Hey everybody Rob Merr here and today we are going to be talking about a couple of updates on Gigamexico, news on Tesla Mega Pack, UAW negotiations as they have commenced those with the three major automakers in the US and a couple other items as well. Looking at the stock, Tesla today up 1.30% close at $245.34 while the NASDAQ was up 1 10th of a percent on the day so a little bit of a nice outperformance from Tesla today.
First off we are going to look at the CPI that driving a lot of the macro movement today. Of course we started off strong, Tesla and the general market but faded a little bit throughout the day. That strong start probably driven by the consumer price index coming in a bit below expectations, roughly 10 basis points depending on what metric you are looking at. So the headline number was just below 3.2% for July so that is down slightly up actually from the prior month but if we look at the month over month comparison in line with last months increase. And then for core that still is a little bit tricky to bring down. Obviously shelter has been keeping that a little bit higher but core coming in at 4.7% which is slightly down month over month. And then slightly down from last month I guess more correctly stated. And then for core of month over month that is again up 0.2% month over month. So lower than what we have seen and kind of getting closer to the range where the Fed might want it to be in between that 0.1 to 0.2% growth each month which would annualize out to about 2%. So not anything too crazy with CPI but again nice to see it coming a little bit below expectations.
Alright getting into the updates on Gigamaxco we've got some reporting from Molennio out of Mexico saying that construction work may have started at Tesla's Gigafactory there. They're not really sure they're basically seeing some machinery, some equipment starting to show up on site. So they say that since this Wednesday they've seen machinery near the highway right next to Gigamaxico it doesn't seem that there's a lot going on yet but some of this machinery starting to show up could be indicative of that happening relatively soon if not starting to happen at this moment. They say it's not clear exactly what type of work is being carried out but the machinery that is there is excavation type of equipment. And then we can see here they've also reported that they've got a quick video on YouTube just paused here so we can see the caption. They say that they believe that the construction of the so-called Gigafactory of Tesla has already begun but again they're not 100% sure on that. So hopefully fingers crossed I think we'll see a bit of an announcement when that starts to officially happen and we'll probably hear a little bit more news but exciting to see some equipment start to show up.
And then like we talked about yesterday we've got another new hire relating to Gigafactory is today. This is Dr. Michael Schmidt who has I believe Electric First reporting on this has been operating as the director of operations for Gigafactory is at Tesla for the last two months. So he previously was at Bosch and some interesting experience with project management and you know technical plant manager general manager experience specifically in Mexico for Bosch. So it looks like Tesla has hired him you know for Gigafactory work in general but you'd have to imagine that with the experience there in Mexico this would be a great fit for what Tesla is doing with Gigamexico as well. So a couple of pretty high level hires over the last couple months obviously just noticing in the last couple of days but over the last couple of months for Tesla relating to their Gigafactory expansions. So exciting to see that.
Alright, we've got another update from Fremont. So this is our guess from Fremont and Lathrop, this would be I believe at Lathrop. But Met God in the wilderness who's done these drone plivers at these facilities for Tesla spotted a number of megapacks here. Looks like from this count 146, I think there may have been a couple others or you know handful more in other areas of the factory but 146 megapacks in this photo which would equate to you know almost half a gigawatt hour and come to roughly 300 million dollars you know it depends on if they're selling one of these megapacks to each individual customer or if this is a bulk order for one company that'll change the average price but if you look at the configuration design studio for megapack you get 146 megapacks at about 290 if you increase the duration to 4 hours you would get that down to about 260 I think it was so roughly that ballpark for the amount of potential revenue that we're seeing here in this parking lot for Tesla which is always fun.
Obviously these days, you know, Tesla shipping out multiple batches of these each quarter to get to their multiple gigawatt-hour installations each quarter which is exciting to see but fun to see them all in the same spots and kind of cool to see how Tesla's got this set up. They've got a little grid-like almost parking spaces for megapacks it looks like. There could be some more to come before this ends up getting shipped out so cool to see that update from Tesla's playthrough facility.
Then we have an update on NACS. Tesla has licensed NACS to VOLEX who will help build more connectors for NACS. Obviously, these would be predominantly or entirely built today by Tesla in their facilities but it sounds like as other automakers start to come on board there's going to be third-party suppliers that are also helping with these and VOLEX would be fulfilling that need. They do say they've become a licensed partner for NACS. I'm not exactly sure what sort of licensing agreement there would be here because obviously Tesla has now open-sourced this SAE is looking at making this standardized which would presumably, you know, eradicate any need for any licensing agreement I guess. But in the meantime, it looks like they're kind of getting started with a licensing agreement. I would imagine that there's not any you know huge benefit to Tesla there other than just again getting more of these connectors out there. So I don't know a ton about VOLEX to provide any additional context on that but relatively big company I think they said they have probably get the number here wrong but I think they said they have like 8,000 workers, yeah, 8,000 people imported the company so relatively large company that Tesla will be or that will be helping out with NACS production. That should help other automakers and potentially other third-party chargers with that build-up.
