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I'm not sure what the margin is, but I found a recent article on how much it costs Tesla: about $100 per kWh for cells, and "within two years" they hope to be under $100 per kWh for finished battery packs.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/

I also found a 2017 article where Audi claims to be paying around 100 Euros (about $114) for one kWh of battery cells. This is a much lower price than I expected. And, a year ago? How is Audi doing that?

https://electrek.co/2017/06/28/audi-electric-car-battery-cost/

The majors have a lot of revenue to throw at it

Yeah, but the majors may find that there isn't enough capacity on the market to make mass quantities of battery cells. Tesla's GigaFactory now makes over half of all EV battery cells, and only Tesla gets those.

I think Audi is planning to sell in Model S quantities, not Model 3 quantities.

That gimpy old dude does exactly that, and knows a great deal about vehicles.

https://electrek.co/2016/12/23...

The good news is that Tesla also makes higher capacity grid-scale energy storage products than the PowerWall.

Yes, that install isn't on the scale of what you say is needed (don't know the math) but it seems to be doing pretty damn good for the Aussies - good enough that Southern California Edison wants one too.

You can't even predict the past or the present. All you can do is lie. America is predicted to increase CO2 for 2018 up over 2%.
You are the only person predicting China will climb massively. Show anywhere credible that agrees with you.
Facts are China CO2 from coal peaked already.
China has more renewable electricity than America as a % of the total electricity, and in absolute number terms.
China remains below 1/2 Americas per person emissions.
Much smarter people than you, who lie much less, predict China will never reach the per person level that America is already at.

America will very likely be below 10 before 2025, if not sooner

How? Following this data, even a continued linear trend extrapolated from the most favourable scenario of -0.35 per year would put the US at around 12 in 2025, with only falling under 10 in the 2030s.

Disregard the linear trend. That assumes that everything remains the same, which will NOT be the case.: 1) Nearly all of America's CO2 cuts has been caused by the killing of the coal plants and replacing with Nat Gas and Wind. That will likely continue in spite of Trump's push.

You idiot. you can't just say it's likely with no evidence whatsoever.

After declining by 0.9% in 2017, EIA forecasts that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will rise by 2.0% in 2018. The increase largely reflects higher natural gas consumption because of a colder winter and warmer summer than in 2017.

2) Because of the massive focus that America has had on cutting CO2 from electricity, that has dropped as %, while Transportation % has risen. That does not mean that emissions from transportation has risen, just the % of our output has.

You liar, I've already showed you before that transport is increasing. Not just as a percentage, but the level of CO2 is increasing as can be easily seen on the graph. Last time I showed you the t of CO2. Why still lie about it now?

3) Over the next 3-6 years, the west and china will be moving heavily to EVs. In America, Commercial and passenger vehicles are all moving to these. We have lots of new buses that are moving to EV with both BYD and Proterra. This is forcing other bus companies, even school buses to switch. Tesla producing a Semi truck that does 600 MPC is going to put a LOT of pressure on ICE version of semis. Delivery starts in less than a year. BYD is producing a Semi that gets less than 200 MPC, though lots of quality issues with. THis is leading to multiple other companies producing EV semis, as well as new ones. In addition, we have Rivian about to introduce both a pick-up truck and a 3 row SUV in 2020(to be shown in Nov at LA show) with more to follow afterwards. What does that mean? It means that by 2024, EVs will almost certainly occupy at least 1/2 of ALL road-based vehicle sales, if not more. The average passenger vehicle in America is around 11.5 years. Basically, ppl have been holding off on buying cars, which is why Ford decided to kill sedans here. Point is, come around 2020/1, lots of vehicles are going to be bought and I would guess that few will want an ICE. Ideally Rivian and Tesla will be able to convince most F1, F2, F3 buyers to switch.

tiny and not growing

Electrified vehicles continue to see slow growth and less use than conventional vehicles

America will very likely be below 10 before 2025, if not sooner

How? Following this data, even a continued linear trend extrapolated from the most favourable scenario of -0.35 per year would put the US at around 12 in 2025, with only falling under 10 in the 2030s.

