https://electrek.co/2023/01/09/tesla...hium-refinery/

Is this old news? Just perusing around out of curiosity. How big a deal is this?

"TV BIG. ME WANT!"

-Murica

Purchased more Tesla today at $118.

It's news is that they are starting to hire. That they are building the plant is old news.

Not a huge deal, might improve their margins somewhat. Megapack factory in Lathrop may or may not be a huge deal though. According to Tesla they will make 10k packs/year. One pack sells for $2M and according to Tesla they sell for ~$500/kWh and cost ~$100-150/kWh for batteries and $100/kWh for the rest. Do the math... And according to Tesla they intend to scale this from 40GWh/year to 1.5TWh/year. And yeah, that's before IRA, service fees, VPP commission etc. Either Tesla are lying, Tesla will screw up the ramp in some major way or they will be printing money. Make your pick.

Some price changes in the US:

• Model 3 RWD: $43,990 (from $46,990, a 6.4% drop)
• Model 3 P: $53,990 ($62,990, 14.2% drop)
• Model Y Long Range: $52,990 (from $65,990, a 20% drop)
• Model Y P: $56,990 (from $69,990, a 23% drop)

For those that qualify for the credit, that’s effectively a $20,500 drop for the Model Y LR

So I guess no demand was confirmed and also here we go lots of demand for 2023. Also RIP the competition that was coming.

re: chinese cars

Chinese distrust domestic vehicles - and foreign cars are put through such protectionist import taxation that they can cost up to 3x more in China than in the USA

An American car that is imported and sells for $40,000 back home goes for about $100k or more in China. Despite this, you see very few Chinese cars on the road.

This is obviously changing, much like driving a Hyundai was embarrassing in the 90s and no longer is the case. However, nobody who can afford an import is buying Chinese. For this reason, you really don't begin to see Chinese cars outside of work fleets like logistics companies or in impoverished regions of the country. Even the taxis will be volkswagons or Hyundais because the clientele strongly prefers those cars.

This is 100% the main reason why Tesla builds their cars for the Chinese market in China. It allows them to skirt the import tax duties and now they can sell their cars for about market rates. What is extremely notable about this isn't the local production, as that's been happening for decades. In fact, such localized production to avoid import duties is a big reason that VW and Buick are big brands over there. Believe it or not, but Buick is a well respected and liked brand in China.

What's notable about this local production is that Tesla is the only one to do it without creating a separate company as a joint venture, in fact, they even own the factory itself, something else that is incredibly rare. Companies like VW and Buick often create a new joint venture with a state run company. With Buick sales in China, it's not from GM directly but rather SAIC-GM. Likewise, when you buy a VW in China it's made by SAIC-VW. There are still imported GMs and imported VWs, but those cost a lot more and are the nicer models with tech they don't yet want to share with the Chinese.

So the two real points are that Tesla doesn't get enough credit for what they've accomplished in China. Not only entering and succeeding in the market but being able to do so without sharing their IP or profits. It sounds simple, but literally nobody else has been able to pull it off. It's an astounding feat. The other is that Chinese overwhelmingly prefer foreign cars and Tesla is without a doubt one of the top prestige cars available. It's clearly the most accessible. Driving a Tesla is a statement in a country of people who openly talk about money and are expected to spend it if they have it. Why you can buy a pack of cigs for 50 cents or the pack right next it for $100. Because if you can afford the $100 pack of cigs, then you should be buying it, else you're just a cuck.

Front page of a car website, notice all the tesla mentions front and center, most of the brands present are imports.
Here's the ev section, again, all foreign brands front and center, with only geeleey (forget english spelling) and BYD listed at the very end

look at how the model Y is view, you don't get this for BYD


yes, companies like BYD in the long term are huge threats to tesla, but in the meantime, it's what you buy when you can't afford a Tesla. Journalists are obviously looking for intriquing stuff so they'll highlight stories about BYD's upscale models that are intended to compete with Tesla, but don't forget for one second that when you see those stats about "ZOMG BYD is selling so many more cars that Tesla" you're forgetting that you can buy 2 mid level BYDs for the cost of a single tesla - the majority of their cars are priced for the lower middle class to afford - regular office workers can buy a BYD. It's only the corner office folk who have the extra money laying around to justify buying a Tesla for 2x the price.

Thanks for the insight on China. Two things I don't understand: 1) I thought Chinese were big savers, which is at odds with what you say about their inclination to spend as much as they can afford. 2) Why would Musk get this deal that has been so elusive to other companies? I can't help but suspect that it isn't what it seems. It's conceivable that Chinese leaders were just charmed by his charisma (which is always lost on me) or felt that having a Tesla factory was such a show of technological prowess that they were willing to give him a sweetheart deal. But I can't help but to be more cynical. And I wonder if they aren't stealing the tech or extracting bribes or planning to requisition the factory in the near future.

re: the deal

i can only speculate so I'm not very helpful

re: IP theft? I imagine it was a little bit of both, where they figure they'll get the IP anyway if they build here even without an official transfer and that "it'd be cool to have them built here" not to mention that it's exactly the kind of high end manufacturing they want to pivot their economy towards. It wouldn't surprise me as well if there's some secret deals the public doesn't know about.

