Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. First up today we have progress at Giga Mexico. The surrounding infrastructure, mostly the roads and highways, are currently being expanded. This coming from a press release from Nuevo Leone where they talk about excavation underway for expanding these lanes so that there will be three lanes in either direction. Once completed, the motor grater will begin the fine tuning and the body of the work. This work is proceeding according to the schedule planned by the construction companies. This three lane road expansion will occupy the entire front of the Tesla land. And for the bridge that's set to cross this highway, still in the preliminary stages.
If there were a rupture around Taiwan, it would be catastrophic to both the Chinese and the American economy. And by catastrophic, I think you're looking at great depression circumstances. If there were some sort of, a war, some sort of attack. If we lost access to Taiwanese semiconductors, how many weeks until Tesla stops making cars? Or GM? Or Ford? Or Boeing stops making planes? Those chips are used in every part of our economy. Estimates range from a GDP hit of between 8 and 10 percent if we lost access to Taiwanese semiconductors. So it's really important as a matter of national economic security that we're able to maintain peace in that region of the world.
What about American competitiveness with China? You touched on that briefly. Elon Musk said last week, the only thing stopping Chinese EV makers is protectionism, basically trade barriers. The UID dethron Tesla in the fourth quarter is the top EV seller. And then just this morning, GM came out, reported a steep decline in operating income in part due to losses from its EV unit. What do you make of the state of American competitiveness with China, especially as it pertains to some of our key industries, EVs, chips, etc?
So solar, EVs, consumer electronics, these are all areas in which the Chinese have done extraordinary well from a competitive perspective. And watching BYD surpass Tesla in global sales was a bit of a heartbreaking moment. But we often lose sight of the fact that the Chinese economy represents 1.4 billion people. So they have a huge advantage when it comes to simple economies of scale, combined with a strong education system that produces four times as many STEM graduates. We've got a real competitor in China. And Elon's right that the West has to grapple with the issue, Europe in particular, California, trying to achieve a very, very different future in terms of how we consume energy in an EV-led future in particular. California wants no internal combustion cars in the foreseeable future. Are we going to make that happen by buying Chinese vehicles? Because that's the most cost effective way to do so for American consumers. What do you think? I think that's a really hard pill to swallow.
So what would you suggest from a policy standpoint? From a policy perspective, how fast do we need to push the drive towards EVs? How much do we need to accelerate that at a moment in time where the US companies, your fords and GMs are still trying to catch up with Tesla? And Tesla has one great asset. Elon is a phenomenal entrepreneur. And I think that don't lose sight of the fact that Tesla makes a great car, but there's an opportunity at Tesla to create the software platform for the future of automobiles. The self-driving car, good chance will first happen at Tesla.
From car news, China, we got the weekly Tesla insurance data coming in at 12,800. But if you keep reading, they also say the new generation of Tesla Model Y, code named Uniper the refresh, is rumored to start production in the Shanghai factory in April. It's just a rumor, but everything we've really heard so far had Project Juniper sometime in the second half of 2024. So if it were to start production in April in Shanghai, could that mean a quarter three or quarter four launch in North America? It certainly would make some sense if it follows the Model 3 Plus arc.
从中国的汽车新闻中,我们得到了每周特斯拉保险数据为12,800。但是如果你继续阅读,他们还说特斯拉全新一代的Model Y,代号为Uniper the refresh,据传将在四月份在上海工厂开始生产。这只是一个谣言,但到目前为止我们听到的关于Project Juniper的消息是2024年下半年。所以如果它在四月份在上海开始生产,那是否意味着在北美地区将在第三季度或第四季度推出呢?如果它遵循Model 3 Plus的模式,这确实有一定道理。
In case you missed it, it is now official. The Model Y was the best selling car by unit volume of any kind in the world in 2023. Plugging that data into the table, if you wanted to compare it to the same weekend quarter four, that number was 10,800. So through the first four weeks of quarter one, we're now 7,700 units ahead of the record Q4 pace. Tesla would have to average about 15.3,000 deliveries each week over the final nine weeks of the quarter to set yet another new quarterly record. The result this week was indeed the highest fourth week of a quarter ever. When it comes to the Model 3 and Y breakdown over the past few weeks, the main sources have not been reporting these figures. So if any of you actually have a reliable source for those numbers, please let me know.
