Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my newest patrons, Chris, John Kay and Jack P. Thank you for choosing to support the channel.
If you're on X last week, you may have seen some people sharing that. Hertz was only going to sell a few hundred Tesla vehicles based on what I was seeing from the Hertz website that didn't make much sense.
Now, CardiallorshipGuy shares the actual auction list, which confirms what I was thinking. 20,000 vehicles that Hertz is selling 90% plus are EVs, and this is across the entire United States. From the actual auction list, 72.7% of the listings are Teslas, 14.4,000 out of the 19.9,000 listings. It's really just math. If Hertz wants to get rid of around 20,000 electric vehicles, most of that EV fleet was majority Tesla.
I was able to go back and find that post I was talking about. It was from Spotted Model where they were saying only 661 of Hertz's 27,000 vehicles for sale were a Tesla. As far as we know now, that is definitely incorrect. I know at least some of you saw this post, so I wanted to make sure we cleared that up.
On X, Marco, the supercharger guy is saying that the diner drive-in is going to get an expansion. The existing parking lot is already at max capacity with 32 stalls, but Tesla has submitted permits for an additional 48 stall. And solar canopies in the parking lot next door. Now with 80 stalls, the Hollywood location will technically tie with Harris Ranch as the largest supercharger in California. You may remember the first thing I said when we saw original construction at this site was, it seemed smaller than I was expecting, so definitely good to see this for what will most likely be a very popular site. The current diner location is here on the right, and then adjacent on the left you have this proposed expansion. The question now becomes, how many people in this proposed expansion will actually be able to see the video screen.
Reddit user BrandDude87 puts together a really nice, updated infographic of all of Tesla's different factories. It's pretty slick because it's designed to scale, and now it also shows us what products are being manufactured at each location, along with the actual output and the acreage. This also works well as desktop wallpaper, so I'll have the link to the original file below.
Adam Jonas put out a new Tesla stock note today. I really just want to highlight for fiscal year 2024, their projecting auto gross margins X ZEV credits of 12.8%. This would be down from where they were in quarter three at 16.3%. Thus, they are indeed expecting a fairly material decline in Tesla's auto gross margin X credits for this year. Here's where things get interesting, they're also expecting earnings per share for this year of $1.98 versus $2.41 where they were at before. For some context here, as it stands now for 2024, Wall Street is actually around $3.80, so Morgan Stanley significantly below. However, even though their new price target is $345 down from $380, with the lower PT, this is still the second highest price target of all of Wall Street. So they're bullish on the price target while sitting at about 52% of the Wall Street average consensus for earnings per share for essentially the next 12 months. Just one more reason why I don't spend too much time with all of these analyst updates.
Lastly, Jonas said, looking ahead, are we approaching maximum market negativity on EVs? We believe the trough may happen towards the latter part of 2024 with EU parliamentary and US presidential elections part of the equation.
A Chinese source is reporting from that conversation that Franz had in China last week that Tesla does plan to make special efforts to integrate China's unique consumer needs into product design. That's also the reason why the design, engineering and manufacturing teams are rooted in China, according to Franz. He said, demand in the Chinese market is changing and Tesla strives to meet local needs in China, Europe and other markets to achieve good sales. Tesla's future car designs will first adhere to safety, efficiency, simplicity and user experience, adding that even though Tesla insists on minimalism, it also prioritizes driving safety.
We got another update on the new Tesla semi-factory under construction at Giga Nevada from Heinrich Zane. He said the current plan is actually not Tesla's original plan that was going to cost $3.6 billion. According to Zane, the plan is to build a separate standalone building for volume semi-production. The new construction is located at the far north end of the property a few hundred yards from the existing building. This area previously was used as a warehouse on wheels, which was a method using the trailers that supplier parts are delivered in to store the parts until they're needed. This replaces the need to build a warehouse and it's more efficient. Two new warehouse on wheels were built recently to relocate these trailers to.
Here's some quick updated footage of this new location for the semi-production site. I did ask him what his source was for this new information about Tesla deviating from the original plan. He said the first indication was a Tesla employee town hall meeting in December where they shared the revised plan.
I'd still be very cautious with all of this, but for what it's worth, he was asked if this is only going to be a factory for the semi. No 4680 production. He said yes, that's my understanding for now. I'd still guess that long-term Tesla will eventually make 4680s at Giganovada at one of these different buildings, but maybe in the initial plan, that's not the plan anymore.
Last night, Omar from Holmar's catalog was lucky enough to get FSD beta version 12.1.2. Immediately, I'm sure some of you are wondering, wait a second, I thought V12 was not supposed to be a beta anymore. Specifically, Elon said version 12 won't be beta. Maybe he meant a later revision of FSD 12, which could be dot many different sequences. Meaning there's still a chance before we exit the V12 phase, meaning V13, it does actually exit the beta phase, but for now, still in beta.
