Musk endeavours

[dspp]

@BD,
- about 10k of the 14k undelivered would be approx what one would expect to be in the RoW shipping system. Not sure about the rest.

- the 35GWh matches c.380k cars + storage when I put calcs on here last week, so 23GWh is going to be eyewateringly poor if so, but see answer to PG as well (but if there is 14k built into stock/shipping that helps fewer tears)

- the 500k is a 12m forwards number so apples != oranges (but please don't ask me to be a Musk twotter apologist)

- ask H over leasing. Looks like a typical demand smoothing tool to me, just as with rental fleets. Aim is to max factory capacity utilisation, within sane limits.


@PG,
- see https://seekingalpha.com/article/425420 ... fitability where TokyoPicker has a fair synopsis of things. Some of the commentary in the thread below is also helpful but most is the usual noise.

- My take on it is that if Panasonic build only to whatever is Tesla's daily production schedule then, even if they had a 24x365 technical capacity of 35GWh then the actual delivered capacity at quarter end would be inevitably lower. Maybe 23GWh. And if Tesla order (say) 50GWh on any given day Panasonic would just look at it and say "max is 35, please reorder". So unless Tesla are prepared to build cell stock (and pay for it !!) then actual real world capacity will be lower. That's before getting into anything 'technical'.

- I also think Tesla tried to use it as a price renegotiation and got their bluff called by Panasonc. And if you see the link it seems Panasonic have tied their other 5 (?) factories to Toyota (which implies, by the way, that Toyota will soon be ditching the hybrid pathway as a deadend) and that is very typical alliancing by Japanese companies.

- And Panasonic and Trsla are both rightly gaming over the Shanghai factory.

- Overall I think both are right, but that Tesla are righter. All the news here needs to be read with close attention to detail and context.

- I couldn't run a company with the senior staff turnover that Musk inflicts on himself (and ! shareholders !)

please excuse brevity, am in airport (sorry, no longer in airport, this should have gone out 6h ago)
dspp

[BobbyD]

@BD,
- about 10k of the 14k undelivered would be approx what one would expect to be in the RoW shipping system. Not sure about the rest.

- the 35GWh matches c.380k cars + storage when I put calcs on here last week, so 23GWh is going to be eyewateringly poor if so, but see answer to PG as well (but if there is 14k built into stock/shipping that helps fewer tears)

- the 500k is a 12m forwards number so apples != oranges (but please don't ask me to be a Musk twotter apologist)

- ask H over leasing. Looks like a typical demand smoothing tool to me, just as with rental fleets. Aim is to max factory capacity utilisation, within sane limits.

If Tesla is supply constrained it seems like an odd time to choose to develop a pool of model 3's, to open up new international delivery chains which have to be stuffed full of cars which could be delivered locally, and to start leasing cars which they could sell outright for large chunks of cash.

If they have customers queuing up to suck their cars out of their factory there would be no demand slump to smooth.

Taking today as the first day of the next 12 months they are already well behind the 500,000 car pacemaker...tomorrow they will be further behind, come Wednesday... Assuming Musk is also right that Tesla production is constrained by Panasonic supply unless some Panasonic engineer wakes up in the next couple of months with a 2000W bulb burning over his head pops out of bed shouting, "Eureka," runs down to the factory in his pyjamas and turns the little red knob on the Pana line from normal to fast this estimate does not look credible, which given he is currently in discussions with the SEC about his Twitter use...

[TUK020]

Historically incumbents are murdered by secular change.

Incumbents usually ride out technology changes. It is where the technology enables new classes of customer, new distribution channels, new usage models, that they get into trouble. i.e. the technology becomes disruptive to the business model.

20 years ago, the company with the leading digital camera technology was Kodak.
It wasn't the shift to digital that killed them. It was the fact that people stopped printing their pictures, but taking them and sending them by phone.

VW will ride the change to BEV.
What happens on Autonomous Driving is anyone's bet

[redsturgeon]

Historically incumbents are murdered by secular change.

Incumbents usually ride out technology changes. It is where the technology enables new classes of customer, new distribution channels, new usage models, that they get into trouble. i.e. the technology becomes disruptive to the business model.

