Hey everybody Rob now we're here and today we are talking about a possible leaked image of Tesla's expected upcoming Model 3 update also known as Project Highland.
We've also got some new information on the production rate for Megapack out of Tesla's Megafactory in Blathrup and we'll take a look at today's PPI report and a couple of other items.
So following that PPI report which we'll talk about in a second pretty strong day in the markets the NASDAQ up about 2% on the day Tesla up almost 3% to $185.90.
Just like last month's report the producer price index or PPI came in below expectations.
和上个月的报告一样,生产者价格指数或者 PPI 低于预期水平。
The total index so the headline number came in at a 2.7% increase from last year which was about 30 basis points lower than consensus expectations.
总指数增长了2.7%,比去年低约30个基点,这比共识预期稍低,因此标题数字也应相应修改。
So really good to see that it's also the most significant drop from one month to the next in year-ever year change for the PPI that we have seen in I don't know how long at least the last couple of years.
Now obviously as we head into months that start to compare to significant increases in the PPI last year. It should be pretty expected for these year-over-year numbers to come down pretty quickly.
现在显然随着我们进入那些与去年PPI大幅上涨相比较的月份,预计这些同比数字会很快下降。
We've talked a lot about that.
我们已经谈论了很多关于那个话题。
So perhaps more importantly is looking at the month-over-month changes that can give us a little bit better of a feel for how things would look going forward if we were to annualize out those month-over-month changes and for the month of March headline PPI declined half a percent from February.
That is the biggest month-over-month decline in almost 3 years.
这是近3年来月度下降最大的。
The total index of course includes food and energy and those can be a little bit more volatile so looking at core PPI.
总的指数当然包括食品和能源,这些可能会有些波动,所以看核心的生产者物价指数比较好。
The year-over-year increases are shrinking there as well.
那里的同比增长也在缩小。
Core up 3.4% year-over-year and then again more importantly looking at month-over-month.
核心同比增长3.4%,更重要的是要看同比月度增长。
Actually saw a 0.1% decline compared to expectations of a 0.3% increase.
实际上看到0.1%的下降,而原本预期是增长0.3%。
So this is actually the first time since October of 2020 that the core PPI has declined month-over-month.
这实际上是自2020年10月以来,核心生产价格指数首次出现了环比下降。
So overall here seems like pretty good news for inflation.
总的来说,这对通货膨胀来说是个不错的好消息。
Obviously that can influence interest rate decisions going forward.
显然,这可能会影响未来利率决策。
Although the CME Group Fedwatch tool not really showing much of a change today for interest rate expectations for the May meeting.
虽然 CME Group Fedwatch 工具今天并没有显示出 5 月会议的利率预期有太大变化。
Alright, getting into Tesla updates, the one getting the most attention today is an image that was shared on Reddit last night by user FFAARPG with the title of simply Model 3 Refresh.
The image is of a vehicle that is about half uncovered by a car cover.
这张图片是一辆车被车衣遮盖了一半的情况。
It looks a lot like a Model 3, especially on the sides, but different wheels, different front end, different headlights, maybe some changes in the interior, although it's a little bit difficult to make that out with the reflection.
The question that we're then left with with this image is if this might be the heavily rumored Project Highland Refresh of the Model 3.
我们现在面临的问题是,这张图片是否可能是 Model 3 的高地刷新项目,这个谣传已经流传很久了。
We've seen a number of photos over the last few months of Tesla testing out Model 3 vehicles with the front end covered up, including these from the kilowatts on Twitter.
You'll want to even like some of those tweets, so alongside the rumors it seemed to pretty clear like Tesla was working on a new design.
你可能会喜欢其中一些推文,因为除了那些传言,似乎很清楚特斯拉正在开发一种新的设计。
However, we have not yet seen any where that front is uncovered until possibly this new image.
但是,我们还没有看到任何一个地方的前面露出来,直到可能出现这张新的图片。
Whenever we get something like this, there's always the possibility that it's not what the original poster says it is, maybe this is just an aftermarket front body kit.
每次我们得到这样的东西,总有可能它不是原PO说的那样,也许这只是一个市售的前保险杠套件。
But there is one specific detail in this image that suggests that maybe this is an accurate leak after all.
但是在这张图片中有一个特定的细节,它暗示着也许这是一个准确的泄漏。
So if we look at a side by side of this new image, next to those previous photos of Tesla's test mules that had the camouflage in the front, we can try to compare and see if there are any details that might validate this new image.
So if we zoom in really closely and we look at the hardware and the design around the front repeater camera, although it is a little bit difficult to tell these seem to have the same design, which notably is different than the current design if we bring that in.
We can see that the body lines for the current Model 3's housing for the side repeater camera, that stops short of the door seam.
我们可以看到,当前Model 3侧循环器摄像头的外壳的车身线条,在门缝处截止。
The previous photos of these test mules out driving around, it is a clearly different design where that body line goes into the door past the seam.
这些测试车的先前照片显示,它们正在巡游中。新设计的一个明显不同之处是身体线条延伸到门上方的缝隙。
If we look at the new image on the left, it looks pretty clearly to have that same design as those prototypes out driving around where that body line again goes past the door seam.
如果我们看左边的新图片,很明显它的设计和那些原型车相同,车身线条又一次超过车门接缝。
That dramatically reduces the probability in my mind that this is some sort of aftermarket body kit or something like that.
这大大降低了我心中这可能是某种售后车身套件之类的可能性。
So my best guess is that this really is a leak, this really is one of the vehicles that Tesla is testing out for Project Highland.
