Finally, Tesla Energy has arrived. Tesla installed 9.4 GWh of energy this is over double the 4.0 GWH last quarter.
This should be about $3.8 billion in quarterly energy revenue alone and nearly $1.0 billion in gross profits. Tesla is officially more than a car company with Tesla energy a major thing.
Tesla car deliveries were good relative to expectations at 444k. Most were expecting 410-430k.
Tesla production was lower but they reduced shifts. Having more deliveries and production will increase margins and profits.
However, energy should keep delivering about 10 GWH per quarter with both lines at the Lathrop megapack factory producing.
The second megapack factory could complete in Q4 of this year. The China megapack factory should ramp quickly. There were previously shortages of the power management chips.
Two full megapack factories producing 20 GWh per quarter would be about $8 billion in energy revenue and $2 billion per quarter in profit.
Tesla has opened at $420 per share. Tesla getting above $426-430 would break the long downtrend.
As great as the strong performance on cars relative to Q1 and expectations is. Tesla Energy finally makes Tesla more than a car company. $1 billion per quarter in energy profits. When both megapack factories are scaled it will be $2 billion per quarter.
If analysts did not model in energy because it was not significant, then they have to add in that line item and will have to add in FSD/robotaxi soon. Energy has arrived and it can add $100+ to Tesla share price.
$3.5B in profit from energy this year and $6-8 B in profit from energy in 2025 and $15B in 2026. If this was a 40PE for rapid growth and 25% margins. This would be $130 from energy alone.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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It’s a funny thing. Seeing literally dozens of plans for making energy carbon-zero by 2050, carbon-emissions’ reductions through the 2030s through cut-backs in coal, oil, and similar; increasing renewables and energy savings’ initiatives at the municipal, state, and national level — but, try to find a plan on how to -actually meet energy demand in the 2030s at a cost comparable to that of the last 3 – 5 years, -improve and restore distribution networks for safety and reliability in the next decade, and -invest in keeping current and upcoming power sources functional; crickets. No viable plan. Pretty graphs and illuminating factoids.
I, for one, believe that a combination of centralized ‘reliable’ power generation and distribution (which should probably be designed and maintained by USACE – the ONLY reliable government entity); with locally sourced supportive ‘politically-relevant’ generation and distribution; WITH home-by-home and business-by-business power storage and production – be it GEO, solar, back-to-grid, and similar – as a powe rsurge/production mitigation strategy – because hey – data centres, 50% partially-electified vehicles, and increased electrical heating/cooling by the late 2030s is not going support itself. – no matter how much Tesla sells us its stuff.
15B from energy in 2026? They’d need 4 plants totals. Idk if they’re going to build 2 more so quickly.
I believe the 40 GWh/year can be increased, just like the Shanghai car factory went from 500,000 car per year capacity to 1+ million/year.
Batteries don’t generate even one erg of energy, they consume energy in the process of storing it. Tesla’s solar roofs do generate a bit of energy, with a financial payback time of 7-8 years at the shortest, depending on local electricity costs, and counting massive subsidies and incentives. The energy payback is more like a couple decades.
So, sure, they’re an “energy” company, but their entire history they’ve been a net energy sink, and that’s likely to continue for at least a decade after they’ve saturated their market, because as long as they’re manufacturing more panels every year, they’re going to be consuming more energy manufacturing panels than the installed panels put out.
Nuclear, by contrast? Pays back the energy necessary to build the plants in about 3 months of operation. If Tesla really wants to be an energy company, they should consider going into the nuclear energy business. I’m sure Musk would be really good at it…
I understand that vast quantities of coal are used in china to produce solar panels.
But 20 year energy payback? Really? I think most solar cells don’t last much longer than 20 years, or maybe they do at reduced output.
If that is the case, then solar cells are just energy arbitrage, they convert coal energy into electrical energy over a long period.
I guess you are probably exaggerating a little bit in that the coal burned to create solar cells, if instead used to create electricity would only produce 40% of the electricity the solar cells produce in a 20 years. But of course that coal-produced electricity would be “on demand” and wouldn’t have to be stored in batteries, which themselves were created by burning fossil fuels.
Its amazing, the more I wrote the above paragraph, the more I realized the energy transition is a scam.
The best way to store energy is in natural gas, coal, oil, and water pressure. Avoid conversion loss. The storage form is more compact than batteries. Storage costs less than batteries.
