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

[Words of HABIT]

Looks like Trump may impose tariffs on European cars.

The U.S. Commerce Department sent a report on Sunday to U.S. President Donald Trump that could unleash steep tariffs on imported cars

Commerce Department sends report to Trump that could unleash steep tariffs on imported cars

From the Reuters article:
"Late on Sunday, a department spokeswoman said it would not disclose any details of the “Section 232” national security report submitted to Trump by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The disclosure of the submission came less than two hours before the end of a 270-day deadline.
Trump has 90 days to decide whether to act upon the recommendations, which auto industry officials expect to include at least some tariffs on fully assembled vehicles or on technologies and components related to electric, automated, connected and shared vehicles."

Has the actual terms of the proposed details of Section 232 been disclosed? No, says Reuters. Makes no sense for tariffs on fully assembled vehicles or tech/comp. to EVs/Self Driving. I'm thinking Reuters is wrong here and the word or should be changed with and. Should tariffs be approved, I see tariff A% for fully assembled vehicles and tariff B% for tech/comp. to EVs/Self Driving, with B being s small fraction of B if at all, also the latter being much more difficult to regulate. The wording by Reuters is unlikely correct or at least not definitive. For example, no mention of tariffs on non-fully assembled cars. What prevents auto manufacturers from shipping their cars with a couple of key components installed in the Country of destination to avoid the tariff completely? Let's see how this plays out. For Tesla, a company that only builds made to order cars and remains production constrained combined with continuing rapid efficiencies in manufacturing and ongoing lower battery costs, they will be far less impacted on tariffs than OEM (Big Auto Manufacturers).

 

[avoigt]

Nextmove the largest EV rental car company in Germany confirmed an order of 100 Model 3 for Germany, 4 of those have been delivered.

That car is the perfect vehicle for rental car companies, fleet management organizations as well as organizations who given company cars as an incentive.

This is just a start of a large commercial move we will see despite all private buyers.

The last time they confirmed 50 and in the meantime given how popular the car is doubled the order now to 10 units per location.

nextmove erhält vier von 100 Tesla Model 3 für die Elektroauto-Vermietung - Elektroautos mieten

 

[KarenRei]

One takeaway that illustrates what Tesla might do to increase production is focus on the alien dreadnaught idea. Suppose you model production of a car, how each part might be made, all ways they might be put together, what might be its characteristics (performance, comfort, safety, etc.), how should you automate, when do you use people skills, then optimize each component and their relationships, then do alternative cost extrapolations, et cetera, et cetera. Of course I've conflated design and production with other considerations but that is the idea and it is a way to understand at least the complexity of the task of innovation and how it may be speeded up.

That's already done to a great extent. Shapes / structural strength is optimized by physics using gradient-based optimization / genetic algorithms, and there's a whole field of mathematics (popular in large corporations) called Operations Research / Operations Management, where people build gigantic models of a company's operations with tens of thousands of inputs and then have the computer figure out the most financially optimal business decisions.

The role of humans is to design and feed the models as well as possible, not to make the decisions themselves

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

OT for president's day...



Right... Because people don't fart after eating vegetable starch...
To follow the ICE argument type: you're just shifting the tailpipe

I hope this is a joke, but I’m really not sure...

 

[elasalle]

OT for president's day...



Right... Because people don't fart after eating vegetable starch...
To follow the ICE argument type: you're just shifting the tailpipe

Eating vegetables and the steak, means we are carbon neutral diet

 

[Fact Checking]

Makes no sense for tariffs on fully assembled vehicles or tech/comp. to EVs/Self Driving.

I believe Trump's tariff shenanigans (and the government shutdown) should not be understood in the light of a rational economic actor trying to maximize economic and political gain: both the NAFTA v2 and the China tariffs resulted in no real changes to the tariff environment in the end and caused a lot of disruption and cost billions of dollars in the U.S. alone.

Instead it should be understood in the context of a president who is the target of criminal investigations sitting in the White House and creating periodic acts of distraction to keep the narrative away from the crimes he committed, as associate after associate gets jailed or indicted. Here's the full list of the 36 criminal indictments so far (!) in the "witch hunt" FBI investigation, 5 plea deals and Trump's personal lawyer got 3 years of jail time:

All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far​

Plenty of witches to distract from, and Trump Junior, probable point man in the Russia connections, has yet to be charged.

