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they call it Autonomous mode. Sorry

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Well, maybe they're calling it that somewhere not on Tesla's website? Let's see... Yep, found an entry:

“For Reporting Year 2017, Tesla did not test any vehicles on public roads in California in autonomous mode, as defined by California law.”.

... except that is actually talking about full self-driving, not AP. Internal testing of FSD. Which wasn't done regardless.

Elon only knows publicity stunts, He can't actually create anything. Just cobbles together old tech.

Anti-Musk brown energy shills are beyond any parody at this point. You just quote their actual words and everyone laughs!

That wall of patents at Tesla was totally fake, right?

If the grid did this well already, then Tesla's batteries wouldn't be having such a massive impact on the cost of balancing.

They only have a 'massive impact' for short durations in very specific situations. South Australia case is unique and you'd have a hard time finding many similar ones in Europe.

hmm, botched my supporting link.

They just announced they are building a Giga-factory in China that will produce both batteries and cars: https://electrek.co/2018/05/14...

If the grid did this well already, then Tesla's batteries wouldn't be having such a massive impact on the cost of balancing.

"I have a hunch this is Tesla's true end game"

Tesla CTO JB Straubel in 2014 - "“We are an energy innovation company as much as a car company.....“Tesla wasn’t founded to make cars. We have enough cars. We have *too many* cars. Tesla was founded to change the game in energy.....I really love batteries, I might love batteries more than cars"

https://electrek.co/2014/05/24...

It gets better. Tesla thinks that they're responding too quickly to be paid the real price of electricity.

Not with the previous release of AP2. It filtered out stationary objects to avoid spurious detections of hazards that were actually on the edges of the road.

The latest version - ironically, right before the accident (Tesla updates have a slow rollout process, so the driver almost certainly hadn't gotten it yet) - no longer appears to filter out stationary objects.

The big question is: why are we still talking about this accident that happened months ago? 3300 people die per day in car accidents. There's virtually no news in any of them, but every time it's a Tesla (AP or not), it's huge news. Which creates a misleading perception, given that Teslas have such a low rate of fatalities per mile (a point that's on this site frequently used against Tesla in arguing that Autopilot doesn't actually make a driver safer - the argument is that the vehicles are physically safer to begin with, so you can't credit that to Autopilot).

Tesla does NOT have the battery operation im-house. He simply has a 'deal' going with Panasonic.

Tell me: who owns this building, and what is manufactured inside this building?

https://www.tesla.com/blog/battery-cell-production-begins-gigafactory

Also, is this a drop in the bucket or can the factory produce a significant number of cells?

https://electrek.co/2017/08/08/tesla-gigafactory-battery-cell-production-elon-musk/

https://electrek.co/2018/01/03/tesla-gigafactory-hiring-effort-battery-production/

I believe it is fair to say that Tesla really does have battery production in-house. It's a significant reason why Tesla can make $10,000 on a Model 3 while GM loses $9,000 on a Chevy Bolt. (Note: making $10K per car will require Tesla to get production rates up, as the major expense is depreciation on the factory, and currently the depreciation expense is spread over 2000 cars per week instead of 5000 cars per week.)

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/02/tesla-model-3-competitive-advantage-costs-10000-less-to-make-than-chevy-bolt/

This is very different from the way Amazon ran at a loss for a long time. Amazon was building retail sales network in a totally new market. Tesla is just selling cars to the small number of millineals in the 1%.

Tesla is just selling a small number of cars!

Well, and inventing a better battery pack technology than anyone else has.

And building out the best car charging network, period.

And building their own battery factories to get their costs down.

And building out their factories. (A company like GM has spent decades building out its factories, but Tesla is a new company and is building from nothing.)

And investing in R&D to invent profitable new things like the Tesla semi-truck.

Hmm, maybe Tesla is doing more than just selling a small number of cars.

Tesla does NOT have the battery operation im-house. He simply has a 'deal' going with Panasonic.

Tell me: who owns this building, and what is manufactured inside this building?

https://www.tesla.com/blog/battery-cell-production-begins-gigafactory

Also, is this a drop in the bucket or can the factory produce a significant number of cells?

https://electrek.co/2017/08/08/tesla-gigafactory-battery-cell-production-elon-musk/

https://electrek.co/2018/01/03/tesla-gigafactory-hiring-effort-battery-production/

I believe it is fair to say that Tesla really does have battery production in-house. It's a significant reason why Tesla can make $10,000 on a Model 3 while GM loses $9,000 on a Chevy Bolt. (Note: making $10K per car will require Tesla to get production rates up, as the major expense is depreciation on the factory, and currently the depreciation expense is spread over 2000 cars per week instead of 5000 cars per week.)

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/02/tesla-model-3-competitive-advantage-costs-10000-less-to-make-than-chevy-bolt/

This is very different from the way Amazon ran at a loss for a long time. Amazon was building retail sales network in a totally new market. Tesla is just selling cars to the small number of millineals in the 1%.

Tesla is just selling a small number of cars!

Well, and inventing a better battery pack technology than anyone else has.

And building out the best car charging network, period.

And building their own battery factories to get their costs down.

And building out their factories. (A company like GM has spent decades building out its factories, but Tesla is a new company and is building from nothing.)