20 years ago, the company with the leading digital camera technology was Kodak.
It wasn't the shift to digital that killed them. It was the fact that people stopped printing their pictures, but taking them and sending them by phone.

VW will ride the change to BEV.
What happens on Autonomous Driving is anyone's bet

I agree with these sentiments. As a photographer I have a bit of insight into the digital revolution. Nikon and Canon were always major players at the high end of the analogue camera world, along with the likes of Leica and Hasselblad at the extreme pro end. These companies still thrive in the digital age. What has really changed is the advent of camera technology in smart phones. Now there is no need for the average snapper to own a stand alone camera and it is just the serious hobbyists and pros that need or want stand alone digital cameras.

The corollary from this is that the best legacy ICE manufacturers will survive, eg. the likes of VW, Toyota, Ford while some of the smaller less efficient manufacturers will struggle with the change. At the sporty end the likes of Ferrari, Porsche Lamborghini etc will live on and Bentleys and Rollers will still have their place.

As you say, once autonomous driving appears then all bets are off, there may remain a niche for very high end ICE vehicles, as long as regulators allow them on the roads, but the obvious shape of an everyday autonomous "taxi" vehicle does not look much like a Tesla. Think more of a "white goods" type of form factor that is built for maximum space, practicality, robustness, reliability and safety, a "pod' more than a sports car.

John

[tjh290633]

I had a ride in one of the new battery electric London taxis the other day. Very impressive with six seats in the back. Now that is what I call a sensible application. I can't see autonomous operation managing a U-turn in a busy London street.

TJH

[Howard]

I had a ride in one of the new battery electric London taxis the other day. Very impressive with six seats in the back. Now that is what I call a sensible application. I can't see autonomous operation managing a U-turn in a busy London street.

TJH

Mrs H and I rode in a Chinese-made smooth and spacious battery electric London Taxi three or four years ago. The driver told us it was charged during his lunch break and again in the evening.

It seemed the ideal vehicle to reduce pollution and we couldn't see how it (and vehicles like it) wouldn't be welcomed by Londoners. However, the slow take-up of EVs for this purpose shows that the switch to electric power isn't that easy. The problem is that it isn't possible, even in London, to provide the necessary charging network for taxis, let alone all cars and buses.

Addison Lee announced an order for 1,200 VW vehicles in January. The first batch are diesels!! Very low emissions apparently. A L would like to convert to Hybrids or full EVs but to quote their spokeswoman: “We are keen to move quickly to an electric fleet for the benefit of London’s environment, but are limited by London’s charging network, which as the report by Dr. Rebecca Driver demonstrated, cannot support a shift to electric by the capital’s private hire and taxi industry.”

So Ody's dream of a sudden, fast switch to BEVs across the world with Tesla overwhelming the German and Chinese manufacturers doesn't look a likely scenario. There is a wall of money ready to invest in serious players who can help cities like London solve this problem. Ludicrous acceleration is not what is needed nor spats with battery providers nor wild claims about autonomous cars. Cities need practical modest and reliable cars which we can all trust. Addison Lee obviously think VW (with all their problems!) are a serious player, but there are many others.

regards

Howard

Link to Addison Lee order is http://www.addisonlee.com/addlib/addiso ... et-london/

[odysseus2000]

Great to have these alternative views on the ongoing move to BEV.

There is now a consensus that BEV have great potential, but that is where it ends, with disagreements over time scales, available charging, competing manufactures...

Potential robotic driving has almost no consensus other than many believing it is not likely to be practical at level 5 (no human input).

Probably some players will make a fortune out of what ever comes and that keeps me interested in the BEV revolution which I think is in its very early infancy.

Robotics being as yet still constrained by practicality of approaches, cost etc with again potential fortunes, likely far in excess of BEV imho, awaiting any body who can get it to be practical.

Interesting to watch.

Regards,

[dspp]

AL don't want to pay for charging infrastructure. They want it to be provided for them, free of charge.

VW, Ford, Toyota, GM, etc don't want to pay for charging infrastructure either.

The fuel companies, and the forecourt companies (Shell, Exxon, BP, Tesco, Sainsbury) don't want to pay for charging infrastructure.

So effectively they all passively colluded to perpetuate the status quo. They could do this because there was no penalty to not do so.

