Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) retail and institutional investors are aggregating a number of inquiries that will potentially be addressed by the electric car maker’s executives in the upcoming Battery Day event, which will be held later today, September 22, 2020. The questions are aggregated from verified TSLA shareholders by Say, a startup that aims to create and develop investor communication tools.
Using the platform, Tesla’s retail and institutional investors have been submitting and voting on inquiries they wish to be discussed and clarified by the electric car maker. Here are the Top 5 questions that garnered a notable number of votes from the company’s retail and institutional shareholders.
RETAIL SHAREHOLDERS
- Will vehicle-to-grid be possible? What are the implications for the grid and for owners?
- If Tesla achieves its goal of massively increasing the world’s battery production, do you envision supplying batteries to other companies? Or do you see Tesla needing everything it can produce for the foreseeable future?
- When do you expect Tesla vehicles to beat ICE vehicles on initial purchase price? Has the cost decline of batteries already made this transition possible, or how soon will it occur?
- How are battery recycling plans coming along? How much is already being recycled if any?
- Will batteries continue to be the limiting factor at Tesla, or do these announcements make some other factor the new limiting factor? When do you expect batteries to no longer be the bottleneck?
INSTITUTIONAL SHAREHOLDERS
- Please may you share with us your thinking on whether the advances you have announced could enable Tesla address other, non-ground-based forms of transportation?
- How have the technology advancements and increased vertical integration of battery manufacturing influenced your ability to improve the environmental and social impact of the supply chain, especially as compared against your competitors?
- As the battery’s useful life starts exceeding the average ownership period of the vehicles, what alternatives do you envisage in terms of reusage/recycling?
- Are Tesla’s battery breakthroughs allowing Tesla to keep its current pace in the rate of battery cost declines, or should they enable an acceleration?
- Battery cell margins appear very thin with multiple viable suppliers building out significant capacity. In this context (small margin stacking), what drives the main benefit of vertical integration versus allowing the cell suppliers to aggressively compete for Tesla’s business?
Tesla is yet to fully confirm if it will be entertaining questions from Say in the upcoming Battery Day event, though the company has addressed inquiries from retail shareholders in past Earnings Calls.
Tesla’s Battery Day event is scheduled to begin at the conclusion of the Annual Shareholder’s Meeting, which is set to begin at 1:30 PM PST on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020. (4:30 PM Eastern Time).
The full list of both Retail and Institutional Shareholder questions is available here. A link to the Livestream of the Battery Day event is available here.
