I wouldn't count on price stability. The earnings call is in 9 days and I expect it to be a 3 ring circus. Who knows what will come of that. I don't see how Elon can do anything other than indicate Panasonic has been a barrier to production ramp and that they are moving toward independence from Panasonic in the future. Of course, he will declare his long term loyalty to Panasonic but Tesla has invested billions into equipment that is operating at 60% efficiency and Tesla has big expansion plans. They don't even produce enough cells for their energy storage division. I wouldn't be surprised if some US built Model 3 are also made with non-Panasonic cells. Hibar had best be working like the life of the unified company depends on it.
Tesla (TSLA) pops amid local reports of Gigafactory 3 entering its production stage https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-tsla-rises-gigafactory-3-model-3-production/
GF3 battery questions are becoming clear. Model 3 production will begin with battery packs from GF1. Pack production will start at GF3 with LG cells at the start of November. Production is rumored to have started but there are no leaked pics of new cars coming out of GF3. I assume they will produce a very small volume of cars for the first couple of weeks, before they get GF3 pack production online, as they trial the GF3 production process.
Drove through Illinois yesterday, south to north (East St. Louis to South Beloit), and heard on the radio that Rivian is intending to build EVs, including a truck, in the closed Mitsubishi plant in Normal, IL. The CEO says they will be the biggest car company in the world. Edit: Sorry, he may have said "...one of the biggest..." As I understand it they have major investments from Ford and Amazon.
Total auto production for Q3 was 113318. Everyone is hung up on the 97K number for model 3 production but S/X numbers are both higher on the quarter. I ran some numbers and it appears gross revenue is up $1.3B. That number should be reasonably close. I have considered Q3 expenses and come to the conclusion I have no idea, however I do have this: They can spend $0.9B more than Q2 and break even in Q3. Whatever Rivian is doing to kill Tesla, they might want to look at doing it more quickly.
Here is an epic video of Tesla Gigafactory 3 construction. I believe this video was taken yesterday and shows the current situation for phase 2 and the new fence (original blown down in cyclone). It can be a bit confusing to watch GF3 videos because they aren't posted in real time. Someone could put up a video of 14 day old content and that makes it a bit tough to track. Fortunately, there are tons of photos and video on WeChat and other sources for those of us who follow GF3 like it is the Zapruter film. For those who haven't been following closely, the first vertical steel column was installed on March 16, 2019, in an empty field.
One guy at my plant just retired and went to Rivian. They're still getting the plant set up for mass production. Amazon ordered 100,000 Rivian electric delivery vans apparently.
Its going up pretty fast. The thing is, when creating these factories in China, its assumed that corporate espionage is just part of the deal. No doubt the battery technology used will be stolen and replicated. That is usually bad for business, but in the bigger picture, better for the planet If China starts pumping out massive battery production for EV's, that is one giant country moving away from fossil fuel which is good! Its been part of their plan to have 60% of car sales be EV's by 2035, and eventually ban all combustion engines.
Progress at GF3 is unbelievable. Pads, structures, pavement... it's all going on and it is all looking nearly finished. The battery plant has lots more roof structure and they have started installing purlins. I'm sure we will see quite a bit of roof sheathing installed in the next week. The speed of this factory construction is sobering. I've followed a lot of construction and have never seen anything like this.
We now see dozens of tractor trailers backed up to GF3. There are several videos of a model 3 running the test track. I think they are the same model 3 running the track again and again. You can see the car do three laps, drive over by one of the doors, U-turn, and go back to the track for three more laps. They are probably trying to make it look like production is in full swing. lol!
There is an article on CleanTechnica.com, lamenting the EV/HFC choices coming out of Renault. The author condemns the choice of Hydrogen for the new Renault minivan and the small battery capacity of the EV variant of the same vehicle. It is entertaining to read these articles which seem to be premised on, "Why wouldn't they just put a larger battery in the vehicle?" Gee... I wonder why they wouldn't double the battery capacity? If they made that choice, I imagine articles would be written about why the Kangoo is only selling half as many copies as expected. Why wouldn't they just build more? How hard is it to understand there is a global battery supply problem? Why do we pretend it doesn't exist? https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/22/renault-loses-its-marbles-dissolved-in-hydrogen/
HFC sound nice, but that infrastructure... hmm "The 5–10 minute speed of refueling sounds nice. But after refueling one vehicle, the station needs about 20 minutes to pressurize enough hydrogen to fill the next vehicle. In economic terms of the station operator, a €1,500,000 station can service 3 vehicles per hour."
I believe that problem can be solved fairly easily but with added cost, of course. Another problem with hydrogen generation is that it takes more energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen than can be recovered with the hydrogen. It would be a lot more efficient use of power to store energy in a battery, than to store it in hydrogen. Work is being done on this problem, also. The process of electrolysis is being worked on. It will never store energy with 100% efficiency but we should see improvements reducing losses below 50% in the next few years. I will point out, batteries are also not 100% efficient. Good batteries are well above 90%, though. The specific efficiency will vary with many factors, including temperature. When charge parameters are ideal, high 90% efficiency is possible. Inefficiency is why Elon has said Tesla will never implement wireless charging. If you look at the single largest consumer of energy and add a 15% inefficiency, viability comes into question. There are already generation and transmission losses, absorbing a manageable but significant amount of our power. Generation at point of use is where we need to get to.
Every analyst poll I have read expects a small loss for Tesla Q3 2019. We will know the real story tomorrow (October 23) at 3:30pm, PST.
This is a weird post but.. There is significant buzz on WeChat about a Tesla news cast. It would seem that something big has happened. Unfortunately, the chatter is all in Chinese and the only Chinese I know is from a menu. So... Speculation... It could be model 3 certification. The Chinese government may have made sure the cert came in time for the earnings call. If that is the case, it will be clear the Chinese government is helping Tesla. By the way, the substation is not fully online, yet. They are currently limiting power consumption to 40 megawatts. Full power will be closer to 200 megawatts. they won't need big power until the battery plant comes online. ... But who cares. They are on the cusp of production.
