Hey everybody, Rob Mayward here. Welcome back to Tesla Daily. Today we are continuing to talk about the adoption of the North American charging standard. More news on that. The Tesla street continues. We've got updates on Tesla in China, Project Highland, and a number of other stories as well.
Alright, starting off with this talk, Tesla today up 2.2% to close at $249.83 while the NASDAQ was up 1.5% on the day. So not a huge outperformance given Tesla's beta, but nevertheless, the streak does continue. Tesla stock has now increased for a record, 12 consecutive trading days, up 37% over that period of time.
So really nice to see and a more fun reminder of Tesla's volatility than when we're experiencing the same in the opposite direction. And we'll see if that can continue tomorrow. Of course, we do have before market open the consumer price index CPI report, then the producer price index on Wednesday morning leading into the June FOMC for their open market committee meeting, where current expectations according to the CME Group FedWatch tool lean about 80% in favor of no further interest rate increase at this meeting. But those expectations will probably hinge a lot on the CPI and PPI report prior to the meeting. So we should be in for at least a couple of interesting days this week.
真的很高兴看到特斯拉的波动性,当我们经历相反方向的波动性时,这是一个更有趣的提醒。明天我们将看到是否会继续下去。当然,在市场开盘前,我们有CPI报告,周三早上有PPI报告,这将引导我们进入6月FOMC公开市场委员会会议,目前根据CME Group FedWatch工具的预期,80%的人认为本次会议不会再次加息。但这些预期可能会在会议之前严重依赖于CPI和PPI报告。所以,本周应该会是至少一个有趣的两天。
Alright, getting into the news, as we had talked about most days last week, we have more news on charging over the weekend. A number of charging companies have announced that they will also be supporting the North American charging standard like we heard from Ford and GM previously. So no major surprise here as these dominoes continue to fall, but we've heard from ChargePoint saying that they are going to be adding NACS support and actually said that the R&D for this was in the works for quite some time already.
So they have things in the works that will be delivered before the first NACS vehicles from these other brands. Similar announcement from Blink, who remember it had that sort of cryptic tweet, but they are jumping on board with NACS as well. Charon has also announced that they are going to be supporting pushing for NACS to be a standardized connector. They noted that there is still a few things that need to be done before that is truly an open standard. So they want to help push for that. And then a number of others jumping on board as well, evstation.com, doing a really good job of tracking all these different announcements.
So great to see this and shows the benefit that this will have to Tesla owners with all of these other different charging companies adopting NACS. That's obviously going to make things a little bit easier for Tesla customers charging at those locations in cases where they may be available or more convenient than a supercharger happens to be at that time. Although I do think those cases are probably rare and will become increasingly rare, more charging availability is always a win.
The other interesting update that we've got regarding these charging developments is from a GM spokesperson speaking with the Associated Press about the structure of the deal that we heard from GM last week. So they say that financial details between the two companies are not released, but spokesman Daryl Henderson said that GM is not paying Tesla and said, quote, "'Tesla will get better utilization of their network and all the new charging revenue, which will help them expand the network further. There are other opportunities both companies can take advantage of as a result of the agreement." End quote.
So apparently GM not paying Tesla that probably means that Ford not paying Tesla either. Although technically for both cases, that's probably not true because at a minimum, it sounds like they're going to be paying Tesla for adapters. Though Elon has said that that hardware and potentially other hardware would be provided at cost or at no profit to Tesla. But still they are paying for that. And that does amortize Tesla's cost for whatever hardware Tesla is also utilizing over a larger unit base, lowering the cost for Tesla.
Still, it doesn't sound like there's any other financial consideration here outside of the charging revenue that Tesla could generate. The article does say that details of how customers would gain access are still being worked out. GM EV owners may have to pay a monthly charged access Tesla's charging network, or they could pay for a juice. And then apparently unlike Ford, GM says that their customers will probably need to buy the adapter.
So right now for third parties, as Tesla has trialed, opening up the supercharger network to third parties, that has worked with a subscription fee, and then you get equivalent pricing to Tesla, or you pay an additional fee for each use if you do not have that subscription. So it sounds like that may still be on the table in terms of how this is going to be structured with these other EVs, which could end up being pretty lucrative if Tesla has the dominant charging network, which this type of a partnership helps solidify. So still some things to be determined. I'm also still very curious if there's going to be any sort of licensing fee for API access, for route planning. Since it sounds like Tesla will be assisting with those things as well, but in the same instance, that's also another funnel into actually just using the supercharger network where Tesla can generate that marginal revenue. So that may be it, and that's kind of what it's looking like right now, but we'll keep an eye out for any additional information.
All right, next up, we've got a couple of rumors out of China. The first is on project highland, according to some information going around on forums in China. The updated Model 3 will have ventilated seats, ambient lighting, and an upgraded sound system. There is also a short video of what is purported to be a ventilated Model 3 seat that gives a little bit more credibility to these rumors. Beyond that, we'll have to wait and see. I don't think any of those would be terribly surprising, but an upgraded sound system ventilated seats seem to go a little bit in the opposite direction of cutting costs, but I guess upgraded, at least for the sound system, could be in the eye of the beholder, and maybe Tesla feels ventilated seats are worth it from a value cost perspective. Hopefully we'll know soon enough.
