The Future?, page-294

Speaking of "Landmarks, Bigger Boats & Growing Gigafactories"

Tesla heads towards trillion-dollar valuation as Big Auto stalls on EVs

The stock market is making another major re-appraisal of the potential worth of electric car maker and Energy storage developer Tesla, as it dawns on them that this company can no longer be considered just a flash in the pan.

Tesla, they now admit, is going to be a very, very big company.

Overnight, in major news, Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, one of the most respected auto analysts in the market, dramatically lifted both his price target and his bull case valuation for Tesla – just weeks after an earlier upgrade.

Jonas thinks Tesla stock is currently over-priced by the market.

But apart from risks – most potently the breakdown in China-US relations, and delays to autonomous driving – he also sees massive upside, so his bull case valuation is lifted from US$2,020 a share to US$2,500.

That puts a potential market value of Tesla of more than $US500 billion, or $A700 billion. And there’s no reason why it wouldn’t go further towards $A1 trillion.

That’s more than every other car maker in the world combined.

And the reason is simple: Jonas says it is now clear that the legacy auto makers – despite their big talk and promises – are dragging their heels on EVs.

By 2030, Jonas now reckons, Tesla will be producing three million cars a year and pulling in revenues of more than $US170 billion. And the rest of the industry will be struggling to catch up.

“One year ago, we believed the legacy OEMs (car makers) would have had a far more advanced strategic position to pressure Tesla market share,” Jonas and his fellow analysts write.

“However; Tesla has had, in our opinion, much more freedom to expand than we initially thought, with legacy OEM EV timelines 1 to 2 years further out than our initial expectations.”

In short, Big Auto has seen the future, made some nice speeches, assigned some capital, done some pretty marketing, and then looked the other way.

And while they stumble over the rollout of their EV models – nearly all of them petrol and diesel lookalikes, and various forms of hybrids – Tesla is moving forward with radically different ideas that speak to a very different future – think Cybertruck, the Tesla Semi, the Roadster, and even a multi-purpose van.



Morgan Stanley also points to the recent discussion of a Tesla compact vehicle, an opportunity to fill the market void – created by its rivals incompetence – for a smaller, cheaper car.

Morgan Stanley expects a price point of around US$30,000 and a 2025 launch date for the compact Tesla, and sales of more than half a million by 2030.

The catalyst for this review appears to have been the recent earnings release, which revealed Tesla’s first annual profit, the first time it made a profit in four consecutive quarters, and its relatively high volumes, despite the impact of Covid-19.

And its plans for new Giga-factories.

“Our forecasts give Tesla credit for nearly an additional three full factories of production, which we see as reasonable given the company’s demonstrated strategy of rapid capacity expansion (three factories currently under construction/pre-construction),” Jonas writes.

“On the 2Q call, Elon Musk reiterated the company’s desire to prioritize growth over profitability, which makes sense to us, given the company’s current advantages in attracting talent and capital, the inherently competitive nature of the auto industry, and increasingly visible encroachment from new players.”

Interestingly, Jonas ascribes an added value of just US$38 billion from Tesla Energy – its battery storage and solar business – to bridge gap between his price target and the bull case.

Last week, Musk said he reckons Tesla Energy will be worth as much as the car side of the business.

If Musk is right, you can throw another AU$700 billion onto the bull case valuation.

Even if he’s only half right, that still makes a trillion dollar company.


Giga Austin Is Massive: See How It Compares To Other Tesla Factories

This map made by a Reddit user shows Tesla must have serious plans for its newest factory.




If you thought Giga Austin would be just another Tesla plant, the map above will give you an entirely new perspective.

Thanks to the Reddit user brandude87, we can see it will probably be the biggest of all Tesla factories until now, at least in what relates to the size of its terrain.

The Reddit user created this scale comparison to show how massive Giga Austin will be.

At the same time, brandude87 gave us an idea of the other Tesla plants around the world.

Did you have any idea Giga Berlin was bigger than Giga Shanghai, for example?

That suggests Tesla may have to have a second plant in China very soon.

It makes sense that Giga Austin has such a big terrain. Apart from the Semi and the Cybertruck, it will also produce the Model Y and Model 3 for the “eastern half of North America,” as Elon Musk put it at the Q2 2020 Earnings Call. Yet, checking the map also made us wonder.

Giga Nevada also has a gigantic terrain.

In theory, Tesla could build another Giga Factory there, even if it would be so close to California.

That shows that choosing Texas as the home for its new plant probably had more to do with strategy than with logistics.

With such a vast terrain to occupy, we do not doubt if Tesla has a building for each of these new product families: one for the Semi, one for the Cybertruck, and one for the Model Y/Model 3.

That makes sense considering the electric pickup truck will have a completely new construction method: the exoskeleton, also referred to as stressed-skin structure.



https://insideevs.com/news/436587/giga-austin-massive-compared-other-tesla-plants/




Food for thought

Frank