@Tesla's Investor Battery Day is rumored to announce a "Terafactory" for terawatt-hours of battery production. A Terafactory theoretically would produce over a terawatt-hour of battery capacity (1,000 GWh). This isn't possible. Let's put 1,000 GWh into perspective...
1,000 GWh is ~20x the current capacity of Panasonic’s production at Gigafactory Nevada, and ~15x times current global EV battery production. A terafactory won't be possible for many years. For one, the supply chain isn't there, especially in North America.
The world would still need 5 terafactories and ~12 years to electrify 99% of cars on the road if 5 terafactories miraculously appeared overnight. This doesn't even account for stationary power battery production.
At Battery Day, Tesla may announce it will start producing its own cells, but likely won't be able to produce 1 GWh until 2022. Supply chains are tricky in the battery world, especially if Tesla stays with a cobalt cathode, and even more difficult in North America.
It won't be until at least 2H 2023 for Tesla to get prices of its own cells sub-$100/kWh. Tesla should focus on making EV/PV/ESS and let the Asian battery makers do what they do best. Things could get messy and capital intensive if it tries diving into battery cells headfirst.
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I’m headed to Huawei’s Mate 70 launch event in Shenzhen (yes, Shenzhen Metro has business class). This phone/chip/OS/event is a really big deal for Chinese tech, and has big implications for US-China relations. Here’s some background.
In May 2019, the US Dept. of Commerce added Huawei and its affiliates to the Entity List, which restricted US companies (and allies) from exporting tech to Huawei. They expected this to cripple Huawei, because it wouldn't be able to acquire any semiconductors made with US tech.
The US govt assumed that by restricting Huawei’s access to cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing equipment, particularly Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from ASML, the company would be unable to produce cutting-edge chips at process nodes smaller than 10 nm. EUV lithography is crucial for efficiently manufacturing chips at 7 nm and below, utilizing light with a wavelength of 13.5 nm, which enables finer feature resolution with fewer patterning steps.
Here's the most recent satellite image, taken a few days ago. That new structure in the middle (汽车专用作业区) will connect the factory to the Zhengzhou International Land Port, which will be 50km², roughly the size of Manhattan.
The bottom right corner of the image is land being cleared for the Port's rail yard, so you can see how BYD's factory literally attaches to this massive port that will send cars to Europe, from the middle of China. BYD's factory is already way ahead of the port itself.
Last week, there was a piece in @FT on how China's gov’t policies and regulatory crackdowns have severely impacted the private sector—particularly VC and startups—resulting in a stifled entrepreneurial spirit and a significant decline in new company formations. There was a chart from the article that looked abysmal, that went viral on its own. (see chart below)
The chart listed two sources—one misspelled—and the CEO of the other responded to one of the authors on Twitter that the data from his platform is certainly not comprehensive and was completely misrepresented in the chart. Author @EleanorOlcott's tweet was also Community Noted. Plenty of others have also debunked it, but she/FT has not responded, and the article has not been taken down.
What’s infuriating is how quickly and widely misinformation about China can spread. A few days ago, I met up with a former classmate in Shenzhen who is getting her Ph.D. in the US, and one of the first things she brought up was a chart she had just seen about how the number of new companies has fallen dramatically in recent years. I asked her if she were referring to a Financial Times chart. She was.
I’m at the Huawei launch of the world’s first tri-fold phone, and new intelligent driving conference in Shenzhen. Huawei’s timing is not a coincidence; Apple’s keynote was just a few hours ago. This is symbolic.
I’m definitely the only American here…
The color of the Mate XT Ultimate Design is completely Chinese. Looks awesome. Now @huaweirichard, who was spotted using the phone last month, is explaining the use cases for a triple screen.
Crowd loves the stock app, for some reason….
@huaweirichard @Huawei The camera is phenomenal and there are lots of on-device AI functions.
I can't believe people still talk about Tesla when this exists. Here's Huawei's ADS 2.0 in Shenzhen, filmed by me.
Luxeed S7 has LiDAR, no HD maps, 11 HD cameras, 3 mmWave radars, 12 USS, significant onboard compute...
Driver didn't touch controls once (except to reroute).
40 mins straight. This model is popular among DJI, Huawei, and Tencent engineers, who compare their commutes’ disengagements. I have never heard of anyone knowing anyone who has had a disengagement.
Also, for those asking, this car costs $45,500, goes 0-60 in 3.3s, 800v architecture. This feature costs $3,588. There are also really cool auto park features that I'll film and post another time. Oh, and this car is beautiful.
ARK locks its Tesla models, but we unlocked them. I'm going to dig into @ARKInvest’s new Tesla model this weekend, but before that, let's look at what ARK thought about 2023.
[Unanswered issues with past two years’ models quote-tweeted here] @wintonARK
Remember, just last year, ARK’s bull case figured Tesla would sell 3 million cars in 2023—its bear case 2.4 million. It also thought Tesla would do $174B in automotive revenue this year (2022 model bull case), or $141B on the low-end (2022 bear case). In Q1 2023, it did $19.4B.
In 2020, @ARKInvest thought Tesla would do $315 billion in revenue in 2023. Tesla did less than 10% of that in the first quarter so far.