The next thing we've got today is an update on the UAW. So as we know these negotiations have started between the UAW and Ford, GM, Chrysler Stellantis now and oh wait we're skipping out of here we'll go to this one we'll come back to this other one. But so the UAW there's a report from automotive news today that they are asking for more than 40% raises and potentially labor rates that would nearly triple up to $150 per employee according to some sources. This could potentially increase labor costs labor costs across all of these manufacturers by 45 to 80 billion dollars a year and as automotive news here says could threaten their future viability if those types of increases were to go through. So it's a big ask obviously this is early on in negotiations so you're gonna start high and some you know work your way down probably end up meeting somewhere in the middle so I won't put too much weight in this right now but it's interesting to see you know this start to begin and it'll be a good story for us to follow as these negotiations continue because it could lead to some potentially significant interruptions by way of strike for these other automakers later this year so we'll continue to keep an eye on that.
And we'll go back to one story here; also from automotive news and this is on NHTSA investigating a Tesla crash that happened back in July, unfortunately, a fatal crash with a Tesla vehicle and a semi-trailer semi-truck trailer in Virginia. So I don't know a ton about this accident, but it sounds like there was a tractor-trailer that turned out onto a road and unfortunately, the Model Y which was potentially on autopilot did not stop and there was a collision obviously fatal accident. So NHTSA is looking into it. It's worth mentioning though that NHTSA looks into more than a hundred of these each year especially when it potentially involves newer technology like autopilot or FSD so it doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot and we have seen many cases where there's been an investigation and there's you know they learn more information and it kind of moves on from there and there's no real. party at fault probably also worth mentioning that the driver of the semi-truck trailer was yeah the driver of the semi-truck trailer was issued a summoned for reckless driving so again I don't know all the details of the crash but perhaps you know some faults at the semi-driver in this scenario as well so we'll see I don't know that we'll hear a whole lot more on that for a while but we'll keep an eye out for it
and then the last couple things for today Illinois has extended their electric vehicle rebate program or I guess more more specifically renewed it beginning on November 1st I think applications will open up for this on October 18th it'll run through July or January 31st of 2024 this will be a $4,000 rebate so it'll be a pretty short window here for potential EV buyers to benefit from this rebate during that window it is until funds expire or you know all used during that window so it could even be a little bit shorter I'm not sure what the total budget is I'm not sure if that's been disclosed but I think in the past that these have run out pretty quickly so good to see but in terms of the impact a little bit questionable in terms of how big that budget is
and then moving on we've got just kind of a quick update on X today so Linda Yacareno Tesla Tesla's X the CEO was on Squawk of Street this morning just to kind of talk about where things are at with X right now with the rebrand with her you know time at her time at the company which is now dated a couple months pretty good interview I would say if you want to check these out unfortunately CNBC kind of divided them into different clips but you can just search CNBC Linda Yacareno and those clips should come up but she said X is in a really good spot talked about just kind of brand safety the tools that they have added the progress that they have made on things like hate speech which obviously get out a lot of headlines but she said you know when she worked at NBC Universal for 11 years Twitter was the number one partner and by all objective measures the platform that Twitter is today or that X is today is much healthier and safer than it was a year ago and that they've added new brand safety new content moderation tools and things like that to help improve that she's sort of doing the rounds with CMOs CEOs to kind of make these points clear to them and she said that coke visa state farm they've all returned to the platform the operational run rate right now for for X or Twitter is pretty close to break even they're starting to hire again and right now they're in sort of the the shift from super cost discipline which we see you know we saw early on in Elon Musk's takeover now to more of a focus on growth paired with that hiring so I would definitely recommend checking out those clips especially if you haven't heard a whole lot from her I think she's asked a lot of hard questions and responded really well to those questions so give us a little bit more insight into you both what's going on with X and her position at the company
然后我们简要地更新一下今天关于X的情况,Linda Yacareno是特斯拉的X首席执行官,今天早上在《华尔街早餐》节目中谈论了X的现状,包括品牌重塑、她在公司的时间(已经持续了几个月)等。我认为这次采访非常不错,如果你想了解更多,可以搜索CNBC Linda Yacareno,应该能找到相关片段。她说X现在处于一个非常好的位置,谈到了品牌安全、他们所添加的工具以及在类似仇恨言论这样的问题上所取得的进展,这些问题显然引起了很多关注,但她说,当她在NBC环球影业工作了11年时,推特是第一合作伙伴,而从所有客观指标来看,现在的X平台要比一年前更加健康和安全,他们已经增加了新的品牌安全、内容审查等工具来改善情况。她正在与首席营销官和首席执行官们进行沟通,以明确这些观点,她还表示可口可乐、维萨和国家农场已经回到了该平台上。目前,X或Twitter的运营收支几乎接近盈亏平衡,他们正在重新开始招聘,并且现在正处于从极度成本控制的阶段(正如我们在埃隆·马斯克接手初期看到的)到更加关注增长并伴随着招聘的阶段转变。我强烈建议你去观看这些片段,尤其是如果你对她的情况了解不多的话,我认为她面临了很多棘手的问题,对这些问题作出了很好的回应,这为我们提供了一些关于X目前的情况以及她在公司的位置的更多见解。
and then last item for today just a quick look at the calendar so tomorrow we will have the producer price and extra ports in the morning and then looking ahead to next week we have a few economic reports we also have the FOMC meeting minutes as we head into next week so just wanted to take a quick look at that because I'm gonna be off tomorrow a little bit of the reason that today's episode is a little bit earlier I am heading to the airport shortly catch a flight to Seattle gonna hang out with galley a little bit this weekend so no episode tomorrow as I'll be doing that but should be back on Monday all right that'll wrap it up for today as always thank you for listening make sure you subscribe and sign up for notifications you can also find me on x at tesla podcast and we'll see you on Monday for the august 14th episode of tesla daily thank you