Tesla is soliciting bids on a second Giga factory in China. If they can break ground by summer 2023, the next Giga factory might be done before Giga Berlin is operating.
With David Einhorn short on Tesla again, I am expecting a series of negative Tesla coverage for a while.
TESLA Run Rate 2022: [Fremont]: 0.5395M [Shanghai]: 0.9275M [Texas]: 0.0213M [Berlin]: 0.016M [2022 TOTAL]: 1.796M Implied: [24.72% Beat] Relative [StockPrice]: $1149.92 Anybody see it differently?
My view is very similar to yours, although I put Shanghai at just over 1M unit output. That may be a bit high for Fremont. The bottleneck at Fremont is their ability to supply and stage parts for assembly, not the GA process itself. So, I doubt front frame casting will be all that beneficial, although it will certainly help a bit. This is why I believe Fremont will struggle to exceed 500K units per year.
I haven't looked into it at all. Are those totals the projected amount they'd built based on the speed their production lines run?
Shanghai is already at 1M run rate. The stats don't show it but the rate bumped up in December and they were already at 245k/quarter. Fremont is going to have a hard time breaking 500K production but it is possible with the new casting program. I expect Texas to scale far earlier than Berlin. Please note:. I'm not talking about production start. Texas already has battery production equipment installed and they are making batteries. I have no way to know if there is any volume coming off that line but we know it was tested, at the very least, a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, Berlin is producing a few hundred cars. The lines have clearly been tested. Further delays have got to be a warning shot over the bow of anyone considering doing business in Germany.
I did some quick math on Tesla's 1M production announcement for the 4680 cell. This number suggests that Kato Road is producing far in excess of the 10GWh design capacity. It has to be closer to 25GWh. Either I've made a basic math error or Tesla has tabless and likely dry anode figured out. Assuming this is the case, the new cell platform is a 2.5x production multiplier. Also, Giga Texas is producing some volume of 4680 cells. I speculate the number is very low as GT hasn't been producing long but it could easily be producing with similar efficiency as Kato Road, as I wouldn't expect a long ramp. I haven't seen large volumes of source material so I don't expect they are in full battery production but very little is known about GT production, at this time. This is a game changer for both EVs and energy storage. Predictions. I predict Tesla will move all Model Y production to Giga Texas by mid 2023. Fremont will continue to make the S/X and probably 3 but 3 production could also move to Giga Texas. Model S/X will take on a structural 4680 pack by mid 2023, at the earliest. This is a soft prediction. The S is their flagship model so there will be a push to reduce weight with the structural pack but this will cause complete obsolescence of their 18650 battery/pack production facilities. I doubt they will want to junk these facilities while they are struggling to scale on every other model. This is why I believe 2H23 will bring S/X upgrades. That will give them a couple of years with the current Plaid and is still an aggressive target for the new platform. My hunch is, even Elon probably isn't certain of when the S/X will receive a 4680 redesign. The real question will be: What happens at Giga Nevada? With Y switching to a 4680 cells, that will leave a ton of 2070 cells for another purpose. Perhaps they will scale the hell out of energy storage. Panasonic need to get their 4680 game online, ASAP. If they do not, Tesla will out scale Panasonic and make them obsolete. The bad news in this revelation is that any company which isn't Tesla is going to have an extremely difficult time competing.
This is a correction to post 2927. There seems to be some strange production accounting in Q4 at Giga Shanghai. I believe they are not at 1M annual production rate, as I indicated earlier. The current number is something just north of 700K. It could be they are battery constrained. If they are cell constrained, this would explain why they had a couple of monster weeks. A fresh load of cells would unleash the full power of the factory. So, perhaps Tesla's new battery facility at Shanghai will pay big dividends when it comes online. It's really taking shape. I expect it to come online sometime in 22Q2 with a volume ramp taking only a few weeks, likely case. Until then, and perhaps after as well, Giga Shanghai is a 700K annual unit factory.
Do you ever think back about the fundamentals that Elon Musk has built his empire on? It all sounded ridiculous, back in the day. Now it is obvious. - He knew batteries were the entire story, back in 2013 and planned for GigaFactories - He knew full AI was required for FSD and set out to work on an AI solution, while everyone else went with a primarily GPS / micro-data solution. - He knew SpaceX had to develop their own engines while ULA was using Russian engines on their rockets. This risk developed into a significant issue for ULA a few days ago, although they are at the end of Atlas 5 launches so it shouldn't make a difference. I'm astonished at the billions we pour into companies that are built on fundamentally unsound thinking. We literally institutionalize bad thinking. Elon Musk has cut through the nonsense and has made some formidable opponents look pretty foolish.
I held quite a bit of Tesla during the period in which the "funding secured" tweet came out. Despite this, I don't have high confidence of receiving any of the money the SEC has been hoarding for the last four years. We will see what happens.
I don't recall if I mentioned but Elon tweeted, about a month ago, that Tesla is no longer cell constrained. That seems to mean that all vehicle and energy storage programs can move forward at full speed. It's going to be a wild ride.
I'd short this if I could with RH or if the puts weren't so $$$ given the overall stock price. A few puts would tie up my entire trading portfolio.
