Indeed, their cathodes tested in at only 3% cobalt by weight, which is mind-bogglingly little. They've stated that they're quickly en route to using no or nearly-no cobalt. Based on the test results so far, I believe it.
1) The "whistleblower" he refers to is the confessed sabateur.
2) The 9% was a mix of middle management and the being-phased-out Solar City sales division (Tesla's solar division is switching to an exclusive focus on solar roofing products). Tesla has long been criticized for spending too much on SG&A. But of course, expect the shorts to make a fuss when they make SG&A cuts too.
3) The "fire" was something suspicious smouldering in a vent. No impact to production. BTW, I love how you guys focus on every incident, no matter how minor, at Tesla, and completely ignore every issue at every other place, no matter how major. For example, at BMW's SC plant, a worker died from having his head crunched up by a lift. Did you even hear about it?
4) The "tent" is a Sprung building. Cheap, fast, and can last for decades. They're popular for athletic buildings, warehouses, hangars, military applications, mining, etc. There was even one at "Ground Zero" in New York after the terrorist attacks. Reno Tahoe Airport used one for ticketing / checkin / baggage for years.
Re, #2 and #4: please decide on whether you think Tesla is spending too much money or too little so that your arguments can be consistent. Thanks!
Gross profits are what remain from the revenue when you remove the cost of goods sold.
Which is why it's part of gross profits. C = A - B. A and B are both components of C.
And no matter how many times you assert it, Tesla's gross profits - aka, "Revenue - COGS" - are not on a downward tend. Your claims are flatly and plainly contradicted by the quarterly statements. Repeatedly asserting otherwise doesn't make it true.
With Tesla, we have COGS consistently increasing more than the revenue growth
Gross profits being Revenue - COGS and being generally ~25%-ish before the model 3, dropping (obviously) during scaleup's early phases, and now all the way back up to ~19% and well on their way back towards ~25%, the numbers tell a very different story.
R&D scaling is far closer to constant (aka no scaling) with volume than linear. For really bloody obvious reasons, and it's embarrassing that this didn't occur to you.
What combination of cuts would you use to actually start turning a profit?
Not cuts. Scaling. The very thing Tesla is doing right at this moment. The very thing they've been spending to do.
Actually, Musk's only comment about the lawsuit on Twitter was:
There is more, but the actions of a few bad apples will not stop Tesla from reaching its goals. With 40,000 people, the worst 1 in 1000 will have issues. That’s still ~40 people.
FYI: Musk has no salary. His only compensation is his stock. And he only gets more stock if the company meets some extremely aggressive benchmarks. Otherwise, he's working for free.
That's not to pity him; he's plenty wealthy as it is. I just wanted to correct your comment. He earns no salary from Tesla.
...and security controls if this guy was able to do this and nobody can figure it out unless he admits to it
Please read the lawsuit. They found evidence that he was doing this and confronted him about it, only getting the confession after showing him the evidence they had of him doing it.
Indeed. A teardown of the Model 3 contracted by German automakers estimated that the cost to manufacture the Model 3 LR at a full production rate would be $28k.
No matter how many times you make it, that's still a terrible argument. SG&A does not scale linearly with number of vehicles, and much of the costs of scaling up production / sales comes in advance of the actual revenue from them. And R&D is closer to constant than linear with respect to volume.
I didn't even bother to mention there that, hey, you remember that 9% they cut from the workforce (mostly middle management, and much of the old Solar City sales division, as they're switching that to roofing products)? That's a SG&A cut. But that's actually beside the point.
Not at all? There is not a single Tesla product that is made on schedule, and they are going back to where everyone else is. But then denial isn't a river in Egypt -- it is what happens in Muskland.
1. The conversation was about automation.
2. You can view the general market's view of the company in its stock price. Hint: people very strongly disagree with you. Also hint: most of Tesla's stock is held by large institutional investors.
What on Earth are you talking about? COGS is part of gross profits. Gross profit equals revenue minus COGS. Tesla has generally maintained ~25% gross profits, only dropping recently with Model 3 production start, and that's been going back up as they've been scaling back up, now around 19%.
I think you mixed up your short arguments. You're supposed to say that Tesla's SG&A is too high, because it's a standard (and false) short pretense that SG&A 1) scales linearly with sales, and 2) has no lag between when you need to start spending and when you get revenue from the associated sales.
With cancellation rates at 1/3 of the preorders for model 3,
It was 1/4th. Over the course of two years. With new reservations keeping pace or outpacing cancellations. With a reservation list that even at 5k per week would take them nearly two years to get through. With massive potential for reservation growth.