And investing in R&D to invent profitable new things like the Tesla semi-truck.

Hmm, maybe Tesla is doing more than just selling a small number of cars.

Look at pictures of the two trucks. The Tesla clearly has pillars between the side windows and windshield, they are just black and glossy to make them look more like glass.

The Nicola design wraps the glass around onto the side then has the pillar a foot back from the windshield.

In this case and all the other claims the Tesla and the Nicola look nothing alike. They are both an evolution of the standard truck designs from the last 10 years. Both trucks look more like some concept designs from 20 years ago than they look like each other.

https://electrek.co/2018/03/16...

https://www.trucks.com/2016/12...

Look at the pictures in the two links and tell me they look the same. Besides the windshield differences the Tesla has no grill and what looks like frunk like hood, the Nicola has a huge grill. The Tesla has vertically oriented lights, the Nicola has horizontally oriented lights.

The Tesla has wind shields over the front wheels that extend back to the back of the cab creating an air channel from front to back. The Nicola wind shields over the wheels have a conventional profile tying out without the channelization but these shields also have a second big grill under the headlights.

The Nicola has thick arms with a slot supporting the side mirrors, Tesla has a thinner single blade arm supporting the side mirrors. The Nicola side mirrors are rectangular with rounded corners, the Tesla mirrors are tapered at the top with almost a rounded triangular shape on the top.

The Driver in the Tesla is centered in the cab, the Nicola uses a standard Left/Right side driver seat. Etc, Etc, Etc.

These two trucks look NOTHING alike once you discount the similarities to actually be a semi truck. Semi trucks have to be certain sizes width and length, have a defined profile and shape that fits the wind profile. They have to match the standard trailers in the industry and have the standard type, size and spacing of tires. The Diesel Semi-trucks you can buy right now from vendors like Volvo, International and others look very similar.

The lawsuit is a joke, you have to wonder if it's an attempt to get purchased by Tesla because Tesla is doing so much better and Nicola bet on Hydrogen being a viable fuel by now and it's not, the trucks aren't in production and costs of production and hydrogen will likely preclude any serious sales once Nicola actually starts producing trucks if they ever do.

This Electrek article show prior art for wrap-around windows and mid entry door. Check the comments and you'll find many others, such as the Volvo Supertruck concept from 2014. The Nikola cab looks way closer to that Volvo than the Tesla cab does to the Nikola.

In case anyone is wondering: all of this "Autopilot is doomed" stuff comes out at a time when it just had one of its most massive updates in its history (unfortunately, it hadn't significantly rolled out before the fatal crash in California). It no longer filters out stationary objects, it handles roads with unusual lane widths, two-direction roads with no central lane markings, and will deliberately "break the rules" when needed for safety (for example, driving into the shoulder when a truck is about to hit you, or when the normal "rules of the road" have suddenly changed.

But of course, you're not going to see a million articles about that because that's not the obligate doom-and-gloom.

I consider myself a self-driving pessimist. I think there's far too many rules that we process, with too complex reasoning, for self-driving to be immediately around the corner. I have slowly been becoming more optimistic with the realization of how much more one can enable a car to "see" than humans (for example, using radar brightness at different wavelengths to determine road smoothness / traction conditions ahead, or past altimetry data to determine the depth of water on a road), but still think it's going to be a long time before full self driving becomes mainstream. But I also believe that, if properly implemented, combined human-computer systems can be much better than either alone - with the computer bringing new senses and "constant attention" to the picture, and the human bringing their brain. The key is ensuring that the human pays full attention. Making them regularly torque the wheel is one thing, but even better looks to be where the tech is headed - eye tracking. With eye tracking, they can't stop paying attention to the road. And I can't see how in such a situation that "human + computer" is not better than "human alone".

Where did China get lots of new electricity? From coal.

China’s National Statistics Bureau said in January that the country’s total energy consumption in 2017 was up around 2.9% compared to a year ago, but coal’s share in total energy mix was down by 1.7%.

Even if it did get a little more from coal this year over the lifetime of the electric vehicles it will be a net win. https://electrek.co/2017/11/01...

America has not built a new coal plant in over 5 years, and it is doubtful that we will do ANY new ones.

As others have previously told you, it's not the number of coal plants that matters but how much coal they burn and how efficiently they do it.
So what if you aren't building any new ones, it just means you are using the dirtier old ones built in the 70's for longer and at higher utilization.

Now, our new nat gas plants, are so many times cleaner than the best that China has to offer. However, more than 80% of our new plants are wind/solar, not nat gas.

Renewables didn't quite break 50% utility scale capacity, andn remember capacity doesn't equal production especially for wind and solar.
And 80% are wind/solar, seems strange since CO2 from electricity generation is expected to rise in the US in 2018. (Transport is also going up by the way) Maybe you need to show your work instead of just pulling numbers from your ass again.
Many times cleaner than China's best? Care to show some evidence? Maybe try less obvious lies

Unlike China where you constantly put up MORE new coal plants than you do AE.

You must be sick of people constantly pointing out to you that China is replacing inefficient coal with more efficient coal and using less coal to produce more electricity than before. Though still not enough times to get inside your bubble of ignorance yet.

