Just FYI, electrek is consider very bullish on Tesla. A lot of their articles lean. Just like a lot of the short sellers sites lean the other way.
However stuff like this is kind of factual ("an investor reported X ... we thinks it means Y") and it comes with some fair caveats. I come across their articles regularly and I haven't really seen them misrepresenting facts.
In this case, they add the following to the stuff they cite from the investor: "Electrek’s Take: I would take this with a grain of salt since those tours are controlled by Tesla’s investor relations department and there are obviously made to impress, but it’s nonetheless some interesting color on Tesla’s battery operations.". So credible source but they take their opinion with a grain of salt.
So yes, it's definitely a pro Tesla article and the 100$/KwH metric is an interesting one regardless. Definitely looks like they are doing better than their competition (which is not really news) and they seem to be out producing everybody else at this point at lower cost with more cost reductions likely due to economies of scale and improvements such as discussed in the article.
Also interesting is Elektrek's take on the infamous 35K variant being more likely to ship towards the end of the announced window. We'll see. Cost reductions definitely make this more feasible. But I can't blame Tesla for wanting to cash in on the apparently greater demand than supply for the more profitable high end models. I imagine they are not in a hurry to drop prices given the lack of competition and given the pressure on them to show positive results on their balance.
Makes you see news like this differently. Musk probably gave them a factory tour and asked them to spew some BS to the ether to help the stock.
I see this (and to an extent, my interest in Tesla) as a “rising tide lifts all boats” sort of situation. Anyone differentiating their automobiles by making batteries at a noteworthy price point pushes everybody else to at least try to match. The gauntlet is thrown down.
I really care if SpaceX succeeds. I only care that Tesla succeeds enough to be a model worth improving upon. If they go down as a cautionary tale against making electric cars that would be bad for everybody.
I follow Tesla closely as a current owner, and most news I hear about software changes, future Tesla stuff, etc comes out first from electrek.
So thanks to the guy who runs it and stays on top of it!
>I would take this with a grain of salt since those tours are controlled by Tesla’s investor relations department and there are obviously made to impress, but it’s nonetheless some interesting color on Tesla’s battery operations.
I stopped trusting their PR team, they must prove themselves instead of talking now. They did this to themselves.
They may have been delayed from overly ambitious targets, but Tesla is shipping three different models of all electric cars, residential and large-scale energy storage, solar roofs (barely), and is building out the single biggest factory in the world.
Now we’re hearing that Tesla is hitting $100/kWh for their battery cells. That’s a milestone that as recently as 2017 the DOE expected to be hit in 2020, and back when Tesla launched in 2003 was a compete and utter fairy tale.
$100/kWh has for years been predicted to be the tipping point where long-range electric goes mainstream. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is literally Tesla delivering on its core mission statement.
SpaceX literally owns the orbital launch market and is a private enterprise trying to get humans to another fucking planet.
How irrational can Elon-haters possibly get?
It's worse than that. The "analyst" is from Worm Capital. Every heard of them? Probably not. But their fund is 60% Tesla.
Why is it that "shorts" are criticized for talking their book and spreading FUD, but the "longs" are not criticized for all the stock pumping? Why are Worm Capital and the YouTube guy getting factory tours?
Because they're helping the bottom line? That's Tesla's job. To help itself.
Are you proposing they give tours to short sellers?
If I am long on a stock I applaud the shorts. After all, if they are wrong, they have to buy back and drive up my price more. Also when a company is over-hyped or worse and outright fraud, short sellers can bring attention to this and slow the impending bust that is going to happen. I personally had shorted a lot of stocks in the past and they are almost all bankrupt now taking with them the sheer speculators that over extended themselves.
You're right but I think a lot of hobby investors don't really get 'long on stock' - once they buy stock in a company they feel personally invested and want the price to go up, and damn the naysayers.
The only time this might not apply is when a company is taking a huge risk (like Tesla with the push for the Model 3) and there's a real chance that grassroots FUD could break a company.
However, I would think all the news coverage short sellers are drumming up is illegal stock market manipulation. But, either that's not the case in practice, or the SEC just ignores them.
"The pump-and-dump scheme, allegedly orchestrated by a Frost associate named Barry Honig, took place between 2013 and 2018. According to the SEC, Honig coordinated an effort to buy up shares at a discount, pay a third party to write laudatory articles on Wall Street forums, and then sell those shares for a profit."
I'm no stock market expert but surely that's only true if the short sellers are right and the stock does lose a lot of value? Whereas if the stock keeps going up the short seller has motive to try and crash the stock price?