The only one that cut through the crud was Tesla. They ponied their own money up and built the vehicles, and built the charging system.

Now everyone else is still claiming it can't be done, and still has their hand out to get someone else to pay for it. But now the market is penalising them with death if they don't move to change.

Evolution works by culling the gene pool of those who fail to evolve and adapt to fit their environment.

We are seeing evolution in action.

It is - literally - existential for some.

regards, dspp

[BobbyD]

AL don't want to pay for charging infrastructure. They want it to be provided for them, free of charge.

VW, Ford, Toyota, GM, etc don't want to pay for charging infrastructure either.

The fuel companies, and the forecourt companies (Shell, Exxon, BP, Tesco, Sainsbury) don't want to pay for charging infrastructure.

So effectively they all passively colluded to perpetuate the status quo. They could do this because there was no penalty to not do so.

The only one that cut through the crud was Tesla. They ponied their own money up and built the vehicles, and built the charging system.

Now everyone else is still claiming it can't be done, and still has their hand out to get someone else to pay for it. But now the market is penalising them with death if they don't move to change.

VW, Ford and Daimler are actively developing a charging network with next gen 350kW charger, in Europe whilst VW are investing their dieselgate fines in Electrifying America in the states. Why invest in a network which will be out of date before there is any significant demand for it? Tesco have a joint venture with VW, BP own Chargemaster the biggest uk charging network and is rolling out superchargers across the network, Shell has chargers across Europe and has declared its aim to be the biggest electricity company by the 2030's...

I don't recall the car companies owning the charging infrastructure for ICE. Why do you think anybody interested in producing cars should have to be involved in charging?

Companies didn't go out of their way to pour their shareholder's money down the drain? Never saw that one coming. Something you don't see in any other sector either. Well done Tesla, and thanks for creating the electric car market, we'll take it from here.

Who is claiming it can't be done?

Oh and $450 million of Tesla's own money came from a US government loan ...and that's before you get in to taxpayer funded BEV subsidies on every single Tesla sold in the US, UK, Norway, China...

Cheer up it's almost almost Friday!

[BobbyD]

Mini Cooper SE predicted under 140 miles range, £30k. i3 guts in ICE mini shell.

- https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-revie ... ectric-ev/

[odysseus2000]

Mini Cooper SE predicted under 140 miles range, £30k. i3 guts in ICE mini shell.

- https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-revie ... ectric-ev/

The local garage man said he loved the BMW mini, the repair work that they get fixing them is almost enough to run his entire garage.

Now they put out a low range nonsense version with batteries.

German auto has not figured out BEV.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

If you know anything about energy then this short case for Tesla is hilarious:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/425499 ... brid?app=1

If you include co2 from the making of a model 3, ought you not include it for the making of Toyota?

There are numerous other laughs in this, giving me many guffaws.

Regards,

PS if you want another laugh, read this short analysis of Qcom

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-qualc ... KKCN1PH1RE

and then look at the price of Qcom stock. Hint, it did a strong negative fall.

Regards,

[Howard]

AL don't want to pay for charging infrastructure. They want it to be provided for them, free of charge.

The only one that cut through the crud was Tesla. They ponied their own money up and built the vehicles, and built the charging system.

Evolution works by culling the gene pool of those who fail to evolve and adapt to fit their environment.

We are seeing evolution in action.

It is - literally - existential for some.

regards, dspp

Tesla has invested in charging points to support their fan-base in Southern California and some other areas where they have reasonable sales coverage. Elektrek states that there are over 10,000 Tesla superchargers worldwide (but the number of locations is obviously much smaller around 1,400). Wikipedia asserts that Tesla have banned taxis and commercial vehicles from using their chargers.

The scale of this investment by Tesla is modest. I believe Tesla have paid for six supercharger sites in London.

Transport for London is very proud of its investment in chargers. However its performance is pretty minimal - quote from their site “There are currently more than 150 rapid charge points across London - we're committed to installing at least 300 by 2020”.

The research quoted by Addison Lee (see my link in the post a couple of days ago) “found that if just 25% of the 108,700 taxis and private hire vehicles operating in London went electric, over 2,100 rapid-charge points would be needed to keep them operational.”