Hopefully, once you folks have your nuke reactors going, you will build those instead.

They seem like practical people who are concerned about pollution so no doubt they will.

To this day Nissan has never sold a replacement battery pack (there is a part number and a price, about $4k).

$5,5k plus installation, according to this. For the 2011-2015 (84 mile) leafs.This more recent article suggests $6,2k for the 24kWh, $7,6k for the 30kWh pack, and $7800 kWh for the 40kWh pack. Being made available in May. So I'm not sure where you're getting this "To this day Nissan has never sold a replacement battery pack" stuff.

There were some early issues with the Leaf packs in certain climates that Nissan resolved, but beyond those they have proven to be remarkably reliable robust.

It's not just been one pack. The introduction of the 30kWh pack led to a new wave of degradation problems. Not that the improved 24kWh degradation rate was stellar, it just wasn't catastrophic for people in hot climates like it previously was.

Nissan seems to go through battery problems every time because of their cost-cutting no-active-cooling system approach. The most recent is #RapidGate; the 40kWh pack generally hits an overheat temperature around 200-250km, sometimes as much as 300km, into a trip, and from thereout charging rates are cut in half.

Nissan is finally introducing active pack cooling next year. About bloody time.

Solar is a complete loss.

The 27 MW San Fermin solar plant in Puerto Rico came through Maria just fine. Ditto the recently built 1100 MW Santa Isabel Wind Farm. Gusts up to 118 MPH were recorded on some parts of the island, but San Fermin was built to withstand 155 MPH, and Santa Isabel Wind Farm was similarly properly engineered for the site.

Solar and wind are how Puerto Rico should be largely powered in the future, with some peaking plants to cover when the output of low.

Also, concerning this article: The terms for AP and FSD haven't changed in a year. There is no "news" behind this article. By selling FSD separate from AP, it makes it explicit what you're buying. You cannot choose just AP and think "I'm getting full self driving". Meanwhile, the FSD option is plastered with all sorts of weasel words like "in the future" and "eventually", with no hard dates. You cannot choose FSD and think "I'm getting this immediately, or at least the day after tomorrow!"

Why this article? Why now? Again, literally nothing has changed about the terms or wording in the past year. It's not like there's a lack of news. Just yesterday, we learned that not only was the 2k+/wk Model 3 production rate not a burst rate, not only have they maintained it for three weeks, but that when they're done with the upgrades this week, the line should come back at 3-4k/wk; and Tesla is now targeting not just 5k/wk at the end of this quarter, but 6k/wk (with an expectation that at least one supplier or process won't get it all the way, in order to ensure that they get at least 5k, with the intent to get it up to the full 6k in Q3).

That's actual news. This is concern trolling. And it's full of statements that are just plain wrong, such as that camera-based AP systems "don't work well in low light conditions". Nonsense; AP often works even better in low light conditions than it does in bright conditions. There's no "glare" at night, strong contrast between headlight-illuminated markings and obstacles vs. the road, and the cameras have good low-light sensitivity (better than the human eye). The article also makes it sound like they've not taken any time at all to research how Autopilot works, writing things like "If a sensor fails, Tesla will have to choose between disabling self-driving capability until the customer repairs it or allowing the car to continue operating with a higher risk of a crash." - seriously, virtually any Tesla owner can tell you that if you have a sensor failure, AP is disabled until you get it fixed. Just bloody ask. They then go on to imply that Tesla doesn't have redundant control systems. That's simply not true - go see them with your own eyes. The mechanical systems to control the brakes, steering, etc are all redundant. Concerning the computer, they link to a teardown of a Model S (older model) from last year. Why? Do they think that nothing's changed in the past year? And yes, the computer has on-board redundancy.

What the heck is up with all of these hit pieces of late?

I also could not disagree more with one of their main conclusions - that going straight for "full autonomy" is the safer option. Tesla has had three deaths around a billion miles of AP driving - the exact amount of mileage on AP today is not known, but was 300 million in November 2016, so probably around a billion today. The normal rate of deaths per mile is 1 per 80 million. Meanwhile, Uber had a pedestrian fatality in its first week operating in Arizona. If you try to go straight for full autonomy, you guarantee driver inattentiveness. Vehicles should be locked at no more than Level 2 autonomy (and level 3 should be illegal) until a high degree of safety can be guaranteed without driver involvement in the real world. Tesla and most of their emerging competitors (like the laughably bad Mercedes Drive Pilot - which actually does claim to be self-driving, unlike Autopilot) make you keep your hands on the wheel to try to ensure you're paying attention. With AP, it's not enough to simply touch it - you have to actually apply torque. But honestly,

Also, concerning this article: The terms for AP and FSD haven't changed in a year. There is no "news" behind this article. By selling FSD separate from AP, it makes it explicit what you're buying. You cannot choose just AP and think "I'm getting full self driving". Meanwhile, the FSD option is plastered with all sorts of weasel words like "in the future" and "eventually", with no hard dates. You cannot choose FSD and think "I'm getting this immediately, or at least the day after tomorrow!"

