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

[MikeAtkinson]

More on the Gigafactory Berlin logistics expansion:

New logistics concept: Rail outbound Freight yard enables Tesla to transport finished cars to all of Europe with low CO2 emission
-Simultaneous loading of 3 trains.
-250 cars per train
-6 loading tracks
-up to 10 trains per day.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1569022694540169216

 

[Gigapress]

Remember last year when their new Mach-E Chief Engineer, Donna Dickson, had this awkward interview on Munro Live in which she acknowledged the problems with the Mach-E coolant hoses, but kept framing it as a learning effort? Learning appears to be moving very slowly for the F-150 Lightning.

• Nothing in the thermal system appears to be integrated. The Lightning appears to have two separate air conditioning units, multiple coolant pumps, and a resistive heater. No heat pump, Octovalve or Supermanifold. Potential coolant leak points all over, some near electrical components. Mechanic expressed concern about short circuit faults, but that's just speculation.

• The F-150 still uses what appears to be a big lead-acid 12V battery but the technician in the video didn't say anything about it. Tesla has moved on to Li-ion for the 12V auxiliary batteries in the latest generation of S, X and Y. This saves about 10 kg of mass and takes up about 1 liter less volume.

• Underbody is not aerodynamic. Heavy gauge steel shield for battery. I have no idea why they didn't just make it flat like Tesla does, which is much better for airflow. Maybe there's a reason I'm not thinking of.

• Carries an extra wheel, which adds about 30 kg. Cybertruck prototypes have not shown an extra tire and the design is an "insane technology bandwagon", so maybe this means Cybertruck will use the standard onboard air compressor to keep tire pressure stable when a leak occurs, which would work long enough to get to a tire shop. Best spare is no spare.
  • Tesla has a patent for automatic tire inflation for the Semi and versions of this idea have been done on military vehicles.
    • Tesla Wins Patent for Automatic Tire Inflation System for its Semi Truck - TeslaNorth.com
  • Suspension will use the compressed air, and so there is already going to be compressed air tubes going to all four wheel wheel cavities anyway.

• High-voltage wire harnesses (the orange ones) are all over the place and mostly exposed. This is not optimal for technician safety. Notice in Exhibit 3 how, in contrast, on the Texan Model Ys the high-voltage harnesses are all buried deeper inside the car, out of the way of hands and sharp objects that might cut the protective insulation and expose the metal wires inside.

This will be a nice luxury truck but maintenance of the coolant system will be a nightmare it seems, and all the extra weight, complexity and aerodynamic issues will make this truck seriously inferior to Cybertruck on manufacturing cost and on specs.

Exhibit 1: Bowl of Spaghetti

Exhibit 2: Lead-acid 12V?

Exhibit 3: Model Y from Giga Texas - Full View
Notice how looking at this doesn't hurt your eyes, and how small and tightly packed the system is. Bear in mind, this frunk cavity is smaller than the F-150 cavity, yet all the stuff is so much more compact that it seems roomier in a picture.
Source: Munro Live (link)

Exhibit 4: Model Y from Texas - Corey pointing out that 12V is Li-ion Now

Exhibit 5: F-150 Underbody

Exhibit 6: Cybertruck Underbody from 2020
Nice and smooth
Source: link

Exhibit 7: Model 3 Underbody from 2018
Also nice and smooth.
Source: link

Exhibit 8: Mach-E Bowl of Spaghetti
At least there aren't orange high-voltage wire bundles all over.
Source: link

 

[PokerFJÆS]

Tesla Giga Berlin Info Event Attended by 500+ People; Critics Satisfied with Info Presented

Tesla Giga Berlin held an info event where they discussed water consumption, logistics concept, battery factory and much more. Having received information on some questions, the critics were satisfied. More than 500 people joined the event.

www.tesmanian.com

"In addition, company representatives said that the gradual increase in production at the new plant is going very well, although the exact figures were not announced. At the moment, all that is known is that by the first quarter of 2023, the production of 5,000 Model Ys per week is planned."

 

[SmokyPeat]

California produced ~3x the solar Texas did last year, but you need to look at the trends. Solar generation is up a whopping 75% in Texas this year, while California is up ~18% YoY, lower than the 28% national average. Capacity planned and under construction in Texas according to the EIA is ~double that of California, with the average Texas project being further along because of lower bureaucrosclerosis. So while CA produced triple what Texas did last year, this year it will be double, next year it’ll be 1.5x, then sometime in 2024 it’ll be less.

And CA homes aren’t really “twice as efficient”, CA just has a close to ideal climate that requires far less heating or cooling than just about anywhere else in the country. Homes are also a bit smaller, but again that’s because of NIMBYism that makes building new housing extremely hard, leading to high housing costs that give California the highest COL-adjusted poverty rates and homelessness in the country.

NIMBYism is cancer.

A little red state/blue state rivalry for solar dominance is great. Everyone wins. I just find the endless California bashing tiresome after a while. California taxpayers support quite a number of the red welfare states. They don't seem particularly grateful.