Disregard the linear trend. That assumes that everything remains the same, which will NOT be the case.:
1) Nearly all of America's CO2 cuts has been caused by the killing of the coal plants and replacing with Nat Gas and Wind. That will likely continue in spite of Trump's push.
2) Because of the massive focus that America has had on cutting CO2 from electricity, that has dropped as %, while Transportation % has risen. That does not mean that emissions from transportation has risen, just the % of our output has.
3) Over the next 3-6 years, the west and china will be moving heavily to EVs. In America, Commercial and passenger vehicles are all moving to these.
We have lots of new buses that are moving to EV with both BYD and Proterra. This is forcing other bus companies, even school buses to switch.
Tesla producing a Semi truck that does 600 MPC is going to put a LOT of pressure on ICE version of semis. Delivery starts in less than a year.
BYD is producing a Semi that gets less than 200 MPC, though lots of quality issues with.
THis is leading to multiple other companies producing EV semis, as well as new ones.
In addition, we have Rivian about to introduce both a pick-up truck and a 3 row SUV in 2020(to be shown in Nov at LA show) with more to follow afterwards.
What does that mean? It means that by 2024, EVs will almost certainly occupy at least 1/2 of ALL road-based vehicle sales, if not more. The average passenger vehicle in America is around 11.5 years. Basically, ppl have been holding off on buying cars, which is why Ford decided to kill sedans here. Point is, come around 2020/1, lots of vehicles are going to be bought and I would guess that few will want an ICE. Ideally Rivian and Tesla will be able to convince most F1, F2, F3 buyers to switch.

That's only a surprise to anyone that hasn't figured out that wind and solar power are just proxies for natural gas.

Not in Germany. Germany really doesn't have massive amounts of natural gas power. Gas is too expensive in Europe to be wasted on generating electricity whenever you want to. Germany only generates something like 13% of its electricity in gas plants. Considering that it generates 2.5 times as much from wind and solar, "proxy" clearly doesn't describe the relationship unless Germans can somehow conjure electricity from nothing.

Given the low capacity factor of wind power it's often been shown that just burning the natural gas in a combined cycle plant will nearly always have a lower CO2 output than if natural gas turbines were combined with wind.

This sentence is absolutely nonsensical. One can't make an inference like that from any level of wind capacity factor. Wind's capacity factor here is about as much a red herring as inferring economic viability of solar panels from quantum efficiency of photovoltaic cells (another popular mistake!). But to follow the viable part of your logic, since Germans generate several times more electricity from wind and solar than from gas, and since carbon intensity of wind generation is so much lower for wind and solar than it is even for CCGT plants, replacing the wind and solar power with stable CCGT-generated power can't possible reduce CO2 intensity even if the existing 13% of gas plants are *not* combined cycle plants already, since if if 13% of the generation goes, say, from 600 grams per kWh to 300 grams per kWh, but another 35% goes from let's say ~50 grams per kWh to the same 300 grams per kWh, clearly that's *not* a net improvement.

Solar output peaks at noon, right when people turn off stuff to break for lunch.

I don't know where you live, but where I live, at noon people generally start going for lunch in staggered groups while other workers keep working. Usually not a lot of stuff gets turned off. At homes, stuff is already turned off of course since people are already at work.

Nuclear power is reliable, low CO2, and cheaper than solar power.

Not anymore. At least in certain regions. Those will increase in size over time, though. Very recently, price even in German auctions was around 4-5 Euro cents per kWh, much less than what is requested by prospective nuclear power operators from states as a guaranteeed feed-in price (in my country neighboring to Germany, a guaranteed price of 10 Euro cents per kWh was requested by the nuclear plant operator as a condition for building two new reactors).

... (source) ...

The bullet points you pulled from that “source” are just requotes of Musk’s after-the-fact explanation regarding his “going private” tweet. It’ll certainly satisfy the Kool-aid drinkers, but the article doesn’t provide any sort of independent confirmation of anything Musk said. In fact, it seemed to me the article writer wasn’t entirely convinced regarding some of those points.

What Musk did over Twitter is first and foremost unbecoming of a CEO and is outright manipulation of the stock price.

In your opinion.