Tesla Scope did say for this release, they saw the expansion to hardware for equipped vehicles and vehicles outside of California and Texas getting this update for the first time. Technically, yes, you could say that this update is going to non-employees, but we know Omar is not a regular non-employee. Tesla Scope did not say why, but they said two vehicles on their platform had this update pulled from their vehicles. Lastly, they said a wider release to customers sometime this week or upcoming weekend if everything looks good. Brad Ferguson shared from Omar's space that Tesla called him, warned him it was rough, but that he was able to make videos. Nags have been turned up to 11 to make sure drivers pay attention.
The most important thing I want to say about V12 going out to customers, do not overreact one way or another. The main thing to focus on will be the rate of improvement from here. I say that because he later posted his first two drives with FSD12 where both zero intervention, no accelerator press, no speed change, no take over, no awkward moments. Those were two roughly 15 minute drives traveling two and three miles. Another owner said definitely feels way more natural, less robotic, stopping feels better, tried a few places it always messes up and it nailed all of them, just some acceleration presses. Chris from DirtyTesla shared a text from a customer in Utah who got it and said it's amazing, slaughtered all the normal spots it messes up on, the max speed set was kind of odd, like never go to the max speed even with no one in front of us. That may have something to do with the automatic speed offset where it lets FSD pick the most natural speed for you. It will determine the most natural speed based on considerations like road type, traffic flow, environmental conditions, the speed limit and the selected FSD beta profile setting, chill average or assertive.
That was just a quick clip from one of Omar's first drives and it handled fire trucks and pedestrians, double parked cars, was breaking for speed bumps and overall it did look pretty smooth and human-like. But again to ensure that we don't get carried away here, let's not forget that FSD beta is really overfit for San Francisco, we've known that now for some time, so let's see how FSD12 handles in some other cities. As always not to diminish what we're seeing because so far it does look very good but let's just keep our expectations in check.
Just in case anybody is new, the reason FSD12 is so important for Tesla, it really is an entirely new architecture, they're removing most if not all of the heuristic or manual lines of code that used to tell the vehicle what to do from a planning perspective in each different situation. Now with V12 as far as we know, it's mostly if not all just using neural nets, taking video in from other good human drivers and learning what to do based on that video feed alone. Those hundreds of thousands of lines of manual code do this in every different situation are now gone, it's just learning how to drive based on how other humans drive.
Elon was asked about a timeline for Tesla's entry to South Africa to which Elon said import duties are super high in South Africa to protect the domestic industry. Does not make sense for Tesla given that electric cars are not locally made.
I'm not sure what to make of this one personally, we know that Matthew D.R. has had some very solid sources in the past and for what it's worth, he's saying expect first deliveries of the new Tesla Roadster, this year, this coming when we really haven't heard anything officially from Tesla about the new Roadster in some time.
All throughout the replies of this post that were all skeptical of what he said he was doubling down time after time. He did say the Roadster will have less range than announced during the reveal. Per the usual, do not go banking on this but I have to say Matthew's been pretty solid in the past so I wanted to at least pass it along.
The word is two cyber trucks have arrived in China to begin their national tour. Speaking of the cyber truck, user GigaHorse on the Cyber Truck Owners Club forum shared the first 10,000 miles ownership experience. I'll have this post below if you'd like to dive into the detail. I'm only going to cover high level things here because we have to remember one user's experience may be very different than somebody else, especially when it comes to efficiency metrics based on what tires you have, where you're driving, the temperature, how you drive, etc.
This was an all-wheel drive variant and they said two sets of tires but mostly all seasons and a variety of driving conditions. The average lifetime watt hours per mile was 599 giving cyber truck a 100% battery used range of 206 miles or 80% battery usage of 164 miles. Mostly fairly aggressive driving, no speeding tickets or accidents but not babying the truck. The things they like, sound system, handling, cooled seats, the speed, steered by wire acceleration, visibility and frunk with dividers. What they don't like, the charge time, road noise, the range, the attention that the truck gets, people touching, fingerprints are bad taking pictures.
The volt is not waterproof, especially if raining while driving at high speeds, it gets wet inside. Yes, we can certainly hope that in the future once these V4 locations actually get V4 updated cabinets and can deliver charging speeds up to 350 kilowatts, the cyber truck will be able to accept that but the question is still what will the charging curve look like and for how long will it be able to accept those higher rates.
They did have some problems during this time, one of which the main screen blacked out, it went dead, they had to get it towed to a service center as the battery percentage was low and at an unknown level. A plastic trim piece on the vault came off, mobile Tesla service tech fixed it the next day using the same part. Overall, a dream to drive, disappointing charge speeds and range, the value is okay, still some production problems to work out, the sound system is beyond great. Honestly, pretty much I think exactly what most of us would be expecting.
Replying to a post about this ownership experience, Wes confirmed what I was saying, take everything with a grain of salt, he has 325 wide mud terrain tires on his cyber truck and has seen 460 watt hours per mile over the last 150 miles, more efficient than that original post. Wes did share a picture of those wider mud tires on his cyber truck and I have to admit, that looks pretty tough.
