Musk endeavours

[PeterGray]

Exactly RS.

I can't see I'd buy one, but that really is something new, and may well fill a very useful niche. Unlike the Tesla 3 which just looks like a reasonably smart electric car to me. Nothing fundamentally different from anything "stone age" auto is quite capable of producing, or does already. Things like wireless software updates are a good gimmick, but unless you are selling prototypes and not finished product they're something normal consumers can quite happily do without.

[odysseus2000]

Exactly RS.

I can't see I'd buy one, but that really is something new, and may well fill a very useful niche. Unlike the Tesla 3 which just looks like a reasonably smart electric car to me. Nothing fundamentally different from anything "stone age" auto is quite capable of producing, or does already. Things like wireless software updates are a good gimmick, but unless you are selling prototypes and not finished product they're something normal consumers can quite happily do without.

Are you sure?

Would you buy a phone or a computer that doesn't have over the air updates?

If the manufacture finds something can be made better would you not like to have it for free with no work from you? If a hostile finds a way to get control of your car, would you refuse a free patch to stop the hostile?

A 21st century car is vastly more capable and more needing of tweaks and counter measures to stop hostiles. We are essentially dealing with a sophisticated computer on wheels.

It is for this and similar reason that I believe Tesla are a very long way ahead of the competition.

Regards,

[Howard]

Well they've reached Europe at least!

First Ro Ro ship has just docked at Zeebrugge. See below.

And also this link starts with an interesting report on the relationship with Panasonic.

https://www.teslarati.com/panasonic-ear ... quisition/

regards

Howard

[odysseus2000]

Well they've reached Europe at least!

First Ro Ro ship has just docked at Zeebrugge. See below.

And also this link starts with an interesting report on the relationship with Panasonic.

https://www.teslarati.com/panasonic-ear ... quisition/

regards

Howard

Nice find.

It is all kind of accelerating now in what many see as a quiet period for Tesla.

We should soon see if the Model 3 sells in Europe.

The Maxwell acquisition maybe suggests some break through in super capacity energy storage. If the energy density has been increased, super capacitors will likely offer the lowest cost method of both fabrication and charging as one no longer is troubled by chemistry. There are several Youtube video of folk starting ICE vehicles with super capacitors instead of lead acid cells.

Whether the fall in Panasonic has something to do with the potential of super capacitors is unknown to me. Clearly if super capacitors now work and are
manufacturable on industrial scales at low cost, the whole battery story changes likely with the abandonment of batteries as fast as possible and their replacement with super capacitors.

If Tesla or someone else announces that they will use super capacitors instead of batteries, it would surprise me if Tesla equity didn't respond very positively.

Meanwhile this new patent application by Tesla gives some insight into how they are planning to do the computation:

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/ ... axRec=2302

Of course all of this could be smoke and mirrors, but if any of this catches hold, the recent rises in the Tesla share price will look quite lame.

The shorts here are not doing well for I think a few reasons:

There is potential big news for Tesla in a few areas.

Citron are no longer leading the short sellers brigade and are advocating long.

Shorts have been pained by attempts to short Tesla on valuation and seem to be coming less easily influenced by the bear articles that regularly get written on Seeking Alpha.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

This is a good example of a Tesla bear article:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/423832 ... show?app=1

The author sets out to make Tesla look like a con, saying how lack of activity at the Buffalo plant is covered up, people paid to do nothing. I have no idea if this is right.

The author then talks about how Panasonic are not doing well implying Tesla are the reason. However, if you read the Panasonic report it says that the Tesla battery business is doing well.

Then the author says the Maxwell addition by Tesla is maybe to help the Chinese government who have an underwater stake and that anyhow Maxwell are a heavy loss making business with violations and what not. No mention of the potential of super capacitors.

Superficially it reads well, but anyone with any study into Tesla will see it has a very lame job.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

For Super Capacitors to match Lithium Ion they will to increase energy storage from 10 to 25 times.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor

Scroll down to comparison table.

Any announcement from a reputable source of such increases or saying new devices are comparable to lithium ion in storage will have huge implication for electric vehicles and for battery makers.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

And also this link starts with an interesting report on the relationship with Panasonic.

It does sometimes seem that some pro-Tesla arguments followed to their logical conclusion would place Tesla as a battery company which may or may not build cars rather than a car company.

Still if Tesla do ultimately go their own way with all the hoopla about major battery shortages in the short to medium term I doubt Panasonic would suffer any meaningful harm.

Also

one could almost assume that Panasonic is practically losing its exclusivity

is not the sort of phraseology I'd likely find in any analysis I would take seriously.

[PeterGray]

Exactly RS.