Complete. Non. Issue.
instead of wasting time on bullshit.
Half a billion dollars from the federal government to customers - some of which will be spent on extra options packages - is anything but "bullshit". Giving that up to move some deliveries forward a couple weeks would be moronic.
The only scenario where Tesla doesn't want to increase output is that they lose money on the variable costs - something you Tesla lemmings have been denying is true (although it is).
Meanwhile, Tesla has been upping their capacity from 2k at the start of the quarter to 3,5k in the middle and is now headed toward 5k. Maintaining production through most of the quarter, avoiding tolling the credit by instead saturating the Canadian market of first-production orders.
But by all means if you disagree, make sure you got those short positions in!
No, you can't. Not during a scaleup period. Scaleup fundamentally requires downtimes; it's a natural part of the process.
During sustained operations? Yes, you absolutely care about averaging them in. But that's not the figure that people care about during a scaleup. The figure that they care about is, "if we stopped scaling up today, stopped taking down the lines for upgrades, how many could we produce per week?". And that's not the figure that the Bloomberg tracker gives.
As car as I can tell, you're not talking about building a line for a new platform (like, say, the N platform, GMX 130, CD3), you're talking about a line for a new body on an existing platform. Did you ever set up a line for a brand new platform?
SG&A != gross margins SG&A scaling is not linear with vehicle output, and more to the point a significant amount has to be spent in advance of scaleup.
Minor correction: This is a common myth; it's not battery overheating that prevents S and X from doing sustained track duty, but motor overheating - in particular, rotor overheating. Induction motors mean you have induction currents in the rotor, which means rotor heating. There are limits on how much you can cool a rotor; cooling the stator is much easier, as you can extend alumium or copper vanes from it in all directions and run coolant along them.
Tesla's new primary motor is PM and thus has no rotor induction currents, and thus can do sustained track duty. Now, with Model 3 dual motor and performance configurations, the front motor is induction - but any time you're not running a 100% throttle, that's the motor it ramps down first, so in almost any realistic scenario, it won't get hot enough to overheat the rotor. The motor config on the Roadster is at this point unknown, apart from the fact that it will use at least some PM motors, and there will be two motors in the back (one for each wheel), one in front.
Slashdot Mirror
General consensus seems to be that that paper is bunk and shouldn't have been published.
Indeed, their cathodes tested in at only 3% cobalt by weight, which is mind-bogglingly little. They've stated that they're quickly en route to using no or nearly-no cobalt. Based on the test results so far, I believe it.
Just so people know:
1) The "whistleblower" he refers to is the confessed sabateur.
2) The 9% was a mix of middle management and the being-phased-out Solar City sales division (Tesla's solar division is switching to an exclusive focus on solar roofing products). Tesla has long been criticized for spending too much on SG&A. But of course, expect the shorts to make a fuss when they make SG&A cuts too.
3) The "fire" was something suspicious smouldering in a vent. No impact to production. BTW, I love how you guys focus on every incident, no matter how minor, at Tesla, and completely ignore every issue at every other place, no matter how major. For example, at BMW's SC plant, a worker died from having his head crunched up by a lift. Did you even hear about it?
4) The "tent" is a Sprung building. Cheap, fast, and can last for decades. They're popular for athletic buildings, warehouses, hangars, military applications, mining, etc. There was even one at "Ground Zero" in New York after the terrorist attacks. Reno Tahoe Airport used one for ticketing / checkin / baggage for years.
Re, #2 and #4: please decide on whether you think Tesla is spending too much money or too little so that your arguments can be consistent. Thanks!
Which is why it's part of gross profits. C = A - B. A and B are both components of C.
And no matter how many times you assert it, Tesla's gross profits - aka, "Revenue - COGS" - are not on a downward tend. Your claims are flatly and plainly contradicted by the quarterly statements. Repeatedly asserting otherwise doesn't make it true.
Gross profits being Revenue - COGS and being generally ~25%-ish before the model 3, dropping (obviously) during scaleup's early phases, and now all the way back up to ~19% and well on their way back towards ~25%, the numbers tell a very different story.
R&D scaling is far closer to constant (aka no scaling) with volume than linear. For really bloody obvious reasons, and it's embarrassing that this didn't occur to you.
Not cuts. Scaling. The very thing Tesla is doing right at this moment. The very thing they've been spending to do.
Is teh Google too hard for you?
Only if SG&A 1) scales linearly with production volumes (it doesn't), and 2) involves no scaleup time delay (it does).
