Hey everybody Rob Merritt here and today we are talking about new comments from Elon Musk on the Tesla Semi and Tesla's production targets, also on Tesla's decision to open up the supercharging network, new sales data out of China, updates on hardware 4 and more.
First thing though, Tesla stock strength and street continues finishing up about 3.5% to day to close at $258.71 while the NASDAQ was up just 8-10% of a percent, meaning the record run for positive days for Tesla stock now extends to 13.
And today we've made it through the first major economic report of the week the Consumer Price Index or CPI report, largely coming in line with expectations.
今天,我们已经度过了本周的第一个重要经济报告——消费者价格指数报告(CPI报告),其大体符合预期。
The headline number or the total consumer price index looks the best here that came in at a 4% increase year over year, that's the lowest in two years, but was still up for 10% of a month, which is about double the rate that you want to see it increasing at.
And if we look at core, so excluding food and energy which can be a bit more volatile and energy drove the total index down pretty significantly this month, so looking at core, that was up 5.3% year over year, so still decline from where we've been but not declining all that rapidly, and core was also up for 10% of a month over month, so a little bit more than double where you'd want it to be to annualize out to 2%.
And it's been pretty locked in at that level, 5 out of the last 6 months, coming in at 0.4% month over month, the 6th month, that was up half a percent, so good to see things coming down, but as far as the CPI report at least is concerned, inflation still looking pretty sticky, but it's just the CPI report, there are other measures, while the Producer Price Index report tomorrow morning, and then tomorrow afternoon, a couple hours before market close, of course we'll have the FOMC statement and interest rate decision followed by the press conference from Jerome Powell.
Expectations for a pause at least at this meeting did increase a little bit from yesterday, it was about 80% yesterday, now about 90% according to the CME Group FedWatch tool, and the aggregate increase by the July meeting expectations for that went down a little bit as well.
昨天对于此次会议至少暂停的预期略微增加了一些,昨天约为80%,现在根据CME Group FedWatch工具大约为90%,而到7月份的会议预期总体上稍微降低了一些。
意思是说,昨天人们对于此次会议是否会暂停加息的预期有所提高,预计有80%的人认为会暂停,而今天这个预期上升到了90%左右;而整体来看,到7月份的会议,预期有所下降。
So plenty more macro news to come tomorrow, but for now let's move on to some new data out of China, we've got updated insured vehicle numbers for the week of June 5th to June 11th, so 10th week of the quarter, we've got about three weeks left, this quarter's going pretty quick, but a really, really strong week here for Tesla 16,400 insured vehicles, that is the third highest week over the last three quarters.
That puts the total through the first 10 weeks of Q2 at 111,000 quarter to date, at the same points in a quarter in Q4, Tesla was at about 97,500 and in Q1 about 88,000, remember Q1 facing Chinese New Year early in the quarter, but Tesla so far pacing well ahead of those last two quarters.
For Tesla to hit a record this quarter, we're looking at about 26,000 or so needed over the following three weeks, the last three weeks of the quarter, so only about 9,000 a week, which looks pretty achievable at this point, remember we might run into some supply issues for the Model 3 regarding Project Highland if there is some significant downtime there, which does seem to be the case, so that could start impacting these numbers, especially as we get to that other quarter, but that record still does look to be within reach, so I'm very happy with this number, I think it's a great number for Tesla, and hopefully we see this strength continue over the last few weeks of the quarter.
Alright next we've got a bit of an update on Tesla's hardware 4, not a huge update here because we've kind of known about this, we had some other confirmation, but green the only, he's gotten his hands on a Model S or X vehicle with hardware 4, he is also confirmed as we'd heard from someone else that the radar is present in this vehicle, so this is the new high definition radar that we've talked about quite a few times, no confirmation if this is on Model Y yet, as we've started to hear some reports of Model Y having hardware for, so we'll continue to keep an eye out for that, outside of that not a lot of other details here yet from green, I'm hopeful that as he has more time with the vehicle there will be some other insight that he can share, I think right now the big question is on the camera suite, since we've had some leaks and other information suggest that maybe there are going to be additional cameras added later on, so my hope is that he can get a little bit better of an understanding of what the situation is exactly there, but we'll see.
Alright next up we've got a couple of new comments from Elon Musk who in Austin today appeared at the Edison Electric Institute Conference, unfortunately I haven't been able to find a full recording of this yet, if anyone has that please pass that along, so we're kind of going off second or third hand reports here, but we've got a couple of those first from the Wall Street Journal, they are reporting that Elon during this discussion said that he doesn't expect the company to begin producing the Tesla Semi in larger volumes until the end of next year and apparently cited battery supply constraints, so it's not clear exactly if that's a general battery supply constraint, Tesla's recent comments have suggested that they're a little bit less constrained on that front at least for the moment, or if that is more of a 4680 battery supply constraint specifically, which is obviously in much tighter supply right now. Tesla has said that the advancements for the 4680 that they talked about at Battery Day aren't necessarily needed to accomplish the metrics for the semi, but obviously Tesla is juggling a lot of different things with the battery supply chain especially with the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act, which we already know has changed some plans and might change how Tesla is deciding to allocate batteries, which could push one part of the business that wasn't presumed to be battery constrained into a constraint, so unfortunately not a whole lot of detail in this report, and it also says that Elon did not specify what he means by higher volumes of production, my first guess would be that they're just kind of setting the ramp back a little bit, which isn't too surprising given that we just had those announcements about Giganovata and Tesla's got to really get that built up, and obviously that's going to take some time.