Vossen on Instagram shared some images of a custom cyber truck wrap with some white wheels, thought it was pretty cool, first time I had seen something like this. Some Chileans are being notified that Tesla will be opening a store on January 31st. In San Francisco, the Kilowatt spotted a right hand drive Model 3 performance. When you pause, you can see the red performance brake calipers. As Connor Gaffius pointed out on X taking a screen grab of that video, there's a chance that the front bumper on the performance variant is actually different.
I know seeing a right hand drive variant will be very encouraging for many of you. Strata has broken ground on a 1 gigawatt hour battery energy storage project in Arizona. This project in Phoenix is expected to become operational in 2025 and they are indeed using Tesla Megapack 2XLs. Doing the math, 1 gigawatt hour is 1000 megawatt hours divided by roughly 4 megawatt hours in each Tesla Megapack, that's 250 megapacks times an average ASP of 2 million dollars, gets you to that 500 million dollar investment.
Each Megapack 2XL has 10 cabinets as opposed to 8 on the prior generation. Sawyer got an image from somebody of the Washington DC Auto Show where Tesla has a Cybertruck but at this display, people can actually get in and sit inside, which is unusual so far for Tesla. Most of the Cybertrucks that we've seen on display at various locations are actually roped off to any customers. But not the case at the DC Auto Show.
We have some new top voted questions for the Wednesday earnings call. Should retail shareholders be concerned, Elon has stated he's uncomfortable expanding AI and robotics at Tesla if he doesn't have 25% voting.
How many Cybertruck orders are in the queue and when do you anticipate you'll be able to fulfill all existing orders? What are Tesla's biggest priorities for 2024? And when will Tesla start construction on the Giganavada expansion? They just did. And Gigamexico. And when can we expect each of these to produce their first products like 4680, semi and next gen vehicles?
BYD is now on board saying that pouch batteries are not the way forward. Their ending production of their pouch type batteries used in their best selling hybrids as they seek to address durability concerns and the risk that they could leak. They're looking to replace these with prismatic batteries instead. BYD and some industry experts believe pouch type batteries where the cells are wrapped in a thin metal bag made of aluminum laminated films have a higher chance of leaking electrolytes. Elon has said previously he is strongly against using pouch type cells.
Finally we get a positive anecdote on EV production for a legacy OEM. GM saying that the Lyric is now not struggling with those same battery module issues. Cadillac delivered 9000 Lyric for all of 2023 but that was after only delivering 2400 in the first half of the year. The Lyric now accounts for a quarter of all of Cadillac sales up from about 12% in the fourth quarter of last year. The Cadillac exec said it's been a measured build up and launch as battery modules have become available and now that we're in a position with strong inventory we're seeing great sales performance. Remember this year the Lyric lost eligibility for the $7,500 credit but GM is currently offsetting that by offering incentives and they're saying that it should regain eligibility later this year.
Nissan CEO just announced they need to clean out their closet. He said Nissan needs to jettison its old clumsy inefficient ways no matter how comfortable they may be as the company overhauls itself to better compete in today's top C-turvy global auto market one be sieged by change, uncertainty and ruthless competition. We cannot continue old ways of business from the past into the future. How do we make ourselves efficient enough to be competitive against those new fast agile companies. They're planning to announce the details of this radical remake of Nissan by March 31st that's going to cover the next three years for the company. The roadmap will cover low cost competitors in China, improved competitiveness in EVs, more efficient leverage of partnerships with suppliers and the need to call to date a more nimble corporate culture.
Next month Ford is going to be implementing new invoice pricing when it comes to working with dealers. Ford will change the way it calculates EV invoice prices starting on February 9th. On that date Ford will include dealer holdback on all of its F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit Invoices which is essentially a discount that gives dealers the ability to discount models on their lots. Dealer holdbacks have been around for a long time but this is actually contrary to what Ford was trying to do with more fixed pricing when it comes to EVs but this move starting February 9th will basically give the dealers more flexibility when it comes to selling these EVs.
Rivian has pretty quietly been gathering in some top talent for its R2 launch in Georgia in 2025. They just brought on an industry vet with experience at Apple and Porsche. They recently hired an exec from Mercedes Benz and an exec from Stellantis North America.
I think 2024 is going to be the year more people start to talk about humanoid robots and developing plans for playing some part in this game. Not just because of what Tesla is doing with Optimus but also because of that pretty big deal that figure just signed with BMW. In a recent interview at the World Economic Forum the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella was talking about three major platforms for innovation, compute infrastructure, AI, then AR VR devices and embodied AI such as humanoid robots.
It looks like Model 3 Plus deliveries in the United States are set to begin January 25th. Just three days away.
看起来美国开始交付Model 3 Plus的时间定在1月25日,仅仅还有三天的时间。
Tesla stock today closed at $208.80 per share down 1.6% on the day while the NASDAQ finished the day up 0.32%. 117.9 million shares traded on the day up about 8 million shares from the 30 day average.
I hope you guys have a wonderful day. Please like the video. If you did you can find me on X linked below and a huge thank you to all of my Patreon supporters.