Also note that the way Trump imposed tariffs also gave him a discretionary 'list of companies exempt from the U.S. tariffs' economic reward mechanism, which is a hotbed of "favor hoarding" and outright corruption.

With that background I'd not expect the upcoming European tariff war to be any less violent than the NAFTA or China one.

 

[VValleyEV]

While I agree that Jack's numbers could be a little off for the reasons other folks have mentioned, it's pretty clear the 2170's aren't significantly different form an energy density standpoint.

Yup, my takeaway also: that the MS battery pack is not made obsolete by the M3. So at least from that aspect, no huge push necessary in near term to re-engineer the MS to stay energy-competitive in the product line. They can tweak the interior and keep the current design for at least another year or two, while focusing on M3/Y/Semi/Pickup, and HW3 upgrades to those who have purchased FSD.

And that Jack is a terrific old-school curmudgeon resource.

 

[KarenRei]

Now, I've been surprised at Slacker's coverage. I'm not as well versed as you on obscure groups, but they had someone I stumbled on, Bjorg Thorhallsdottir (pardon the missing accents, not on a mac ).

Oh, I found random minor / obscure groups on Slacker, usually with a handful of songs. But with Spotify I'm finding almost all, even when I go really obscure! I know, I know, not an issue for your average person who listens to Beyonce and so forth, but if you're the sort of person who listens to, say, breathy Faroese electronica or Greenlandic pop or or whatnot.... Slacker is seriously lacking.

 

[Intl Professor]

OT except to the most generic thinking.

Courtesy of Google News which is doubtless generated using some level of AI:

AI is reinventing the way we invent

The article basically reports on the increasing difficulty and cost of innovation and how AI may help by analyzing data and generating new combinations not seen before which are worth investigating further. The goal is to better master the information available to cut the time and cost of innovation.

The review in the article of some research on new drugs has been done before. This piece's most interesting summary is with a Canadian materials lab. The idea is to extrapolate all possible combinations of atoms for a molecule, study how they might be constructed, what might be their expected properties, look for ways to construct them, examine the cost to produce them, and then try to make prototypes in the "real" world.

One takeaway that illustrates what Tesla might do to increase production is focus on the alien dreadnaught idea. Suppose you model production of a car, how each part might be made, all ways they might be put together, what might be its characteristics (performance, comfort, safety, etc.), how should you automate, when do you use people skills, then optimize each component and their relationships, then do alternative cost extrapolations, et cetera, et cetera. Of course I've conflated design and production with other considerations but that is the idea and it is a way to understand at least the complexity of the task of innovation and how it may be speeded up.

Then you could fire a whole bunch of engineers. Just kidding. Or not.

An easier path to further simplify this task is to focus on fundamental research on the implications of Einstein's general relativity for solving the problem of locomotion. Why not use the motion of the cosmos to instantly move from place to place as appears to be the explanation for some crazy maneuvers by ufos? Of course there would have to be some consideration of acceleration which might convert to jelly our sensitive bodies, unless the research were so sophisticated as to solve that issue too. We already do this, of course, in our imagination—it's called science fiction—the new horizon for all those unemployed engineers. A clear argument for C.P. Snow's concern about uniting the two cultures.

 

[JRP3]

OT for president's day...



Right... Because people don't fart after eating vegetable starch...
To follow the ICE argument type: you're just shifting the tailpipe

While also shrinking it significantly, I hope

 

[elasalle]

Port of Drammen this morning
NorwegianModel3guy on Twitter

Another 25 M3 registered today Tesla Registration Stats

 

[Intl Professor]

I believe Trump's tariff shenanigans (and the government shutdown) should not be understood in the light of a rational economic actor trying to maximize economic and political gain: both the NAFTA v2 and the China tariffs resulted in no real changes to the tariff environment in the end and caused a lot of disruption and cost billions of dollars in the U.S. alone.

