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

[Carl Raymond]

My biggest takeaway from the meeting was that the shareholders were in a surprisingly go mood considering the last few months stock price movement. Very optimistic.

Excellent timing. Almost as if Elon planned for the stock to be on the rise today.

 

[Artful Dodger]

"We need a large scale solution to cell production" -JB

"We're not sitting idly by, we're taking all the moves required to be masters of our own destiny here, uh, technologically and otherwise and I think, you know, through all the experience we've developed with partners and otherwise, we have solutions in place" -Drew


We now know for sure they're making their own cell production lines.

"GF1 is huge, and getting bigger."
-Elon

Maxcells confirmed.

Cheers!

 

[wipster]

Same reason the lightning rod on top of your local church spire ISN'T grounded to the toilet: your grandma will thank you later.

Bite me Lodger.

 

[Artful Dodger]

TMC should actually already have this: take the biggest pieces of recurring FUD and have a simple one paragraph rebuttal. Make it short enough that it can not only be linked to online, but so that each one paragraph rebuttal can be a simple image to post directly in twitter replies etc.

Like the "20 Most Used Climate Myths" page at Skeptical Science? It's a long-term project maintained and frequently updated by members of the site:

Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says

 

[MarcusMaximus]

That is what is says on Tesla.com

Tesla.com lies. Communications hell is the next circle, which Elon has yet to recognize.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

At the scale we hope global BEV production reaches, will there be enough nickel production available to scale alongside it? Might be something else that Tesla would bring in house, since apparently they use way more nickel than either cobalt or manganese, and they're trying to eliminate cobalt entirely IIRC. (I don't really know anything about how any of these except for Lithium is produced, I know some are essentially side products from other types of mines, but I don't remember which ones)

My reaction to these mining questions has been......no way! Elon doesn't want or need yet another line to worry about and these are simply base materials.

But if you think about it, all his businesses are simply trial runs for Mars Elonization©. Mining base materials will be a huge part of that, so perhaps he's considering it more than we imagine.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Cleantech News — #1 In EV, Solar, Wind, Tesla News | CleanTechnica has already collected data on all the FUD and summarized it with a few articles. We need someone to take that and splice in all the CNBC FUD clips and create a more visual/audio presentation for the general public....something that will get people upset once they see what's going on....like with the doc Who Killed the Electric Car

So, Oliver Stone?

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

My prediction was maxwell tech would be in model Y, but they didn’t want to hurt 3 sales by announcing better specs. Then again I’m heavily biased as a probable model Y buyer.

I've been involved in few acquisitions and the aftermath of them. I got to tell you, no matter the due diligence process, you never quite get what you though you bought, there are always gotchas. So I'd be rather cautious in expecting this technology to end up in production really soon, and Model Y is probably close to the 'pencil off' phase.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

he claims that because it isn’t sold online and that “they try and upsell you” (to SR+) that it doesn’t really count as meeting the original $35k car goal.

Ah, so then the MSRP of every base model vehicle by every car manufacturer in the world is a lie. Good luck getting one without a salesman trying to up sell you.

 

[powertoold]

Who cares if there's a 35k car or not? (there is) But it's moot point: Tesla is supply constrained.

There should be tons of articles: Tesla can't keep up with demand, Model 3 highest revenue car in segment, Electrification is real and Tesla proves it, Tesla has several cars (Y and truck) in pipeline that may outsell all existing models.

 

[Carl Raymond]

Who cares if there's a 35k car or not? (there is) But it's moot point: Tesla is supply constrained.

I like that there exists a $35k car because it counters the “EVs are toys for the rich” line of FUD.

 

[powertoold]

I like that there exists a $35k car because it counters the “EVs are toys for the rich” line of FUD.

Too bad, Tesla's strategy the whole time has been to sell expensive cars and work their way down. As of now, they can't make cheaper cars. They can't keep up with the demand for the higher priced ones. It's a business too.

Elon said that ~40% of new owners are trading up from Camrys / Accords / Priuses. These aren't rich people. They're smart people who see the long term cost benefit of EVs.

 

[VValleyEV]

*We* (as in a handful of Tesla Model S owners) shamed the powerful NYT and they’ve yet to forgive us for it.

Somehow I must have missed this. I would love to hear all about it.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Maxwell believes that they can, right now, increase gravimetric and volumetric density -- which essentially increases range and cuts cost per kwh. This is because the dry electrode techology avoids a certain sort of "waste" which is deposited in the cell during the solvent / drying process and is essentially deadweight -- I forget the details, someone else can remind us.

Actually, DBE binders stay on the electrode while the solvents used in wet electrode coating processes evaporate away (that's the whole point of the big drying ovens). Maxwell makes some claims about the DBE binders compensating by helping with electron mobility or something, but that sounds like puffery.

