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Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

electrek.co

41–50 of 836 posts

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#41
post #2

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a b…

A more likely outcome is that all major auto manufacturers offer self driving. Ford and Mercedes already have Level 3 systems. Toyota is working with Waymo. Several Chinese automakers have self driving, at various levels of quality. It's going to become a routine feature of cars. Tesla isn't even the leader.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#42

Electrek’s ‘reporting’ has proven so one-sided that I take all their stories with a bucket of salt. Even if the truck has been a flop I doubt their whole battery program has been. Perhaps they’re rejigging suppliers and pausing whilst they get ready to ramp up cyber cab production lines

I honestly don’t follow this much but I doubt that production ramp up is the Cybercab’s long pole when they’ll need a significant number of market approvals for FSD to reach critical mass.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#43
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Tesla stock has traded on fundamentals for a while.

Short it then

Can't win against irrational exuberance and fraud that isn't prosecuted in the capital markets ("voting machine vs weighing machine"). Just have to wait for failure of the enterprise, equity wipeout, and recapitalization under better human management (if you're optimizing for a company that actually manufacturers and sells a product vs a shell to pump a stock and enrich the board members who enable him with a lack of corporate governance). The factories and Supercharger network will remain intact under a reorganization.

Musk can move money around SpaceX/Tesla/XAI/whatever the next story to investors is to prop up valuations and share prices, but can he win against China's clean tech export machine? Long term, I think not (China is a third of global manufacturing capacity as of this comment, and the world is their TAM). So he'll do the tech bro thing, giving talks, going to demo days, spending his wealth on pet projects, etc, while innovators innovate and point the firehose of these products at the world. Are you going to talk people out of his religion? Unlikely. The faithful will remain so, because that's how the human brain sometimes operates.

Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly) ("In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.")

US warns China overproducing EVs, batteries, semiconductors for global dominance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 - October 2024

China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 - July 2024

China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 - July 2024

(as of this comment, ~50% of light vehicle sales in China are NEVs [battery electric of plug in hybrid] while exporting ~6M units/year, more than total annual US light vehicle sales)

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#44
post #2

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a b…

Well, they don't have a self-driving car but they do have a self-driving share price!

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#45
post #2

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

> I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly. Struggling, not so much: '24/'25 revenue of just under $100B, with Q3'25 record profitability and deliveries yielding $1.5B net income. Strong liquidity and a current ratio of about 2, boosting short-term financial stability. Solid cash reserves and relatively low debt ratio. High stock price: far exceeds that of traditiona…

Past performance is meaningless here.

They lost the massive US subsidy making EV’s appealing and are getting outcomes in China. Model E and Cybertruck have anemic and shrinking sales numbers etc.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#46
post #2

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a b…

This omits the fact that Musk has slashed costs in critical areas of Tesla cars, notably in relying only on visual sensors.

They abandoned the hardware most promising to help enable self-driving.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#47

For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car. For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition. Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year. https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...

Just wait another 6 months /s

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/27/spacex-announces-plan-...

Remember in 2016 when people would be on Mars by 2018?

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#48
post #2

Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.

The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock. Two things can happen: The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless. Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less. Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted. Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a b…

There's a simple third option you omitted:

Tesla is not the only company to achieve self-driving, and all companies that achieve it share the market with them.

(Or the fourth option, it will take decades for self-driving to take even a significant market of "driving" as humans continue to want to own and drive cars rather than short-term rentals.)

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly. Struggling, not so much: '24/'25 revenue of just under $100B, with Q3'25 record profitability and deliveries yielding $1.5B net income. Strong liquidity and a current ratio of about 2, boosting short-term financial stability. Solid cash reserves and relatively low debt ratio. High stock price: far exceeds that of traditiona…

1.5B net on $100B revenue is not great. 1.5%? If that's not struggling, it's uncomfortably close.

For comparison, GM brought in $1.3B on $48B.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#50

> In a regulatory filing today, L&F revealed that the contract’s value has been written down to just $7,386. > No, that is not a typo. $2.9 billion to roughly $7,400. Ooft. That’s one hell of a write down. Imagine the person that had to do the calculation and report it back.

$7,386 seems to be roughly one Cybertruck batteries worth (the only vehicle that uses that battery). As in they literally expect to build one more Cybertruck battery and that's it. I'm guessing the excess stock in the Tesla factories covers spares for a few years already. I wonder when the cancellation will be announced by Tesla? It's all but leaked at this point.

Maybe they did this to keep the contract with a symbolic value; or to avoid the headlines that Tesla 'cancelled' the contract?

A '99% write down' is such an uncommon term that many people might not register it.

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