That's the problem with all the Tesla news nowadays - there's actually very little going on, what we see in the media is opinion dressed up as news. And if it's bad, the shorts will run with it.

.) The Saudis had approached Musk multiple times about taking Tesla private over the past two years .) During that time, Musk has been telling shorts to get out .) The Tesla board was informed about Musk's intent before the infamous tweet, and discussed the merits .) The board decided the next step was to contact and discuss with the largest shareholders .) Musk decided that he couldn't legally contact *only* the largest stockholders, so he publicly announced on twitter .) Stock goes up .) Stock goes down

(source)

Really, there's nothing in the news anyone can trust about Tesla nowadays. After the NYT interview I saw these competing headlines:

"Musk says Tesla had an excruciating year, and the worst is yet to come" (one source, among many)

"Musk says Tesla had an excruciating year, and the worst is over" (one source, among many)

Which of these is an accurate portrayal of Tesla's future?

Don't believe any of it. Given the timeline above, it's really hard to see how Musk could be charged with a crime - SEC is civil, not criminal, the FBI would have to get involved for that. It's also hard to see how the SEC could impose a fine. There *might* be an issue with the exact definition of "secured", but it's a) moot, b) can be argued either way, and c) it took the SEC 5 years to bring down [Theranos CEO] Elisabeth Holmes for much more severe problems, they aren't likely to move any faster with Tesla. Five years from now we can worry whether this has made any difference to Tesla.

It's clear that Tesla only has to weather the next 4 months or so, and then be clear of all this nonsense.

Until then, just ignore the rabble - it's only noise anyway.

Musk is a narcissist.

This buyout was just him bullshitting. It IS a LIE!!!

  This lame excuse of "Ambien" and lack of sleep is total horseshit. His LAME-ASS excuse.

I KNEW it. ALL of you fanboys are idiots.

And YOU Okian are full of shit!

YOU are a complete liar.

What Musk did over Twitter is first and foremost unbecoming of a CEO and is outright manipulation of the stock price.

In your opinion.

That's the problem with all the Tesla news nowadays - there's actually very little going on, what we see in the media is opinion dressed up as news. And if it's bad, the shorts will run with it.

.) The Saudis had approached Musk multiple times about taking Tesla private over the past two years
.) During that time, Musk has been telling shorts to get out
.) The Tesla board was informed about Musk's intent before the infamous tweet, and discussed the merits
.) The board decided the next step was to contact and discuss with the largest shareholders
.) Musk decided that he couldn't legally contact *only* the largest stockholders, so he publicly announced on twitter
.) Stock goes up
.) Stock goes down

(source)

Really, there's nothing in the news anyone can trust about Tesla nowadays. After the NYT interview I saw these competing headlines:

"Musk says Tesla had an excruciating year, and the worst is yet to come" (one source, among many)

"Musk says Tesla had an excruciating year, and the worst is over" (one source, among many)

Which of these is an accurate portrayal of Tesla's future?

Don't believe any of it. Given the timeline above, it's really hard to see how Musk could be charged with a crime - SEC is civil, not criminal, the FBI would have to get involved for that. It's also hard to see how the SEC could impose a fine. There *might* be an issue with the exact definition of "secured", but it's a) moot, b) can be argued either way, and c) it took the SEC 5 years to bring down [Theranos CEO] Elisabeth Holmes for much more severe problems, they aren't likely to move any faster with Tesla. Five years from now we can worry whether this has made any difference to Tesla.

It's clear that Tesla only has to weather the next 4 months or so, and then be clear of all this nonsense.

Until then, just ignore the rabble - it's only noise anyway.

I'm looking at what has already happened - what is factual, not wishful.

No one values companies based on the past production rates. . . they value based on future potential earnings. . . they are have past 5k/week and you think that earlier production rates are still somehow relevant to a discussion of valuation. . .your understanding of finance is so backwards that your financial arguments against Tesla do come off as desperately wishful. . .

Again, why do you REALLY hate Tesla. . . some Tesla driver smoke you at the green light or something? Please realize that Tesla acceleration is so subtle that it was probably unintentional. . . : )

Only the most optimistic Tesla supporter would equate an investor "exploring how it can be involved in a potential deal" with "something concrete".