So if my research is right (and please do correct me if it isn’t), no organisation has really addressed the supply of a significant number of chargers in London. With six charging points in London and only around 1,400 across the world, dspp you can hardly claim that “The only one that cut through the crud was Tesla. They ponied their own money up and built the vehicles, and built the charging system”. If London is a good example, for BEVs to take a significant share of the ICE market in cities worldwide there needs to be an absolutely massive investment in charging points and their electricity supply which only Governments can afford.

I understand that if all my neighbours bought BEVs and invested in superchargers in our garages and only half of us charged simultaneously we’d virtually melt the electricity supply cables to our road.

So, will this charger situation change quickly? The introduction of low-cost BEVs may encourage improvements. But longer-range batteries will be even more power hungry. And, certainly in cities in the Northern hemisphere, local solar power isn't the answer.

A rapid change (less than 5 years) to 50% BEVs on the road in the UK doesn’t look likely. So plenty of time for the big players to change production processes to meet demand. And in the meantime, if Addison Lee are an example of fleet players, there will be huge (and profitable) sales of low emission diesel and petrol cars in the near term, because there is no other viable option.

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

Mini Cooper SE predicted under 140 miles range, £30k. i3 guts in ICE mini shell.

- https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-revie ... ectric-ev/

The local garage man said he loved the BMW mini, the repair work that they get fixing them is almost enough to run his entire garage.

Now they put out a low range nonsense version with batteries.

German auto has not figured out BEV.

Regards,

You know in some circles lumping all Germans together just because they are German might be considered somewhat erm, narrow minded...

The cooper SE looks very much like the new e-Golf, just far too late.

If you include co2 from the making of a model 3, ought you not include it for the making of Toyota?

Why bother with either of those dirty monsters when the VW ID will be carbon neutral throughout its lifetime as long as it is charged with green leccy?

So if my research is right (and please do correct me if it isn’t), no organisation has really addressed the supply of a significant number of chargers in London.

There are loads of public chargers in London and around the continent. There aren't many superchargers, but then there are barely any cars which would currently benefit. Both numbers are rising.

London might not actually be the place most in need of superchargers, halfway up the M6 would be far more useful, although I have no doubt both will come. As more BEV's hit the road they will be able to sustain more charging sites. More revenue will bring more investment, especially from companies which need to diversify out of fossil infrastructure and have convenient slabs of concrete in useful places on which you might like to charge your car given half a chance.

https://www.zap-map.com/live/ - Purps are better chargers.

[dspp]

Tesla have put in a sensibly placed continent-scale rapid charging network in North America, Europe, and increasingly China as well as other markets of interest to them. No other company has done that. Plenty others are doing the yack yack, but none have actually delivered except Tesla.

Here is the real status of the charger network for all EV in UK, which you can filter by type.
https://www.zap-map.com/live/
If you look at Tesla Supercharger you can understand why a colleague struggles slightly once he is north of Dundee, but if you then look at the Tesla DestinationChargers you can see that he is OK. He cruises the whole of the UK without any hassle. Real world, real driving, business & leisure. There are plenty of folk cruising USA-Can and wider Europe in the same way. China is a very city-centric network but is building fast.

Try pulling the same trick on anything else and you will at present struggle. But that too is changing fast.

Those of you dissing solar panels in northern countries clearly don't own much solar. I do and I could run 11-months of the year off my little 4kW array, both for my house and to do 10-12,000 miles per year in an EV (inc any Tesla) except for the minor matter of not having off-street parking in my place (ok, that sucks).

Those of you complaining that you can't all do a 300A charge simultaneously clearly haven't tried getting all of you into the same petrol station forecourt simultaneously either. All infrastructure has capacity constraints. Add a bit of maths and physics to your understanding and you can give up the dino-juice faster. A lot of EVs can live off existing home cabling and supply constraints as probabalistically they don't all get charged from zero to 300-miles every night in the same half hour. Nor do they pull the same trick at the dino-juice station.

At a societal level we can move faster than we are. Some individuals and some companies are pushing the pace. Others are holding back. I'm not terribly keen on getting an arrow in the back by investing in the one at the front, but equally I sure as heck don't want to be investing in the sick & the lame at the back. And shooting arrows out of stupidity is not sensible either.