所以我最好的猜测是这真的是在泄漏,这真的是特斯拉正在为高地计划测试之一的车辆。
Now one of the questions around this would be if this is one of those vehicles, why are there so many bugs on the front of the vehicle?
现在,围绕这个问题之一将是,如果这是其中一辆车,为什么车前面会有这么多的虫子呢?
If Tesla is keeping this covered when it's out testing, how is that happening?
如果特斯拉正在测试时保密这件事,那么这是如何实现的呢?
Could easily be testing this at night where there's less of a risk of someone seeing this, taking photos of it. So I don't really view that as anything that should add to the skepticism around this image. If this is a Tesla prototype, which I think seems more likely than not, it is possible that Tesla could have multiple different prototypes that they are considering. So there's no guarantee that this is exactly what a refresh might look like, especially for things like wheels that can be easily changed. But hopefully we're not too far away from seeing it from Tesla. So far the feedback that I've seen online seems to be pretty positive, so that's a good thing. I think it's just in general a little bit too early to judge, you know, we talk about this whenever we see photos like this, whether it's Cybertruck or any other vehicle, lens distortion is going to have an impact and that's pretty clearly affecting this photo as well. So I'm pretty much just going to withhold judgment, especially because we can't even see the full vehicle in this photo. That said, feel free to share what your thoughts are in the comments today if you would like, and we'll see what comes of this. Sometimes things like this can tend to spark up a little bit more information, whether that's confirmation or something else, we'll see if anything else comes out in the coming days.
All right, next up we've got some really interesting information on MegaPak production rates for Tesla's Mega Factory in Lathorpe, California. This is from Bradford Ferguson. I'll put his video link down in the description, but basically him and a few others took almost a week out of their schedule to sit and watch the factory and see how many MegaPaks were leaving over the course of that time. So when they began this endeavor, they counted the number of MegaPaks in the factory parking lot. That number was 67 at the beginning. And over the next six days, watching 24 hours a day, they counted 42 MegaPaks leaving the factory. Then at the end of the period, they did that same count on number of MegaPaks in the parking lot, and that count was 83. So you had 42 leave, you had the number of packs in the parking lot increase by 16. So a total of 58 MegaPaks may have been produced during that six day window. Obviously, that depends on if some were stored out of view or inside that were then relocated outside, or if maybe the count was off during that period, they could have missed some that left that they didn't see. But it should be a pretty good approximation for production over that period.
So call it 10 MegaPaks a day, that's about 38 MegaWatt hours of MegaPaks each day, or over 90 day quarter, about 3.4 MegaWatt hours per quarter. And if you assume each MegaPak is selling for about $2 million, again you're talking $20 million per day, or about $1.8 billion in MegaPaks being produced per quarter. So that's starting to drive some pretty serious revenue, that's about $7 billion per year, and this is only about 33% of the final capacity of 40 GigaWatt hours per year, that laythrupp should scale up to, hopefully, pretty quickly. So it's really nice to have some insight on that production rate.
Obviously this could have been a faster week or a slower week than normal, compared to the average for a quarter. Obviously a quarter could have a week with some downtime. Maybe there was some downtime within this week, so the production rate per day could even be higher. So even with great data like this, still plenty of unknowns, but exciting to see it ramp and hopefully we're not too far off from having that same excitement for Tesla's new Mega Factory in Shanghai.
Speaking of, we do have new China-insured vehicle numbers for the week of April 3rd. I mentioned this yesterday, but that number has now been confirmed. So for the first week of this second quarter, there were 6,973 Tesla's insured in China. So it's a huge decline week over week, but that is pretty much what we always see from Tesla in the first week of any new quarter. If we compare this week versus the first week of the last two quarters, this week was significantly higher with both of those at about 2000 vehicles a piece. So with that context, it's a very solid start to the quarter, but obviously early just one week and a long quarter to go. Going forward, it sounds like we may not be getting these China-insured weekly numbers anymore. CNEVPose saying that the sources for this information have stopped sharing it, Moneyball and Twitter saying something similar. So we'll see on that going forward, we may not have this level of granularity anymore.
Alright, last couple of things here for Twitter and SpaceX. The NBC today reporting that Twitter has partnered with ETorro to let users trade stocks in crypto, which kind of points to the expanded feature set as well as the 4A and a finance that Elon has alluded to in the past. But from reading the article, it doesn't sound like this is heavily integrated. Kind of sounds like it's just Twitter putting in some links to ETorro in some areas. So I think it's more of an advertising thing than anything for ETorro towards Twitter, so probably some nice revenue for Twitter on this deal.
Alright, lastly then on SpaceX, we continue to have some more positive signs towards a possible Starship test flight next week. Eric Burger on Twitter this morning saying that multiple sources saying that SpaceX is likely to receive a launch license from the FAA today. Later on in the day, we heard about road closures set for Monday, April 17th, the 18th and 19th as backup dates with Eric then noting that that would obviously still require FAA approval, but saying that that may then come tomorrow instead of today. Either way, it is getting very, very close at this point. It looks like we might be set up for an extremely exciting week next week with a possible Starship orbital test flight plus Tesla earnings. So keep a close eye on Starship.
And then before we wrap up just a quick note, I may have another work conflict tomorrow, so there might not be an episode I think there will be, but wanting to give a heads up just in case.
Alright, that'll wrap it up for today then as always, thank you for listening, make sure you subscribe and sign up for notifications. Also find me on Twitter at Tesla 5Gast and hopefully see you tomorrow for the Friday, April 14th episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.