I can't see I'd buy one, but that really is something new, and may well fill a very useful niche. Unlike the Tesla 3 which just looks like a reasonably smart electric car to me. Nothing fundamentally different from anything "stone age" auto is quite capable of producing, or does already. Things like wireless software updates are a good gimmick, but unless you are selling prototypes and not finished product they're something normal consumers can quite happily do without.

Are you sure?

Would you buy a phone or a computer that doesn't have over the air updates?

If the manufacture finds something can be made better would you not like to have it for free with no work from you? If a hostile finds a way to get control of your car, would you refuse a free patch to stop the hostile?

A 21st century car is vastly more capable and more needing of tweaks and counter measures to stop hostiles. We are essentially dealing with a sophisticated computer on wheels.

It is for this and similar reason that I believe Tesla are a very long way ahead of the competition.

Regards,

Though, of course the biggest source of risk of hostile control is via over air updates!

[odysseus2000]

PeterGray
Though, of course the biggest source of risk of hostile control is via over air updates!

Yes, it is and not just your car, endless systems from major infra-structure to domestic appliances are now part of the Internet of Things (IOT) & vulnerable to cyber attack.

Apple & the other phone makers all put a lot of effort into defending their systems against attack as do banks, utilities,... The recent issues with GCHQ & Huwaei have be about vulnerabilities in their products.

As things now are the days when you bought a product with out a processor & without firmware & it never could have a update are declining.

All of this makes for highly likely obsolescence as it's all too easy for firm ware to get lost during normal business practice making it then very difficult to repair or service an appliance and not generally worth the trouble of reverse engineering to get alternate firmware etc.

Pessimists say that serious cyber attack will certainly occur, Musk has speculated that a hack of Tesla sending all Tesla via auto pilot to e.g. New Jersey, is a potential threat that would be the end of Tesla.

As things now are most of the stuff I build that is anything more than a simple led light has a processor currently Arduino running essentially compiled C software for firmware.

One potential alternative being pioneeered by Lady Ada of Adafruit is open source Circuit Python which is an interpreted language so that the source code is not converted into binary machine code, but stays as is, very like some of Sinclair's early computers. This operates more slowly, but is faster & easier to modify as there is no compilation stage.

The Tesla auto driving & car control firmware though is likely some kind of compiled multi data, multi instruction type of system with origins in the world of the massively parallel super computer architecture.

Regards,

[TUK020]

Pessimists say that serious cyber attack will certainly occur, Musk has speculated that a hack of Tesla sending all Tesla via auto pilot to e.g. New Jersey, is a potential threat that would be the end of Tesla.

I've heard NJ is a dump, but is it really that bad?

[odysseus2000]

Pessimists say that serious cyber attack will certainly occur, Musk has speculated that a hack of Tesla sending all Tesla via auto pilot to e.g. New Jersey, is a potential threat that would be the end of Tesla.

I've heard NJ is a dump, but is it really that bad?

Think Musk was more concerned about what the residents of New Jersey would say when they found their state full of Tesla.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

Batteries, the car industry and European politics get a mention in FT World Weekly podcast:

Does European industry need greater protection?

- https://www.ft.com/world-weekly-podcast

[Howard]

Truth is stranger than fiction - see report below:

https://electrek.co/2019/02/06/tesla-mo ... pe-delays/

It's amusing to read that early adopters are prepared to put up with this sort of service. Would Apple have succeeded if their launches were as chaotic?

Let's hope the Model 3 proves more reliable than Tesla's delivery process! How difficult is it to drive a few cars off a ship and prepare them for customers?

I've bought a few nice new cars in my time and am pretty realistic/cynical about car dealerships. However, the hand-over process is normally high-quality.

Will Tesla sell 50,000 Model 3's in Europe this year?? I wouldn't bet on it.

regards

Howard

[redsturgeon]

Truth is stranger than fiction - see report below:

https://electrek.co/2019/02/06/tesla-mo ... pe-delays/

It's amusing to read that early adopters are prepared to put up with this sort of service. Would Apple have succeeded if their launches were as chaotic?

Let's hope the Model 3 proves more reliable than Tesla's delivery process! How difficult is it to drive a few cars off a ship and prepare them for customers?

I've bought a few nice new cars in my time and am pretty realistic/cynical about car dealerships. However, the hand-over process is normally high-quality.

Will Tesla sell 50,000 Model 3's in Europe this year?? I wouldn't bet on it.

regards

Howard

I guess there is a reason why car dealers exist.

John

[BobbyD]

It's amusing to read that early adopters are prepared to put up with this sort of service.

I'm not convinced that the average Tesla buyer is representative of the average car buyer. The Apple comparison is interesting, I wonder whether with the upcoming release of 'Android' Tesla can inspire the same brand loyalty?

[BobbyD]

The new Volkswagen Passat can drive itself at 130mph
Autobahn stragglers beware: VW's latest saloon and estate are coming for you

...