Mind you, the road rage charger wars on the autoroute du soleil in France in vacation season could get pretty intense in the coming years

regards, dspp

[dspp]

A fact-filled piece about Tesla/Panasonic. Some of the facts are misleading (e.g. scrappage at Panasonic is in the section of the factory run by Panasonic), but nonetheless there is some meat on these bones.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/425506 ... oses-risks

[PeterGray]

Those of you complaining that you can't all do a 300A charge simultaneously clearly haven't tried getting all of you into the same petrol station forecourt simultaneously either.

But refilling a tank is a lot quicker than even the best recharging, and is going to remain so, at least for some time, so you need much bigger areas and far more "refueling" points.

Of course these issues can, and will be resolved - at least partly - but there are real infrastructure issues associated with EV uptake - lack of off st parking being one.

There are well provided areas, I live 1 mile from a row of 8 Tesla chargers, they are nearly always all empty! But it's one of the inevitably absurdities of early EV development that we have model specific chargers around the place, there's a Porsche one not far away too. There's going to have to be standardisation.

[BobbyD]

There are well provided areas, I live 1 mile from a row of 8 Tesla chargers, they are nearly always all empty! But it's one of the inevitably absurdities of early EV development that we have model specific chargers around the place, there's a Porsche one not far away too. There's going to have to be standardisation.

There has been a standardisation, in Europe atleast Tesla has moved to CCS for model 3 and has a CCS adapter for S's and X's. That doesn't mean that different networks/manufacturers are going to open their infrastructure to all users, although anybody looking to be an electric petrol station rather than enhancing their brand is unlikely to be that discerning.

Regarding charge speed the Taycan can take 62 miles charge in 4 minutes from a suitable charger, so this is going to drop significantly over time. It does raise the question as to whether we'll end up with a massive oversupply as charge rates and energy density increase...

[odysseus2000]

A fact-filled piece about Tesla/Panasonic. Some of the facts are misleading (e.g. scrappage at Panasonic is in the section of the factory run by Panasonic), but nonetheless there is some meat on these bones.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/425506 ... oses-risks

Super interesting article.

Very difficult to know what is going on and whether the Maxwell acquisition is a red herring.

The general view might be something like it must be extremely difficult for Tesla managers to control quality when things are running 24-7, and if the reports of battery cell losses are correct there is clearly a need for worker training & education & good interface between the multiple shifts that will be needed. Alternatively are the problems occurring through failures of the computer manufacturing, such that it is not the workers at fault, but the computer controlled manufacturing?

Dunno, one would have to be on the factory floor to have any real idea. Instinctively one tends to believe the Panasonic side based on the experience of Japanese products, and that Musk is simply trying to deflect blame from his side. However, we don't really know. The author of the article has made his side with Panasonic & perhaps this is right even if it does feel a bit too feeding to predujices built over years.

To get a more accurate view is going to take time & more indications of what future Tesla sales will be.

Every competitor & his dog wants Tesla dead, but at the same time doesn't want to cripple their own legacy business, by trying to compete with good models, hence the slew of 3rd cars coming out of Germany & the endless pleading with politicians to give them more time, tax funded charging networks etc

Imho for now it is Tesla's game to lose, if they continue to execute & sell then their technical lead over all other manufacturers will grow them into a very big business.

Regards,

[dspp]

I think that North America and Europe will standardise around CCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System) which as BD notes Tesla are likely to adopt globally imho, perhaps with dual cable solutions in some regions (https://electricrevs.com/2018/11/14/tes ... s-it-mean/ or https://electrek.co/2018/12/12/tesla-du ... ercharger/) or adaptors (https://electrek.co/2019/04/03/tesla-cc ... irst-look/) or maybe elements of both.

My personal guess is that Chademo will wither and die as a standard even in Japan, as it simply isn't a big enough market. But the Japanese are well used to using standards to block foreign access to their home market so I could be wrong. Also there are signs that China may flip and adopts Chademo, or unify it with their GBT standard (https://insideevs.com/china-chademo-fast-charging/). Certainly China has the scale to support a standard.

So we could end up with two connectors and their corresponding standards for much of the coming decade.

regards, dspp