15 ms·

Tesla and Panasonic freeze spending on $4.5B Gigafactory

165 points by elemeno 8y ago

ckastner 8y ago
Panasonic's issue seems to be: > Panasonic's Tesla EV battery business had operating losses exceeding 20 billion yen [~180m USD] in the financial year that ended in March, up from a year earlier. The losses were exacerbated by delays in the start of production of the Model 3. It's not entirely clear to me from the article whether this loss stems from the operations itself, or from the reduction in demand for the model 3. Either way, it's bad news for Tesla.
- lazulicurio 8y ago
  > Either way, it's bad news for Tesla As someone in the (US) industry, everyone's hurting right now, not just Tesla. The GM plant closures have had a large ripple effect on suppliers. And beyond that, in general it seems like there's been a lot of belt-tightening over the last year. Whether self-fulfilling prophecy from fears of a recession or something else, I don't know.
  - navigatesol 8y ago
    >As someone in the (US) industry, everyone's hurting right now, not just Tesla Yes, that auto market is cyclical. That's why it's nice to be producing tons of cash flow and income, instead of burning billions of dollars.
    - Dumblydorr 8y ago
      Tesla isn't burning billions anymore, have you seen their last two quarters profits? Now, especially if they cut investment into new factories, they will have trouble bringing new products but they could still make 7k cars weekly and press pause on R and D.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - whttheuuu 8y ago
      What? They aren't burning any money let alone billions lol
  - prolepunk 8y ago
    The weird thing about GM closures was that GM seemed to be doing fine, and then they axed whole bunch of factories and discontinued most of the sedans and Chevy Volt.
    - Gpetrium 8y ago
      To me, GM's closure was aimed at 'trimming the fat' to put more emphasis on areas where they are more profitable, a shift to the tech side of cars and in preparation for an economic downturn.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      Cars are highly cyclical, which means future demand can be predicted very well. Cars are cyclical because they last for 5 to 15 years. When everyone is done buying new cars, there's a lull and car companies need to cut back supply. "Everyone" is hurting because "everyone" is part of the same cycle in the industry. Ford, GM, etc. etc. have all closed plants in anticipation of the lower-demand over the next year or two.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- lazyjones 8y ago
  Here's an older article that clarifies some of the issues: Panasonic has lowered its forecast for the 2018/19 fiscal year, which ends in March, following a decline in profits over the winter. However, the Energy division, which also includes the battery business with Tesla, recorded its first operating profit in three quarters at 131 million euros. The Japanese company cites the trade dispute between the USA and China as the reason for the lowered forecast, which caused demand for automotive components and factory equipment, among other things, to fall. https://www.electrive.com/2019/02/05/tesla-saves-panasonics-business-margins/ https://www.electrive.com/2019/02/05/tesla-saves-panasonics-...
x38iq84n 8y ago
There is a lot of negative sentiment around Tesla lately. The Giga Factory was supposed to be Tesla's greatest asset, its largest advantage in the market, that enables exponential growth of production and sales. It looks like bears are coming for Tesla if they don't step up their game.
- navigatesol 8y ago
  >There is a lot of negative sentiment around Tesla lately. Because the mainstream press is catching up to things that "the Shorts" have been seeing and saying for a long time. It's a fact that Teslas are great cars. It's also a fact that the quality is just okay, that the market for $50k+ vehicles is limited, and that Tesla can't produce a $35k vehicle at a profit. If people bought into the idea that you were getting a fully autonomous car that would drive itself around and make you money while you slept, for $35,000 before incentives...I'm not sure what to say. But it seems like many people did.
  - ShorsHammer 8y ago
    I find it hard to believe the most popular short around is actually good value to short much as I would with the most popular long. It's just so often incorrect. Investing advice from mainstream sources isn't a good strategy.
    - jsight 8y ago
      That is a really good point and one that I haven't thought of much. I've always considered "most popular" company as a signal of overvaluation, though I've certainly never analyzed that rigorously. But is there a similar correlation with "most popular short" and future success? Its definitely possible.
      - ShorsHammer 8y ago
