Jason Badeaux

Tesla recognized the complex supply chain in the automotive industry and revolutionized it through vertical integration across its factory, including battery and electric motor production. At its recent AI day, Tesla revealed its in-house AI training chip (called the D1 Dojo chip). The chip, based on itself, would be ranked in the top 10 super... See more

A system is self-sustaining if it would continue to function normally in the indefinite absence of its creators.

Tesla’s cell constraints are likely to continue over the medium term. Because its most profitable use of cells is likely to be in electric vehicles, we do not expect Tesla’s energy storage business to drive enterprise value meaningfully during the next five years.

In order to build efficient, combustion-based generators, we needed to build them at economies of scale and extensive transmission and distribution networks to transport power along with them. Those wires are vulnerable to being knocked out by storms (or even squirrels), leading to blackouts, or supply shortages leading to cascading failure. That... See more

Indeed, except for the very simplest physical systems, virtually everything and everybody in the world is caught up in a vast, nonlinear web of incentives and constraints and connections. The slightest change in one place causes tremors everywhere else. We can't help but disturb the universe, as T.S. Eliot almost said. The whole is almost always... See more

Few investors understand the enormous difficulty involved in switching from manufacturing ICE vehicles to EVs. Tesla has widely automated their vehicle manufacturing facilities, which has resulted in substantially higher operating profitability than its larger ICE vehicle competitors.

The Tesla Model 3 is a car designed without the driver in mind. Intentionally. I don’t think Tesla did this simply to be edgy, dangerous or different. They did this to prepare people for a world without drivers.

Financial assets are promises to trade certain things in the future, if certain events happen in the world. The financial system is the market for promises.