Headlining those is the slightly ambiguously named ‘Travel Assist’. It’s the now very familiar combination of lane keep assist and active cruise control systems that allows the car to basically drive itself on motorways, only here its maximum operation speed has been upped from traffic jam crawling to a full 130mph. Because autobahn.

- https://www.topgear.com/car-news/geneva ... elf-130mph

I still don't like L2.

[Howard]

As the Tesla situation is developing fast, my comments less than two weeks ago need updating!


Tesla is no longer projecting itself as a super-fast growing enterprise. It is concentrating more on profitability European sales for quarter 1 are predicted to be around 15,000 cars. That's three weeks production. And Elon Musk implied that literally thousands of cars are on on ships to Europe and China. Orders in China are now thought be be in hundreds. What is going to happen to the 30,000 Model 3s being produced from now to the end of March? Will they all sell at existing price levels in the USA? They represent a huge cost in raw materials if they don't sell.

Sales in North America are beginning to slow - maybe most of the early adopters have purchased, it gets tougher from now on. The rarity value of a Tesla will be damaged if the company starts to discount prices and second hand values fall. Will Tesla reduce prices further to shift more cars in the USA?

Reliability is more important than sharing dreams with customers - some dreams are being tested literally in the next three months Hopefully Tesla are solving the PDI problems so they can sell the cars arriving at Zeebrugge. We should soon see clear evidence they are reliably delivering thousands of cars a week to European Tesla supporters eagerly awaiting the cars they ordered.

Acceptance that their prices are too high to achieve original sales forecasts - and the prices in Europe do look far too high to gain tens of thousands of sales. The next few week's sales levels will indicate whether this is true as there should be no problems in supply.

Lower capex means some new model plans are just dreams - but new models are critical for sales success outside (Southern) California. The new plant under construction in China is due to be manufacturing its first cars in little over six months. Will it meet this target? Its financial backers will soon be assessing its viability. At the moment over the next two years it looks as though the Fremont plant will be easily able to manufacture enough Teslas to meet world demand. Why spend capex on a factory in China when new models are needed and the S and X are beginning to look dated and in need of face-lifts?

Will investors re-rate Tesla stock as they realise it is just another Auto manufacturer in a very competitive world market?

And some new questions have arisen:

Manufacturers in Europe and China are selling more and more competitive EV models in their home markets. If Panasonic are seeing Tesla reducing order volumes for their batteries won't they start to help these other manufacturers develop the next generation of EV batteries?

Reducing production levels in a big operation usually causes major reductions in cash flow because the cost of earlier production has to be financed by lower sales income - will this be an issue by Q2?

Will European customers love Autonomous Mode on our crowded roads or will they just see it as a ridiculously expensive cruise control?

I've been impressed by Elon Musk's ability to keep those plates spinning but it may be getting harder as the cold wind blows from Europe and China.

I still think that Marketing issues rather than engineering issues will be key in 2019.

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

Tesla’s near-term future depends heavily on the reception of its Model 3 in Europe.

But for now, Tesla will have to sell the Model 3 there without Autopilot.

Although European safety regulators approved the Model 3 vehicle for sale in Europe in January, they have not approved Autopilot — the controversial driver-assist mode that offers automatic cruise control, lane keeping and lane changing — The Times has learned.

“At this moment the autopilot is not part of the original Type Approval of the Tesla Model 3,” Joke Willemsen, spokesman for RDW, the Netherlands-based organization in charge of the Model 3 approval process for Europe, said via email.

- https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/ ... story.html

Also we're all looking at China and Europe as new markets, but California only buys about 10% of EV's sold in the US, why does it account for such a disproportionate number of Teslas, and why has Tesla failed to make significant inroads nationwide?

- https://evadoption.com/ev-market-share/ ... are-state/

[odysseus2000]

According to seeking alpha, Tesla Autopilot is approved:

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3431356-m ... -autopilot

I have no idea if this or the previous statements that it is not approved are right.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

According to seeking alpha, Tesla Autopilot is approved:

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3431356-m ... -autopilot

I have no idea if this or the previous statements that it is not approved are right.

Regards,

They cite Bloomberg, but no link.

Searching Bloomberg for Tesla doesn't throw anything up. CAn't see anything on Musk's Twitter.

Doesn't mean it's not true.

Did find this though:

SpaceX Texas Launch Site Risks Being Split in Two by Border Wall

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... hyperdrive

and this:

Retired Electric-Car Batteries to Chill Beer, Grill Sausages
The first batches of batteries from electric and hybrid vehicles are hitting retirement age, yet they aren’t bound for landfills. Instead, they’ll spend their golden years chilling beer, powering car-charging stations and storing energy for homes and grids. Bloomberg's David Stringer reports on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Australia." (Source: Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... hyperdrive