        Fair point, I wouldn't say simply being contrarian is the solution. Shorts do great work and can profit immensely from finding the truth, as they should, but personally feel the financial media is a Dr. Frankenstein which creates it's own monsters. There's plenty of examples of "common knowledge" in the year before the Great Recession. All sorts of talking heads lined up to re-iterate the _truth_. It is possible to short a viable company into bankruptcy and win from it, this is something that should be acknowledged.
cinquemb 8y ago
And here I was thinking that Caa1 partnering with A3 would change everything…
dalbasal 8y ago
An ironic aspect of financing (from personal loans to multi-billion dollar deals) is that you can get it as long as you don't need it. Google or FB would have no problem at all spending a measly $4.5bn on a project that potentially has real impact on their primary business (search,ads), or even secondary one (android, etc.). Their only problem is finding a way to spend it. This is because Google makes software, and software doesn't really require much capital. The only thing they could realistically spend that kind of money on is m&a. So, because they don't need it, google has many times that sum sitting around and could probably raise many times that sum again. Because the only thing they could spend it on is m&a. If they do, the money goes to pay founders/investors in the target company....and back to to the "available to invest" pile of money collectively accumulating in software giants' balance sheets, VC & PE funds and such. What rarely happens is actual spending. If Tesla or another manufacturing company gets ahold of $5bn, they will actually spend it on parts, machinery and such. The current money market is so loopy. All it can do is move money around. It can't spend it. It's like a real estate market in dense places like NY, but worse. Lots of money flies around, but it goes between one pocket and another. Very little goes towards building buildings. An investment in the gigafactory would be more like investing in a new city. It actually results in buildings, but isn't going to be attractive to investors, because... because it isn't a zero sum game. Other people can build a building too. There's no reason for your building to be worth more than it cost you to build.
- countryqt30 8y ago
  It just demonstrates that Google/FB/[SOFTWARE] is a wonderful business, and Tesla/Cars/[CAPITAL INTENSIVE] is a waste of money. The market realizes this pretty well, so most money goes into developing and funding new software companies.
  - gpresot 8y ago
    Both have pros and cons. Capital intensive businesses, once running, have their own barriers to entry (moats) "literally" built in: all those capital requirements help keep new entrants away. Capital-light business (and I am not sure the infrastructure investments to run a cloud service platform are so small), need to build this moat either by having access to consumer (data, network effects) and/or by keeping ahead of competition with constant innovation.
MobileVet 8y ago
The technology is clearly the key piece of Tesla... and while that scales well, the platform is another story. Imagine if Toyota bought Tesla. That may be the best outcome possible as the platform would suddenly be at scale. The technology could be added to all Toyota cars ICE included (with their level of fit and finish) and the ‘electric only’ line would be supported while it ramped up and lowered cost. This would solve a lot of Tesla’s problems and make the outcome far more likely to be positive. As it stands, I want a Tesla, but I am not going to buy one because 1) cost vs quality 2) likelihood of implosion
- samfisher83 8y ago
  Toyota has made the Prius for a decade+. It has a hybrid drive train which is more complicated than an electric drive train. They just need to increase the electric drive train and pull out ice one.
  - SECProto 8y ago
    Even more importantly, they've made the Prius Plug-in Hybrid for 7 years - it already has a big enough electric motor to drive it alone (up to 135 km/h), and a plug-in charging system.
- cinquemb 8y ago
  Well Moody's thinks the Toyota x Panasonic is credit positive… not sure they would think they same of Tesla acquisition at $2xx/share… though maybe Toyota would be interested (among others) in swooping up assets pennies on the dollar from default in an auction…
- aNoob7000 8y ago
  Unfortunately for Tesla, at its current valuation, nobody is going to buy it. The race now is between established players catching up to Tesla and its technology, and Tesla catching up to established players with their capacity to produce cars at scale.
  - lazyjones 8y ago
Proven 8y ago
I don't know what took Panasonic so long... Tesla is done. Too bad they have already plundered billions in subsidies other forms of taxpayer money. But this is a good first step. More fun to come when Tesla owners realize their cars have no resale value.
yungchin 8y ago