I can promise you that within 10 years a chinese EV car/battery startup is going to get a lot of government funding a la Lenovo and a good chunk of founders are going to be former employees of Tesla in Shanghai - this is a certainty because it's true for all big industries

re: savings

Yes they save, but it in a very different manner than we do.

We tuck our money away into things like IRAs that essentially don't get tapped into without paying big penalties and taxes. They tuck there's into a savings account.

So while we have our money working for us, they largely don't.

Many americans would likely own a nicer watch or buy nicer bottles of wine if they had 500k sitting in their bank account rather than 5k in their bank account and 500k tied up in their IRA.

They also don't need to save up for retirement, because their children will bear that burden.

Their medical bills are also basically nothing compared to us whereas in the USA the primary reason for needing a 7 figure nut for middle class retirement is you're going to be giving a lot of it to hospital corporations and insurance providers.

When I was in China, my roommate shattered his kneecap. Was in a hospital bed recovering for about 2 weeks after multiple surgeries. Total cost was about 3k USD. This was in Beijing being treated at one of the finest hospitals they had.

If you get sick with covid in china, all treatment is free. Or at least used to be a year ago.

my brother in law once came and visited and complained of having some very feelings in his chest and wanted to see a doctor, we went to the nearby hospital, the doc listened, said "sounds kinda iffy, let's do a ct scan" to which I'm like "woah is that necessary? how much will that be?" as I'm thinking they are using the "stupid rich foreigners will pay for anything mentality" and he was like "wtf" and it was only after he explained the cost was like $35 or something like that. All in all they found he had a chest infection, prescribed the right medicine for it and he was fine within 2 days and total bill - without insurance or anything was like $70 total.

So they save, but it doesn't go anywhere. The common place to park assets is in real estate, which is why the housing market exploded. So much that they've begun putting in penalties to buying 2nd and 3rd homes. It's to the point where many kids have homes in their name which they've never even been to because dad bought it to park his money somewhere and avoided penalties by putting in their children's names. So since you can only buy so many homes and China has over 6 million millionaires that's expected to become over 12 by 2026 - they put their money in their lifestyle.

Ignore the savings, it's about what are they going to then do with the savings when they don't believe in the stock market? Eventually, many reach a point where they spend it. High net worth Chinese are far more liquid than Americans of similar net worth. China has 6 million millionaires right now, it's expected to become 12 million by 2026. Those are a lot of people with money to burn.

About the cigarettes, that wasn't an exaggeration. I am a former smoker. Like most foreigners, I gravitated to a specific brand that cost about $1 a pack.

this was the brand of expats

however, I was told a few times by my Chinese boss that if I went to x meeting or y conference I needed to buy a more expensive brand because people would have trouble respecting someone who smoked those cheap cigs in a formal business environment - it'd be looked at as if I had coffee stains on my shirt

so I would be told to by something more expensive, this was the safe choice which costs about $8 a pack and was the favorite of officials and businessmen



this is what Deng Xiaoping smoked and they had entry level ones for like $10 but other special types were far pricier, likewise there were always packs that sold for over $100 a pack but I rarely saw people smoking them, was probably more of a gift/special event thing like cohibas. they even have a brand of cigs that you are supposed to smoke at weddings


so yeah, I would be told to go buy nicer cigs and keep the receipts because it'd go on the expense account because they didn't want them to go "omg he's homeless how can we do business with him" - likewise, nearly everyone in client-facing roles at some point needs to invest in a nice watch, the watch is purely there to signal to potential clients "look I'm not starving here, this is a successful operation and we're not going to scam you"

nice posts

is there social pressure to 'buy chinese', in the way that ford or whoever might advertise themselves to the US market as 'american made'

not really unless you are a government official, but they all drive government issued audis

this has been a big deal, but it's less about foreign or chinese but rather "they are supposed to serve the people how can he afford that rolex"

xi jinping has cracked down on this pretty hard, and embraced that government officials shouldn't live so lavishly, he wants them to serve the people not be seen enjoying lives of luxury


hundreds of dollars a bottle and comes in all this excessive packaging to be seen loud and clear, it even has a special key to open it and each bottle comes with a mini glass as well - again it's all about the ceremony and presentation, I can barely tell the difference between a $300 bottle of this stuff or a $1 bottle of it

instead of being seen drinking this when out at the restaurant in friends (chinese love eating in large groups, if you're an official or businessman you'll be eating out with the boys at least twice a week), but now with Xi's crackdown they now will pour it into exact same kind of bottle that a farmer uses for the booze he distills at home, so it'll look like it's some dinky and cheap homemade stuff to any staff serving them (in china it's super common to bring your own booze to restaurants and they don't do corkage fees) but instead you're actually drinking some 30 year vintage stuff



re:cars

listen to this 3 min bit, it's brilliant

https://www.wvtf.org/2014-08-08/what...is-lamborghini

Tesla is already #3 in Chinese market and losing market share. Claiming the competition is a handwave seems flat out wrong.