From Roland, Tesla, Norway, Spain, and the Netherlands had their best January and their best first month of the quarter ever, Sweden likely to join the list by the end of the month. There was at least one, if not a few ships that did not arrive in time for Q4 delivery, so that could be boosting these figures, but either way, very strong start.
We got the California New Car Dealers Association report for quarter four. This data matters because California is leading the EV push when it comes to US adoption. For 2023, full be EV market share hit 21.4% but something to keep an eye on that be EV market share did actually tail off in quarter four.
Looking at the top 15 best selling electrified models for the year, the Model Y and the Model 3 dominated. The Model Y did 132.6,000 registrations, the Model 3 at 82.7,000. The closest competitor in third place was the Chevy Bolt with 19,000 registrations. Then for the overall market, the top selling light trucks, which includes the Tesla Model Y, the Model Y outsold the RAV4 and Honda CRV combined with the Toyota Camry in second place a full 30,000 units behind the Model 3. And to anybody trying to paint this as a negative for Tesla, their market share going from 71% in 2022 to 60.5% in 2023 simply does not understand mathematics. I've walked through that math many times before but the simple takeaway as other be EV players enter the market, Tesla's be EV share is naturally going to come down.
How can you convince a large percentage of Americans who live in middle America to go electric? Well, I mean, you know, the Ford F-150 is a great example of a big car that has gone electric and is very exciting. So, but people have to make their own decision. I get it. Nobody's going to force anybody to make these decisions. I honestly think that the price as the price of the electric vehicle comes down and it has dropped 23% year over year, 23% reduction, which means that they're on par now a new EV and a new gas powered vehicle and the price of operating the car and not having to go to the gas station and being able to fill it up for much less and more conveniently. Honestly, I think it's going to sell itself. And I think you'll see, I mean, this is why, I mean, you know, Tesla, for example, their uptake has been amazing. They have accounted for a huge percentage of the increase in electric vehicle sales. It's because they've offered a lower, not a low, but a lower cost model, an entry more entry level model. And people just love driving the car. You're going to see this throughout all of these models.
Do you think this is going to be a common topic on the campaign trial talking about electric vehicles in this push? I mean, it could be. But here's the interesting part is that all of those factories that I was talking about regarding electric building electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries, 60% of them are going into red states. So, you know, people in red states love their EVs too and are working at these factories. So I think, you know, again, I just think that over time, the political nonsense about it will die down and people's experience will speak much more loudly. I think it's important, you know, for for those who care about global warming, climate change, and doing their part, you know, EVs are a solution for them. For those who care about cost, EVs are a solution for them. For those who care about power, EVs are a solution for them. I mean, people just have to get used to it and understand it. And I think, you know, you'll see this uptake continue to snowball.
First and foremost, you'll love to see the current administration actually acknowledge Tesla and its success. Second, I think she's right that in the long run, EVs won't be weaponized politically as much. I'm just not sure that shift is going to start to happen this year ahead of the election. It's very unfortunate. I just think we all need to be prepared for it in the months ahead.
The what's inside channel just uploaded a video getting the new model three plus trading in a model S, but they did a range test of sorts. Just want to share his quick summary. If you remember at the beginning, it said 333 miles is estimated what we could get with most Teslas that I have the S and the X and even the Y. We'd probably get I'm just going to tell you this like 280 270 miles range. This is what we got in here. 327. Are you kidding me? Six miles worse than what it said at the beginning? That's incredible. That really is incredible. I know it's just one test, but it would be great to start seeing more Teslas getting real world range closer to the estimate.
We have a new world's largest battery energy storage project in California. This one 3.287 gigawatt hours. This is paired with a solar farm and the batteries are provided by three different companies LG Samsung and BYD. This site has now reached substantial completion and is fully online. Also of note, part of this project is on the Edwards Air Force base and it's the largest public private collaboration in the US Department of Defense history.
LG energy is now predicting 30% growth for battery storage in 2024 globally, but driven by the United States. They also just said production of their LFP cells in that factory in Arizona will be a major growth engine. Their dual purpose gigafactory in Arizona will make both cylindrical cells that are going to be 4680s presumably for Tesla, as well as 16 gigawatt hours of production for battery energy storage via LFP cells. Here's the proof that LG is emphasizing the production of 46 millimeter diameter cells and their recent announcement indicates a strengthening collaboration between LG and its major long time Tesla. LG plans to start mass production of the 4680 battery by the end of 2025. So you can see that's a Tesla plan right?