Why this article? Why now? Again, literally nothing has changed about the terms or wording in the past year. It's not like there's a lack of news. Just yesterday, we learned that not only was the 2k+/wk Model 3 production rate not a burst rate, not only have they maintained it for three weeks, but that when they're done with the upgrades this week, the line should come back at 3-4k/wk; and Tesla is now targeting not just 5k/wk at the end of this quarter, but 6k/wk (with an expectation that at least one supplier or process won't get it all the way, in order to ensure that they get at least 5k, with the intent to get it up to the full 6k in Q3).

That's actual news. This is concern trolling. And it's full of statements that are just plain wrong, such as that camera-based AP systems "don't work well in low light conditions". Nonsense; AP often works even better in low light conditions than it does in bright conditions. There's no "glare" at night, strong contrast between headlight-illuminated markings and obstacles vs. the road, and the cameras have good low-light sensitivity (better than the human eye). The article also makes it sound like they've not taken any time at all to research how Autopilot works, writing things like "If a sensor fails, Tesla will have to choose between disabling self-driving capability until the customer repairs it or allowing the car to continue operating with a higher risk of a crash." - seriously, virtually any Tesla owner can tell you that if you have a sensor failure, AP is disabled until you get it fixed. Just bloody ask. They then go on to imply that Tesla doesn't have redundant control systems. That's simply not true - go see them with your own eyes. The mechanical systems to control the brakes, steering, etc are all redundant. Concerning the computer, they link to a teardown of a Model S (older model) from last year. Why? Do they think that nothing's changed in the past year? And yes, the computer has on-board redundancy.

What the heck is up with all of these hit pieces of late?

I also could not disagree more with one of their main conclusions - that going straight for "full autonomy" is the safer option. Tesla has had three deaths around a billion miles of AP driving - the exact amount of mileage on AP today is not known, but was 300 million in November 2016, so probably around a billion today. The normal rate of deaths per mile is 1 per 80 million. Meanwhile, Uber had a pedestrian fatality in its first week operating in Arizona. If you try to go straight for full autonomy, you guarantee driver inattentiveness. Vehicles should be locked at no more than Level 2 autonomy (and level 3 should be illegal) until a high degree of safety can be guaranteed without driver involvement in the real world. Tesla and most of their emerging competitors (like the laughably bad Mercedes Drive Pilot - which actually does claim to be self-driving, unlike Autopilot) make you keep your hands on the wheel to try to ensure you're paying attention. With AP, it's not enough to simply touch it - you have to actually apply torque. But honestly,

I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV. It also outsells similarly priced 4-door ICE competitors like the Acura TLX, Mercedes C/CLA, Audi A4, Lexus RC, and the BMW 2, 3, and 4 series.

I'm assuming you are joking. But in case you aren't, the highest estimate of model 3's that I've seen is just over 17KThe Chevy Bolt hit 20K before the end of last year Nissan has delivered 300K Leafs as of January of this year.

Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.

That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".

Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.

Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.

How many of that 1.3 billion miles is on populous roads though? Are they counting test track miles or only public roads? Is this self driving in the manner of a smart cruise control or truly self driving? I don't know the numbers but I find it hard to believe they truly have 1.3 billion miles of legit fully self driving miles on populated roads.

Tesla should have a great deal less than 2 deaths under their belt to be on par with human safety levels.

That is a strong assertion from someone who says "I can't find any stats".

Human drivers kill about 15 people per billion miles.

Tesla Autopilot has driven more than 1.3 billion miles, and has killed two people. So the fatality rate is roughly a tenth that of humans. That is a lot better than "on par" with humans.

It's not exactly open. The NTSB has to change that. If we don't demand transparency, we will always get the runaround. It's a law of nature.

Huh...who knew...oh wait https://electrek.co/2018/01/23...

If the AI in its buggy state is still safer than human drivers, then it makes more sense to roll it out in its buggy state rather than wait until it's been debugged. As critical as I am of Tesla naming the feature "autopilot", it does seem to lower accident rates on average. Pointing to specific incidents of failures when the average failure rate has actually gone down, is nothing but cherry picking data contrary to the average to support the conclusion you want.

tesla owner nearly burned to death

Even back in 2014 when the tech wasn't as mature as it is today, rates of EV fires, including rates of Tesla fires, were much lower than they are for gasoline vehicles. Yes, it's possible to burn a battery pack, but you have to really mess it up to do so. As an example of how fire resistant they are, this Model S was entirely gutted in an unrelated fire, to the point of leaving a pool of molten alumium on the ground, and still didn't manage to burn the battery pack. Here's the results of what happens when you deliberately try to burn a Powerpack (same basic tech).

