Musk endeavours

[JamesMuenchen]

Car&Driver compare the Porsche Taycan Turbo S vs. Tesla Model S

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/co ... rformance/

Tesla wins overall.

It seems though that Porsche is better on the battery



More surprisingly, the Porsche held its own in our 75-mph range test. While the EPA says there's a 134-mile difference in the range between the two, extrapolating from our 100-mile run, the real-world difference amounts to 10 miles in the Tesla's favor. The Taycan also won the other speed test, with its consistently higher charging rate providing quicker recharging. Tesla's Supercharger network might have more stations, but it also has more users, and Tesla owners have faced long queues just to plug in during peak travel times. At the Electrify America outpost where we charged the Porsche, 15 other plugs went unused the entire time we were there.

Isn't this supposed to be where legacy auto was so far behind Tesla that they were never going to catch up?

[odysseus2000]

As we have discussed before, the Taycan is nearly twice the price of the S, and is a sports car that has similar performance to a the model S saloon depending upon who does the tests.

Difficult to argue that this represents a catch up with a car that was first released around 10 years ago.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Tesla semi being tested, driver reportedly tells California Highway Patrol that range is exceeding its specification:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/29449/tes ... california

Interesting! If this can be made to work and also driven robotically it would be a serious competitor for some rail freight.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Musk on residual values for gas & diesel:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/122 ... 33829?s=20

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Does this look better than solar panels:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/122 ... 12224?s=20

Regards,

[dspp]

Does this look better than solar panels:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/122 ... 12224?s=20

Regards,

No. Look at the number of connections in that. Every one a potential failure point.

Not everything Musk does is right.

regards, dspp

[odysseus2000]

Does this look better than solar panels:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/122 ... 12224?s=20

Regards,

No. Look at the number of connections in that. Every one a potential failure point.

Not everything Musk does is right.

regards, dspp

Yes, from an engineering perspective it has more failure modes, but many punters will imho be mostly influenced by looks and the aesthetics, at least to me, of the glass roof look a whole lot better than a series of solar panels.

If we consider solar panels of say 400 W and an installation of 4KW, 10 panels, there will be at least 20 connections (+ and - for each) between the panels.

Solar glass modules are believed to be around 45W and have dimensions of 15x45 inches:

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/25/ev ... oof-tiles/

This implies that a 4 kw system will need 4000/45 = 88 panels, so about 176 connections, or about 8 times those of a panel roof. Connections are often the Achilles heel of electrical systems, but if you consider a car, it has very many connections subject to vibration and other fatigues including salt spray on engine components and one does not see wholesale failures of electrical systems.

Failure rates of existing solar panels are around 0.05%:

https://news.energysage.com/average-sol ... lure-rate/

Whether thermal troubles will be much worse with these glass roofs compared to panels may be an issue, but I still think that most punters, say someone like Howard, would be more inclined to buy a new house with a solar glass roof than a new house with panels. It would be interesting to read other posters views.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Could Google acquire Tesla?:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspecu ... e744fc6e65

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Tesla sales soar by 168% in Germany:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-sales-g ... uary-2020/

Regards,

[Howard]

Tesla sales soar by 168% in Germany:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-sales-g ... uary-2020/

Regards,

To 396 cars sold! Totally dominating the German market. Their competitors only sold 246,000 cars in the month.

Howard

[Howard]

Musk on residual values for gas & diesel:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/122 ... 33829?s=20

Regards,

Lots of us support buying BEVs in future, but they won't be helped by wild forecasts. At the moment Tesla depreciation is worse than their rivals according to this survey of the US market, which included tracking 10,000 used Teslas.

“Used Teslas lost $7,500 in value in the past year, Jaguars $5,500, Porsches $4,900”
“the past year has seen pre-owned Teslas lose the most value, at least according to thousands of car listings tracked at Carvana ($NYSE:CVNA).”

This survey in the USA suggests that in the real world Teslas depreciate faster than their ICE counterparts.

ICE cars may depreciate faster in the future but, who knows, Tesla depreciation may worsen as well as BEV competitors take market share. It's difficult forecasting the future, but certainly up to now Ody your forecasts of doom for all ICE manufacturers have not been borne out by the facts.

https://media.thinknum.com/articles/use ... ches-4900/

regards

Howard

[odysseus2000]

Tesla sales soar by 168% in Germany:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-sales-g ... uary-2020/

Regards,

To 396 cars sold! Totally dominating the German market. Their competitors only sold 246,000 cars in the month.

