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
谢嘉琪 