Randy Carlson on Seeking Alpha has an interesting theory that Maxwell can boost density by pre-doping the anode powder with lithium ions so the SEI formation phase doesn't have to steal them from the electrolyte. (I think I got that right). This isn't possible with solvent-based approaches. It's just a theory, but could improve density a few percent.

(Maxwell has demonstrated 300 Wh/kg, vs. Tesla's current 207 Wh/kg, but that is probably with a different or more expenisve chemistry -- if it isn't, then that's effectively a 50% range increase and 33% cost reduction per kWh.)

​

I think you meant 270 Wh/kg for Tesla. We'll see which Maxwell claims hold water over time. They've been a pretty promotional company for many years. I'm not calling them fraudsters, they have some good engineering, but they definitely know how to put the best spin on things. Their NMC test cells showed 1500+ cycles, but commercial NMC cells do that without breaking a sweat. That's why Tesla uses NMC instead of NCA for Powerwall and Powerpack, which need well over 2000 cycles.

They also believe that they can cut the cost of the electrodes (per cell) by "10%-20%+" which is an additional cost reduction. (I'm not sure what percentage of the cell cost is the electrodes.)

I seem to recall them claiming a $200 per car savings. That'd be consistent with 10% savings for electrode coating.

Maxwell talks about improving energy density via thicker coatings. Thick electrodes have their own issues, of course, e.g. at the inner radius of a cylindrical cell. These kind of coating systems tend to have depth-to-width limits, and a thicker coating depth conveniently allows a wider coating. Can they achieve 2170 coating width without a thicker-than-normal electrode? We don't know. The answers to questions like this will determine how much time and effort it'll take to adapt DBE to meet Tesla's needs.

Interestingly enough, the wider electrodes in the prismatic cells used by many other carmakers would tend to exacerbate the width/depth issue. This could help explain why no one else bid on Maxwell.

 

[Curt Renz]

A little help needed on the FUD-fighting front:

Probably the most popular tech website in the US, The Verge, covered the Tesla shareholders meeting, but their article has this inaccurate statement near the start:

“Wall Street analysts and industry experts have questioned the demand for Tesla’s cars in 2019. This is largely because Tesla’s cars are still fairly expensive. They’re no longer eligible for the federal EV tax credit, and the cheapest $35,000-version of the car basically never materialized, meaning every one of Tesla’s vehicles is sold above the average transaction price in the US.”

If anyone has the free time, I encourage you to visit the article and leave a comment asking to fix the 2 inaccuracies above (Eg: Tesla cars still get an EV Fed tax credit, and that the $35k car can be ordered from Tesla today by phone/store)

The biggest news from Elon Musk’s Tesla shareholder meeting

EDIT: I managed to get the author to change at least the first piece to “no longer eligible for the FULL federal tax credit:”, but after going back and forth with him on twitter it appears he is hung up on the $35k car aspect as some sort of switch and bait. Despite the fact one can go and buy it today for $35,400 with better specs than originally promised - he claims that because it isn’t sold online and that “they try and upsell you” (to SR+) that it doesn’t really count as meeting the original $35k car goal. I tried at least.

The Verge author also wrote, "The meeting comes at a time when Tesla’s stock price is at a two-year low..." Actually the close today was nearly 23% above the intra-day low eight days ago, with more piled on during after-hours. But he apparently went with the spin they wanted.

 

[Thekiwi]

Who cares if there's a 35k car or not? (there is) But it's moot point: Tesla is supply constrained.

There should be tons of articles: Tesla can't keep up with demand, Model 3 highest revenue car in segment, Electrification is real and Tesla proves it, Tesla has several cars (Y and truck) in pipeline that may outsell all existing models.

If you don’t push back against the small inaccuracies from journalists - it will lead to bigger inaccuracies down the road.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Same reason the lightning rod on top of your local church spire ISN'T grounded to the toilet: your grandma will thank you later.

Yes, a bolt of lightning carries about 1 Billion joules of energy, or about 278 Kwh. Given the average charging efficiency of 80%, that bolt could recharge a 200 KWh Roadster pack in about 30 microseconds.

Problem is, then you'd have to call it the 'Roaster'.

 

[azaz]

That was a bad question.

Anyway, Musk said he is open to informational ads - that is really what they need to do. Not some stupid model posing with the car ...

Agree.

They just need more people to understand what Tesla brings to the table. It’s a no brainer in terms of expanding the customer base.

 

[CaliBear1]

A very simple FAQ page would solve a lot of problems...I could write the damn thing.

Write it and tweet it. We'll all R/T!

 

[sparcs]

Can Tesla use the Maxwell acquisition as a launching point to set up their own battery cell production lines? They obviously would gain the engineering talent with the acquisition.

Seems like Panasonic is a huge bottleneck for even for Model Y. Panasonic appears to need a longer period of time to ramp than even Tesla.

I guess this is the big mystery for Battery Day.