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Some info coming in from the Citizens Event at Giga Berlin:

View attachment 851350

Output of the Cell Facility will be 16 cells per second. 4680

Source:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1568946251546382336

Both LFP and NCM apparently.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1569025567554420738

 

[Buckminster]

It totally makes sense to me that Tesla is working on a VR/AR headset. Elon calls the shots on Tesla investments in special projects, and Elon is a gamer.

Although Elon talks a good game about transitioning the world to sustainable energy, and mankind becoming a multiplanetary species, sometimes I think he’d ditch it all to create the ultimate video game experience.

Elon is the world’s greatest entrepreneurial engineer, and a perpetual 12 year old boy. That unique combination screams VR/AR headset.

New thread here:
Tesla VR / AR

Other pertinent threads:
Service and communication (out of main)
Tesla mining and refining
Gigafactory locations and products
$10k per Tesla Tax Credit

 

[Fred42]

California’s grid is a dumpster fire of cronyism and NIMBYism. It massively underserves it customers in almost every way.

California (pop.38m) produces ~200TWh of electricity every year. This is less than Alabama +Mississippi produces with ~8m people. California has to import ~100TWh from neighboring states. Texas (pop.30m) is on track to produce ~550 TWh this year.

Now you might say this is because California is superior on renewables? No. Texas produced 117 TWh of wind+solar generation last year, and so far this year generation is up 33% YoY (solar generation is up a whopping 70% this year!). California produced 69 TWh last year and YoY H1 it’s only up ~13%, which is half the YoY national average. Hell, next year Texas will likely produce more wind&solar electricity than Californian *total* production of electricity!

If California really wants to go EV, they are going to have to pull their heads out of their NIMBY asses. Outside of chronically underserving their power needs requiring roughly double the national average prices in order to drop demand to the level of supply, California has much less heating/cooling requirements than other states, and much, much less energy intensive heavy industry. This means however, that on a percentage basis production increases to supply a fully electric car fleet are going to be much harder for Cali than Texas:

Switching both CA and TX to full EV will probably require both states to increase electricity generation by ~150 TWh. This is equal to 3/4s of CAs current total generation! 150 GWh is only a 27% increase for Texas. It gets even worse for Cali though when you compare that number to the rate that Wind+Solar generation is increasing. W+S generation will likely be up by about 36TWh in Texas this year, but only 10TWh in California, meaning it’d take Texas about 4 years to make enough generation at today’s rate of increases to power their entire vehicle fleet… it’d take Cali 15 years!

NIMBYs right now (mostly on the left) are currently the single biggest obstacle to decarbonization.

CA just passed a law that exempts storage batteries from zoning regulations, so one less hurdle.

 

[thesmokingman]

Sorry if this has been posted here.

I can see Munro falling on the floor when he sees this jungle of wires. I am no car guy, but OMG what a mess!

Man, it's kind of surprising if not alarming the amount of electric harness/plugs that are exposed.

 

[SmokyPeat]

Both LFP and NCM apparently.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1569025567554420738

Interesting. I assume the LFP cells will be prismatic rather than cylindrical 4680. Hopefully we get some more detailed info soon.

 

[thesmokingman]

Anybody who has worked on their own cars a lot knows that for many automotive manufactures complexity and service difficulty is not an accident but a feature. Amongst other things I think it will be a hurdle for them to overcome in the design and production of EVs.

This is one of the reasons why I hate working on an old Porsche. The inane complexity for no good reason is a German trait.

 

[Gigapress]

Tesla said foreign exchange headwinds materially reduced automotive profit margins in Q2.

Does anyone know what happened and if we can expect improvement for Q3? Was it because the Euro to USD exchange rate fell?

 

[wws]

Man, it's kind of surprising if not alarming the amount of electric harness/plugs that are exposed.

Last week we picked up our Volt from dealer service - after a rodent had chewed on a wiring harness. The harness itself was $490. They had to disconnect everything under the hood, and drop the front subframe with the engine/motors/transaxle to replace it. Took 26 hours of labor @$265/hr. Fortunately it was covered by my comprehensive insurance.

By comparison, a year or two ago one of the front marker lights in my Model 3 wasn't working right. Service ranger diagnosed it in my driveway - and again a rodent chew on a wiring harness. He ordered the part, came back a few days later. Took him about 1/2 hour to replace.

(Yes we have a few fruit trees in our yard. And yes, it probably wasn't a good idea to plant them...)

 

[thesmokingman]

Last week we picked up our Volt from dealer service - after a rodent had chewed on a wiring harness. The harness itself was $490. They had to disconnect everything under the hood, and drop the front subframe with the engine/motors/transaxle to replace it. Took 26 hours of labor @$265/hr. Fortunately it was covered by my comprehensive insurance.

By comparison, a year or two ago one of the front marker lights in my Model 3 wasn't working right. Service ranger diagnosed it in my driveway - and again a rodent chew on a wiring harness. He ordered the part, came back a few days later. Took him about 1/2 hour to replace.

(Yes we have a few fruit trees in our yard. And yes, it probably wasn't a good idea to plant them...)

That's life. But the legacies treating tasty harness plugs like an open air fruit stand is gonna hurt consumers later...