I'm not sure this is bad news for Tesla, I'd say it's mostly bad news for the rest of us. Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don't need to be posting losses anymore), and I'd imagine they can continue to grow, if more slowly, without the rapid expansion of battery production capacity that this story is about. But the great aim behind the gigafactory (at least, how I read it) was to drive battery cost down very aggressively, that is, working on the supply-side economics. This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner, without all the subsidies (which have been a demand-side hack that didn't even work very well). If this means a slower clean transition (and I think it does) that's a sad outcome.
- GrumpyNl 8y ago
  Countries everywhere are taking down the subsidizing of electric cars ( In holland called, the Tesla-subsidie). This will hugely effect Tesla sales when they dont have an affordable car.
  - T-A 8y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-taxcredit-exclusive-idUSKCN1RM1NG https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-taxcredit-...
- philwelch 8y ago
  Tesla itself don't have to be the ones manufacturing the batteries. Given that manufacturing seems to be the part of the value chain that Tesla is the worst at, I don't think the gigafactory was ever going to be that valuable or effective anyway.
  - hindsightbias 8y ago
    It was all the rage not for back that Tesla was a battery company, not a car company. If they’re not scaling cars or batteries, then peak Tesla would be inevitable.
  - imtringued 8y ago
chisleu 8y ago
They have already spent $4.5B which are creating all of the batteries for the model 3. They are pausing spending of an additional $100-150M until Tesla needs the additional capacity. They don't yet need it. What a terrible title...
- cjhopman 8y ago
  You either misinterpreted the article or pulled numbers out of your ass as they are almost 10x off of what the article states. "It was reportedly considering putting an additional 100 billion yen to 150 billion yen ($900 million to $1.35 billion) into the Gigafactory."
  - chisleu 7y ago
    "reportedly" That wasn't the actual investment up for consideration, and it's not needed yet because Model 3's production is satisfied, hence Tesla is offering longer range versions of the model 3 without the extra motor/AWD.
taf2 8y ago
Could this have anything to do with the Tesla acquisition of Maxwell? Perhaps there is a different battery technology on the horizon that won't require the same infrastructure with Panasonic?
- RivieraKid 8y ago
  No, Panasonic is worried about demand and doesn't want to throw money out of the window.
Footkerchief 8y ago
Because I took away the wrong message from the headline, and others might too: > Tesla and Panasonic are freezing plans to expand the capacity of their Gigafactory 1, the world's largest EV battery plant, as concerns mount on Wall Street about weakening demand at Elon Musk's car company. Freezing expansion, not production.
lr 8y ago
I know Elon loves cars (and rockets), but what about selling batteries for other things? BMW sells its batteries for electric vessels (boats). It would be great (for the world at large) if Tesla did the same.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  They are. They'd done a few deployments for grid power and are selling the Powerwall. (Or were I haven't followed it since I'm not looking to install solar anytime soon)
jaimex2 8y ago
This makes sense with GF3 coming online so quickly. The original plans to keep expanding GF1 may not be needed if GF3 can do it better and more cheaply.
gr2020 8y ago
From Electrek [1]: A Tesla spokesperson has reportedly commented on Nikkei’s report: > “We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed,” Update: In a comment to Electrek, Tesla exapnded: > “We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed. However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated.” [1] https://electrek.co/2019/04/11/tesla-panasonic-suspend-investments-gigafactory-expansion-report/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/11/tesla-panasonic-suspend-inves...
AndrewBissell 8y ago
The most interesting part of this story is that Panasonic has chosen to broadcast this decision in a national newspaper in way calculated to cause maximum embarrassment to Tesla, which still depends on investor perceptions of huge upcoming growth to support its stock valuation. An odd thing happened last year when Pana's reported margins dropped while Tesla's went way up during their "miracle Q3." A common theory among Tesla shorts was that Pana had helped them make the quarter with a discount on batteries, to be paid back at some point in the future. Given the big drop in Q1 deliveries and demand standstill in the U.S. after the Model 3 order backlog was depleted, maybe Panasonic is worried they're not going to get paid back?
- AndrewBissell 8y ago
  A good Twitter thread on this subject here: https://twitter.com/BradMunchen/status/1112668005614252032 https://twitter.com/BradMunchen/status/1112668005614252032
QuantumGood 8y ago
"We are seeing significant gains from upgrading existing lines to increase output, which allows Tesla and Panasonic to achieve the same output with less spent on new equipment purchases."

