Battery production. Battery manufacturers are extorting legacy automakers because they don't have their own capacity (LG Chem specifically). The bins you picked from before for ICE production are not the bins you pick from for EV production (for propulsion, at least).

Tesla built GF1 in the Reno desert because, at the time (2013) [1], they forecast that at 500k/vehicles a year (which they're almost at), they would be consuming worldwide battery cell manufacturing capacity. And here we are with everyone else playing catch up trying to eek out the batteries they need to deliver EVs to compete against Tesla.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/g...

I think one of the issues that should be worrying for Tesla, is that it's really Panasonic doing the heavy lifting on the battery side. I'm quite certain when it comes to it, Panasonic are going to be happy selling to Ford/GM/VW/BMW. It's true that Tesla is disrupting the automotive industry, but people don't really appreciate that the automotive industry involves thousands of suppliers of individual components that are then used to build a car by the manufacturers.

I'll worry about that when Ford/GM/VW/BMW makes an EV worth buying. Until then, the TSLA/Pano partnership seems to be working without issue. The special sauce is the cell chemistry and the battery management system, which Tesla owns.

> I'll worry about that when Ford/GM/VW/BMW makes an EV worth buying.

Well you wouldn't have to worry about this regardless unless you are the competition. But otherwise it's like saying "I'll worry about EVs when I can charge them in 3 minutes at every corner". If you worry only when the threat already materialized then it was pretty short sighted. Which is an ironic attitude considering we're literally talking about companies ignoring reality until it hit them in the face and the threat materialized.

Tesla/Pano have been having a lot of issues - a lot of it being on the Tesla side. Pano is no longer making those batteries just for cars because TSLA can't meet the volume needs

My understanding is that it's because Pano doesn't like Tesla's management style of the relationship (Pano prefers a loose feedback loop and team autonomy, Tesla wants it tight with rapid iteration and constant feedback up the chain), and that Tesla is about to scale up their own cell manufacturing. Feel free to throw citations in if you have solid evidence it's a demand issue, because Tesla sales figures and their last earnings call don't indicate that (their Model 3 backlog actually increased while deliveries also increased).

Parent said nothing about demand.

> Pano is no longer making those batteries just for cars because TSLA can't meet the volume needs

Demand ^ Emphasis mine.

No, a bottleneck in production other than batteries fits the bill just as well.

My mistake if that was what was intended to be communicated. That was not my interpretation of the comment. Going to try to find if and what the bottleneck is if that is the issue.

They discuss it in the Q2 call, I don't know about the most recent.

YoY revenue decreased