Gee, who'dathunkit that filling a pack with fire barriers and surrounding every cell with a non-flammable coolant might mean something?

tesla almost kills owner when it rams concrete barrier

OMG, a car got in a nonfatal accident at highway speeds and protects its occupant! Quick, ring the New York Times, have them dispatch an autogyro to the scene, post haste!

tesla almost kills driver and multiple fire fighters due to their shit system

OMG, another highway-speed crash with an astoundingly small amount of damage (" minor cuts and bruises from the accident but was otherwise unharmed"), caused due to a fire truck stopped on a highway causing traffic to have to swerve out of its way, causing minimal damage to the fire truck, with the Tesla driver openly stating that the accident was his fault? WORLD NEWS MEDIA, WHERE ARE YOU? This is the story of the century! Cars never crash, and yet... twice!

tesla delivers accident waiting to happen to owner due to shit quality control

Dear Lord, a vehicle with a manufacturing defect, from a company making a hundred thousand vehicles per year? I've never heard of such a thing! That's never happened before in history! What's next... two? Three even? Oh, precious God in heaven above! They've even fooled new owners picking up their vehicles on the Tesla forums into not finding defects on their cars. What sort of sorcery are they playing here? They even got Consumer Reports to rank Model S above average in reliability. Witchcraft!

tesla cuts corner by not having a proper gauges in front of driver. glued on iPad they use instead causes deadly shards of glass to be thrown at occupants.

Oh, precious Heaven above, a car gets in an accident because he wasn't paying attention and praises how well it protected him, writing "“Everyone from the paramedics to the tow truck driver said that people don’t usually walk away from this. Had this been a regular ICE vehicle, I would be dead or in a lot worse condition." WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE STOP TESLA BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN????

Also: clearly, NOBODY has EVER before in the history of time made a car with a central speedometer. It's just never happened! Certainly not completely>/i> centred ones, let alone "right beside the wheel" like in Model 3. Nope, never happened! Because it's so much safer to have to look "down and then through an obstruction" to see your speed, vs. "down and slightly right with no obstructions". Obviously!

Aye!

https://electrek.co/2016/11/01...

"Itâ(TM)s hard to get much out of the data at this point, but it seems that 90% charge level appears to be the ideal daily charge level and surprisingly, frequent Supercharging (twice a week to daily) appears to actually be beneficial in preventing battery degradation.

CEO Elon Musk once referred to a battery pack Tesla was testing in the lab. He said that the company had simulated over 500,000 miles on it and that it was still operating at over 80% of its original capacity. It sounds crazy. The car itself is more likely to give up than the battery pack at this kind of mileage, but based on this new data, it looks a lot more plausible."

Another factor to keep in mind is that the old battery above will probably retain over a third of it's value- further lowering the cost of replacing it with a new pack. The thing is, the packs are not monolithic. They are made of modules which themselves contain single batteries about as big as two stacked "D" cells. Each cell is very simple in construction- basically a layer of material with a thin layer of charging material rolled up like toilet paper until it's the appropriate thickness. Then two endcaps are put on and it's wrapped in a couple of heavy coating layers. That's dead simple manufacturing. It should get a lot cheaper.

---

I had to choose between buying one of the original teslas or retiring years earlier but I still follow them. I think an electric car of some kind will be ideal for my city commuting.

There was a really cool "Tron" Concept car about 2012 which was fully electric and estimated to run about $130,000 if it had seen production. That would have been my dream.

Seattle's sun exposure is about average for Europe; about half of Europe is sunnier and about half is dimmer. That's not stopped Europe from going big on solar.

If you're talking several kWh, you're definitely getting into home backup system ranges, such as a Tesla Powerwall ("a production-quality UPS with li-ion cells" - you can see the results of fire testing on their industrial scale version here). And then you'd already have an inverter if you ever did decide to go solar.

Even if you decide that the payback time on solar is too long for you (which I can understand), it's definitely worth considering when your roof has to be replaced / fixed next. I mean, if they're already up working on the roof, you need the labour either way, and panels are dirt cheap now.

Like this project? http://www.latina.com/lifestyl...

Or these 6(+)? https://electrek.co/2017/12/05...

https://electrek.co/2017/12/01/chevy-bolt-ev-us-sales-records/

According to this Chevy sold 20K Bolts from December 2016 to November 2017. MSRP is $37,500, before any rebates

The Ford Focus Electric has an MSRP of $29K, again, before any rebates.

Seriously? 60 kg of lithium should give you a ~300 kWh battery. Are you sure you about those numbers?

According to Electrek, a 70 kwh Model S pack contains 63 kg of lithium
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01...

electrek.co

18650=18mmX65mm
Model 3 cell new form factor=21mmX70mm

Is this the newly discovered "Musk quantum dimensional effect" (patent pending as well as IgNoble prize pending) where a 17% increase in diameter and 6% increase in length such that

The bigger cells enabled Tesla to optimize volumetric energy density.

?

Do explain in your uniquely insightful prose the fundamental principle of the "Musk quantum dimensional effect".

Also doesn't this all but double the tooling for both cell sizes, with Model 3 being different than Model S/X?
Perhaps Musk need to go back to his roots as an economics major, rather than dabbling in "quantum dimensional effects".

The funny thing is, the cells are 18650's

No, they're not. Chances are that the switch to a cell size that's more efficient in the long term has created problems for them in the short term.

Rather...

This is an extremely misinformed and misleading article. To be absolutely clear, we are on track with the previous projections for achieving increased Model 3 production rates that we provided earlier this month. As has been well documented, until we reach full production, by definition some elements of the production process will be more manual. This is something Elon and JB discussed extensively on our Q3 earnings call, and it has no impact on the quality or safety of the batteries we’re producing. As noted in our Q4 deliveries release, during the fourth quarter, “we made major progress addressing Model 3 production bottlenecks, with our production rate increasing significantly towards the end of the quarter.”