More info has now been released by Tesla and it looks like this has been in the works for some time

https://electrek.co/2018/08/13...

As I announced last Tuesday, I’m considering taking Tesla private because I believe it could be good for our shareholders, enable Tesla to operate at its best, and advance our mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. As I continue to consider this, I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked since last Tuesday.

What has happened so far? On August 2nd, I notified the Tesla board that, in my personal capacity, I wanted to take Tesla private at $420 per share. This was a 20% premium over the ~$350 then current share price (which already reflected a ~16% increase in the price since just prior to announcing Q2 earnings on August 1st). My proposal was based on using a structure where any existing shareholder who wished to remain as a shareholder in a private Tesla could do so, with the $420 per share buyout used only for shareholders that preferred that option.

After an initial meeting of the board’s outside directors to discuss my proposal (I did not participate, nor did Kimbal), a full board meeting was held. During that meeting, I told the board about the funding discussions that had taken place (more on that below) and I explained why this could be in Tesla’s long-term interest.

At the end of that meeting, it was agreed that as a next step, I would reach out to some of Tesla’s largest shareholders. Our largest investors have been extremely supportive of Tesla over the years, and understanding whether they had the ability and desire to remain as shareholders in a private Tesla is of critical importance to me. They are the ones who believed in Tesla when no one else did and they are the ones who most believe in our future. I told the board that I would report back after I had these discussions.

Why did I make a public announcement? The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn’t be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly. To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.

Why did I say “funding secured”? Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private. They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil. They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.

Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5% of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time. I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.

I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a

correct Slashdot headline is:
Tesla finally opensource their code, as required by the GPL.

What is this product you're bullshitting about

This. It's undergoing trials with early customers right now.

Where can I buy it?

From Tesla. Big waiting list, though, as rampup doesn't start until later this year, and will continue over next year.

Ah, it is the same thing as the famous "$35k electric car", a shiny piece of vaporware that exists only on the marketing brochures...

No, no, you're mixing up your short arguments! You're supposed to say that it's been scrubbed from the marketing brochures and has been cancelled! And deny all counterevidence when presented with it, including a tweet just the other day from Tesla discussing AWD availability on the SR.

Woo woo - 100% free renewable power! But no mention of up-front capital costs. Given that batteries wear out and have to be replaced, some discussion of life-cycle cost would be interesting.

The summary links to a poor quality, ad-filled site, but this seems par for the course for /. these days. Even a tiny bit of effort Googling brings up more data though.

The entire project cost $8.8 million to install 13.5 MWh of storage, or $650/kWh, which is pretty good. The NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) estimates the lifetime of a grid battery at 10 years. Estimates of swapping out new for old runs $250 kWh (the infrastructure and controllers are still in place, old batteries are recycled) so the average annual replacement cost runs $350,000, or about 3.8% of the original capital cost.

Pretty darn good! Woo hoo!

Better for two reasons, it actually provides some data about the battery installation (it is 13.2 MWh of storage) and the site isn't packed with auto-play unstoppable video ad force-feeding like the FastCompany site.

But American Samoa, the U.S. territory, got Tesla batteries two years ago. This installation is 6 MWh, but since the population is much smaller (55,000 vs 195,000 for Samoa) it is enough to run the main island (Tutuila) for three days without needing any power production, and is nearly 100% renewable powered now.

They are. The teardowns industry experts executed on their products indicate roughly 30% margin. Citation.

They are just using the Amazon model of spending on new products and services, investing their capital into growth vs returns. Thats a long-term return strategy and one I think wall street will have to get used to. There is a difference between companies like Sears who cost-cut and sell business units in order to try and remain solvent, and ones like Tesla who throw everything they have in order to deliver the next breakthrough product like the fastest accelerating car on earth, or the first really usable electric Semi-Truck, or win the race to Level5 autonomous driving. Amazon did the same thing when it invested in AWS, Prime Streaming, Alexa, and Kindle. Some of their investments didn't pan out, like Fire Phone and Tablet, but most do. They are smart guys. This is Tesla's approach. Solar Tiles, Battery packs for home, business, infrastructure, cars, suvs, trucks, sports cars, and the underlying platform (autonomous driving, supercharger network).

