Audi has temporarily halted production of the e-Tron due to supply issues. The rumour is LG is having difficulty scaling their new Polish plant. Meanwhile, Giga Berlin is now an open field with very few weeds left to pull. This afternoon, it was down to a single crew and very few standing trees.
There is a rumour floating around that Tesla has set up a manufacturing facility in an existing building in Shanghai to make solar roofs and other solar related products. Some locals are investigating. We are seeing the first of the construction workers leave quarantine. I expect construction to begin by Monday. Production at Giga Shanghai is said to be roughly 600 vehicles per week. Suppliers are struggling to restore production but things are improving quickly. Apparently, employees are being told they will achieve 4000 cars per week in the near future. If they can achieve this, they will blow past the 600k production rate that Elon projected for this year. No cases of coronavirus at Tesla, to this point.
Tiny amounts of tree clearing at Giga Berlin have been delayed due to small animal re-homing. Power is already trenched in with a massive transformer on-site. How Tesla can possibly produce cars in Germany by summer 2021 is beyond me but Tesla indicates they can and it's Tesla so....
Tesla enters the Chinese EV charts at number one with a bullet. Now we know why they were sending boats full of American model 3 to China, starting the last week of December. They said they would supply the market locally but they were stacking the deck so they could enter the market as a number 1 seller and blow everyone's hair back a bit. It's a brilliant stroke, IMO.
Tesla and Panasonic unwind the joint venture at Giga New York. Panasonic to be fully out by fall of 2020.
What is your take on this? I've only seen the basic articles that are out. As someone who lives right outside Buffalo everyone is talking about how Musk and the developers lined their pockets with the 700 million to build the facility and now he's up and leaving. People aren't too happy. My understanding is that Panasonic is leaving and Tesla will remain.
I think Panasonic was prime on Giga New York. They didn't own it but they were the primary operators with Tesla having a few lines of their own production. Now, Tesla will take over. Cells will come from China. Cells are coming from China, anyway. The Panasonic cells don't look right in the Solar Roof. Giga New York will be turned into a battery plant and they will crank out PowerWalls in a big way. I speculate they will make cells there, also. I suspect management looked at it and realized they can make more money from it as an energy storage facility than as a solar facility. I'm 80% confident in this. How they plan to scale the solar industry is another question. Obviously, they will buy cells from China. Maybe they don't need a ton of space to operate the solar roof lines but surely it's going to take a little bit to scale to 1000 roofs per week by the end of 2020, as per Musk's goal. My take is there will be more employment out of the new direction than there ever was with the old one. I would expect wholesale hiring to start this spring and continue for 24 months as they scale.
Thanks Tom. Like I said, people around here aren't too happy but I don't think they see the big picture or understand that Panasonic is leaving and NOT Tesla. News outlets are posting the letters employees received from Panasonic about being let go but I would imagine most will be hired back by Tesla. It would be nice if the plant could live up to the hype for the surrounding area.
The vast majority of those employees were made offers by Tesla to stay and more will be hired. By the way, Panasonic has no deal with New York state. The deal is between Tesla and the state. There is no doubt Tesla will honor the deal, although I think they didn't meet a couple of the original hiring milestones. I recall they met the agreed numbers in early 2019 and expect they will hire way beyond the milestones going forward.
Giga Berlin grounds clearing is largely done with power locally available. They continue to talk about construction to begin in March. With 79 confirmed COVID-19 cases, I wonder if a construction ending quarantine is in their future. I've been wondering if, before this is all over, if workers will expose themselves to coronavirus, get through it, and with certified immunity to COVID-19, they could demand a higher salary constructing when everyone else is in quarantine. It's not that ridiculous of a thought. 20~45 year olds have a really low mortality rates to COVID-19. Would you risk exposing yourself to coronavirus for an extra $50K of salary for two years? What if it was near certain you would be exposed to it at some point in the future, anyway?
I believe Tesla is going to receive a huge, long term, boost of momentum from the coronavirus. While the virus is hurting Tesla, short term, we are seeing what happens to the atmosphere when carbon emissions are dramatically reduced. Alt-right folks will continue to deny the effects and will consider it an issue controlled by God but I think a very significant portion of the population is going to have a hard time denying what is happening right now. I believed in climate science all along and I find these results pretty dramatic. Also, I find these results quite hopeful for the future. https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/airborne-nitrogen-dioxide-plummets-over-china
TESLA has other companies that are in the EV industry looking for $ and opportunities. "Capitalizing on the Electric Vehicle Revolution" NASDAQ: IDEX - Ideanomics Capitalizing on the Electric Vehicle Revolution "Focused on facilitating end-to-end solutions for the purchase of commercial electric vehicles & developing next generation of financial services and Fintech products" Key Investment Highlights EV World Market Growth CAGR of 25.6% Institutional Ownership Stock Trades Below Book Value Doing Business In the Largest Market in the World Strong Experienced Management 2020 Exponential Growth Share Structure Sept 30, 2019 Market Cap $88,849,138 Outstanding Shares 162,076,044 Restricted Shares 74,424,144 Unrestricted Shares 87,651,900 52 Week Hi-lo $2.84-$0.43 Assets - $164,763,676 Revenues - $ 43,286,378 Institutional Ownership: Fidelity, BlackRock, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Barclay's Capital http://www.ideanomics.com/
With $7B in the bank, Tesla is better positioned to weather a huge recession/depression than any other car maker. Imagine what the automotive world might look like in three years.
The parking lot at Fremont is full of fresh Model Y copies. They obviously started production at the beginning of the month.