Furthermore, as is often the case in manufacturing, some parts of the production process require the expertise of employees with engineering or manufacturing experience, and others don’t. We’ve created thousands of new high-quality jobs in Nevada in recent years. As we continue to expand Gigafactory 1 and ramp Model 3 production, we’ve been able to teach new skills to thousands of new employees, many of whom had no manufacturing experience prior to joining Tesla. New hires on the module line receive extensive training, including safety training, and learn about the importance of proper cell-to-cell spacing so they can identify such issues in the production process. More broadly, battery production – and the module line in particular – is overseen by our top engineering talent, and many of Tesla’s most senior leadership.

Finally, the implication that Tesla would ever deliver a car with a hazardous battery is absolutely inaccurate, contrary to all evidence, and detached from reality. It is irresponsible to suggest as much based on unnamed, anonymous sources who have provided no such evidence and who obviously do not have a complete understanding of the extensive testing that all batteries in Tesla vehicles are subjected to. As with Model S and Model X, which have well demonstrated safety records, we maintain a rigorous approach to quality and process control for the Model 3 battery. Even more importantly, to our knowledge, there has not been a single safety concern in the field related to Model 3 batteries at any point over the six months of Model 3 production.

As for the assertion about cells touching in Model 3 batteries, this is extremely misleading and displays a complete lack of basic knowledge about how our batteries work. Every battery in a Tesla vehicle has thousands of cells, the vast majority of which are at the same voltage potential as neighboring cells. Hypothetically, even if two cells of the same voltage potential were touching, there would be absolutely zero impact, safety or otherwise – it would be as if two neutral pieces of metal touched. Despite this fact, all Model 3 battery modules’ cell positions are measured twice in manufacturing to verify process control and quality of outgoing parts. Conversely, if at any point in the production process cells are touching at different voltage potentials, they cannot be electrically interconnected. Over the course of the production process, we conduct three different tests to ensure the right number of cells are electrically connected in Model 3 modules. Additionally, the long term reliability of cell position is something validated through testing, including shock and vibration, and high temperature and humidity testing, as well as thermal cycling endurance testing throughout design and via sampling in production. All of this testing is designed to prevent touching cells from being installed in any of our vehicles, including Model 3. Finally, the safety aspects of our module design would continue to function even in the presence of touching cells, so the concerns raised are further unfounded.

These false claims are being made even tho

investors are confident their investment will yield exponential returns from some new tech we havent seen or current/old tech we haven't seen utilized in a new way

It could also be that investors are betting that Tesla is going to make it big on first-mover advantage and network effect.

Right now, all the electric cars are great second cars. For short trips around town, commuting to work, etc. a Nissan Leaf is great. But if you want to take a long road trip for any reason, you aren't taking that Nissan Leaf. You use your gasoline car.

All the electric cars, except Tesla. Tesla's Supercharger network is something that they have paid huge money to put together, and it means that you really can have just a Tesla as your only car. Long road trips? Just stop at a Supercharger and eat a snack or something while your car charges.

Only Tesla has the Supercharger network and cars that can use it. With any other brand of car, charging will take at least twice as long.

Assuming that Tesla can get their production line running smoothly for the Model 3, they can sell a lot of cars each year. And they are going to make money on each of those cars.

Right now, Tesla is losing lots of money, but it's not being wasted. They invested in R&D to develop the new Model 3, the new Semi, and the new sports car. They invested in equipment to make the Model 3. They invested in their own battery factory so they can get the lowest cost on batteries.

So the best possible scenario for Tesla: they get the Model 3 production line flowing and sell nearly half a million cars in 2018, and by 2019 or 2020 they are all caught up on back orders and selling over half a million Model 3s each year. They make a lot of money per car due to low cost on the batteries. All those cars use the Tesla Supercharger network, and lots of friends and family of Tesla owners get rides in the new cars and decide they want Teslas also, leading to more orders for Model 3s. Then they start selling lots of Semis, they finish the Model Y and sell lots of those, and they wind up owning a large chunk of the battery electric vehicle market. People start buying Teslas because they are confident in the charging network, and Tesla can afford to build out the charging network even more because they are now finally making money, and it snowballs. Then one or more factories in Europe come on line, making batteries and cars, and Tesla starts selling over a million cars per year. And the factory in Shanghai comes on line and they sell even more. Where does it end? Could Tesla grow to be the size of Honda?

Note that nothing in that scenario assumes new tech we haven't seen, or really even old tech we haven't seen utilized in a new way. It just assumes that Tesla wins big by being the first company to get volumes up and costs down enough to really sell a battery electric vehicle at a price people can afford. Plus Tesla wins in the Semi space by being the first company with a viable product.

Tesla also has a fairly wild plan, where they finish the full (level 5) self-driving features; they get legal approval for the cars to drive around on their own; and Tesla owners can opt-in to have their cars driving in an Uber-like carsharing service called Tesla Network. Imagine people have their cars drive them to work. Then, while they are at work, their cars join themselves to the service, and drive around picking people up and dropping them off; the people get paid for the trips their cars make, and then when it's time for them to go home for the day their cars automatically release themselves from the service and go to pick them up and drive them home. Thus a l

Those BMWs are fucking ugly looking pieces of shit for stupid faggets. Give them Teslas.