Of course, I'm sure we all remember Elon's previous comments about the volume targets for the semi on the Q3 2022 earnings call, Elon said quote, as I think everyone knows at this point, it takes about a year to ramp up production, so we expect to see significant, we're tentatively aiming for 50,000 units in 2024 for Tesla's semi in North America, and obviously will expand beyond North America end quote. So most people interpret that to be a target of 50,000 units actually produced in the fiscal year of 2024, with the words he said it's a fair interpretation, but Elon is usually talking about production rates, so I've kind of always interpreted it as a production rate target. Certainly my model has a much lower number in there for next year, but even then I'll probably have to adjust that downward based on whatever is being delayed here.
Now the other comment that Elon made is apparently regarding the decision to open up superchargers. Again here we're limited on not having the exact quote, the context, the intonation, but according to post on Twitter, Elon said that opening up the supercharger network to other OEMs quote probably isn't good for business, but it was the morally right thing to do to accelerate sustainable transportation end quote. So of course we've talked a lot about this over the last few days, I think as Elon wants others to adopt this standard, he's gonna be you know, obviously careful about saying that this gives Tesla some huge advantage over those competitors that he's trying to get on board, and I do think that he thinks that's the right thing for the mission, I think a lot of us would agree with that, and to an extent there's probably a degree of inevitability of these being opened up whether it's by regulation or Tesla deciding that it can be good for business, I think it ultimately comes down to how things end up being structured, and we don't have a lot of those details yet. Now obviously it diminishes the network effect that the supercharger network brings to Tesla when it was closed, but if Tesla can do enough other things to compensate for that, which obviously they are striving to do, then this would likely result in being a win for the business, there's just a couple of contingencies that are yet to shake out. It's definitely fascinating to watch that happen.
Now speaking of this charging situation, we do have new comments from Stellantis, we had joked last week about how maybe we'd have a Twitter space from then this week, not yet, but we do have a comment. Stellantis has told Reuters that quote, at this time we continue to evaluate the NACS standard and look forward to discussing more in the future, end quote. So a little bit of a non-statement, but it does at least show that this is under consideration, under discussion, with in Stellantis, which of course it is, they definitely seem like they would be in a position to be the next Dominata fall as sort of the other major American automaker, although obviously that's increasingly murky these days, but I assume they'll jump on board at some point and then it'll be really interesting to see what other foreign manufacturers do, which will be the first of those, if any, to do the same. That seems like it would kind of be the last wall to fall before this really is a standard.
Alright next we've got a couple updates from other automakers first from Toyota, they head into their annual meeting and ahead of that meeting they announced some plans I guess on their EV strategy. The couple of big headlines from this is that they have said that their next generation battery electric vehicle to be introduced in 2026 will have a cruising range of 1000 kilometers or about 620 miles. Alright sounds good, but also why isn't Toyota the one that is making the case that all of these batteries that are being put into EVs can be used better across more plug-in hybrid EVs? They're just going to do the exact opposite and shove enough batteries to get 620 miles a range into one? Alright it sounds like they really believe in what they were saying before. And then the other big announcement is that they have discovered a technological breakthrough in solid state batteries and expect to commercialize those in about five years. Hmm sounds kind of familiar, let's go back to July 25th of 2017 reading this Wall Street Journal headline that says Toyota nears technological breakthrough in its electric car batteries.
Literally the exact same words and at that point they said that they were working on production engineering for these batteries and expected to start selling cars with the new batteries by the early 2020s. Such a coincidence that that's about five years out from that point in time. Don't worry though I'm sure at this point it's totally a huge breakthrough and it's totally going to be cost and volume competitive and will somehow just fault Toyota right to the very top of the EV market suddenly alleviating all of these constraints that they've talked about for what a decade now. We gotta move on because it's just it's too frustrating.
As for things that actually exist we've got an update from Polestar on the Polestar 2. They've announced a starting price of $49,900 in the US and say that customers can begin taking deliveries as early as summer 2023. They've also confirmed that the Polestar 2 will be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit for both trims of the vehicle. There is a long range dual motor with a 78kWh battery, 276 miles of EPA range and a long range single motor with an 82kWh battery and 320 miles range.
Next we've got a quick update from Waymo their co-CEO has announced that they have expanded their coverage for 1000 plus public riders in San Francisco to the entirety of San Francisco previously I think Chinatown Fisherman's Wharf Union Square was a little bit partitioned off so it looks like that has been added and now all of San Francisco covered 24-7. Alright last couple of things quick update on Starship Elon was asked on Twitter when the next launch would be and he said 6-8 weeks so that would put things right around early August definitely a lot earlier than a lot of people would guess right after the first orbital test flight so another possibly really exciting event to keep an eye on for the calendar for Q3. And then lastly I briefly yesterday mentioned most people probably know my thoughts on battery swapping for those that don't I got a couple of questions on that in the comments I've talked about it on a few occasions but probably most succinctly in an episode where I was talking about Neo compared to Tesla so I'll link to that in the description and it'll be time stamped to the part where I'm giving my thoughts on battery swapping if you are curious otherwise that'll wrap it up for today as always thank you for listening make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications you can also find me on twitter at tesselpodcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Wednesday June 14th episode of Tesla David thank you.