Then the other sort of rumor that is going around in China is that Shanghai is now, I guess, testing out FSD. There have been some rumors that it was going to be approved in Shanghai, but that wasn't what the report had actually said. It sounds like maybe Tesla is doing some internal testing, maybe with some employees, and that Shanghai would look to be the first to approve it, but that it's not there yet. So probably not worth getting too excited about yet, but there does continue to be a little bit more smoke on FSD there in Shanghai. Last quick China update, Tesla Asia tweeting out and also posting on Weibo that they have opened a new giga laboratory, which is just a different kind of store, but in addition to highlighting the product as traditionally would be done in a Tesla store, it's also highlighting the manufacturing process, giving it the aesthetic of a Gigafactory tour, showing more about the production process and things like that. So kind of a cool concept to see, but some of the reporting on this seem to be a little bit confused, so just wanted to clarify what that actually is.
All right, next up we've got some comments on Gigamexico to catch up on. These are actually from last week, but the governor of Nuebi Leon commented on the timeline for Gigamexico, saying that he expects construction to start in 10 to 15 weeks. He said he expects all permitting would be completed by that point in time. It's obviously a rough estimate, but that would put that window from August 16th to September 20th. He then also predicted that the first car made in Gigamexico would be ready in 2024. Now that doesn't necessarily mean ready for sale, could just be a release candidate, something like that. And again, obviously just the estimate, but if they do break ground in Q3 and they match Gigashang High's timeline, that was about a year from breaking ground to start up production, so that would put things in 2024. So Q3 shaping up to be a pretty interesting quarter, we potentially have Project Thailand, we potentially have the Cybertruck and potentially groundbreaking at Gigamexico. Hopefully we get at least two out of those three.
All right, now shifting over to Gigatexus, Joe Tagmyer with his most recent drone video has captured a new delivery for Tesla. This is a Trump bending machine, which Trump describes as easy programming, fast automated bending, the TrueBend cell 5000 is the perfect solution for all those who value productive and flexible automation for the widest possible range of parts. So interesting to see, and we can kind of see from the manufacturer's videos, what kind of things this bending machine would be capable of. And with it shipping in there to Gigatexus, obviously the question would be, is this a machine that Tesla is using for Cybertruck? Maybe a while, but I'm sure at some point we'll find out.
Next we've got a really quick update on the referral program. It looks like Tesla has dropped the referral credit bonus for refers from 2000 credits to 1500 credits for the Model 3 and the Model Y. So kind of interesting to see right ahead of quarter N, usually this would be the period of time where Tesla kind of ramps up those types of promotions. So it could be at least a little bit of a positive sign for demand for those vehicles. And then also Tesla has tweaked the solar refer price, starting June 8th, they say that the refer E would receive a $500 credit on their purchase price, the referrer still generating 9000 credits for that referral.
Next is some information on Tesla's newest software update, version 2023.20.4.1 from not a Tesla app. This is only rolling out to about 2% of users so far, but this does allow a little bit broader access for the live camera view associated with Sentry Mode. Apparently that will now incorporate all nine camera feeds rather than the five that it does today. Those already give pretty good surround vision, but even more flexibility on that live camera feed now. Outside of that, there are a couple of changes to trip odometers and also the service menu.
Lastly, specifically on Tesla, then we do have a few other items, but KGI Securities upgraded their Tesla rating today from neutral to outperform with a $335 price target. They have raised their 2024 and 2025 earnings per share estimates to $5.68 and $8.38 respectively, saying that while Tesla is expected to experience a near-term earnings contraction due to its focus on volume sales in a challenging macro environment, KGI analyst Jennifer Liang believes that the company's earnings will regain robust momentum by 2025 at the latest. So more improvement and sentiment if nothing else.
Next up, we've got a couple of things on Volkswagen, the first actually coming from an auto line conversation with Ford CEO Jim Farley, but one kind of interesting thing of note was Farley giving an example of just how much disruption in the industry there is right now and how this will really reset market share. Obviously a concept that we are very familiar with, but he used Volkswagen in China particularly as an example saying that they have about 22% market share of ICE vehicles there, but just 2% of EVs. And he said they spend enough money to be 22% of EVs, but they're not. So I don't think it was really intended to be an insult, but just kind of struck me as interesting to hear from Farley. And also a statistic that obviously highlights the struggles that Volkswagen is having in this transition.
And as Volkswagen grapples with this and their strategy going forward, handles black reporting that CEO Oliver Bloom is looking to take a page out of Tesla's playbook. Now Ford's playbook that they're kind of adopting by streamlining model counts, reducing those counts, lowering production costs. And is looking to present some of these things at their capital markets day next week. So we'll keep an eye out for any updates on that.
Lastly for today, Neo after originally rejecting the idea of price cuts has finally capitulated to an extent and lowered prices in China by about 30,000 RMB for $4,200. So pretty significant cuts.
And at the same time, they are also cutting battery swapping as a free option that will now only be a paid option where previously that had been up to six swaps free per month, then reduced to four. Now basically reduced to zero unless you're paying.
Obviously that's going to result in lower utilization, which is going to result in fewer stations being demanded, which is going to lower the utility of those stations. And it can kind of pretty quickly start to look like a death spiral for battery swapping for Neo.