Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Loomis. Quick shout out to my newest patrons, Jeff A. And Tony DeVee. Thank you for choosing to support the channel.
Recently, there was an interview on a German channel with Berlin's director of manufacturing, Andre Terek. It was really good even having to rely on the subtitles. Here are the takeaways. Gigabrelin is currently producing the first battery sub-components in Berlin, but they're being shipped to America for final assembly. So at least a portion of the 4680 cell factory is operating in Berlin, just not for Berlin.
Andre confirmed the plan is to one day make the full 4680 cell in Berlin. He was asked about producing the Model 3 in Berlin, and he said the approval process is underway for the factory expansion. And he said, we may be a bit surprised with what Tesla can do. Clearly not a direct answer, but perhaps a hint. Later on, he also mentioned Tesla does, of course, have other products, not just vehicles. And so there are many production options that are conceivable for Gigabrelin, but more details to come.
安德烈确认计划是有一天在柏林生产完整的 4680 电池。有人问及在柏林生产 Model 3,他表示工厂扩建的审批流程正在进行中。他说,我们可能会对特斯拉的能力有些意外。显然不是直接回答,但也许是一个暗示。后来,他还提到特斯拉当然有其他产品,不仅仅是汽车。因此,在 Giga柏林有许多生产选项,但更多细节将会揭晓。
He confirmed, despite having around 12,500 employees, they're still finding it hard to hire enough skilled workers, and they still need to hire more. He spent a few minutes debunking all of the fun around Gigabrelin. He mentioned there are asparagus farms in Brandenburg that use more water than Tesla. Berlin recycles most of its water at its own wastewater treatment plant, and there are numerous other companies using orders of magnitude more water than Tesla is, even if Tesla were to use its full allotment, which right now, they don't.
Andre said the forest that was cleared for Gigabrelin was originally created for the paper industry. Tesla has reforested the same amount of land that they cut down, and even better, they've done it with mixed forests and monocultures, and they went further in surrounding areas, planting trees and shrubs for a higher quality forest.
Andre talked about Tesla automation, the machine that builds the machine. So yes, Tesla is still actively building its own manufacturing equipment. This is for multiple uses, but primarily, he said it's for drive units and batteries. This company was formerly known as Tesla Gromen, now it's Tesla automation. It functions effectively as Tesla's own internal supplier, that's always on call. This equipment that's being custom made for Gigabrelin does ultimately go to Tesla's other factories globally as well.
Remember that Tesla AI girl on X that got FSD12.3, she was one of the first people, well, her account no longer exists. I have not been able to confirm exactly what happened here, but if you did not get a chance to, and you wanted to see that video, somebody did upload it to YouTube, so I'll have this link in the description below.
A Tesla safety PSA, after that Wall Street Journal report, the last few days of that very unfortunate death, for a while there was the thought that Tesla vehicles automatically would open your windows and doors when submerged in water. The thinking though, is that the sensor was actually for water inside the vehicle, and at a certain level inside, then the windows would automatically roll down. Potentially alongside the doors opening as well.
I just wanted to clarify, that feature was never really confirmed, and unless it malfunctioned in this recent case with Angela Chow, then it's not actually a feature. Another gift we got for our family members for Christmas last year, in addition to the Fantic Tire inflator, was actually a tool to break your car window, in the event you're ever in that situation.
As expected, Elon is at Gigabrelin today, RBB24 with the report. They said production at Gigabrelin is rolling again. Elon was asked if he's committed to still expanding Gigabrelin, he said yes, absolutely, I think this is a great place.
This one's kinda funny, Elon gave a brief speech to some of the employees, there was some media in attendance, Elon said they can't stop us, and German he said I love you. The word is, Elon's speech was not meant to be made public. There was a company vehicle parked in front of the assembled media representatives with loud music, so that not a word could be heard. Plant manager Andre Tyrigge also encouraged the crowd, and he announced an annual salary change, saying they could rely on it. A collective agreement was not necessary, and he promised a bonus system saying, you're doing great things. Elon also met with some government heads who were touting the huge benefit of Tesla economically to the region.