Keep talking.

That the innovation isn't present... it's all just standard kit and standard batteries bolted together with the one thing that they WOULDN'T want to replicate as he's done it - the automated driving computer.

I guess you've missed the multiple battery tear-down articles going back 4 years.

LOL. California's little project here is not truly THAT big. You need to get a handle on the size of the lithium battery production in the world, both existing and announced projects, before making statements implying this would make a dent in it. Worldwide battery production is on its way to topping the TWh per year mark before this project could possibly get completed - probably before it can get started.

And, there are many utility scale projects already in operation. The US had over 700 MWh or utility scale battery storage at the end of last year. Tesla just built a 129MWh facility in Australia that is already demonstrating unexpectedly rapid payoff. California already has a 120 MWh facility opened last year. There is already over 1 GWh of utility battery storage contracted for the California grid, a large portion of it coming from a 730 MWh Tesla project. And on and on. But all of these projects combined are barely a dent in the worldwide battery production that was over 100 GWh last year and rapidly increasing.

You also seem to think that these require big buildings or something. They are just outdoor fields of relatively small units, with the largest typically being built to a tractor trailer size for obvious reasons. Tesla's look about like refrigerators. Each unit needs a concrete pad and you probably want to put it in a fenced area with gravel for ease of maintenance. How they are deployed is really up to the utility. You could add them to existing substations or buy a little field near an existing power line. There would almost never be a need for any new lines. You just deploy them in existing facilities near existing power lines.

One of Tesla’s biggest anonymous trolls/shorts has been doxxed as an investment manager heavily invested in the oil industry.

To his credit, he disclosed that he was holding a short position on Tesla and therefore, he benefits from the company’s stock price going down.

If you don't/didn't know enough to know what a short position was. Should you really be giving legal advice about stock manipulation?

Rei, all good points, but I think you are playing Chess against an Anon who was eating his own Checkers pieces. . .

My proof of this:
1) He does not think Tesla makes cash from selling cars. Here are the journal entries for my purchase:
Dr: Cash 56K
Cr: Revenue 56K
Dr: COGS 39K (based on this
Cr: Inventory 39K
Hey, look. The Cash account went up by $56K. . . they DO make cash when they sell a car. . .
2) He makes Tesla sound like a college student that partied too hard and is about to get cut off by his parents (perhaps he is projecting?). . . yeah, let's pay no attention to what they actually _used_ the investment funds for. . .
3) He seems to imply that Cash Flow From Financing Activities is some kind of dirty little secret. . . perhaps he is writing from North Korea where they don't have capitalism?
4) He inflicts us with some kind of Self-Righteousness-Fallacy.
5) He thinks that you inject _investors_ and not CASH into companies. . .
6) He thinks that companies need to "show continuous positive cash flow" (I assume he means "cash from from operating activities") . . . so I guess no more capitalism. . . nobody tell Jeff Bezos that his wealth is a complete lie. . .

Never mind, Rei. . . I can see how obliterating posts made by Checkers eating Anons can be fun. . . please carry on. . .

There are so many stupid things said on /.
A 133-hp electric motor drives the front wheels and is powered by a 39.2-kWh battery pack, which should offer around 150 miles of driving range. With the larger 64.0-kWh battery, power and range increase to 201 horses and about 250 miles, respectively.
As we previously reported, the new Kona Electric compact SUV will be offered in a ‘Short-range’ battery pack option, which consists of a 39.2 kWh battery pack enabling a range of 300 km (186 miles) on a single charge.

That version of the vehicle will also be equipped with a 99 kW permanent magnet synchronous electric motor putting down 395 Nm of torque and a top speed of 167 km/h (103 mph).
...
Another higher-performance version with a ‘Long-range’ battery pack option will also be available. Under this configuration, the Kona Electric will be equipped with a 64 kWh battery pack, which will enable “nearly 470 km (292 miles) of range.”