165 points by elemeno 8y ago

Panasonic's issue seems to be: > Panasonic's Tesla EV battery business had operating losses exceeding 20 billion yen [~180m USD] in the financial year that ended in March, up from a year earlier. The losses were exacerbated by delays in the start of production of the Model 3. It's not entirely clear to me from the article whether this loss stems from the operations itself, or from the reduction in demand for the model 3. Either way, it's bad news for Tesla.

lazulicurio 8y ago
> Either way, it's bad news for Tesla As someone in the (US) industry, everyone's hurting right now, not just Tesla. The GM plant closures have had a large ripple effect on suppliers. And beyond that, in general it seems like there's been a lot of belt-tightening over the last year. Whether self-fulfilling prophecy from fears of a recession or something else, I don't know.
- navigatesol 8y ago
  >As someone in the (US) industry, everyone's hurting right now, not just Tesla Yes, that auto market is cyclical. That's why it's nice to be producing tons of cash flow and income, instead of burning billions of dollars.
  - Dumblydorr 8y ago
    Tesla isn't burning billions anymore, have you seen their last two quarters profits? Now, especially if they cut investment into new factories, they will have trouble bringing new products but they could still make 7k cars weekly and press pause on R and D.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - whttheuuu 8y ago
    What? They aren't burning any money let alone billions lol
- prolepunk 8y ago
  The weird thing about GM closures was that GM seemed to be doing fine, and then they axed whole bunch of factories and discontinued most of the sedans and Chevy Volt.
  - Gpetrium 8y ago
    To me, GM's closure was aimed at 'trimming the fat' to put more emphasis on areas where they are more profitable, a shift to the tech side of cars and in preparation for an economic downturn.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Cars are highly cyclical, which means future demand can be predicted very well. Cars are cyclical because they last for 5 to 15 years. When everyone is done buying new cars, there's a lull and car companies need to cut back supply. "Everyone" is hurting because "everyone" is part of the same cycle in the industry. Ford, GM, etc. etc. have all closed plants in anticipation of the lower-demand over the next year or two.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
lazyjones 8y ago
Here's an older article that clarifies some of the issues: Panasonic has lowered its forecast for the 2018/19 fiscal year, which ends in March, following a decline in profits over the winter. However, the Energy division, which also includes the battery business with Tesla, recorded its first operating profit in three quarters at 131 million euros. The Japanese company cites the trade dispute between the USA and China as the reason for the lowered forecast, which caused demand for automotive components and factory equipment, among other things, to fall. https://www.electrive.com/2019/02/05/tesla-saves-panasonics-business-margins/ https://www.electrive.com/2019/02/05/tesla-saves-panasonics-...

x38iq84n 8y ago

There is a lot of negative sentiment around Tesla lately. The Giga Factory was supposed to be Tesla's greatest asset, its largest advantage in the market, that enables exponential growth of production and sales. It looks like bears are coming for Tesla if they don't step up their game.

navigatesol 8y ago
>There is a lot of negative sentiment around Tesla lately. Because the mainstream press is catching up to things that "the Shorts" have been seeing and saying for a long time. It's a fact that Teslas are great cars. It's also a fact that the quality is just okay, that the market for $50k+ vehicles is limited, and that Tesla can't produce a $35k vehicle at a profit. If people bought into the idea that you were getting a fully autonomous car that would drive itself around and make you money while you slept, for $35,000 before incentives...I'm not sure what to say. But it seems like many people did.
- ShorsHammer 8y ago
  I find it hard to believe the most popular short around is actually good value to short much as I would with the most popular long. It's just so often incorrect. Investing advice from mainstream sources isn't a good strategy.
  - jsight 8y ago
    That is a really good point and one that I haven't thought of much. I've always considered "most popular" company as a signal of overvaluation, though I've certainly never analyzed that rigorously. But is there a similar correlation with "most popular short" and future success? Its definitely possible.
    - ShorsHammer 8y ago
      Fair point, I wouldn't say simply being contrarian is the solution. Shorts do great work and can profit immensely from finding the truth, as they should, but personally feel the financial media is a Dr. Frankenstein which creates it's own monsters. There's plenty of examples of "common knowledge" in the year before the Great Recession. All sorts of talking heads lined up to re-iterate the _truth_. It is possible to short a viable company into bankruptcy and win from it, this is something that should be acknowledged.