Which is why I wrote "that's actually beside the point"
Actually, Musk's only comment about the lawsuit on Twitter was:
FYI: Musk has no salary. His only compensation is his stock. And he only gets more stock if the company meets some extremely aggressive benchmarks. Otherwise, he's working for free.
That's not to pity him; he's plenty wealthy as it is. I just wanted to correct your comment. He earns no salary from Tesla.
Please read the lawsuit. They found evidence that he was doing this and confronted him about it, only getting the confession after showing him the evidence they had of him doing it.
Read the lawsuit. All applicable laws are (obviously) cited.
Indeed. A teardown of the Model 3 contracted by German automakers estimated that the cost to manufacture the Model 3 LR at a full production rate would be $28k.
No matter how many times you make it, that's still a terrible argument. SG&A does not scale linearly with number of vehicles, and much of the costs of scaling up production / sales comes in advance of the actual revenue from them. And R&D is closer to constant than linear with respect to volume.
See the post immediately above yours, written three hours before you wrote this.
I didn't even bother to mention there that, hey, you remember that 9% they cut from the workforce (mostly middle management, and much of the old Solar City sales division, as they're switching that to roofing products)? That's a SG&A cut. But that's actually beside the point.
The lion's share of Tesla's stock is owned by major institutional investors.
1. The conversation was about automation.
2. You can view the general market's view of the company in its stock price. Hint: people very strongly disagree with you. Also hint: most of Tesla's stock is held by large institutional investors.
What on Earth are you talking about? COGS is part of gross profits. Gross profit equals revenue minus COGS. Tesla has generally maintained ~25% gross profits, only dropping recently with Model 3 production start, and that's been going back up as they've been scaling back up, now around 19%.
I think you mixed up your short arguments. You're supposed to say that Tesla's SG&A is too high, because it's a standard (and false) short pretense that SG&A 1) scales linearly with sales, and 2) has no lag between when you need to start spending and when you get revenue from the associated sales.
It was 1/4th. Over the course of two years. With new reservations keeping pace or outpacing cancellations. With a reservation list that even at 5k per week would take them nearly two years to get through. With massive potential for reservation growth.
Complete. Non. Issue.
Half a billion dollars from the federal government to customers - some of which will be spent on extra options packages - is anything but "bullshit". Giving that up to move some deliveries forward a couple weeks would be moronic.
Meanwhile, Tesla has been upping their capacity from 2k at the start of the quarter to 3,5k in the middle and is now headed toward 5k. Maintaining production through most of the quarter, avoiding tolling the credit by instead saturating the Canadian market of first-production orders.
But by all means if you disagree, make sure you got those short positions in!
Not at all. They just went too far too fast. It's still a very heavily automation-focused facility.
No, you can't. Not during a scaleup period. Scaleup fundamentally requires downtimes; it's a natural part of the process.
During sustained operations? Yes, you absolutely care about averaging them in. But that's not the figure that people care about during a scaleup. The figure that they care about is, "if we stopped scaling up today, stopped taking down the lines for upgrades, how many could we produce per week?". And that's not the figure that the Bloomberg tracker gives.
As car as I can tell, you're not talking about building a line for a new platform (like, say, the N platform, GMX 130, CD3), you're talking about a line for a new body on an existing platform. Did you ever set up a line for a brand new platform?
SG&A != gross margins
SG&A scaling is not linear with vehicle output, and more to the point a significant amount has to be spent in advance of scaleup.
The press calling it a "tent" seems to be just another attempt to make a dig at Tesla. Just like when people call EVs "go karts".
This isn't a paint shop. It's GA4 (General Assembly #4). Just one portion of assembling a vehicle.
Minor correction: This is a common myth; it's not battery overheating that prevents S and X from doing sustained track duty, but motor overheating - in particular, rotor overheating. Induction motors mean you have induction currents in the rotor, which means rotor heating. There are limits on how much you can cool a rotor; cooling the stator is much easier, as you can extend alumium or copper vanes from it in all directions and run coolant along them.
Tesla's new primary motor is PM and thus has no rotor induction currents, and thus can do sustained track duty. Now, with Model 3 dual motor and performance configurations, the front motor is induction - but any time you're not running a 100% throttle, that's the motor it ramps down first, so in almost any realistic scenario, it won't get hot enough to overheat the rotor. The motor config on the Roadster is at this point unknown, apart from the fact that it will use at least some PM motors, and there will be two motors in the back (one for each wheel), one in front.