That's my everyday car. The Tesla plan. They're fabulous. You like Tesla's? Wonderful car. Yeah. Is it Elon Musk is a genius? Yes. Genius. Yeah. You've actually had him you went to meet him in here. You know something he's a a lot of geniuses are dreamers. He's a manufacturer. I mean he's an engineer.
He came to he ended the Scraj in 2007 with his prototype electric roadster. And I know that's pretty cool. And he says you know Jay I'm going to build charging stations all up and down the coast. It'll be free and you can pull it and charge it. I'm going yeah right there like that'll happen. But he was smart enough to build the infrastructure at the same time. Yeah everybody else who builds electric car. Where can I charge it? Oh you can charge anywhere. Just plug it. Well no you can't. I mean he's the first one to really get the thing. So no he he's a genius.
A Reddit user shared a video of the new functionality of the adaptive headlights on the model 3 plus. So far this is only in Europe and I'm not sure when Tesla will push an update for older cars and other regions. If you watched closely it didn't look perfect but it's certainly a start. Here we have it. Bloomberg was reporting that Elon's 2018 CEO compensation plan that trial has finally reached verdict. This is indeed the one we've been waiting for. Tesla's board rather has been waiting for so that they can construct Elon's next compensation plan. Unfortunately though for Elon the judge has ruled in favor of the plaintiff. Bloomberg said Tesla's board will have to start over and come up with a new proposal. We also have to keep in the back of our mind. Elon may appeal or challenge this ruling but he's in quite the predicament. If he goes that route that's only going to further delay his next compensation plan because the board can't figure that out and hammer out the details until this case is actually settled. It should go without saying but this court case is actually worth spending time to look into because it's going to have an outsize impact on Elon's future at Tesla specifically when it comes to his compensation. The 2018 CEO Comp plan with a 55.8 billion dollar maximum value was the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets by multiple orders of magnitude. 250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer comp plan and over 33 times larger than the plan's closest comparison which was Elon's prior plan.
What's unique in this case is that the defendants, Elon and the board actually bore the burden of proof proving that the plan was fair. Part of the reason that's the case because Elon enjoyed thick ties with the directors that were tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla and Elon dominated the process that led to the board approval of his comp plan. This whole case may actually have shifted on a technicality. Delaware law allows defendants to shift the burden of proof under the entire fairness standard where the transaction was approved by a fully informed vote of the majority of the minority stockholders. That's exactly how Tesla conditioned this plan. But the defendants were unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed because the proxy statement inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process.
Translation, in the judge's eyes, Tesla did not provide enough accurate information to the shareholders to actually have an informed vote on this compensation plan. Which resulted in the defendants, Elon and the board having the unenviable task of proving the fairness of the largest potential comp plan in the history of public markets.
The two main factors that were considered throughout this trial were process and price, process being how did the board, Elon and Tesla actually come up with this plan and price was the actual compensation amount, reasonable effectively.
Without going too far into the detail, what you need to know is that Elon proposed a grant size and a structure that a few ones down the road he was actually fine lowering. But throughout the whole process, it was a cooperative venture between Elon and the board. The board members did not take a position on the other side of Elon. And of course, the plaintiff then pointed out Elon's deep ties with specific board members that were involved in the process.
Part of the board and Tesla's defense was that they're comparing what Tesla gave with this plan to what Tesla got, arguing the structure of this compensation plan was all upside for the stockholders. This plan offered Elon the ability to increase his Tesla ownership by roughly 6% from 21.9% to at most 28.3%. That's if and only if Tesla's market cap went from 50 billion to 650 billion while also hitting operational milestones.
The judge said this 6% for $600 billion argument has a lot of appeal, but that quickly fades when you remember that Elon owned 21.9% of Tesla before this compensation plan. Saying this ownership stake gave Elon every incentive to push Tesla to levels of transformative growth, Elon stood to gain over $10 billion for every $50 billion in market capitalization increase without this plan. Elon had no intention of leaving Tesla and he made that clear at the outset of the process and throughout this litigation.
Simply put, was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Elon and achieve its goals? Then we have the defendants arguing that the milestones Elon needed to meet were ambitious and hard to achieve, but they failed to prove that point.