Are not fossil fuels, despite their compact energy value, a problem in other ways? And hydro, though nice and clean once it gets going, takes a lot of effort (like redirecting rivers, screwing with fish habitats) to get there. Even if one takes the most fatalistic view on global warming: If everyone on Earth stopped using all fossil fuels NOW, would that stop our Earth from getting warmer? Sadly, I don’t think it would make any difference. I believe we’ve already past the point of no return. And there’s nothing we can do, or not do that will change this. Sorry.
So some may say: “Why not burn all the fossil fuels we can, since the planet is inevitably going down the crapper” There are actually many reasons to move away from fossil fuels. Getting and burning fossil fuels creates air and water, and land pollution. As long as you breath air, drink water, or live anywhere on land, this is not good. Long after the City of Miami has become an inland sea (not to far in the future, actually), we will need to get reliable, non-polluting power. Batteries have never been an ideal long term storage medium. But they are getting much better, very quickly.
Other forms of energy storage; hydro pools, and flywheels, though technologically interesting, never took off. Batteries are looking pretty good. Also 47 of the continental US states can share power, from were ever it’s made to were ever its needed. Texas is the one state this can’t happen. Why? well, umm the Texas state government choose not to have it’s power grid share commonality with the rest of the country. Something about not wanting to abide to some federal standard. Which any state, that wants to share power with another, would have to do. Remember that major weeks long power failure, in winter, a few years ago in Texas? Other states had plenty of power they would have loved to send to Texas.
Thanks to the Texas state government, that was impossible. Perhaps freezing in the dark was something members of the state government thought was noble? Ask them, I have no idea…
The real problem in Texas, though, wasn’t that they couldn’t share power with neighboring states. It’s that their internal energy market was set up to push ‘renewable’ energy, utilities aren’t legally allowed to prefer reliable power over what’s cheapest at any given second.
So no money to speak of was available for hardening the grid against extreme weather events.
Do you believe these things you write? The Texas companies themselves, in official statements, declared the renewable aspects of their energy portfolios were not the issue in the Big Freeze. They quite clearly said it was all gas infrastructure that failed spectacularly. The accusation that placed the blame on renewables was political in nature, and originated with Republicans in the state.
Of course it was the gas infrastructure that failed. After the ‘renewable’ infrastructure shut down, but that was hardly worth mentioning, since the renewable infrastructure ceasing to be available in bad weather was a routine thing. What did I say?
“utilities aren’t legally allowed to prefer reliable power over what’s cheapest at any given second.
So no money to speak of was available for hardening the grid against extreme weather events.”
So, yes, no hardening got done, and it went down.
Their electricity market mandated buying whatever mix of sources was cheapest at any given moment. Without. Regard. To. Reliability.
So, contrast two conventional plants: Plant A responsibly hardens itself against extreme weather events. Plant B doesn’t bother. *Which is going to be marginally more expensive?* That’s right: The more reliable plant. So Plant B sells power, and Plant A sits idle and goes broke.
The market created a system where nobody could afford to spend any money on reliablity!
This seems like a commodity product with little opportunity for differentiation to drive profits.
Good revenue, shouldn’t be be worth much profits long term.
I expect demand for storage will outstrip supply for at least 10 years. Every dollar invested in AI hardware brings in 4 dollars of AI revenue. AI companies have incentives to scale as fast as they can and can’t afford to wait. Most of the new power plants in the US are renewable and very few other plants are being build (nuclear, coal, gas). So after the initial low hanging fruit in a few areas were energy supply is abundant AI companies will need to work with renewable plants and add storage in order to secure their power supply. This ‘unlimited’ demand for storage will lead to an increase in margins, as AI companies will outbid other uses. For AI a situation similar to the internet revolution will become reality. As the bandwith and speed of internet connexion grew exponentially companies found new uses and markets for that bandwith. As AI hardware advances we will find new uses for that increased AI capacity which i turn will drive profits and demand for more AI.
Where are you getting $420 a share from? Maybe you transposed some digits?
It closed at $231/share Friday, up >10% for the day, which isn’t bad, and continues the positive uptrend for the last few days. I’m positive on Tesla again. But $420/share? Uh, that will have to wait for some day in the Next Big Future when/if it hits a new high.