cinquemb 8y ago

And here I was thinking that Caa1 partnering with A3 would change everything…

dalbasal 8y ago

An ironic aspect of financing (from personal loans to multi-billion dollar deals) is that you can get it as long as you don't need it. Google or FB would have no problem at all spending a measly $4.5bn on a project that potentially has real impact on their primary business (search,ads), or even secondary one (android, etc.). Their only problem is finding a way to spend it. This is because Google makes software, and software doesn't really require much capital. The only thing they could realistically spend that kind of money on is m&a. So, because they don't need it, google has many times that sum sitting around and could probably raise many times that sum again. Because the only thing they could spend it on is m&a. If they do, the money goes to pay founders/investors in the target company....and back to to the "available to invest" pile of money collectively accumulating in software giants' balance sheets, VC & PE funds and such. What rarely happens is actual spending. If Tesla or another manufacturing company gets ahold of $5bn, they will actually spend it on parts, machinery and such. The current money market is so loopy. All it can do is move money around. It can't spend it. It's like a real estate market in dense places like NY, but worse. Lots of money flies around, but it goes between one pocket and another. Very little goes towards building buildings. An investment in the gigafactory would be more like investing in a new city. It actually results in buildings, but isn't going to be attractive to investors, because... because it isn't a zero sum game. Other people can build a building too. There's no reason for your building to be worth more than it cost you to build.

countryqt30 8y ago
It just demonstrates that Google/FB/[SOFTWARE] is a wonderful business, and Tesla/Cars/[CAPITAL INTENSIVE] is a waste of money. The market realizes this pretty well, so most money goes into developing and funding new software companies.
- gpresot 8y ago
  Both have pros and cons. Capital intensive businesses, once running, have their own barriers to entry (moats) "literally" built in: all those capital requirements help keep new entrants away. Capital-light business (and I am not sure the infrastructure investments to run a cloud service platform are so small), need to build this moat either by having access to consumer (data, network effects) and/or by keeping ahead of competition with constant innovation.

MobileVet 8y ago

The technology is clearly the key piece of Tesla... and while that scales well, the platform is another story. Imagine if Toyota bought Tesla. That may be the best outcome possible as the platform would suddenly be at scale. The technology could be added to all Toyota cars ICE included (with their level of fit and finish) and the ‘electric only’ line would be supported while it ramped up and lowered cost. This would solve a lot of Tesla’s problems and make the outcome far more likely to be positive. As it stands, I want a Tesla, but I am not going to buy one because 1) cost vs quality 2) likelihood of implosion

samfisher83 8y ago
Toyota has made the Prius for a decade+. It has a hybrid drive train which is more complicated than an electric drive train. They just need to increase the electric drive train and pull out ice one.
- SECProto 8y ago
  Even more importantly, they've made the Prius Plug-in Hybrid for 7 years - it already has a big enough electric motor to drive it alone (up to 135 km/h), and a plug-in charging system.
cinquemb 8y ago
Well Moody's thinks the Toyota x Panasonic is credit positive… not sure they would think they same of Tesla acquisition at $2xx/share… though maybe Toyota would be interested (among others) in swooping up assets pennies on the dollar from default in an auction…
aNoob7000 8y ago
Unfortunately for Tesla, at its current valuation, nobody is going to buy it. The race now is between established players catching up to Tesla and its technology, and Tesla catching up to established players with their capacity to produce cars at scale.
- lazyjones 8y ago

Proven 8y ago

I don't know what took Panasonic so long... Tesla is done. Too bad they have already plundered billions in subsidies other forms of taxpayer money. But this is a good first step. More fun to come when Tesla owners realize their cars have no resale value.

yungchin 8y ago

I'm not sure this is bad news for Tesla, I'd say it's mostly bad news for the rest of us. Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don't need to be posting losses anymore), and I'd imagine they can continue to grow, if more slowly, without the rapid expansion of battery production capacity that this story is about. But the great aim behind the gigafactory (at least, how I read it) was to drive battery cost down very aggressively, that is, working on the supply-side economics. This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner, without all the subsidies (which have been a demand-side hack that didn't even work very well). If this means a slower clean transition (and I think it does) that's a sad outcome.