The principal defect with the defendants give get argument which was their fair price argument as a whole, is it does not address the $55.8 billion question. Given Elon's pre-existing equity stake, was the grant within the range of reasonable approaches to achieve the board's purported goals? Or at a minimum, could the board have accomplished its goals with less and would Elon have taken it?
This was an interesting argument from the defense. Tesla's ambitious goals forced it to the point of an existential crisis in 2017 and Elon was critical to Tesla's future. Musk was on the verge of walking away and was distracted by his other ventures. Elon required an added incentive to stay at the helm and he's uniquely motivated by highly ambitious goals. As the board member said, the board looked to fashion milestones that would give Elon the dopamine hits he needed. There we have conflicting testimony here saying that Elon was on the verge of walking away, but many other times he was going to be a lifer at Tesla.
The counter argument from the plaintiff when it comes to these lofty goals, if transformative growth is the goal, why set milestones at the time of the grant that were 70% likely to be achieved? All you need to know from Tesla's own internal projections, the first three milestones were actually probable to be achieved by Tesla, so not really the stretch goals that the defense was arguing. They also said further, how can one conclude Elon was on the verge of walking away from a leadership role at Tesla when Elon made it clear he would not quit Tesla and is heavily invested in Tesla, both financially and emotionally, and views Tesla as part of his family.
It also hurt the defense's case here that the compensation plan had no guardrails or requirements for Elon actually investing certain amounts of time into Tesla. So if encouraging Elon to prioritize Tesla over his other ventures was so important, why not put those guardrails in place?
The takeaway? There is simply no evidence that the added incentive provided by a grant of this magnitude was necessary much less fair. Here's the bit where the defendants concede three operational milestones aligned with internal projections. As a remedy, the plaintiff only seeks rescission, arguing further at a minimum. The court should rescind the options for the first three tranches given the lack of disclosure regarding the probability of achievement.
And one of the plaintiffs arguments here held up, so the court orders rescission of the grant as a remedy for the defendant's fiduciary breaches. The remedy of rescission restores the party's substantially to the position which they occupied before making the contract. The grant or the award is not too complex to unscramble and the entire grant sits unexercised and undisturbed.
The defendants argue that rescission is a harsh consequence that would leave Elon uncompensated. Then the judge goes back to saying Elon's pre-existing equity stake provided him tens of billions of dollars for his efforts. Which is quite honestly the same, Elon should work for free argument because he already has so much money.
In case you're thinking to yourself, wait a second, didn't the shareholders vote to approve this plan? The answer is yes, but in this court trial, that really didn't matter because in the judge's eyes again, the board, Elon and Tesla, did not provide enough accurate information for that vote to effectively carry weight. Basically because of some legalese.
The two main things working against Elon here, the first one had to do with the process. The judge argued that Elon had too much control over the company and over the board with his long standing relationships. And there wasn't really that much pushback from the board at all. And to the price or the size of this plan was just not warranted because Elon already had substantial incentive with the 21% of Tesla that he already owned.
And yes, as it stands now based on the court documents, Elon's entire $55 billion compensation plan is now rescinded or avoided. Going forward, if Elon does not challenge this ruling, his next compensation plan is most likely going to have to have wildly ambitious targets, the first few tranches of which are not like internal projection type of tranches. That's part of what got them into trouble with this prior plan.
The second thing would be the board actually having much more say, much more negotiation power, much more leverage in the actual back and forth between the board and Elon when it comes to figuring out the numbers, not just Elon setting the numbers and then the board saying okay.
And third, when it comes to the shareholder vote for this upcoming compensation plan, the board and Elon need to be much more forthcoming sharing accurate information with the shareholders. So they're actually informed on Elon's relationship with each board member and the process of how they actually came up with the numbers in the plan.
With Elon being worth around $200 billion, losing this part of his compensation would be about 25% of his net worth. Elon's response slash advice never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware. I do think it's worth mentioning at the end of this document said, Something tells me this is not the end of the story.
The Model Y drove record breaking performance for their IZEV program in 2023. Tesla registered nearly as many qualifying deliveries as the combined total of its three closest competitors. Tesla delivered 43.6,000 vehicles that were eligible for this rebate program last year. That figure nearly quadrupled Tesla's total from 2022. In second place was Hyundai with 16.7,000 deliveries.
