2023 Investor Day | Tesla

I recommend watching the original presentation by Tesla's lead designer from Investor Day, it's about 12 mins and has great visuals: [this video] One change that people don't appreciate much is that Tesla has gotten much better at making their cars. While other automakers now have models which spec-wise are competitive with the 3 and and Y, only Tesla and maybe BYD can make EVs profitably at scale. This is why they've been able to cut prices and still be decently profitable - a Model 3 RWD costs $40,240, which is about $33,500 in 2018 dollars (when the Model 3 started selling). I expect legacy car makers will follow Tesla's lead on this process (and switching to 48V) much as they are now following and introducing large castings in their cars.

>just as newer battery chemistries moved away from cobalt Tesla seems to be the leader here. Per Investor Day[0] and other sources, they - developed low-cobalt and low-nickel cathodes, to reduce scarce battery metals - increased overall vehicle efficiency to allow iron cathodes which are earth-abundant - consolidated electronic modules to reduce microchips and wiring - are soon switching to 48V, to further reduce low-voltage copper wiring (copper being a 'medium-rare' metal) - switched from copper to aluminum high voltage conductors (per Munro Live), aluminum having better conductivity-to-weight - reduced vehicle structure with structural battery design and 'gigacasting' manufacturing Many of these seem to benefit from vertical integration. Are any other manufacturers pushing as hard here? [0] [this video]

How do you power a city at night if all you have is solar? Solar requires 100% reliable backup. Batteries? That's backup. Oh, wait. The batteries need backup because they cannot be charged by a solar array that is sized to only fit the load. You need to oversize it. By a lot. In fact, you need to at least double your array size to charge batteries to be used at night. In other words, backup for the backup. Wind? That's backup. Hydro? That's backup. More solar from thousands of miles away where there might still be light? That's backup. Nuclear? That's backup. Gas/Coal/Fossil? That's backup. Oh, wait, here's Elon Musk talking about something you claimed to be a lie, when I said you need to overbuild solar arrays by 7x or more for continuous power. Here he is, less than two weeks ago: [this video] You need to 5x for continuous power, he says. Oops. It's also great that he mentions solar and wind can coexist. Some of backup can be co-located at some locations. Fantastic. Please stop resorting to insults. Please? Insulting people does not change the reality around you. It never will. Do the math and understand what you are talking about. Please. Nobody is saying solar is bad or impossible to use. This interpretation you seem to prefer is entirely fabricated. My claim that solar requires 100% backup is --quite literally-- as true as day and night and as necessary as what happens with solar between day and night. That you continue to attack and insult me over this is difficult to unders

I fell for this fallacy during the early days of the Tesla Skeptics wave. I thought no way this nonsense management style will keep them going once the competitors catch up. OEMs know how to make good reliable cars. Tesla is a shitshow. Turns out the incumbents repeated many of the EV specific mistakes Tesla did early on, and Tesla continued to innovate in what they thought matters (electric powertrain, software, infrastructure etc.) Even today if you watch some of Tesla's old battery day presentations, I am amazed at the level of care they put into their operations. The systems integration goes down to even the little things: [this video] People really see this with how far ahead SpaceX and Starlink are. How does Musk keep getting the top people from the best schools to want to come to his companies when it is well known that prior groups get ground down to nothing and then tossed aside? I tried to figure this out by confronting Starlink employees directly at DEFCON conference a few years back. Essentially they are so driven they just want to work with A players. They dont tolerate B players or they will leave. Musk is sometimes wrong to the detriment of the team but sometimes he is really right and he pushes the team to perform their best and to think outside the box(or first principles as he would say).