hey everybody rob Bauer here and today

we are talking about what might be the

next big thing for Tesla in China we’ve

also got some interesting news on Tesla

and how they utilize navigation and

mapping data possibly some major battery

news a report on Tesla solar roof and

more not too much going on with the

stock again today Tesla tracking with

the NASDAQ both up about seven tenths of

a percent Tesla closing at 195.28

quickly looking ahead to tomorrow we

will get the personal consumption

expenditures report or pce report in the

morning that’ll be before Market open

but reminder that is for February so the

date at this point a little bit old this

would be before everything happened with

the banks but still will be watched

closely and then of course tomorrow is

the last day of the quarter so I’ll go

through my delivery and production

expectations and then we’ll head into

the weekend most likely expecting that

report late in the morning on Sunday

all right let’s get right into some

possibly very exciting news for Tesla in

China I think Tesla Chan on Twitter

spotting this first on LinkedIn Tesla

has posted a job opening for an

engineering program manager for energy

storage in Shanghai the description says

that Tesla’s Energy Engineering Group is

looking for a highly motivated

individual to program manage new design

engineering projects for the mega pack

program so of course we know about the

mega Factory and Lathrop scaling up to

40 gigawatt hours per year of energy

storage products it looks like Tesla may

have similar maybe even more ambitious

plans for the production of energy

storage products in China there have

been rumors for a while now about Tesla

maybe making a mega Factory there and

although this wouldn’t quite be

confirmation of that it definitely would

be the strongest tent that we have had

so far thinking about a possible Mega

Factory in Shanghai and then putting

that together with a couple of pieces of

Tesla history that we have which would

be one the ramp up that we have seen on

the mega Factory in Lathrop happening

quite quickly and then two the history

of Giga Shanghai and how quickly that

ramp happened for automotive those

things things make it extremely exciting

to think about how quickly Tesla could

possibly ramp up energy storage

production in China we’ve already seen

really great growth for Tesla energy 65

compound annual growth rate since 2016.