Done!

the cost for an EV will probably never come down to a parity with ICE cars

Most experts think that once the cost of a battery comes down, battery electric vehicles will cost less than ICE vehicles. Some people are claiming that BEVs are already cheaper than ICEVs if you take total cost of ownership into account.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric-cars-already-cheaper-to-own-and-run-than-petrol-or-diesel-study

I have seen several people repeating the claim that when lithium batteries for cars drop below $100 per kilowatt-hour, BEVs will cost less than ICEVs and consumers will start switching to them to save money. Elon Musk has in the past said that 2020 could be the year this happens. (For Tesla, anyway, since Tesla built its own battery factory just to get the lowest cost on batteries.)

https://electrek.co/2017/01/30/electric-vehicle-battery-cost-dropped-80-6-years-227kwh-tesla-190kwh/

the only hope is for some type of battery that does not involve lithium

I'll bet you that BEVs will boom in the next few years, still using lithium batteries. The high price of lithium is sending a signal to the free market, and as a result more development of lithium resources is happening. If prices are high enough, lithium and other metals can be recovered from sea water, and we aren't running out of sea water anytime soon. Also, we haven't really started recycling lithium car batteries yet, but that's coming too.

According to this article a Tesla Model S only needs 15 pounds / 7 kg of lithium, about as much as a bowling ball; and experts think that just the lithium available from mining would be enough for 185 years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/

Tons of research is going into batteries, but it is way too early to bet on a winning horse at this point.

For years I have been interested in batteries big enough to run an entire city ("grid-scale" batteries). I was assuming that something unusual like the liquid metal battery technology or flow batteries would be needed, but Tesla has started selling grid-scale lithium battery packs to Australia. So maybe lithium is even getting inexpensive enough for grid-scale. My understanding is that the Tesla battery in Australia can only supply power for a very short time, so I haven't lost interest in liquid metal or flow batteries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/26/teslas-enormous-battery-in-australia-just-weeks-old-is-already-responding-to-outages-in-record-time/

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/liquid-metal-battery-inventor-questions-lithium-ion-as-grid-scale-storage-solution-2017-03-29

3000 Model 3s built so far. Discounting the 260 built in Q3, that would be ~2750 in Q4. So that's about 210 units per week - not 1000. Assuming that extra revenue, they will last until mid-June, rather than mid May. Given that TSLA is losing about $16MM per week, they would need to go way beyond your estimates to be profitable. If you're not profitable, you are losing money - and you end up going bankrupt.

As far as Roadster and Semi deposits go, those are liabilities on the books, and need to be accounted as such. Just because someone gives you money as a deposit does not mean you can use it for whatever you like, and if you go belly up you say "sorry".

Look like the Tesla Roadster payload is almost ready for launch as well. Musk has said he is just hoping this thing gets high enough not to do pad damage when it explodes, but I'm hoping he is able to give his Roadster a Mars flyby.

See, here's where your argument goes off the rails: Tesla owns the superchargers and is supplying the power. NOT YOU... Therefor, they are within their rights to limit usage on THEIR equipment.

When you go to the gym, you don't get to set up camp on the treadmill
When you go to the convenience store you don't get to leave your car out front and go on vacation
When you stop in a parkade, you don't get to leave your car past the time you've paid for.

Especially when you've got folks turning their cars into bitcoin mining rigs: https://electrek.co/2017/11/29...

I've read through the commentary so far. Sheesh, people, did Tesla kill your father or something?

Tesla has offered unlimited use of the Superchargers to most of their customers. They initially offered it to everyone, then they announced a change ahead of time (and not retroactive). Then they decided to make their deal more generous, and just to make sure the more-generous deal applied to everyone they announced a one-time retroactive change to give unlimited Supercharger use to all Model S and Model X customers as of that date.

Unlimited use of the Supercharger goes with the car, so every car that ever had it still has it. Buy a used Tesla that has unlimited Supercharger use, you get that benefit. This hasn't changed.

Now they announced their "Supercharger Fair Use" policy that commercial users will no longer be permitted unlimited free use of the Superchargers... and that's only on new sales of Tesla cars, so anyone who has already been running a business and using the Superchargers is still being allowed to continue doing it.

What if you want to buy a Tesla in 2018 and use it for a business? You still can, just install a Tesla wall connector and you can charge the car from empty to full in less time than it takes you to get a good night's sleep. (If you have a 240 Volt circuit with enough Watts you can charge a Tesla at one-quarter the speed of a Supercharger... at your home or business!)

What if you want to operate a whole fleet of Teslas as a taxi service or something? Tesla will sell you a private Supercharger station you can set up. Rumor has it a two-station Supercharger costs about $60K, and rumor has it that Tesla might give it free with a bulk purchase of 10 cars:

https://electrek.co/2016/10/03/tesla-to-deliver-its-largest-privately-owned-supercharger-station-to-a-taxi-fleet-in-montreal/

To those of you wailing that Tesla can control who uses their Supercharger stations: yeah, they can, but so far they haven't abused this in any way; and they can't stop you (and don't want to stop you) from setting up your own charging solution.