Instead it should be understood in the context of a president who is the target of criminal investigations sitting in the White House and creating periodic acts of distraction to keep the narrative away from the crimes he committed, as associate after associate gets jailed or indicted. Here's the full list of the 36 criminal indictments so far (!) in the "witch hunt" FBI investigation, 5 plea deals and Trump's personal lawyer got 3 years of jail time:

All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far​

Plenty of witches to distract from, and Trump Junior, probable point man in the Russia connections, has yet to be charged.

Also note that the way Trump imposed tariffs also gave him a discretionary 'list of companies exempt from the U.S. tariffs' economic reward mechanism, which is a hotbed of "favor hoarding" and outright corruption.

With that background I'd not expect the upcoming European tariff war to be any less violent than the NAFTA or China one.

Plus there's now all the graft possibilities for award of contracts on $8 billion for the emergency wall. Likely starting with a sea wall around Mar Al Lago.

 

[Cosmacelf]

If Brexit had happened under any former Labour leader, it would have been stopped by now. A crying shame that it was just at the moment a Euro-sceptic, Trotskyist was in charge (and I use the phase "in charge" loosely)

Can we knock it off with the purely political opinion posts?

 

[gora321]

Gotta keep nickel sulfate prices in check too, of course. But hopefully some of the new work on laterite processing will pay off bigtime. Tsingshan's HPAL work could be a real industry disrupter.

Found also that Serbia discovered lithium approx 10% of world deposits. Should be big project (Jadar) where Rio Tinto and Chinese show interests.
Vučić: Litijum će doneti pravi bum, imamo 10% od svega na svetu

 

[lklundin]

Well, I'm Spanish, I live in UK, and the most feasible reason for the disappointing Model 3 sales, IMO, is the current price point. The % of people considering price more important than value/price is higher than in other European countries.

Wow.

The price in Spain for the cheapest Model 3 (AWD LR) is 59.1k € (without options & delivery fee and before incentives - of which there seem to be none).

In Germany (where salaries are significantly higher), it is basically the same, 59.4k €
- but Germany has a 4k € incentive ("Umweltbonus" - of which Tesla pays half), so without options & delivery fee, but with incentives it comes to 55.4k € in Germany...

In Italy it is basically also the same 59.6k € - and there there are also no incentives (to my knowledge).

So it's no wonder that orders in Spain and Italy are somewhat limited.

Btw, In Germany the Model 3 only qualifies for the 4k € incentive if the list price is less than 60k €, so that is probably part of the reason for the Model 3 price.

 

[gora321]

3 shares secured!

 

[lklundin]

OT for president's day...



Right... Because people don't fart after eating vegetable starch...
To follow the ICE argument type: you're just shifting the tailpipe

No, because to produce 1 (mass) unit of beef, you need 10 (mass) units of vegetable food.

(Yes, it gets complicated because the cow can digest plants that humans cannot).

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

, breathy Faroese electronica or Greenlandic pop or or whatnot.... Slacker is seriously lacking.

Way OT, but I'm always looking for music suggestions. I thought Bjork was about all you guys had to listen to.

 

[gora321]

David McLeod‏ @macrockets
David McLeod Retweeted Walter MacVane

This will be ship number 10 for 2019. Thanks Walter for this invaluable information. $TSLA

David McLeod added,

Walter MacVane @EcoHeliGuy
Grand Venus repositioned to Pier 80 overnight. Already broadcasting Zeebrugge as the destination.
Show this thread
5:52 AM - 18 Feb 2019
David McLeod on Twitter

 

[lklundin]

For those (Europeans) that are hoping for a Model 3 with an official tow hitch, there is a hint of good news:
Is The Tesla Model 3 Actually Equipped To Tow?
- but maybe only on Model 3s built from 2019-09-01...

PS Edit: I just checked the original source in Norwegian. The date is misreported by insideevs, the actual date is (being reported in the past, not future tense) 2019-01-09 (i.e. January 9), so already for cars currently being built,
Kommer Tesla endelig med hengerfeste på Model 3? - TOCN - Tesla Owners Club Norway

PPS edit: Also, the same source states that from the same date there is an option for air suspension...