Trying to find details on water levels and dam status of TGD is difficult. They have an information lock down. It almost makes me wonder if oppressive communist regimes have a downside. Anyway, it appears the water continues to rise, the dam is under more pressure, and hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing the nearest locations to the dam. It appears they are starting to prepare for the worst. Again, I don't think Giga Shanghai will be washed out to see on a dam failure but I expect they will be shut down for a while so locals can figure out how to not die.
CCTV. Communist cable news. You need a translator. Pretty good, concidering all the weather girls are real babes. NHK from Japan has coverage in English.
Here is a pretty non flashy, pretty well done mini series by a father son duo. Its nothing new to anyone following @TomB16. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, these guys really help remove some of the static so you can see the bigger picture. the video i embedded is just the intro. They go into a few sectors that he (Elon) is impacting. But it really shows also how deep tsla is entrentching in to MUCH more than making cars. I just stumbled upon the channel. But i feel its worth sharing here. If anyone here views tsla as just a car company, i do recommend watching these few videos in your spare time. They are short and can be squeezed into a bathroom or smoke break or anything else.
I just read a government release indicating the current level is 159m. That's 6m below the specified high water level. This doesn't make sense to me. Why would they over-drain it by more than a couple of meters, if it is ruining downstream cities? What's more, it's still dumping water furiously. I look forward to seeing your numbers, A55.
The thing about Motley Fool crowing about Tesla's market valuation is that there is a kernel of truth to what they are saying but their position highlights their ignorance. Tesla is a car company that is bootstrapping itself into a software company. The cars are the platform on which they will sell their software. Software scales differently than hardware. This is why facebook and software companies are not valued the same. As a car company, Motley Fool is absolutely correct. That they think Tesla is a car company reveals they are foolish clowns. I'm somewhat comfortable with the current valuation. My position is that we have a pretty good idea of where Tesla is going but we don't know what it will be worth if/when it gets there. Nobody has ever done what they are doing. All I know for sure is that Tesla is worth more than a car company of it's size. How much more is a black box. How much the platform will be able to charge is entirely unknown. I do know that nobody is close to the same level of FSD as Tesla. They have a commanding lead and it is clear they will make it. It is not clear others will make it, including Google. Others will achieve FSD but they will be localized and it's going to be hard to sell FSD data for small regions when Teslas can drive through those same regions with no external data at all and even without a wireless data connection for hours on end.
I just watched some drone footage from Giga Shanghai. Position yourself in opposition to Tesla at your own risk. The work happening at Giga Shanghai is mind blowing. Giga Berlin is coming along OK but I don't see how it's going to be world beating in terms of speed or capability when complete.
Elon has said they expect Giga Shanghai to output 3M vehicles per year, at some point. He has also said Giga Berlin will scale to 2M vehicles per year of annual production. Also, he has said that when he cites annual production rates, he does not include stat holidays, shutdowns, etc. He said he quotes burst rates so the actual rates will be about 80% of burst rate in the best case. Even at that, he is painting a picture of a lot of production. Holy cow.
He also mentioned selling said software for autopilot to other manufacturers Under licensing agreements. this is big! It turns every auto maker into a potential software client.
That will be the real revenue stream. Assuming that there's a buyer. No reason for BMW, VW, Toyota, GM.............not to develop their own. Tesla is a technology company. When you buy a Tesla, it's not for transportation. But the technology they sell, is packaged on 4 wheels. Right now, Tesla is not the biggest seller. And I don't see a point in the near future where Tesla will put other car companies to rest. Forward looking would be for Tesla to develop such superior technology, that other auto manufacturers will have to license it from Tesla because they can't develop anything remotely as good. That technology will be packaged in long range, high capacity batteries, and operating software integrating the car with infrastructure. Here's what The Fool thinks:
TSLA - Tesla's China Revenue Soars in Q2 Tesla reported revenue of $1.4 billion in China in the second quarter, soaring 102.9 percent year-on-year and accounting for 23.19 percent of the total. Tesla delivered 31,000 electric vehicles to China-based customers in the second quarter, accounting for one-third of its global sales, according to the China Passenger Car Association. Ideanomics Inc. - The EV Revolution – Announced 11,254 Electric Taxi Order https://investors.ideanomics.com/2020-06-10-Ideanomics-MEG-Finalizing-Multiple-EV-Taxi-Orders http://www.china.org.cn/business/2020-07/29/content_76324598.htm
I'm impressed by how few workers are building Giga Berlin. Progress at GB is starting to accelerate. With prefabricated, pre-painted, pieces, it is more of an assembly than a build. They have done enough that it's possible to see how it's going to progress. Meanwhile, seven year old girls at a Shanghai textile factory are busily weaving a giant, red, silk ribbon while machinists construct a huge, novelty size, scissor.
New, private, telemetry from the Three Gorges Dam causes me to think Chinese government news releases are created by holding a piece of letterhead under the butt of someone who just finished a Schezwan hot pot fortified with extra bean oil. The bold face lies are comically offputting. Not only is TGD not down, the high water mark is not the high water mark. Forget 175m. It's been over that several times. Forget 161m. It's well above that, right now. The dam is holding and I'm not aware of an imminent collapse but it is clearly in a marginal situation that is fraught with risk.