Tesla's employee council chief said after the power was restored on Monday evening, the machines were checked and started up. The early shift today began work this morning. Elon and the team also touted providing vehicle leasing options to employees, improving transportation and shuttle services, among other improvements. On X, Elon said thanks to the hard work of the Tesla Gigabrelin team, and support from the community, the factory is back online. Given that the initial concern was that the factory might be without power until the end of this weekend, this would certainly be a win for Tesla. I think most importantly, this highlights that Elon and the Tesla team are still fully committed to expanding in Gigabrelin, despite all of the nonsense.
Alex Voigt is reporting that during the Q&A at Gigabrelin, Elon said, I think it makes sense to produce the semi-truck in Europe at Gigabrelin as well. The word is, Hondelsblatt has the video where Elon mentioned this. Let me remind us all that Elon saying, I think it makes sense to produce the semi-truck in Europe is not the same thing as saying, Tesla will produce the semi in Europe. I'm not at all saying I don't think they will. Eventually, I would just say, we're probably a year away from volume semi-production in the United States. So we're going to have to deploy patients for this one if it comes true at all. Also during the speech, Elon said the next gen car will definitely come to Berlin in the longterm.
The first time Ashley and I took a road trip to Florida, this happened within the first three hours. Even after we got a new tire, they did not have a perfect match. The rest of the trip, we kept getting low tire pressure warnings, even after resetting everything. After that experience, I told myself, I will never not be prepared again. I ended up finding Fantic, who now sponsors the channel, and Fantic products have become a Christmas gift hit in our family. They just dropped this bad boy, the X9. That's designed for pickup trucks, jeeps and the like, and not only will it inflate something like an F-150 from 30 to 35 PSI in 40 seconds, but it also doubles as a light and triples as a power station. Now, it's not gonna power something like your dryer, but your phones, your drones, your laptops, et cetera. Fantic also has the X8 for smaller cars and EVs, and they have car vacuums too. Actually, and I love our X8, we keep it in the back of the Model Y, our family members loved it as a Christmas gift. Now, if you live a heavier duty lifestyle, Fantic has you guys covered as well. So, if you want some peace of mind and functionality, you can get 28% off using my link in the description below. Plus, they have a carrying bag you can grab as well. Stay safe out there.
当 Ashley 和我第一次一起去佛罗里达的时候,这事发生在前三个小时内。即使我们换了新轮胎,他们也找不到完美的匹配。整个旅程中,我们不断收到低胎压警告,即使重置了一切也没有用。经历之后,我告诉自己,我再也不会毫无准备了。最后我找到了Fantic,现在他们赞助我的频道,Fantic产品已成为我们家庭圣诞礼物的热门选择。他们刚推出了这款霸气款,X9,专为皮卡、吉普等设计,不仅可以在40秒内将像F-150这样的汽车从30到35PSI充气,而且还可以作为灯光和电源站。它可能不能为干衣机等提供电力,但可以为手机、无人机、笔记本电脑等提供电力。Fantic还推出了适用于小型车和电动车的X8,同时也推出了车用吸尘器。实际上,我喜欢我们的X8,我们把它放在 Model Y 的后部,我们的家人也很喜欢它作为圣诞礼物。如果你有更重的使用需求,Fantic 也为你提供解决方案。因此,如果想要平静和功能性,可以通过下方链接获得28%的折扣。此外,他们还提供一个随身携带包。在外面要注意安全。
I wanted to highlight on this chart from AJ on X, it shows free cashflow per car per company for 2023. I did check Tesla's numbers, they're correct. I just wanted to add the disclaimer, we have to remember at this point, Tesla's overall free cashflow number will include now some data from Tesla Energy. So it is true that when it comes to the metric free cashflow per car, Tesla is the leader by far. Just keep in mind, Tesla Energy can now contribute to increasing this figure for Tesla as well.