So, not only does this have much lower range than M3, BUT, wIth such a small motor in there, the performance will be similar to any $20K car. IOW, a 0-100 of around 10 seconds, and for the 'high-performance' version, I would expect somewhere between 7-8 secs. This makes Hyundai similar to fiats or tatas.

This is while Tesla M3 is blowing the doors off BMWs 3 series in performance and luxury.

400 miles in a 30 minute charge

Tesla is in talks with electric truck customers to install ‘Megacharger’ stations, report says

> Tesla has not yet reached 5000 model 3s per week. It's a false claim.

um, ...
https://electrek.co/2018/07/01/tesla-model-3-production-rate-5000-units-employees-celebrate/

https://electrek.co/2018/07/01/tesla-model-3-production-milestone-record-total-production-elon-musk/

Wait for the SEC report in a few days to be sure if they have reached this completely arbitrary threshold. And as always, it's as much the rate of chance as the instantaneous absolute value that matters.

> Tesla has not yet reached 5000 model 3s per week. It's a false claim.

um, ...
https://electrek.co/2018/07/01/tesla-model-3-production-rate-5000-units-employees-celebrate/

https://electrek.co/2018/07/01/tesla-model-3-production-milestone-record-total-production-elon-musk/

Wait for the SEC report in a few days to be sure if they have reached this completely arbitrary threshold. And as always, it's as much the rate of chance as the instantaneous absolute value that matters.

you didn't look far then... https://electrek.co/2018/07/01...

According to electrek, Tesla's Gigafactory is already producing 20 GWh and will be over 100 GWh when fully completed. So I guess they should just call it the BYD megafactory.

Tesla said it made 5000 Model 3s in a week? Really?

Elon's exact quote to his media side kick Fred Lambert: “Not only did we factory gate 5000 Model 3’s, but we also achieved the S & X production target for a combined 7000 vehicle week!” https://electrek.co/2018/07/01...

Notice the difference in terminology between what is said of the 3 vs. S & X. "Factory gate" means the cars are made ready for delivery. Though, given that some pics taken of cars in that state show even that may even be a stretch(on top of Tesla's historic reliability issues with the Model 3 after the customer takes delivery). So what Elon is saying is that there were already Model 3s produced and waiting in a lot at the start of the last week of June. Those cars are included in the 5000 unit tally even though they were already produced and may have just needed to be moved from one lot to another. That's why sustained rates are the only true measure.

But really, given Elon's past antics is this a surprise? These word games Elon plays with numbers are so tiresome. The only people who still fall for it must have been told a dozen times by their parents that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist before they started to believe it.

in this article : https://electrek.co/2017/10/25... Tesla aims for a 35 gwh production this year. They are planning at least 2 other Gigafactories.

Why would climate change solutions kill people? There's a fairly clear path forward on fixing climate change now. The first step doesn't even touch oil or other farm chemicals.

The first step is a massive build-out of renewable electricity generation, mainly solar and wind. We're not even close to the maximum capacity of renewables across the country, even without grid changes.

The second step is including 12 hours' worth of battery storage to get to 80% renewable electricity, whether next to the power generation - which is already economical - or even better in the batteries of electric vehicles. This can include...electric farm equipment!

Where we want to go from there, such as combined hydrogen generation for ammonia and CO2 collection from seawater or synthesizing oil from CO2 directly from the air, is up in the air right now. But the concrete steps above, if implemented aggressively, could easily meet our Paris 2025 commitment.

https://electrek.co/2016/12/05...

Indeed. A teardown of the Model 3 contracted by German automakers estimated that the cost to manufacture the Model 3 LR at a full production rate would be $28k.

https://electrek.co/2018/05/14...

it is happening https://electrek.co/2018/03/05...

The company can crank out around 17 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion cells annually, placing it just ahead of Korea's LG Chem, the Tesla and Panasonic partnership, and China's electric-vehicle giant BYD.

It seems to me the numbers/ranking could be off, the tesla gigafactory targets 35 Gwh annually, but I can't find current production numbers. https://electrek.co/2018/01/03...

Hey

1) That was pre-update. Also, it's not clear whether the person was asleep or having a medical emergency.

