he's really writing a lot of those lately.
i wonder why...

Here ya go:



That is an actual conspiracy theory: POWERFUL VESTED INTERESTS are the reason for recent negative press and attitudes (let's forget the years of fawning press), not any of his manifest failures or incompetence or horrible attitude toward his own customers and shareholders.

there's a bit of irony if trump's tradewars deal the fatal blow.

i think if the market goes back to december lows this is over.

Yeah another big selloff + more bad sales data (May sales coming Monday or Tuesday I'd guess) puts Tesla is a death spiral if they're "hardcore cost cutting" after a $2.7 billion raise and Jonas is privately telling investors that they're a restructuring/bankruptcy play.

It's all about demand at this point though and there's a reasonable chance US demand is/will pick up coming up to the expiration deadline and months after the backlog exhaustion + $7500 credit loss that happened in Q1.

Its all about the death of the S/X.

Demand for M3 did pick up substantially in the US but not enough and its 40% SR+ anyway.

The Model Y being planned at Fremont tells you everything you need to know.

How do people feel about electrification of cars in general? I've generally been bullish about the medium-term growth in adoption of EVs, but suddenly had some doubts. Two main questions I had were:

1) In the long run, is battery production for the most part unconstrained or are there fundamental supply concerns? I wasn't sure if supply constraint is mostly about battery manufacturers not willing to risk significant capex due to concerns about medium/long-term demand or whether there are other fundamental issues? Maybe a concern about a breakthrough making current investments obsolete? I don't really know what goes into manufacturing batteries.

2) In a world where new cars are increasingly becoming electric and non-PEVs are also becoming more fuel-efficient, how does that impact fuel prices and does that to some extent become a deterrent to further electrification? I'm concerned that some growth projections are too optimistic because this dynamic typically does not exist in most technological transitions, where the new technology keeps becoming cheaper relatively to the old. Or maybe I'm wrong and this doesn't move the needle in terms of gas prices. Thoughts?

Something other than Gasoline is the future, and EV seems like as good a start as any.
I only care about two things when it comes to the long term viability of EV though:

1) How far can I go
2) How easy can I recharge

I actually enjoy driving, but only in certain settings. Middle of nowhere highways offer some of the last bit of pure driving left and I take roadtrips basically every other weekend. EVs are essentially useless for this in their current state. Especially where I live, and the surrounding middle of nowhere's, there aren't enough charging spots to make it viable. One of my co-workers drives a Honda hybrid, and seems to really like it, and by all means it seems like a fantastic compromise for the current constraints.

1) I think the battery supply bit was Musk trying to shift blame of low demand onto Panasonic, or at least it was disputed as such. Analysts say there is an oversupply of Lithium and Lithium stocks reflect this.

2) I remember an old interview where Musk said there was a conspiracy between oil and Ford to shut him down because they were scared of him. I keep getting distracted and dont feel like finishing my thought on this, lmao. 46% of our petro use is in motor vehicles though. You are currently looking at less than 1% total adoption in the US, so nothing yet, but that will keep creeping up. Gas prices should be going up now, basically.

candybar,
Somewhere between 2021 and 2022 electric cars become cheaper to buy for the same features due to advances in battery cost. Example of projections (although this puts it at 2023-2024):



Range extends more and more until it's all day (500 miles or so) and no longer an issue. Great performance (sub 5 second 0-60) becomes standard as economies of scale come in.

So EVs will be cheaper than ICE for the same feature set with lower maintenance and lower running costs. It becomes a no brainer to buy them at that point. Why would you pay MORE for an antiquated technology with poorer features that costs more to run?

You can also see why I say Tesla are ****ed: a performance battery becomes a commodity, and currently most of what's good and unique about Teslas, everything that people rave about, is the performance electric experience (most of the rest of Tesla is super mega crappy; they really suck at making lower end cars).

You can also see why I say Tesla/Musk make absolutely zero difference to the mass adoption of electric cars, and that all they've managed to do is burn $10 billion in shareholder capital and tax dollars for no long term difference. Battery technology decides the tipping point and mass adoption; that has nothing to do with Tesla as the battery industry is far larger than Tesla and its research dollars don't come from Tesla.

-What supply constraint are you referring to specifically?

-" battery manufacturers not willing to risk significant capex due to concerns about medium/long-term demand" is definitely false.

- For investment purposes this decade minimum, you should consider battery production for smaller EVs like cars, bikes, small drones etc as unconstrained. IMO, peak oil happens before peak lithium- So you're good for a long time.

- Lithium metal and/or lithium-sulfur batteries can be created in a way that basically integrates with existing manufacturing technology.
(In 50 years when people seriously start considering if it makes sense economically to create lithium air batteries, let's revisit this topic.)



Have you googled lithium battery demand? Projections are massive. Here are some headlines on pg 1:
"Lithium-ion battery market to exceed $60 billion by 2024"
"In 2025, the demand for lithium for non-rechargeable batteries is expected to reach 4,450 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent"
"The outlook for lithium continues to shine, with demand from companies that produce batteries to power electric cars, laptops and other high-tech devices, expected to increase 650% by 2027, with overall lithium demand forecast to rise more than threefold over that period, a new study shows."