Okay, we've got a stock car with no flashers on, we've got a van with flashers on. It's gonna do it. Oh my God. Got a pedestrian. It's probably in this car. And it is that pedestrian was in that car and it's rutted that, that wasn't a needle, but that was challenging. Yeah, it got it. On X this morning, Chuck Cook said there are still Tesla eight ass drivers testing and validating version 12 on his unprotected left turn, to which Elon responded saying, gathering video training data over a wide range of adversarial conditions. This is one area where I think it'll be very interesting to see how things play out because previously with edge cases or the March of the nines, you'd have an engineer writing specific code, but with version 12, it's almost like Tesla's going to need to duplicate that very specific scenario, which may not always be possible. And we know Tesla has great simulated data capabilities, but as far as Elon said, they still rely on the real world training data. I think long term with V12, the expectation just becomes that if events that it's never actually seen specifically before happen, then by that time it has a good enough understanding of how to behave in general, that it can behave safely in that new scenario.
Speaking of Tesla testing and validating, we have Keys on X saying, another Tesla fleet validation vehicle spotted in Amsterdam. We're most likely still months away from FSD beta rolling out in Europe, but it's always encouraging to see these images as this is a required step in the process. Every now and then, I'll DM back and forth with Troy Tesla, and he gave me permission to share some of his Patreon only content when it comes to how he calculates Cybertruck production data using Vins. Let me be clear, this is not in any way a sponsored segment. I've personally been a paying patron of Troy now for some time. I think for $5, the value you get is pretty incredible. And I may not always agree with some of the conclusions he draws from the data, but there is nobody going deeper into the weeds, doing a better job tracking all of the available data we have, and I salute him for his work. It really is awesome that as Tesla investors, we get access to this type of content.
说到特斯拉的测试和验证,我们有X上的Keys报道,另一辆特斯拉车队验证车辆出现在阿姆斯特丹。我们很可能还需要几个月才能在欧洲推出FSD测试版,但看到这些图片总是令人鼓舞,因为这是流程中必不可少的一步。偶尔我会与Troy Tesla 私下交流,他允许我分享他在Patreon平台上的独家内容,特别是关于他如何使用VIN号计算Cybertruck的生产数据。让我明确一点,这绝对不是任何形式的赞助。我个人已经是Troy的付费赞助者有一段时间了。我认为以5美元的价格,你能得到的价值非常惊人。我可能并不总是同意他从数据中得出的一些结论,但没有人比他更深入地挖掘数据、更好地追踪我们所拥有的所有可用数据,我为他的工作表示敬意。作为特斯拉投资者,能够获得这种类型的内容真的很棒。
Each dot on this chart represents a Cybertruck VIN. As production ramps up, Tesla signs higher Vins every day. This chart shows that in quarter one, Tesla started production of the Cybertruck at VIN 700. Troy then plots the Vins throughout the quarter, and then he projects where things will go toward the end of the quarter at the top of the triangle. This is how he draws conclusions like expecting the VIN to reach 3,200 by March 31st, that would be 2,500 units for quarter one. But in the yellow Tesla skipped 100 VINs, so it's actually 2,400 units. Additionally, the VIN to production ratio isn't 100% because some Vins are discarded due to vehicle issues. Weighing all of those factors, that's how Troy is currently estimating around 2,040 Cybertrucks produced throughout Q1. Given 13 weeks in a quarter, that would be a weekly rate of 157 per week. Good news in a recent update, Troy has said that Cybertruck production has increased to a weekly rate of around 300. Given all of the new technology and the new manufacturing methods, we will take the progress.
Seriously though, if you guys like data and you want to understand Tesla on an even deeper level, I think the $5 to support Troy on Patreon is more than worth the investment. So much so that I'll have his Patreon linked below. Dan Ives said, we believe the risk reward is extremely compelling at these levels with the AI story and FSD making major strides at Tesla and represents evaluation that could exceed $1 trillion as this next chapter of the growth story plays out. First quarter units sluggish, but 2.1 million is still hitable for 2024. Meanwhile, Troy is saying, no, 2.1 million deliveries is not possible this year, 2 million is possible, but less than 50% likely. I just wanted to let everybody know both predictions have been added to the prediction tracker.