this is starting to form a really nice

beginning of an s-curve but as Tesla

said at an investor day just the

beginning that growth hardly looks like

anything at all compared to where Tesla

is planning on going and planning on

going pretty quickly and as we have

talked about the beautiful thing here

with Tesla energy is that so much of the

operational costs for this business are

covered by Tesla’s auto business

obviously there are going to be some

incremental operating expenses but a lot

of that girl’s profit then from Tesla

energy doesn’t even need to be that good

of gross margin a lot of that can flow

down to the bottom line so hopefully

with this job posting we’re not too far

off from hearing more about Tesla’s

official plans for their next Mega

Factory or maybe their next couple

there’s also a rumor going around Chris

John on Twitter posting about this last

night and I’ve seen this in a couple of

places probably not related but a rumor

that Elon will be visiting China next

weekend so we’ll keep an eye on that see

if anything comes of that

all right next up we’ve got a pretty big

report from Bloomberg they are reporting

on Tesla and catl being in discussions

about building a possible battery

Factory in the United States together

Bloomberg says that in recent days Tesla

has been having discussions with the

White House about this possibility and

seeking Clarity on the implications from

the inflation reduction act on a project

like this whether that’s EV credits or

battery production credits Bloomberg

says that Tesla is hoping to pursue a

similar setup to what we had talked

about between Ford and catl back in

February that was where Ford was going

to invest three and a half billion

dollars to build a lithium iron

phosphate battery Factory in Michigan

leveraging catl for their knowledge and

Technology while the factory would still

be wholly owned by Ford so that is

slated for initial production in 2026

with a plan capacity of about 35

gigawatt hours per year so from

Bloomberg’s reporting Tesla would be

pursuing a similar setup where it would

be wholly owned by Tesla licensing

technology from catl presumably for

lithium iron phosphate or some of the

newer similar technology that catl’s

been working on and although location is

not finalized it sounds like they are

considering Texas so that’s about all we

know at this point in time but obviously

Tesla could be using these batteries for

energy storage stuff that we had just

talked about certainly Vehicles as well

and Tesla has been clear that although

they are working on their own battery

production with 4680s they want to

continue to leverage battery supply from

these suppliers sounds like this would

be a little bit of a hybrid of both not

too dissimilar from the setup with

Panasonic at Giga Nevada

hopefully Tesla gets some of the clarity

that they’re looking for from the White

House and can quickly move forward on

this we’re still waiting on those

guidelines that are supposed to happen

before the end of March which we are

quickly approaching all right next up

we’ve got some pretty interesting

information from Greenlee only on

Twitter today about how Tesla is using

some of their Fleet and data collection

capabilities to improve things like

navigation and mapping so green was

taking a look at how Tesla handles

alternative routing in the navigation

system and it’s not quite as simple as

Tesla just grabbing a suggestion from

Google Maps they might take Google Maps

information and then they layer on Tesla

Maps information to make some of those

decisions but that’s not all they’re

doing the Tesla vehicles are also asking

the Tesla Maps database according to

Green for things like what parking lot

outlines are at certain locations what

else needs to be known for the route

that the Tesla is going to navigate

which can include things like stop sign

locations crosswalk information lane

information things that Tesla can

probably get some of from Google Maps

but when Tesla’s got this massive Fleet

that is driving around constantly they

should be able to build a much better

database and it does seem like that is

something that Tesla is doing which I’m

thrilled to see I’ve always kind of

wondered why Tesla hasn’t been doing

this but it looks like they have you

don’t want to become reliant on maps but

they can definitely give you information

that makes solving this incredibly

challenging problem a little bit easier

and probably a little bit safer as well

I think Tesla historically has kind of

confused people talking negatively

towards HD Maps it’s not exactly what

we’re talking about here this would be

more of kind of metadata but I think

over time as this gets more and more

robust probably approaches more into

that type of territory and as we had

already talked about with Hardware 4

seemingly including a much more precise

and robust GPS system this type of stuff

should only get better over time one of

the really cool things about this is

that green says this seems to be

updating in nearly real time one of the

elements there is speed so very much a

Waze like system where Tesla can get

really great traffic flow information

from the fleet which obviously improves

naturally as the fleet grows so some

pretty cool stuff here green shared a

couple of photos of that code showing

that it is coming from Tesla Telemetry

data and right now Tesla probably just

kind of scratching the surface of the

types of things that this can eventually

lead to

all right next up we’ve got a report on

the Tesla solar roof from CNBC today

they are citing research from wood

McKenzie that says that Tesla has only

installed 3 000 solar Roof Systems in

the US since launching the technology

where would McKenzie got this

information from and why they and CNBC

are so confident that it’s correct I’m

not sure but Tesla solar on Twitter

today replying to the article and saying

that this is incorrect by a large margin

unfortunately that was about 12 hours

after the Articles published so this is

already spread a long ways but hopefully

that interjection from Tesla implies a

little bit higher of a number for solar

roof installations historically of

course this article from CNBC just so

happened to be published the day after a

shareholder lawsuit against Tesla for

the SolarCity acquisition gave opening

arguments in pursuit of an appeal for a

previous ruling that had gone against

the lawsuit all right moving on from

that something a little bit fun here

from Tesla today they’ve got a new

product that has launched in Europe it

is gigabeer we heard about this when

Tesla opened gigafactory Berlin this is

a five percent ABV pilsner from Tesla in

a cyber truck inspired package and Tesla

says Tesla gigabeer is designed to

emulate the form of cyber truck while

honoring the 500-year tradition of

German Orion Heights Cabot beer making

Tesla says this is a limited edition

pilsner brewed in Berlin with our

exclusive strain of cyber Hops and notes

of citrus Bergamot and sweet fruit each

bottle features a seamless gloss black

sleeve with a glow-in-the-dark Giga

Watermark this is 89 Euros for a pack of

three so it’s not the cheapest beer

you’re ever gonna buy might be the most

expensive and unfortunately for many of

us at this time it does seem to only be

available in Europe

all right last couple of things for

today this Gap has been closing for a

long time but Elon today officially

becoming the most followed person on

Twitter with 133.1 million followers

moving just past Barack Obama at 133

million so congratulations to Elon for

that and since we didn’t talk about

anything else from Elon on Twitter today

now’s probably a good time to do that he

did tweet out that Giga Mexico will have

the lowest water usage per car of any

auto Factory in the world probably no

surprise to those of us that have

followed the company closely all right

lastly then we’ve got a couple of

pricing updates from Ford and from

Porsche Ford has issued another round of

price increases on the Ford F-150

Lightning pro model this is what is

supposed to be the sort of commercial or

work truck that originally started right

around forty thousand dollars but has

now had four significant rounds of price

increases with the most recent one

Happening Now bringing the price from

just under 58 000 up by four thousand

dollars to just under sixty two thousand

dollars now so it’s a pretty sharp

difference in a pretty short period of

time obviously Tesla has faced some

criticism about similar things over the

years and we’ll see what happens with

cyber truck but given the financials

that we have seen from Ford it’s much

harder to see how this was ever a

realistic Target for them than what

we’ve obviously seen transpire in the

financials for Tesla and then also

bucking the price cutting Trends is the

Porsche ticon they have according to the

recap here from Drive Tesla Canada

increased prices on what I believe is

all trims of the ticon by about four to

five percent in the US and Canada for

the 2024 model year so not the most

sensitive category obviously the Porsche

brand very much at play but that does

make the comparison with a Model S that

much more difficult alright that is

where we’ll wrap it up for today then as

always thank you for listening make sure

you’re subscribed and sign up for

notifications you can also find me on

Twitter at teslapodcast and I’ll see you

tomorrow for the Friday March 31st

episode of Tesla daily thank you

[Music]

thank you