Here we have BYD claiming it wants to work with Tesla to grow the EV market. The head of BYD's public relations said I think this is an inevitable process, but it may take another two to three years. In the end, many brands that are not able to compete in the market will be eliminated. He said Tesla is our very respected industry peer. It's also our client. I think this market is very large. It's not that we must surpass them or they must surpass us. Instead BYD and Tesla together, or more new energy vehicle brands together, we need to think about how to increase the new energy vehicle cake.
Ford is supplying more than 1000 F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach E vehicles to EcoLab to replace their water treatment firms gas powered vehicles in California.
Here are the highlights from GM's Q4 earnings. Mary Bar said the pace of EV growth has slowed, creating uncertainty, but many third party forecasts have US EV deliveries rising from 7% in 2023 to at least 10% in 2024. Demand for GM's EVs globally has been weaker than expected. I do want to say right now is not a great time to read into GM's financial metrics declining quarter over quarter and insinuating it's the end. There were many one-time items that are impacting GM's financials for Q3 and Q4, one of which is the UAW strikes.
GM expects their US EV portfolio will become variable profit positive in the second half of 2024. I just want to make sure everybody knows this does not mean gross profitability, they're different things.
Variable profit is also known as contribution margin. It's just the revenue that remains after actually subtracting for variable costs. Variable profit is a per item profit metric where gross margin is basically company-wide gross profit. Your variable costs are different than your cost of goods sold because your cost is made up of variable costs but also your fixed costs. Simply put, it's much easier to achieve variable profitability than it is gross margin profitability.
Bara said cruise is already implementing changes from these investigations and they need to focus on ensuring communities understand the mission of cruise, a problem Tesla doesn't really need to tackle. Cruise is working on new financial targets and a timeline to relaunch. They do plan to spend $1 billion less this year on the cruise line.
Perfect timing after we just talked about the dealer pushback yesterday, GM is now planning to sell plug-in hybrids in North America. This is to help GM comply with more stringent tailpipe emission standards. They'll bring them to the market at a time where GM needs them from a compliance perspective.
This right here is what we call corporate speak. The real reason we just talked about yesterday, GM needs to keep its dealers happy. No details were given on the hybrid models or when. The BEV launches are still a priority for GM this year.
GM again postponed their investor day that was supposed to be in March, the first time around it was supposed to be November of last year. This is to showcase their software and digital strategy.
If you're wondering why GM stock was up today, it's because they gave bullish guidance when it comes to operating profit for 2024 of between $12 and $14 billion. How are they doing this? Well, they still have a very lucrative business for ICE trucks and SUVs. They lost $1.7 billion on the EV business, the UAW strikes cost GM $1.1 billion across Q3 and Q4, and they're planning for auto prices to fall between 2 and 2.5% this year.
This was a fun reminder I saw from Holmars on X where Cruz got $1.15 billion from Tiro Price and Softbank. This was back in 2019 and this funding for Cruz came weeks after Tiro Price said it sold 92% of its stake in Tesla. In May 2019, Tesla was around $15 per share.
Akyo Toyota, the chairman of Toyota, just addressed his company after the recent embarrassments. He said the group has lost sight of its founding principles. We were expecting a grand new vision forward for Toyota from this meeting, but this is what we got. Intentionally vague principles to inspire each leader and each company to formulate their own road to improvement. These principles being think of others, support each other, hone our skills, make things the right way, and continue dialogue. This new global vision has nothing in the way of hard targets. Translation? Why don't all of you guys figure out the new strategy and plan going forward and just be good to each other and do the right thing in the process.
India's EV adoption is also hitting roadblocks. The main reason the lack of EV charging infrastructure is proving to be a big factor in buyers opting to not choose an EV.
印度的电动车普及也面临阻碍。缺乏电动车充电基础设施是导致购车者不选择电动车的一个重要因素。
Lucid has expanded its factory in Arizona by 3 million square feet in preparation for production of the Gravity SUV. This makes the factory more than four times its previous size. It did not say what the new annual production capacity will be.
Renault has scrapped those IPO plans for its EV and software arm and peer, citing valuation concerns, and VW has put efforts to seek outside investors for its power co-batter unit on the back burner.
Tesla stock closed today at $191.59 up 0.35% compared to the NASDAQ down 0.76%. Tesla stock traded about 1.4 million shares lower than the average 30-day volume.
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