Bloomberg Intelligence [cough] suggests Tesla could be included in the S&P 500 index, even if it misses break-even this quarter. Apparently, there is a "manual" process by which than can do whatever they want, regardless of the numbers. lol! https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tes...ible-without-q2-profit-bloomberg-intelligence
Here is the question I would ask on the earnings call: "Elon, it was recently revealed that your Twitter account has been hacked. Also recently, there has been a more positive tone in your Twitter feed. Have you considered the upside of yielding operation of your Twitter account to hackers?"
For my money..........it probably doesn't matter. Tesla will sell cars on order, deliver cars on backorder, book sales on delivery, net sales will fall short of real world operating expenses.........it has, and always will, cost more to operate Tesla than income from car sales. History of profit is not what drives the stock price. My decision as the buy, sell, hold Tesla stock, and at what price, is not influenced by how many cars they sell and what they made per car. Every auto manufacturer in the world probably sells more cars. But nobody jumped on the Yugo bandwagon. Daihatsu did not see a rally on their stock. The last time there was this kind of excitement around a vehicle, was what? Let's look at auto makers. Who is successful on The Street? Toyota sells a lot of Prius. Ford F Series trucks beats everything in the pickup truck market. Look out your window. What's actually in the street? Then there's Wall Street. Tessa is hands down the higher price stock. Go ahead. Tell me how many Tesla are on the road in the real world......
I live in a small city in a remote area and we have several dozen Teslas here. I haven't seen a model Y yet but I've seen everything else. It's no longer a big deal to see a Tesla, anywhere.
We're starting to see structure at Giga Berlin. I can't imagine this building will use internal space efficiently with all of those columns and walls but, as long as they can crank out Model Y out of the snow and rain, that's all that matters.
I should mention that GA5 is not as automated as GA1~4. I don't know much about GA6 but I would guess it is a copy of GA5 since it is exactly the same size and positioned adjacent. Because of this, I would guess GA5 and 6 have significantly lower capacity than GA1~4. Since Q4, the plant has been shut down for efficiency upgrades so GA1~4 should be more efficient than they were when they could crank out 420K units in a year. Here is what we know. - I believe all Model Y come from GA5 - Tesla produced 8500 Y in Q2 - Fremont was shut down for over half of Q2 - We know initial Y production in Q2 was at sample quantities At the end of 2018, Tesla cited 3K units per week, per line. They cited 150K units of annualized production as a target at Shanghai in December. Since then, they have done maintenance and upgrades to production across the company. They now cite 200K units of annualized production at Shanghai. Thats a 33% increase; difficult to believe but they have switched to large scale casting to eliminate about 30% of chassis production (with no mention of casting process limits or complexity). If 200K unit production at Shanghai is real, assuming 6 weeks of annual production downtime, that's 4500 units per week for one line. If 200K unit production at Shanghai is real, that also suggests 600K unit production at Fremont for GA2~4 alone. Add in another 90K units for GA1. Add in 100K unit production for each of GA5 and 6 and you have 890K of annualized production. Something isn't adding up. It's easy to see how these numbers are difficult to believe. In order to be true, they would have to have achieved tremendous efficiency gains with the casting process. They claim to have done so, even with the two piece casting of the rear frame on the 3. This is a turning point for investors. Believing production numbers requires faith. Past claims do correlate to VIN registrations so there is no history of lying but current claims are extremely aggressive. If current claims turn out to be lies, surely Tesla will tumble heavily and I will lose a consider able piece of my net worth. It's a sobering thought. Not sure where to add this paragraph so suffixing.... The Fremont paint shop received a wholesale upgrade in April, and has adopted a new process. I hope it improves Tesla paint quality and I also hope it burns down less often than the old one.
The other obvious question relating to the tremendous GA footprint reduction gained with the cast sub-frame is: Does that mean Fremont can increase the number of general assembly lines on it's existing heavily occupied footprint in the main plant? I would assume so but have heard nothing of lines 7 or 8. On the other hand, they have said they will build the Semi at Fremont and I'm pretty sure they will build the Roadster there. Perhaps this shines a light into where that space will come from.
One more thing.... The plans for Giga Berlin show the GA building being less than 1/2 the size of casting and paint building and also only a single story where casting and paint are two. That seems to provide a little insight into footprint related to production complexities.
In my neighborhood there are four Tesla, three model 3 and one model X. I am waiting for my 7-seat Model Y to be available. It is quite common to see Tesla vehicles on the road nowadays in Texas. So excited for the ER this week. I am still holding all of my shares from $283 but sold all of my calls around $1100 to book some decent profits. I could make additional $100K if I held my calls but oh well.
The current Tesla bear case is the Three Gorges Dam could collapse and take out huge amounts of development downstream, including Giga Shanghai and about 400M people. This narrative cannot be dismissed outright. The dam is currently in precarious condition.
China has stated the dam distortions are an issue with the space based imaging system and are not real. I've been looking at quite a few recent terrestrial images and they seem to confirm the Dam being physically straight, at this time. It looks like there is a funhouse mirror on the satellite used by Google. Current water levels at the dam measure over 165m. Flood gates are wide open. I'm not aware of a bypass for the dam. Design capacity of the Three Gorges Dam is 175m, which it achieved in both 2010 and 2011 without incident. The bad news is that record flooding is scheduled to flow into the Yantse basin on July 21 so they have been releasing water at best speed, flooding out cities down stream. I've been monitoring this for a while. China has been evacuating people from cities close to TGD for several days. There is risk here.
Authorities answer to refute misunderstandings, rumors on Three Gorges Dam https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1195133.shtml This assh0le deserves to lose everything.
The Chinese have blasted relief gates in a dam behind Three Gorges reservoir, to lower control the water level and divert flood waters to a less populated area. This is causing horrendous flooding but it will impact far less people. I'm not as worried about Three Gorges Dam as I was but it's clear the pacifying language coming from government sources was a misdirection and they are working hard to save it. TGD is at capacity and there is definitely concern or they would not have blown a relief gate into the Chuhe River Dam.
Production intensifying at Giga Berlin. There appears to be perhaps close to 100 workers and they the site is far more active than I've ever seen it.
The Chinese are currently moving a mountain at Giga Shanghai. Progress is astounding. Concrete floors are mostly poured. Mechanical system installations are well underway, even on unfinished buildings. The stamping press is installed in the Y assembly building. They have a really good start on assembly lines. They even have some robots in place. I'm an older man. I can remember when we laughed at Chinese industrialization. It doesn't seem all that long ago. These days, the world looks to China. Their capability is amazing. Our industrial leadership is gone. When the Chinese economy surpasses the US economy, they will deserve the nicer lives they've built for themselves. Nobody gave it to them. They reached out and took it.
There is a lot I'd like to know but Tesla has become increasingly secretive. I don't expect to hear much tomorrow about batteries, other than a date for Battery Day (tm). It would be nice to hear something about the operational status of GA6 at Fremont. If they miss the break even target, as they are expected to do (analyst concensus at $-0.11), perhaps they will be more forthcoming with technical details.
Now, anything breakeven or below sets the clock back another year for inclusion process? No ifs ands or buts, right?