Howard

Yes, but in rate of increase of car sales how do the numbers look?

The numbers for Tesla are positive, the numbers for legacy ice are negative.

No one knows the future, but if these rates of change continue, what will happen?

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Tesla the fastest growing brand in the world and still no advertising spend.This is unprecedented:

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-beats-i ... the-world/

Regards,

[Howard]

Audi e-tron sold well in Norway in January. Top sellers were:

Audi e-tron - 902
Renault ZOE - 533
Volkswagen e-Golf - N/A (511 total with ICE)
Hyundai Kona Electric - N/A (380 total with ICE)
Nissan LEAF - 366
BMW i3 - 200
Tesla Model 3 - 166

Tesla has sold 24 Model 3s so far in February. We might expect a surge in sales in March, but the BEV market is looking more competitive this year.

https://insideevs.com/news/397255/norwa ... car-sales/

regards

Howard

[dspp]

TSLA $2bn capital raise

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3541673-t ... ise-button

https://seekingalpha.com/pr/17778288-te ... mmon-stock

dspp

[dealtn]

TSLA $2bn capital raise

dspp

As said elsewhere, he should be fired if he didn't do a capital raise given what's happened to the share price in recent weeks.

[odysseus2000]

This at least the second capital raise after saying no need for capital on a conference call.

Still it is what it is and I have put in a buy order for a few more Tesla shares if it takes out the opening high and it did, so it can now make me look like an idiot again.

As far as I can find, and I look carefully, Tesla is by far the best growth story in the current market.

I am perhaps the only one excited by the glass roof, but unless there are very serious technical flaws that can not be fixed by e.g. local cooling and heating of the tiles I expect this roofing to be come a cult desirable for all the rich and comfortable folk around the planet. People like me won't lash out the cash but the war on carbon now has such strong support across the generations from those children only just beginning to comprehend the world to those who have lived a long time, that I believe this could be big, especially with the Tesla brand now having such global awareness even though it has never had advertising spend.

Regards,

[dspp]

Tesla is building a pilot battery cell manufacturing line in Fremont – getting into the cell business
https://electrek.co/2020/02/11/tesla-bu ... e-fremont/

I've seen some of the job descriptions for various Tesla positions circulating in my alum network, and some of them at least look to be closely related to this. Judging by the job descriptions and the associated folk etc, this effort is for real. If you read the commentary under the electrek article others think the same way and are drawing the same conclusions.

When you read this "Jaguar isn’t the first company to have recent battery supply issues. We’ve seen production target cuts from Audi on their e-tron and Mercedes on their EQC due to supply issues from LG Chem. Jaguar has been trying to secure more battery capacity, but it’s been slow-going. They reportedly signed a deal for cylindrical cells with Samsung SDI in 2018, though they use LG pouch cells for the I-Pace."
https://electrek.co/2020/02/10/jaguar-p ... shortages/ which to my eyes is not a short term virus issue, but a symptom of the longer term supply chain constraint, the key issue will be cell availability over the next 10-years.

[edit:]
Richard Lars Pallesen • 18 hours ago
Tesla will have to ramp batteries pretty fast. Elon told one of his major investors, Ron Barron, that he thinks they can get to 20 million vehicles per year. Even if they only make half that number that is pushing a TWh if you account for larger packs in the Semi and Cybertruck. Elon has also stated a couple of times at least that he thinks energy storage will be as big as automotive. So even if Tesla is making 5 million cars in ten years they will need nearly a TWh including storage. If they eventually end up making 20million vehicles per year(which I find inconceivable) but that is going to be near 2TWh's without storage. Obviously Elon needs to be planning for these types of numbers in battery cell production to meet his stated goals. And the only way it can happen is if they figure it out for themselves.

Funnily enough I project Tesla at 20-mln cars/yr (or equiv) somewhere in the 2030-2038 timeframe depending on scenario. But I hadn't seen anybody else saying the same numbers, let alone Musk.

regards, dspp

[odysseus2000]

Cramer on Tesla capital raise:

https://www.thestreet.com/video/jim-cra ... yptr=yahoo

Regards,

[Howard]

VW ID. 3 appears popular in the UK.

1,500 sales and waiting list of 20,000 according to article below. Will there be enough batteries to supply demand?

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/car ... -DAYS.html

regards

Howard