2) From your second link:

Mr. Ramirez was employed by Tesla for less than four months after joining from SolarCity, and during his short time at Tesla, it was his job to identify ways to enhance our safety program, and he certainly was not terminated for doing so. That would make no sense.

Mr. Ramirez was terminated because after an extensive investigation, it was clear that he had engaged over and over again in harassing workplace behavior and used extremely inappropriate language that violated any reasonable standard. We conducted our investigation after we received an onslaught of complaints about Mr. Ramirez’s behavior, with nearly a dozen different employees stating that he engaged in clear bullying, sought to intimidate his colleagues, and repeatedly made inappropriate comments about women. Importantly, this was not a case of he said/she said. There were literally almost a dozen people who came forward to complain about Mr. Ramirez – notably, from a wide variety of different locations and departments within the company, some of whom were Mr. Ramirez’s direct reports and others who were his peers in other departments. Among the evidence that was provided:

One employee said that Mr. Ramirez commented on a fellow employee by saying ‘she’s got some big old [expletive].’ This obviously made the employee very uncomfortable.

One of Mr. Ramirez’s direct reports said that he made inappropriate comments towards women, calling them names like ‘hun’, and that he regularly tried to intimidate others.

Another employee told her manager that because of the abrasive language that Mr. Ramirez repeatedly used against her, she never wanted to interact with him again.

One of Mr. Ramirez’s direct reports said that he regularly mistreated his team, and that she felt he bullied team members and others with abusive remarks.
Multiple employees said that they were fearful of coming forward because they had witnessed Mr. Ramirez engage in intimidation and they were scared of being retaliated against by him.

Bullying and harassment have no place at Tesla.

I know a lot of solar scientists and engineers, and I don't know any of them predicting 1 cent per kilowatt-hour price in ten years.

Thierry Lepercq, head of research, technology and innovation at the French energy company Engie SA, said in an interview at Bloomberg that he sees a potential for the cost of solar electricity to fall below $10-megawatt hour (1/kWh) in the sunniest climates by 2025.

Teslas have driven over 7,2 billion miles. Given how by far most of that has been accumulated since the addition of AP hardware (in October 2016 they were only at 3,5B), and from the Q1 conference call we know that over 1/3 of Tesla miles are on AP, we can extrapolate to maybe around 2 billion miles (give or take large margins of error, and yes, that's the best we can do for now until the first AP statistics report comes out). At the normal US vehicle fatality rate of 1 per 86 million miles driven, 23 people should have died on AP (were Teslas only of average-safety, which they're not).

Adjust up or down by your personal assumptions. We should have actual data to work with in a month or two.

The numbers and relations you claim are way off, which is particularly egregious given that so much of this data is readily available in press releases from Nissan and Tesla.

While Nissan sold a 100 MILLION.

In what time period, or should I say era? According to Nissan's own press report, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance combined sold 10.6 million units in 2017, with Nissan's portion being 5.8 million. Your claim is off by almost a factor of 20! To put how outrageous your claim is in context, the total number of cars produced worldwide, over all companies and excluding commercial vehicles, appears to only be about 73 million! Even including commercial vehicles still falls short of 100 million.

They've sold more Nissan Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars, and the Leaf is just a footnote for Nissan.

In another press release, also from January 2018, Nissan states that they sold their 300,000th Leaf vehicle. Meanwhile, in February 2018, it has been reported that Tesla delivered their 300,000th vehicle. So your claim that Nissan has sold more Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars is certainly debatable. With currently available data from searching the web, it looks like Nissan and Tesla were roughly at parity in Feb. 2018 in terms of electric vehicles sold.

In any recent period, if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million.

That is a bit of disingenuous comparison. Of course Nissan sells more cars than Tesla currently does since Nissan is a much older and larger company and it manufactures more types of vehicles and at many different price levels. Meanwhile, Tesla is a much younger company that so far has mostly catered to the luxury market (though it is starting to push the prices down with its newer Model 3). Nevertheless, your relational claim of "if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million" is way off, again by almost a factor of 20! Per the figure I cited above, Nissan sold 5.8 million vehicles in 2017 while Tesla delivered 101,312 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2017 (note that Tesla also sold a handful of Model 3s in 2017 not included in the 101,312 figure). The correct relation, which is only good for 2017, is that Nissan sold about 57 times as many vehicles as Tesla did, not 1000 times as you claimed. But who cares about comparing total vehicles sold over all types!