you misunderstood, I said several times that BYD could gain status with time, it's clearly a long term threat

just in the mean time, majority of people still don't view domestic brands as something to buy unless you really can't afford to otherwise, which many still won't

while I don't think they'll ever be #1 due to costs, I think that for every Chinese person who decides that BYD is now a respectable car company that will get their dick wet as well as a tesla (listen to that radio segment) you'll have 10 Chinese people who don't feel that way and now for the first time have enough money to afford one

less than half of Chinese people own a car

when I was working in for app developers in China, average salary in the office was about 60k a year with the more senior staff all making 6 figures USD, almost none of them knew how to drive a car unless they came from a rich family - but they'd often talk about aspiring to learn to drive and buy one eventually - that upward mobility is far outpacing

this guy was the founder and majority shareholder of publicly listed company that at the time had a market cap of over 4 billion, yet even he felt the need to show off that he owned a tesla, this was the first car he ever drove

I kid you not, I had a dream last night that Tesla was back at $300/share and it was before the end of 2023.

insider activity

mr musk's most recent purchase is one of the two green dots in early 2020, he purchased 195,000 shares for $10 million

the subsequent green dot relates to a mr antonio gracias in august of 2020. he purchased 1,575 shares for $41,000

most of the red dots after summer 2021 are musk. 250m here, 500m there, an occasional 3bn every now and then

its fairly common for RSU heavy companies to have a lot of selling, but stil notable imo that not many tesla insiders seem to think these prices are attractive, and definitely not the chief twit

neat, where'd you get that info?

Yeah Elon sold some. But to be fair, he probably has a lot higher percent of his net worth in the company than most CEOs, than most of us retail investors. I don't care so much about if he is selling or not, I care more about how invested he is relatively.

Some of the sales was to pay taxes for his compensation package. I wouldn't hold those against him..

insiderviz.com

I for one, am shocked

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...fies-rcna66150

Headline seems hyperbole. What did they stage? Did the push the car and let it roll downhill like Nikola did? That's staging... From what I read in the article the staging was not disclosing that during the development process a car crashed at a parking lot, that the cars being sold in 2016 didn't have the functionality shown in the video and that they used mapping of the road. Is that really staging the video? Which part is the main one? The premapping? If so then waymo is staging every video they release... Anyway, who the hell cares about what they said or didn't say in 2016. What matters is how many cars they will sell in the future, if they will be able to do FSD or not. Not what they said in 2016.

Another company that has staged presentations is Apple who staged the iPhone presentation:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017...he-iphone.html

The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.
Jobs also wanted to make sure that connectivity wasn’t an issue for the iPhone. But to do that required some shading around the edges. From the same Times Magazine report:

They had AT&T, the iPhone’s wireless carrier, bring in a portable cell tower, so they knew reception would be strong. Then, with Jobs’s approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength.

How relevant was this for where they are today?

Purchased more Tesla today at $129.

You think a few whataboutisms from other frauds make this fraud less fraudy?

Pretty hilariouos you mention Waymo. The 3d mapping with lidar is actually how waymo works. If you remember, Musk said lidar wouldnt be economically viable and they were never going to use lidar. So then they show off their full self driving capability by using a system that had zero relevance to their actual self driving mechanism. They didn't disclose this to anyone, most relevantly shareholders. Not only did they not disclose this, Musk actually publicly stated that this video was PROOF that Teslas could drive themselves.

I don't see how you could view that as anything other than fraud

Like, say if Waymo made a demo where they took the FSD system from a Tesla and put it in a Waymo car then used that demo to sell their FSD system that functioned in a completely different way, would you not view that as fraud as well?

Like Ashook said in the article, they showed the future capability of the system. Today the system can do what they showed, seems pretty relevant. Today they manage to do it without HD maps. 3D mapping(technically 4D) is use to generate the dataset of labels. Imo a pretty clever way, get labels even for bad sensor drives by using other drives.

https://youtu.be/ODSJsviD_SU?t=6097

@Heltok

Do you think it is fundamentally possible to solve the 'real world' wrt self driving? Poker is solvable, but it's a closed game.

An open environment has infinite possibilities. Is FSD at this level enough proof that it's possible or are the infinite amount of edge cases a fundamental unsolve problem ?

Making models to predict the future is impossible, doesn't matter how many variables you use. FSD is different though because it's not predicting the future, it is adjusting to the present with a bunch of cameras + algo's. What are your thoughts here ?

It depends on your definition of solvable. If solving means from A->B while minimizing a cost function time, discomfort, wear, consumption under the constraint to never be in an accident, then no we will not solve driving as long as some drunk human can hit us from behind or aliens land on top of the car.

I think what matters is if we can FSD significantly safer than humans and capable on driving on most roads without any significant amount of human intervention. Then it will sell like crazy and save lives and make TSLA moon. I think already it saves lives but requires too frequent intervention to remove the human. In a few years I think we can remove the human and just have a remote pilot as backup for the few times it fails. Some time after that it will fail so seldom that road service can take care of the few times it fails.

As for the infinite possibilities. The cool thing with neural networks is that can extrapolate between the samples in their training set. And by now Tesla have many lifetimes of diverse driving data. I see now theoretical reason for why shouldn't be able to eventually get above human level performance with current hardware and future software.