Re:Tesla Q1 2020 Update
by jillesvangurp on Thursday April 30, 2020 @05:55AM
(#23029182)
Not an investor, but Tesla is looking increasingly like a money printing machine to me with so much untapped potential that they could pivot to in many ways.
The genius of the whole setup is that it's a car company that is basically a battery company but also a power infrastructure company.
IMHO, any battery produced in the next decades will have some way of being sold profitably. It just so happens that cars are a very profitable way to monetize them right now. But there are lots of other places where batteries could be equally useful (which Tesla has been exploring). When EVs commoditize over the next decade, they are ready to start pivoting to other things that will have a similarly insatiable demand for battery. Tesla using the same batteries in cars, semis, and grid storage means that any penny invested in more production capacity for batteries is not lost.
The reason semis are delayed is that they lack production capacity because it's maxed out. They're adding capacity as fast as they can at a jaw dropping pace and it's maxed out. That's not bad news but good news for Tesla.
Solar is a risky but genius move as well. I know they've gotten a lot of criticism for that and the so far underwhelming adoption rate. But it's a smart move if they can get that working. Pairing solar with batteries and car charging options (and maybe car to grid/house) is going to be a killer deal. And that's just the consumer market.
There are a lot of solar panel manufacturers out there but not a lot that are also selling grid storage solutions, mass producing cars, or have experience with building out direct sales to consumer type organizations. Add to that their approach to innovating mass production of batteries, cars, and indeed factories & machines. Tesla does all these things for the very simple reason that the sum of these things is more than the value of them individually. IMHO they'll bang on this until it starts working just right in a couple of years while dropping production cost at a pace that basically very few will be able to match and own the solar market as well.
The genius of the whole setup is that it's a car company that is basically a battery company but also a power infrastructure company.
IMHO, any battery produced in the next decades will have some way of being sold profitably. It just so happens that cars are a very profitable way to monetize them right now. But there are lots of other places where batteries could be equally useful (which Tesla has been exploring). When EVs commoditize over the next decade, they are ready to start pivoting to other things that will have a similarly insatiable demand for battery. Tesla using the same batteries in cars, semis, and grid storage means that any penny invested in more production capacity for batteries is not lost.
The reason semis are delayed is that they lack production capacity because it's maxed out. They're adding capacity as fast as they can at a jaw dropping pace and it's maxed out. That's not bad news but good news for Tesla.
Solar is a risky but genius move as well. I know they've gotten a lot of criticism for that and the so far underwhelming adoption rate. But it's a smart move if they can get that working. Pairing solar with batteries and car charging options (and maybe car to grid/house) is going to be a killer deal. And that's just the consumer market.
There are a lot of solar panel manufacturers out there but not a lot that are also selling grid storage solutions, mass producing cars, or have experience with building out direct sales to consumer type organizations. Add to that their approach to innovating mass production of batteries, cars, and indeed factories & machines. Tesla does all these things for the very simple reason that the sum of these things is more than the value of them individually. IMHO they'll bang on this until it starts working just right in a couple of years while dropping production cost at a pace that basically very few will be able to match and own the solar market as well.