pairs of 24 gauge wires. Obviously they'll adjust wire gauge to whatever is the best trade of mass and cost, and likely only a single pair, since multiple pairs in PoE is more a result of working within the limitations of Ethernet cabling. Fewer bigger wires probably are cheaper than more thinner, when you get to choose the configuration of the wire. Since any given power run is likely a lot less than 328 feet that will help too.

 

[JRP3]

Ok, Now expand your view just a tinsy winsy little bit, and accept that Tesla would create some software in there that is smarter than you about managing the battery for needed charge vs longevity. And would even let you go in and tinker with it if you feel the need.

That has nothing to do with WiTricity's claim. Plus Tesla already allows us to choose settings to optimize pack life. There is no magical software that would significantly improve this.

 

[wipster]

A community for the workers, complete with solar roof, Powerwalls and heat pumps.

And hopefully 3D printed.

 

[FSDtester#1]

Pull into your garage/parking space and forget it. No charge port, cable (for vandals to cut) or plug (no compatibility issues).

Can't wait to attempt to pull into my parking spot and see a bunch of people with their smartphones sitting on top of my Tesla charging pad to charge their phones!

 

[lafrisbee]

That has nothing to do with WiTricity's claim. Plus Tesla already allows us to choose settings to optimize pack life. There is no magical software that would significantly improve this.

<---not the WiTricity Forum.

 

[nativewolf]

So EM and Tesla are engaging in real estate speculation without having concrete plans for the land?

Maybe. Not convinced.

Still believe the plan is the largest car factory ever built producing 5 million plus vehicles per annum.

Make a nice solar farm on the 4000+ acres that is not infrastructure. If you have ever done deals in Mexico or other developing countries sometimes you end up buying land you dont really need/want. Cost of doing business.

Topography looks a tad challenging.

 

[lafrisbee]

Can't wait to attempt to pull into my parking spot and see a bunch of people with their smartphones sitting on top of my Tesla charging pad to charge their phones!

mmhmm..I think I have found my Million dollar Idea.... "VWYW" franchise. Vasectomy(-like) Results While You Wait.

 

[bkp_duke]

Looking over the animations for the next-gen platform and assembly, and this struck me.

I'm calling it now - eBrakes. I don't see how you can have a traditional master cylinder hydraulic brakes with brake lines running around to the 4 corners of the car with that kind of assembly process.

 

[insaneoctane]

Sometimes I feel like Tesla investors are the world most terrible businessmen. "Show the 25k car!" "We want V2G because the competition...." "Stop delaying the cybertruck". Musk must be face palming.

Musk: "how many ways do you want tesla to osbourne sales and go cash flow negative while not selling any more cars just for these products to come out?"

Investors: "Yes"

This is why so many are suckered into companies like Rivian/Lucid. Flashy products, terrible business model. Many Tesla investors doesn't care because they feel like the product is what give the stock value, not the business. Typical retail investor's mindset. "I love the product therefore I buy the stock". Yeah, Rivian is giving a car that cost 200k away for 85k, of course you love the product....

Tesla is spending all their effort to make sure the 25k car having a gross margin of over 20% before they start production. Retail investors: "What a disaster! Why even bother doing a hyped up investor day if they are not going to reveal any products?!@@"

It is funny how WS and critics want Tesla to be more like failing legacy with premature, Osborning product reveals. Tesla is doing all their homework ensuring that they have a capital efficient manufacturable/scalable next gen car for the masses fully understood without surprises. Quite the opposite of the hundreds of empty product reveals that the competition has demonstrated for which they have know idea when they'll actually be offered or how to scale...

 

[TN Mtn Man]

The land around the factory just became much more valuable. No reason to not buy the largest contiguous piece available.

Agreed, somehow I expect it's less expensive than land around Austin or anywhere in CA. I'm also wondering if they might consider housing for workers and their families on-site. Not sure what the housing situation is like in that region. or if there are sufficient potential workers within a commuting distance.

 

[Ogre]

Here's that piece where they talk about the mistakes made in Model 3 production.

Frans: "...we leaned into this whole new way of manufacturing a car, but we had already engineered it so things didn't go quite well as planned."
Lars: "It was an amazing product, but it landed us in production hell... Like Franz said, automating something that was built to be made manually is super hard. ... engineers that came by and said we couldn't do it are no longer at the company"

Lars Later: "With Cybertruck, we designed a vehicle that actually started with the manufacturing process... "

 

[AndrewZ]

Agreed, somehow I expect it's less expensive than land around Austin or anywhere in CA. I'm also wondering if they might consider housing for workers and their families on-site. Not sure what the housing situation is like in that region. or if there are sufficient potential workers within a commuting distance.

There may have also been something built into the deal with the government that required purchasing and developing a certain amount of land in exchange for incentives etc. There are legitimately so many potential reasons I can think of along with a list of reasons why producing and delivering multiple millions of vehicles from one factory becomes increasingly difficult as you continue moving up in volume.

Things that matter in the real world, like loading and shipping 14,000 vehicles every day on average.

 

[TN Mtn Man]

When you go up in voltage, you don't need to pull as much amperage. Telsa had a slide on this Wed, but most cars are doing something like 250W, and that can get cut by about 75% when you move to 48V.

You don't effect the power (wattage) by going from 12-48V, you impact the current draw. For the same power you use 1/4 the current. In general anyway-lower current means smaller components, smaller wires and less weight, which should slightly help power draw.

 

[GhostSkater]

Looking over the animations for the next-gen platform and assembly, and this struck me.

I'm calling it now - eBrakes. I don't see how you can have a traditional master cylinder hydraulic brakes with brake lines running around to the 4 corners of the car with that kind of assembly process.

Good catch, it's a must, maybe even separated cooling systems for front and rear so no hoses has to be connected? Or even the battery pack has connection for cooling that just snap into place as you assemble

Also

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631708001487962112