I believe Trump is for free and fair trade. I don't think anyone disagrees that China has been taking advantage of the American people by subverting U.S. politicians from both parties and the Wall Street / Silicon Valley elites, the same b(_)_) tards that caused the banking failure in 2007...and none of them did prison time...in fact they were put in charge of the fix...it's sick. I remember when Papa Bush, a republican, gave his 1000 points of light speech and announced the "new world order". Since then we've had Clinton, Dubya, and Obama pushing the China agenda and letting them and our elites sell out the U.S. Trump is a different cat, he said he was going to clean out the swamp and he's doing it.
8/26/19: Time to look at NIO? Filled gap this morning: $2.83 - 2.94 + .02; beaten up due to trade war; hit $13.80 after favorable "60 mins." report last year. www.nio.com
I dunno, but I imagine like every other company doing business in China, that TSLA had to give the CCP their battery and other technology. The NIO is manufactured in a CCP plant. Maybe Tom knows more about what TSLA had to give up. Regardless though, the NIO is already faster, has more features, and is more luxurious, and cheaper, and going forward if you live on the Mainland and want to remain in good favor with the CCP you're probably going to buy a NIO over a TSLA. Now the young man I was mentoring from China told me that the TSLA has greater appeal but at the same time he was a card carrying CCP member and admitted that you have to be if you want any chance of career advancement and the better things in life. So, yeah, you don't question the CCP and if they say buy NIO over TSLA, well...
NIOs sales are horrible to say the least and they've had many issues. If youre looking for a safer Chinese EV bet go with BYDDF, their profits recently tripled and they just opened a plant in Canada... Almost a no brainer at this point
My apologies to @TomB16 about the GF3 updates. I was going for dramatic effect but it was over the top. The updates aren't really as boring as a nursing home newsletter...I still think that's funny but its not true and I think he may have taken it too seriously, and rightfully so. As for unpatriotic, well, I guess we'll have to wait and see if Trump makes his order to get out of China official. Anyway, sorry Tom. I don't know what's wrong with me, I blame it on those few years of my youth living on the east coast where wise cracks are fairly normal behavior. Please bring back the updates.
I too appreciate the level of detail in @TomB16's updates. I'm definitely not as bullish as him on the company, but the updates are great. I wish I was more bullish on them, because it would mean a nationwide shift off fossil fuels.
Tesla, being a non-distributing company, accounts for just under 1% of my market holdings. I've held Tesla for 3 years and it's currently trading a bit under my blended share price. I believe the company will do well and I will be rewarded at some point in the next 7 years. I don't expect to become wildly wealthy, the way buying a few hundred shares of 1980s Microsoft did. I own Tesla because I like what they are doing. I like the company. They are working hard. I'm confident I will make adequate, below my personal average, returns. What's more, I'm happy with that. The shift away from fossil fuels has begun. The reason it isn't happening more quickly is because it is not possible to shift faster. 100% of the EV global battery supply is pre-sold and we aren't building battery factories quickly enough. In this environment, the company with the most batteries produces the most cars. The talk of GM, Ford, Rivian, VW, Audi, Porsche, <insert name of next Tesla killer here> comes from people who don't understand the EV supply chain. When a scarce resource is in high demand, it would typically command a premium price. Nobody can compete with Tesla on battery cost (the most significant single cost item in an EV). VW has the right idea with their talk of building their own battery supply chain. I don't dismiss the idea of VW buying Tesla. There would be significant synergies but almost all of them would favour VW, so it would probably need to be a hostile takeover and I'm not sure that is possible. I put the odds of this happening at 10%. Tesla kicked the tires on a Chinese factory for 18 months, before pursuing the facility in Shanghai. GF3 is in a free trade zone. Tesla is sharing no tech of any kind with the Chinese. The Chinese government tried to force the tech sharing issue in a forced joint venture but Tesla was prepared to walk. Tesla negotiated an artful deal that achieved what they needed and made everyone look good. ... but let's turn the conversation to something that matters. The paint shop is currently painting test bodies in white that are rolling through the chassis assembly line. Production cannot start in earnest until the electrical substation is online. I'm less confident it will be complete by the end of September than I am in the rest of the factory but a few weeks or months won't be all that relevant seven years from now when I'm selling my stock to pay for prune juice to cleanse after a weekend taco bender at my 58th birthday party.
Focus is everything. Consider the situation of someone digging a hole and another person walking over to say, "You suck. You know nothing about digging holes. You are using the wrong shovel. You are going to fail. That's the worst hole I've ever seen." In this situation, there are two responses. The digger can set his shovel down to curse out the heckler and engage in an argument. Alternately, the digger can ignore the heckler and keep digging. Tesla is engaged in the latter response. They aren't spamming the airwaves with denials and arguments. Instead, they are setting up a punch press and massive assembly lines. I can think of no better response to CNBC and the rest of the anti-Tesla liars than producing a stream of shiny new Model 3 rolling out of Shanghai. Never bet against hard work in any industry. I'm a big Tesla fan but I'm more interested in energy. I envision a pretty massive transformation of the way energy is produced as well as the way it is consumed. My perspective is that of a beareded and besandaled hipster with a gluten allergy. And yet, I am a happy owner of a small stake in a fossil fuel company. I own the ff company because they work as hard as Tesla and we will always need petro-chemicals, regardless of the balance of our energy source. It is currently distributing at 10.3% so it is treating me far better than Tesla. lol! I believe both Tesla and the fossil fuel company will succeed during my investment horizon.