GrumpyNl 8y ago
Countries everywhere are taking down the subsidizing of electric cars ( In holland called, the Tesla-subsidie). This will hugely effect Tesla sales when they dont have an affordable car.
- T-A 8y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-taxcredit-exclusive-idUSKCN1RM1NG https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-taxcredit-...
philwelch 8y ago
Tesla itself don't have to be the ones manufacturing the batteries. Given that manufacturing seems to be the part of the value chain that Tesla is the worst at, I don't think the gigafactory was ever going to be that valuable or effective anyway.
- hindsightbias 8y ago
  It was all the rage not for back that Tesla was a battery company, not a car company. If they’re not scaling cars or batteries, then peak Tesla would be inevitable.
- imtringued 8y ago

chisleu 8y ago

They have already spent $4.5B which are creating all of the batteries for the model 3. They are pausing spending of an additional $100-150M until Tesla needs the additional capacity. They don't yet need it. What a terrible title...

cjhopman 8y ago
You either misinterpreted the article or pulled numbers out of your ass as they are almost 10x off of what the article states. "It was reportedly considering putting an additional 100 billion yen to 150 billion yen ($900 million to $1.35 billion) into the Gigafactory."
- chisleu 7y ago
  "reportedly" That wasn't the actual investment up for consideration, and it's not needed yet because Model 3's production is satisfied, hence Tesla is offering longer range versions of the model 3 without the extra motor/AWD.

taf2 8y ago

Could this have anything to do with the Tesla acquisition of Maxwell? Perhaps there is a different battery technology on the horizon that won't require the same infrastructure with Panasonic?

RivieraKid 8y ago
No, Panasonic is worried about demand and doesn't want to throw money out of the window.

Footkerchief 8y ago

Because I took away the wrong message from the headline, and others might too: > Tesla and Panasonic are freezing plans to expand the capacity of their Gigafactory 1, the world's largest EV battery plant, as concerns mount on Wall Street about weakening demand at Elon Musk's car company. Freezing expansion, not production.

lr 8y ago

I know Elon loves cars (and rockets), but what about selling batteries for other things? BMW sells its batteries for electric vessels (boats). It would be great (for the world at large) if Tesla did the same.

rtkwe 8y ago
They are. They'd done a few deployments for grid power and are selling the Powerwall. (Or were I haven't followed it since I'm not looking to install solar anytime soon)

jaimex2 8y ago

This makes sense with GF3 coming online so quickly. The original plans to keep expanding GF1 may not be needed if GF3 can do it better and more cheaply.

gr2020 8y ago

From Electrek [1]: A Tesla spokesperson has reportedly commented on Nikkei’s report: > “We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed,” Update: In a comment to Electrek, Tesla exapnded: > “We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed. However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated.” [1] https://electrek.co/2019/04/11/tesla-panasonic-suspend-investments-gigafactory-expansion-report/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/11/tesla-panasonic-suspend-inves...

AndrewBissell 8y ago

The most interesting part of this story is that Panasonic has chosen to broadcast this decision in a national newspaper in way calculated to cause maximum embarrassment to Tesla, which still depends on investor perceptions of huge upcoming growth to support its stock valuation. An odd thing happened last year when Pana's reported margins dropped while Tesla's went way up during their "miracle Q3." A common theory among Tesla shorts was that Pana had helped them make the quarter with a discount on batteries, to be paid back at some point in the future. Given the big drop in Q1 deliveries and demand standstill in the U.S. after the Model 3 order backlog was depleted, maybe Panasonic is worried they're not going to get paid back?

AndrewBissell 8y ago
A good Twitter thread on this subject here: https://twitter.com/BradMunchen/status/1112668005614252032 https://twitter.com/BradMunchen/status/1112668005614252032

QuantumGood 8y ago

"We are seeing significant gains from upgrading existing lines to increase output, which allows Tesla and Panasonic to achieve the same output with less spent on new equipment purchases."