It's true that gas stations don't control who can get gas there. But they don't give the gas for free to anyone... they charge money which is why they don't care who gets it. Also, gas stations are pretty well built-out everywhere, while Tesla is frantically building new Supercharger stations; IMHO Tesla is looking after their ordinary customers by trying to keep a few users from disproportionately using the Superchargers.

And note that all Telsas can use all the other charging stations for all the other cars, with an adapter. If you are so worried about the Supercharger, get a CHAdeMO adapter; this will charge a Tesla about half as fast as a Supercharger station, which is still pretty darn fast.

If you read all the above and you still think Tesla is doing something wrong here, I'm really curious as to just what it might be. Maybe you think Tesla should promise to just give free unlimited power forever to everyone without limit? That doesn't seem very reasonable to me.

I've read through the commentary so far. Sheesh, people, did Tesla kill your father or something?

Tesla has offered unlimited use of the Superchargers to most of their customers. They initially offered it to everyone, then they announced a change ahead of time (and not retroactive). Then they decided to make their deal more generous, and just to make sure the more-generous deal applied to everyone they announced a one-time retroactive change to give unlimited Supercharger use to all Model S and Model X customers as of that date.

Unlimited use of the Supercharger goes with the car, so every car that ever had it still has it. Buy a used Tesla that has unlimited Supercharger use, you get that benefit. This hasn't changed.

Now they announced their "Supercharger Fair Use" policy that commercial users will no longer be permitted unlimited free use of the Superchargers... and that's only on new sales of Tesla cars, so anyone who has already been running a business and using the Superchargers is still being allowed to continue doing it.

What if you want to buy a Tesla in 2018 and use it for a business? You still can, just install a Tesla wall connector and you can charge the car from empty to full in less time than it takes you to get a good night's sleep. (If you have a 240 Volt circuit with enough Watts you can charge a Tesla at one-quarter the speed of a Supercharger... at your home or business!)

What if you want to operate a whole fleet of Teslas as a taxi service or something? Tesla will sell you a private Supercharger station you can set up. Rumor has it a two-station Supercharger costs about $60K, and rumor has it that Tesla might give it free with a bulk purchase of 10 cars:

https://electrek.co/2016/10/03/tesla-to-deliver-its-largest-privately-owned-supercharger-station-to-a-taxi-fleet-in-montreal/

To those of you wailing that Tesla can control who uses their Supercharger stations: yeah, they can, but so far they haven't abused this in any way; and they can't stop you (and don't want to stop you) from setting up your own charging solution.

It's true that gas stations don't control who can get gas there. But they don't give the gas for free to anyone... they charge money which is why they don't care who gets it. Also, gas stations are pretty well built-out everywhere, while Tesla is frantically building new Supercharger stations; IMHO Tesla is looking after their ordinary customers by trying to keep a few users from disproportionately using the Superchargers.

And note that all Telsas can use all the other charging stations for all the other cars, with an adapter. If you are so worried about the Supercharger, get a CHAdeMO adapter; this will charge a Tesla about half as fast as a Supercharger station, which is still pretty darn fast.

If you read all the above and you still think Tesla is doing something wrong here, I'm really curious as to just what it might be. Maybe you think Tesla should promise to just give free unlimited power forever to everyone without limit? That doesn't seem very reasonable to me.

Yeah, maybe he'll convince the rest of the world that if they really want to do something about climate change, then they're going to have to do it on their own money, and not expect to bleed America dry.

The problem with all these accords and protocols is that they're fake. None of them REQUIRE the REAL polluters, China and India, do do a damned thing.

You do know that China and India are both partners to the accord, and are both in fact doing things to reduce their carbon output, right? https://electrek.co/2017/11/17...

As Electrec notes, it's almost impossible that this report is correct. Model 3 uses 2170 cells, not the standard 18650s, while Model X and Model S have always used imported cells, so nothing has changed there.

Some companies are making a bold claims with new battery tech/charging
https://electrek.co/2017/11/14...
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

Typical degradation for Tesla batteries is about 4% in the first year, then 1/2 to 1% in each subsequent year. See the raw data and charts here. And that's for Model S, which uses NCA packs. Semi using NMC cells, which are even more durable.

Maybe they do have better engineers. At least in this particular niche.

They have some real good engineers there alright.

This will be by the E6 highway, south of Oslo and near Rygge airport, construction has started and it is supposed to be ready in a month or so:

https://electrek.co/2017/10/28...

Perfectly located if we need a charge while driving down to the Hvaler archipelago.

This evening we needed to do some shopping on the way to Rauland in the Telemark mountains, so we naturally did so in Hokksund where Tesla recently opened a 20-stall charger by the Eiker Mall. Total time off/on the E134 highway was about 25 minutes and the additional charge meant that we didn't have to worry about the bad driving conditions west of Rjukan where we had to follow a snowplow across the mountain.

What's becoming very obvious after 1.5 years/48K km in a S70D is that Tesla simply gets it right, and that none of the (ICE) incumbents are even close at this point in time.

Terje

https://electrek.co/2017/09/17...