So far Tesla is playing the game right. They are marketing to a higher class and achieved somewhat of a luxury status particularly with asians. In China Tesla is considered a "status" brand, kind of like where Apple were a few years ago before smart phones started to get pricey as a whole. Back then, if you owned an iPhone you were considered acceptable. China and Japan accepted Tesla as an iconic American brand (in such a short time I might add). And that's just the icing on the cake... Tesla is the leading EV maker with over a half a million cars sold. They are adapting AI architecture to their autonomous car concept, a one of a kind car brain if you will, that is gathering layers of information from the visuals each one of its 8 cameras of each operating Tesla vehicle in existence is sharing with its network every second of the day, teaching its fleet how to "think" and interpret visuals as the car drives. Once the research is complete, it will be the only one of its kind and the most accurate self navigator based on AI AND Radar technology. Last, Musk is developing a robo-taxi app that will in essence allow Tesla owners to ride share their vehicle with others once the owner obtains the self navigating hardware. Musk is too deep in the game at this point to lose. The brand, the status, the research & technology are all cumulatively ahead of the competition. And is a fine ride to boot
Traders might like this..... The first made-in-China Model 3 will be displayed on August 29 at an AI conference.
For those interested in the energy division of Tesla, Tesla has reinstated their solar as a service offering. SaS is basically a power purchase agreement a consumer can buy from Tesla. Tesla then installs a solar system on the home and sells power to the customer. This is an insidious way for Tesla to become a distributed power company. If Tesla can get their solar game in shape, this tiny seed could grow into a mighty tree in 20 years. With an installed solar base, some with batteries, and Tesla's GridManager software, this unpretentious little offering could be the start of an energy empire. With regard to Tesla's solar manufacturing, it has languished for an eternity but they seem to be ramping up again.
Also... Tesla insurance is on its way.. starting with CA... 30% lower rates than average cars. Makes sense
My wife's uncle just put solar panels on his roof, and he's thinking about adding some on his unattached garage and buying him and his wife a tesla. I wonder if he would buy that service from Tesla.
Where will we buy Tesla? I see support at 186.00. Stochastic is already below 20, I will not risk selling. And close the open short position. Now there is a doubtful zone: either it will unfold before the level, or it will reach this. I think from 186.00 you can already buy.
Today, as expected, Tesla displayed the first model 3 made in China at the AI Showcase in Shanghai. https://insideevs.com/news/367744/tesla-shows-first-model-3-made-china/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-china-exempt-tesla-cars-121853911.html?.tsrc=rss BEIJING, Aug 30 (Reuters) - China will exempt Tesla Inc's electric vehicles (EV) from purchase tax, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on its website. China currently levies a 10% purchase tax on the sale of each vehicle. The move could reduce the cost of buying a Tesla car by up to 99,000 yuan ($13,957.82), according to a post on Tesla's social media WeChat account. Tesla's pre-market share price jumped more than 5% after the announcement. Sixteen variants - all the Tesla models sold in the country - are listed on the document issued by MIIT, including Model S, X and 3. No reason was given for the decision to exclude the cars from the tax. The U.S. EV maker is building a plant in Shanghai, the firm's first overseas factory.
Yet another Tesla killer has started publishing data. This one is the Atlis XT truck. - on the market in 2020 - 500 mile range - full charge in 15 minutes https://www.atlismotorvehicles.com/xt-truck They might as well have also claimed it can levitate.
I don't see any visible exterior changes at GF3, this week. It remains in the same almost done state it was a week ago. Inside, however, lots of robots have been installed. The general assembly line must be near completion. I have no idea about the other assembly lines, as I have no visibility to those.
I should clarify the significance of general Assembly and what it brings to production. GA is probably 20% of the assembly process of a car. Maybe less. Tesla build their own seats. They are the only major manufacturer to do so. They have a factory for this, although few know about it. Building a seat takes a lot of time. The factory that does the interiors is responsible for a significant portion of the effort that goes into building a car. There is also a line to build the rear frame of the car. This is what Elon has been talking about eliminating with a single, large, casting. It would save time and expensive robotics. They also have a driveline assembly line where they wind motors, assemble transmissions (only one gear), assemble the inverter, differential, etc They also have a dash assembly facility for the bulk of the dash, computers, HVAC, etc. Of course, there is a battery module line and a battery pack line. The general Assembly line does not work with raw materials. General Assembly is the final step of fiting together manufactured pieces into the form of a car. It's the last step before the finished Car is sent to quality control. Because of the modular approach to automobile production, we have no way to know how significant the Chinese model 3 at the ai convention is. We can be pretty confident the body and chassis was built in Shanghai. The origin of the rest of the components is not known at this time. As I understand it, battery module and pack production is the most energy intense portion of manufacturing. This makes it unlikely the ai convention Model 3 is using lg batteries with a gf3 assembled pack, as the substation is not yet online. They probably have sufficient power to build a few packs though,so who knows.