Planning to roll my Jan 2020 200s into Jun 2020 at some point here. Given the higher strike the premium differential is mild (25% more expensive), while the 6 extra months captures a lot more of the total collapse timeframe (4 more quarters).

The global production of electric cars is fairly minimal at this point, yet we're having all kinds of supply issues:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ough-batteries
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/me...ays-2018-05-01
https://www.energy-storage.news/news...orage-ramps-up
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/11/1...teries-model-3
https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/10...ion-in-europe/
https://insideevs.com/news/343420/hy...-down-but-why/
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-cobalt-mining
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/...ility-horizon0

Even if it isn't true right now, something like this somewhere along the supply chain had to have been true at some point right? Otherwise, why would we having all these supply issues? Also some quotes from some of the articles linked above:

"This potential problem with demand, which Musk has denied, is reportedly one reason why Panasonic has gotten cold feet, according to Nikkei. The battery maker told Reuters that it is “[w]atching the demand situation,” and “will study additional investments” beyond the current capacity of the Gigafactory."

"Still, Nikkei reported Thursday that Panasonic will “suspend its planned investment in Tesla’s integrated automotive battery and EV plant in Shanghai,” and instead “provide technical support and a small number of batteries from the Gigafactory.” No sources for these plans were named in the report."

"Declining ore grades for copper, continued lack of investment in new mines, and the time required to bring new discoveries to production will constrain metal availability and, ultimately, the metal sector’s ability to meet growing demand from battery/auto makers, particularly in the near-term."

"Given the time involved in making a greenfield investment decision and receiving necessary permits new nickel and copper mines will take at least 5–10 years, if not longer, to reach initial production ramp-up."

"However, it remains uncertain whether manufacturing capacity can keep up with the steep growth in battery demand of 32 percent up to 2025. Looking even further ahead, whether market players have sufficient resources to increase capacity by a factor ~2.5, from 940 GWh to almost 2300 GWh, in the 2025 to 2030 timeframe needs to be monitored closely. What is more important, however, is the availability of raw materials in the short to medium term."

I think the mining sector is prone to boom/bust dynamics and extremely sensitive to the possibility of oversupply tanking prices below what's sustainable for the operations - this means the present uncertainty about demand for electric cars could lead to global shortage along the way.

The McKinsey report seems quite concerned about the battery supply despite what seems to be an extremely conservation projection to me: "We project one in five passenger cars sold globally to be battery electric vehicles (BEV) by 2030"

Yeah, been reading more about this and it seems that there are no truly long-term concerns here (even without a breakthrough in battery technology, which becomes more likely the further we look) but I think these types of markets are extremely sensitive to even small fluctuations in demand, which can limit investments, which in turn can cap growth.

It's hard to see a global shortage. 30-40% year constant exponential growth, as well as the highly reliable general battery industry which is larger than automotive by far, means this will be well supplied always going forward.

As for battery factories, they're sprouting like mushrooms in China.

Tesla autopilot truck lust has a new chapter



It got confused by the overpass shadow and braked hard, only avoiding a very serious accident because the truck driver was alert and could swerve into an unoccupied neighboring lane. 7 months countdown to "Fully Self Driving feature complete"!

What person looks at the copious amounts of broad evidence from 10+ different angles and concludes Tesla are anything but dead last?

Yet another celebrity is suing Tesla:

Some months ago, this happened to a celebrity

Given that celebrities are a tiny fraction of Tesla drivers, work out the rates for these kind of defects in the general population. This is why their brand has fallen to dead last in Norway and dropped 35 points in the US. They make ****ty cars in a tent with ultra low reliability backed up by a horrible service network where you have to wait weeks to months to get a service.

lipstick on a pig

Car-centric urban transport is a dead end we have to get rid of asap.

this video is bull****. Any vehicle may have a valid reason to brake hard and those going behind them need to be able not to hit it.

Yes, in a theoretically perfect world.

In the real world, where non-cucks live, unnecessary sudden hard braking for no good reason is extremely dangerous and greatly increases the risk of accidents.

Speaking of not living in the real world:
lol? This just isn't happening and would be highly suboptimal even if it did. The person freedom and time savings gained from a private car is very high, especially when the majority of US cities are laid out to make it near essential. Why would you want to take that away from people?

Is this a joke? Has to be right? Like no one can miss a point this badly.

What's the status on ejector seat update roll out?

Can't listen with sound, sorry if it's explained, but what's going on in the video?

When do you think EV's become mainstream and are owned more the ICE? The amount if infrastructure that has to change for this to happen just seems huge to me. From the utilities to residential homes, the amount of upgrades are gigantic. I can't see it happening within the next decade. I would think self driving vehicles become more mainstream then EV's because it so much more convenient.

annual shareholder meeting comming up next week. gonna be an interesting one i guess.

Yeah, but the 18 wheeler can see right over any car, They have to anticipate what other drivers are going to do, and not thinking someone might slam on the brakes because of a shadow

Tesla got some attention in local news today, a 150k model X owned by a celeb burned down. He's claiming it's the first model X to burn down like this, though I doubt that's accurate. The car wasn't charging when it happaned.

Article is in Dutch, can't find English sources yet.

https://www.ad.nl/auto/peperdure-tes...lten~afa6449d/