Tesla is still quietly expanding in the Austin region. They have land in Kyle, they have land in San Antonio, they have land in Hado, they have the lithium refinery, and they're not done. In the past few days, Tesla has now leased another 144,000 square feet, giving them over 1 million square feet across multiple buildings. We are expecting the 36,000 square feet in Hado to be for battery efforts. Then Tesla has around 440,000 square feet of warehouse space in San Antonio. Right now, Tesla has three job postings listed for Kyle, Texas, which is about 35 miles away from Giga Austin. A supply chain quality engineer, a supervisor for cell manufacturing, and a quality technician for cell batteries. I think it's pretty clear these facilities in Kyle and Hado will assist with the lithium refinery coming online, feeding supply into the 4680 production process, along with the cathode facility as well.
As we mentioned, Tesla at the top of the program, but we haven't gotten back to this Wells Fargo downgrade. A growth company with no growth seems to be one of the key thesis they are laying out there. Growth in core markets has moderated with EU and China flattish in the last 12 months. US Downs is the second quarters as well. More concerning, they say, is the effect of price cuts are moderating with- I know it can be satisfying to poke fun of Colin Langen from Wells Fargo, the Tesla analyst, given the fact that his tip-ranked ratings are pretty much bottom of the barrel, half-star. Ranked number 8.3,000 out of about 8.8,000 Wall Street analysts. A lot of people are making a big deal out of this, but he's not really saying anything groundbreaking, or even anything that we haven't already known or been expecting.
I've been saying on the channel for weeks, I want everybody to at least be prepared for the possibility of more Tesla stock paying ahead in the months to come. It might be hard to hear, but as I've said, if Tesla's Q1 comes in below expectations from the financial side, things could get pretty ugly, pretty quick, and in my humble opinion, 120 given the current setup isn't really as crazy as some people are making it out to be, although it's never really fun to hear if you want the stock to go up right now. Auto dealers were pulled by Cox Automotive in the first quarter, dealers are making less money, and that really weighs a lot on the outlook. The Cox chief economist said, "'I think pent up demand is gone from the new vehicle market. "'Large dealers are panicking with increased inventory "'and are selling new cars at pre-pandemic losses "'to support their business models.'" One Honda dealer said, "'affordability is the biggest concern. "'Between higher average prices and higher interest rates, "'added in with negative equity from pandemic era purchases, "'we've priced a lot of folks out of the market.'"
GM is losing two of its senior executives, one to retirement, and the other one due to health reasons. GM is losing its executive vice president of global manufacturing and sustainability to retirement, and they're losing their executive vice president of software and services for health reasons. Toyota just agreed to give their factory workers their biggest pay increase in 25 years. They agreed to fully meet union demands for pay hikes at annual wage negotiations wrapping up today. Toyota said it agreed to the demands of a monthly pay increases of about $193 and record bonus payments, but they did not provide a percentage figure for the salary raise. Porsche has predicted a dip in profitability for 2024 due to new model launches and challenging economic conditions. They're anticipating an operating profit margin between 15 and 17% down from 18% the past two years. Porsche did say it's prepared to steer investments back to combustion engine cars if the EU delays its timeline for phasing out ICE vehicles. Oliver Bloom said 2024 is going to be a year of product launches for Porsche more so than any year in our history. Bloom also said we're overwhelmed by orders coming in for the electric Macon, we're confident it's going to be a hit.
In the four weeks since the new EV Macon made its debut, Porsche has received more than 10,000 orders for the car, a figure that does not count China, Taiwan or Japan. The gas powered Macon is the second best selling worldwide model in the entire Porsche family behind the bigger Porsche Cayenne. The electric Macon will be about $20,000 more expensive than the gas counterpart. Bloom said Porsche's product rollout will have the portfolios age from three years to 18 months. The EV Macon is supposed to arrive in US stores this summer and they're touting a zero to 60 time of 3.1 seconds. Porsche also confirmed they're developing a luxury flagship SUV that will be built in Germany. This will be on a newly developed Porsche platform that will support future models. They're calling it a style of vehicle that's parts of the day and part crossover. One dealer said it's very unporsh alike. It has a flat rear design. It's not anything like the Macon or the Cayenne.
