At the 2019 Tesla Annual Shareholders meeting, Elon indicated that he sees more Tesla factories in other parts of China. This was about 1 hour 17 minutes into the meeting video. Elon said that long-term the Shanghai factory will probably reach 1 million cars per year.
Making more factories in Europe and Asia will enable Tesla to scale its growth with improved cashflow. Currently, Tesla has to carry the cost of cars for longer while they are shipped.
Elon said a mobile ride-sharing service should be available before the Tesla Network/robo taxi release.
About 40 minutes from the start of the meeting, Elon indicates that there will be full self-driving capability in one million Tesla cars by the end of next year. There will need to be regulatory approval.
Tesla expects the Model Y to outsell the Model 3, Model S and Model X combined.
They are installing stamping machines and painting machines inside the Shanghai Gigafactory.
Telsa should have a battery and powertrain investor day soon. It could be later this summer.
SpaceX Starlink is using the most advanced phase array radar in the world. It is about the size of a medium pizza.
Starlink will serve the unserved or poorly served.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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There are certainly cars better built, better looking and more desirable, but there isn’t a car that incorporates ease of use, functionality, and convenience that you get with a model 3.
Last year at this time I would have never considered a Tesla as an actual useable car. Now I won’t consider any other car.
There are a couple of things you must have to appreciate a Tesla. One, a garage, two, 240 volt outlet in that garage.
After that assuming you don’t have a need for a classic or a dedicated race car…
You have no idea what Tesla did or didn’t get out of China. Musk has reaped BILLIONS from subsidies. Look up the article in Barron’s showing half of his personal net worth is directly due to subsidies.
Everyone who is a Musk fanboy acts like Tesla has created a vehicle with the help of alien tech. “the cars are that good”. They really aren’t that good. Not that they are bad either. There are plenty of cars at his price point that have much better build quality.
I think SpaceX is a yes, but boring company is a dog.
Perhaps so, until they accidentally say the wrong thing and suddenly get hauled in for their organs. China’s exuberant wealth is in the chaotic froth of bold opportunists and in pockets of party insiders but the harsh cold reality is in the deeper threads and societal bulkheads that constrain the billion, particularly the forbidden zones — beware!
Otto cow wreck
Actual Chinese traffic in real life has a high % of expensive luxury cars. Wealth inequality means millions of people who are able to afford high end cars. Yes there are a billion who can’t afford more than an ebike, but there is still a huge market for good stuff.
“Local demand in China is for cheap slow clunkers.”
That’s true, but they also have strong demand of luxery EV’s. Even if 1 out of every 50 EV’s sold in China is luxery, that is still a massive market, purely because of their population.
Elon gets in a enough trouble for commenting about future potential so I think he’s being a bit conservative about the potential for factories in China. With government cooperation, plentiful capital and local construction teams that can go from a field to a completed factory building in 6 months it really limits risk. If Tesla can go from plans to production in little more than a year and Chinese demand is as strong as it seems, they could use another 3/Y GF, one for the Semi, one for pickups and light commercial vehicles, another for just batteries including Tesla energy.
I think it is just union extortion that is being avoided by not mining here. They should never have called them “rare earths”. People think they are crazy valuable and the union organizers flock like vultures.
Once mining becomes automated…we will mine plenty.
Personally, I’m a tooling engineer. Most of the IP I’m responsible for generating can’t be collected by looking at the end product, you’d have to see the parts being made, possibly even have access to tooling drawings.
“How it’s made”, rather than “what is made”, IOW.
Don’t need spies, just buy one and take it apart.
A lot of new investors have been attracted to Tesla since the new battery was announced despite all the nay sayers they know what`s happening.
Local demand in China is for cheap slow clunkers. Wealth inequality forces more junk, more pollution, more inequality etc. Tesla is desperate.
Tesla’s factories in China aren’t nominally sharing any trade secrets. You may be sure that a significant fraction of the workforce are going to be spying.
Makes sense to build factories based on local demand. If you are shipping more than a K x 100K cars to a country then it might make sense to build a factory there. You have to be careful that capacity doesn’t outstrip demand by a lot since you have to pay interest on the loan you took out to build the factory.
Slowly but surely Tesla is taking over the world. The thing about Tesla is the speed of innovation that keeps all competition firmly 10 years behind. As soon as big German auto makers are strained to produce EVS with 200 miles range and 5sec 0 to 60 Tesla is getting ready to release new refresh with over 400 miles range and under 2.2 0 to 60.
Tesla’s factories in China operate without sharing any trade secrets. Elon got the best deal out of China.
Tesla has gotten less out of government than GM for example and currently Tesla cars are only elegible for $1,750 in rebate, hardly a sum to make any difference for the buyer.
I wonder how much of a influence the US regulations (which practically red-taped domestic rare-earth element mining out of existence) had on Musk’s decision to open Tesla plants in China.
Seems like a prudent business decision, imagine a huge market and all you need to do is fulfill the demand. This is another example of a progressive China, wake up there’s new stuff out there.
IT might be his only move, but it isn’t dumb. China is a huge market.
Making cars elsewhere and hauling them in is lost money. Making the cars there is really the only route. He could hide from that market and watch his cars be pirated and something similar be made by some Chinese nationalist company.
His approach might give him a number of years free of stolen engineering and give him access to battery materials.
Currently Tesla is limited by battery manufacturing.
I noted that he plans on manufacturing in India too.
Lastly, when subsidies are totally removed you will see Tesla is still a real car company. The cars are that good.
That is a depressing observation, but likely true.
If SpaceX’s Starlink succeeds, he can afford to sell off Tesla. I believe his current involvement with China is just to keep it viable through the next 5-10 years, until he can cut loose from it at an acceptable price.
Once you enter the wrong spelling in your auto-correct…
hahah that would be great but something tells me the guy betting his whole car company on China and factories there isnt likely to run afoul of the chinese government by allowing another of his companies to bypass censorship laws in that same country..
its a dumb move because its his only move… hes happy to float with their support while they rob him blind and probably at some point he may just sell a majority or all of tesla to a chinese company that stole his tech.. hes not dumb but also caught in a hard place.. but when all your businesses rely on tax credits and government subsidies they arent really businesses are they but rather welfare queens.. I still think his Space x/Boring Company/Starlink projects are much better bets long term than tesla
I understand China is a big market for electric cars and we have a trade spat going, but here’s the thing with Musk; he’s a welfare baby. Doesn’t do anything without government subsidies paying his way. China is happy to help him build there because they will steal all the tech they can from Tesla. Dumb move for Tesla.
I will believe that Starlink is helping the poorly served when I see crypto payments and a black market for them in China, Cuba, and Russia.
It seem to be a fairly distributed problem across the net and going back years 🙂
Again and again and again… why the hell are you spelling it as TELSA?
“Telsa should have a battery and powertrain investor day soon. ”
297 articles to date on this site where you spelled it Telsa instead of Tesla.