 

[Ogre]

Man, it's kind of surprising if not alarming the amount of electric harness/plugs that are exposed.

The big gaps into that chamber from the struts was quite eye opening, I’d figure they would want to keep that area sealed as much as possible.

 

[Singuy]

Tesla said foreign exchange headwinds materially reduced automotive profit margins in Q2.

Does anyone know what happened and if we can expect improvement for Q3? Was it because the Euro to USD exchange rate fell?

First Q Euro fell 2.6%, 2Q Euro fell 7.63%, currently we are at an additional -1.8%

Yuan 1Q, no change, 2Q, - 5.69%, 3Q an additional -2.28%(currently)

Yen is -19% from start of the year, so yes the money we get in Yen converted is 19% less which cuts into GM (good thing our sales in Japan is small).

 

[thesmokingman]

The big gaps into that chamber from the struts was quite eye opening, I’d figure they would want to keep that area sealed as much as possible.

It's almost negligent imo. They should have covered that area for the sake of the product and consumer, so lazy.

 

[StealthP3D]

The Salton Sea is so toxic, I would not be surprised if it would literally eat away at anything installed on top of it. You can smell this place sometimes as much as 50 miles away, it's rancid. Air quality around the sea is typically "red".

Good point. Aluminum and copper do not get along well with chlorides, especially when electricity is involved. More troubling is all the talk of one mega-solar farm to rule them all. Centralized power generation is not what the future has in store for many very good reasons. Mega-solar farms do have a role, but not ones covering even half of 525 sq. miles of toxic shoreline.

A key attribute of solar farms is the time of day of production. To make the grid as close to 100% green at the lowest cost, and with the fewest batteries, requires hundreds of sites to buffer the effects of intermittent cloud cover (no matter how rare in the desert) and, more importantly, to protect against natural or manmade disasters. Distributing the solar assets widely provides more hours of active production and protects the nation's power supply against being wiped out by two or three well-placed attacks. Power grids are important and need to be resilient to attacks of various kinds.

Solar farms in the far north will not generate as much electricity per square foot but will probably be worth it to reduce transmission losses and for the extended evening power to cool more southerly homes after the sun has set. Solar farms in the far south (from East to West) will maximize winter generation and hours of production.

Currently, fixed solar panels are orientated for maximum annual generation. As solar becomes a larger component of grid power, we will need more panels aimed westerly to deal with peak evening loads more efficiently. What this all leads to is more, smaller farms, not one massive "crown jewel" that would cripple the system if it suddenly went off-line for any reason.

Modelling the optimum strategy for placement of generation and storage capacity over time is a very complex problem with many solutions depending upon what the specific sub-goals are and will certainly involve installing and paying for panels that are only needed 10% of the time. That's how much cheaper generation is vs. long-term storage. The easiest and most productive way to solve for optimal solutions in a practical manner will be by using AI and Tesla is already getting their feet wet with their auto-bidder software. I suspect this effort will grow into ever larger modelling efforts used for the completely different purpose of grid planning.

The world is changing more rapidly than it may appear to the casual observer and there are heaps of money to made by those with a desire to understand these changes more fully and apply that knowledge appropriately as an investor. Tesla is probably the largest and most secure beneficiary of these changes but perhaps not the one with the highest returns. But remember, risk/reward is key in investing and not investing in non-productive companies is a big part of that. The future is difficult to see so probable growth is valued much more highly than more speculative growth.

 

[Stretch2727]

Anybody who has worked on their own cars a lot knows that for many automotive manufactures complexity and service difficulty is not an accident but a feature. Amongst other things I think it will be a hurdle for them to overcome in the design and production of EVs.

Knowing just how painful trivial "make it look like we are doing something" re-orgs are in big companies, the disruption of a MATERIAL re-org will be huge in these companies. His comments about employees not wanting to be "stuck in the ICE division" was particularly telling.

When I worked for Ford we used to say 4 bolts and a flange means there must be another manager.

Interesting there has not been more disclosed on the Tesla approach to the organization and development process. Large products such as a car need some break down in organizational responsibilities, leading to design inefficiencies. It's amazing to me the level of system design and integration they are able to achieve with such a complex product which requires 100's of people to design and validate, all the while fully considering the manufacturing and service aspects. One thing I am pretty sure of is there is no organizational wall between manufacturing and design like many companies and the legacy OEM's.

 

[Maarten]

Last week we picked up our Volt from dealer service - after a rodent had chewed on a wiring harness. The harness itself was $490. They had to disconnect everything under the hood, and drop the front subframe with the engine/motors/transaxle to replace it. Took 26 hours of labor @$265/hr. Fortunately it was covered by my comprehensive insurance.

USD 265 per hour?? Didn't know you need a top university education to replace parts in a Volt.

 

[Ogre]

First plans for a Tesla V4 Supercharger designed station submitted for permitting. Things I noticed right off.

• PV panels planned.
• Megapack is part of the design which, combined with PV might make this grid independent or at least detachable.
• Trailer parking is part of the game plan (Cybertruck FTW).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1568998731407654915