Cadillac teased a V series electric vehicle titling it opulent velocity. It's designed to foreshadow a zero emission expression of performance in modern luxury leadership. The VW Group is only expecting a 3% rise in its vehicle sales this year and they're planning to launch a record 30 new or upgraded models during 2024. They said North America has the potential to become its biggest growth market in 2024. So VW expecting flat sales, meanwhile, we have Stellantis saying it's predicting a turbulent 2024. If you've been around the channel the past few weeks, you will have picked up on the steady drum beat that is almost every automaker expecting a turbulent and a challenging 2024. Initially, the word was that Polestar would launch its Polestar 3 around $83.9 thousand, but fast forward to today and they've decided to come to market at $73.4 thousand for the Polestar 3 long range all-wheel drive variant. That version is expected to start production during the second quarter of 2024 with customers taking delivery this summer.
At first, the Polestar 3 will be produced at Glee's factory in China starting in Q2. Then they're going to start production in South Carolina toward the middle of the year. They did say the Polestar 3 will only be eligible for the $7,500 credit when leased. Something to keep in mind when it comes to chip prices and availability, we have the information reporting that several executives, product managers and salespeople at cloud providers like Microsoft, AWS and Google are saying most of their customers are being cautious or deliberate about increasing spending on new AI services given the high price of running the software, its shortcomings in terms of accuracy and the difficulty of determining how much value they'll get out of it. Effectively saying that the hype has gotten ahead of what the technology can actually return in terms of value for the market. Thus, the industry may be approaching a time of a reassessment of the ROI for some of this AI and semiconductor spend.
Hey, figure one, what do you see right now? I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table, a drying rack with cups and a plate and you standing nearby with your hand on the table. Great, can I have something to eat? Sure thing. Great. Can you explain why you did what you just did while you pick up this trash? On it. So I gave you the apple because it's the only edible item I could provide you with from the table. Great. So, based on the scene right now, I'm going to put the table on the table. Based on the scene right now, where do you think the dish is in front of you go next? The dishes on the table like that plate and cup are likely to go into the drying rack next. Great, can you put them there? Of course.
Two weeks ago, figure and open AI said that together, they were going to develop next gen AI models for figures humanoid robots. This video is showing end-to-end neural networks. There's no tele operations here and they said this was filmed at 1X speed and was shot continuously. Figures onboard cameras feed into a large vision language model trained by open AI. Figures neural nets take in images at 10 hertz through the cameras on the robot. Then the neural net is outputting 24 degrees of freedom actions at 200 hertz. Brett added that figure is vertically integrating almost everything from motors to firmware, thermals, electronics, operating system, battery systems, actuator sensors and mechanical and structures. Not to diminish the progress they're making but just to highlight last year, Boston Dynamics actually integrated chat GPT4 into its spot robot. Welcome to Boston Dynamics. I am Spot your tour guide robot. Let's explore the building together.
A figure engineer said their robot can describe its visual experience, plan future actions, reflect on its memory and explain its reasoning verbally. They're feeding images from the robot's cameras and transcribed text from speech captured by onboard microphones to a large multimodal model trained by open AI that understands images and text. The model processes the entire history of the conversation including past images to come up with language responses which are spoken back to the human via text to speech. This means to a degree that figure 01 can actually use common sense reasoning when making certain decisions like when it said the dishes on the table are likely to go into the drying rack next. This also implies figure 01 has a good short-term memory. So when you ask it questions like, can you put them there? The robot can actually discern what them refers to.
To be transparent, I'm approaching all robotic developments whether it's Tesla's Optimus or anybody else with a healthy level of skepticism. The natural question becomes, when do we see Grok in Tesla? Which brings up one of these overhangs for Tesla stock? We need to get Elon back to 25% ownership so he can actually feel confident pushing forward with AI at Tesla. It would also be great for Elon to actually have that conversation that he said he would with Tesla's board of directors about Tesla investors having some skin in the game at XAI. And look, when you pair those uncertainties with all of the delivery expectations, the earnings per share cuts and everything going on with the macro, you can begin to see why we should be prepared for a tough year for Tesla.
Tesla stock closed the day at $169.48 down 4.54% while the NASDAQ was down 0.54%. Rivian and Ellucid were also each down over 4%. It was an average volume day for Tesla trading about 5 million shares above the average 30 day volume. Don't forget, check out Fantic linked below if you're interested. 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.