The appropriate comparison here is the number of electric passenger cars sold and with that we see a much different perspective. Per the above figures, Tesla and Nissan appear to be at near parity over Tesla's entire production history. But since you said "in any recent period", let's look at more recent, shorter term, data. According to Tesla's press release, they delivered 29,997 Teslas in Q1 2018. By contrast, in the same time period (January through March 2018), Nissan sold 23,989 Leafs. Note that Nissan reports its sales by month, per region, so one has to add up the Leaf sale figures for Japan, Europe, and the US across the January through March 2018 production and sales PDFs, all found here. Point is, in the most recent quarter, Tesla outsold the

And the shorts' continued recycling of old news could provide the raw materials. Literally, this settlement was first reported three and a half weeks ago and it's still making headlines. It's getting ridiculous.

And speaking of the lack of pack cooling, it means that Leafs suffer degradation faster than other EVs.

That could be an understatement of the month. Triple the speed of degradation or more is very worrisome.

Claims, meet facts.

It was never going to be shipped first.
The 57K model is reckoned to have a 20-25% profit margin by external observers. Elon has stated they are working on these to guarantee a healthy cash flow while they increase production volume before bringing in the lower priced specification model 3.

25% of 35K gives less margin for slower production affecting costs and Tesla would be foolish to not know that the first production line can handle a steady 5,000–6,000 a week before committing to a lower profit (by magnitude) car.

https://electrek.co/2018/05/21...

It's not only standing up, but moving forward a few rows.

I'm not sure why people have had this notion that despite the fact that the vehicle as a whole was significantly delayed - mainly due to pack production delays - the SR pack should nonetheless have come out on the original schedule. Where's the logic in that? SR was never supposed to go into production until after the battery line was running at full. It's finally getting close to that, at last.

Huh. Just off the presses.

Tesla cuts Model 3 delivery delays for new orders in half as production ramp improves

As noted at the end of the article and confirmed on FB groups, some have been notified their already configured orders are pushed to July.
Supposedly that's to make sure the 200000th US delivery will not happen until Q3, prolonging the feferal tax credit

Huh. Just off the presses.

Tesla cuts Model 3 delivery delays for new orders in half as production ramp improves

That is Elon's point as well. Disproportionately covering Tesla crashes keeps the general public ignorant of Tesla's actual safety record.

Tesla vehicles currently drive about 2.67 billion miles per year (as of July 2017). That is about 0.083% of all miles driven in the US. This means you would expect about 33-34 deaths per year in Tesla cars, without adjusting for the demographics and behaviors of Tesla drivers compared to the US average. In 2016 there were 5 deaths, making Tesla cars about 6-7 times safer than average (again without adjusting for driver demographics).

Considering the average driver age (by miles driven) is about 43, and Tesla average driver age is 53, you would expect slightly less driver deaths in Teslas. Although considering driver deaths by age are fairly consistent between ages 35-70 (with 16-30 and 75+ being much higher), perhaps there would be another 1-2 Tesla driver deaths if they had drivers of a more average age. So after taking that into account, maybe Teslas are only 4-5 times safer than an average car. Then again your average Tesla driver probably likes to accelerate faster than your average 53 year old driver, so maybe on average Tesla drivers are just as safe or even less safe than average drivers.

Teslas are also much newer than the average car. The average car on the road is about 11 years old, and my guess is the average Tesla is around 3-4 years old. 3 year old cars are about 20% safer than 11 year old cars on average, so again Tesla might kill another 1-2 people per year if they were a bit older. So perhaps Teslas are only 3-4 times safer than your average car.

The only thing that isn't disputable is that Teslas are far safer than your average car. If every car was as safe as a Tesla, its possible that 75% or more of all traffic deaths would be prevented. It's hard to tell just how many 10's of thousands of lives would be saved each year if all cars were as safe as Teslas because there are so many factors, but it would certainly be a lot.