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Tesla: A Carmaker Or Grid-Storage Company?
cartechboy (2660665) writes "Let's be real, the three Detroit automakers were skeptical of Tesla Motors, and rightfully so. But at this point, it's pretty hard to deny the impact this Silicon Valley automaker is having on the industry. Now there's a new question buzzing around: Is Tesla Motors actually a carmaker, or is it really just a grid-storage company? If you think about it, the company's stock price is too high for Toyota or Daimler to just buy it outright. So maybe Tesla's gigafactory will not only make batteries for its own electric cars, but it could also sell battery packs to electric utilities and others. In reality, the gigafactory could become its own separate company and just sell the battery packs to Tesla, and others."
No, its just a carbon offset dealer.
Or there was at some point in time...
http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx
First they would need to lower the stock somehow... perhaps sewing FUD over 2 fires. If that doesn't work, maybe some campaign about how bad batteries are. That would make them aquireable... if it worked.
The gigafactory is basically a Panasonic battery factory. Tesla is involved because they want it in the US and are a major consumer of Panasonic batteries, but all the tech is Japanese. So yeah, Panasonic is in the grid storage business. They do home battery packs and wind farm output smoothing in Japan, and maybe soon in the US.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is what entrepreneurs do. He started with the car, but realized there wasn't sufficient supply for quality batteries. Like any good entrepreneur, instead of just building it as a seperate branch of Tesla, he built it to survive on it's own. I mean, you are already producing batteries, this will allow you to make sure you always have enough supply for Telsa, and to do that, the batteries have to be sold on their own. I wouldn't be surprised if he spins off renewable energy companies, as well.
Seriously, the drive train, the interface, not going to be changing much. You might as well ask about their tire engineering.
Not a thing.
It's the batteries that matter.
Everything else is just salad dressing.
They created a device that can spin the Earth with electricity until the part you wish to travel to lies underneath.
""the company's stock price is too high for Toyota or Daimler to just buy it outright"
Which Daimler? The Jaguar witht a different badge, or Mercedes (Benz)
the latter's hybrids seem to be doing quite well at the moment (in Formula 1)
Tesla is a religion, and just like every other religion, its followers go off on rants about how reasonable it is, and make extraordinary claims about the quite ordinary.
By covering the top of the Tesla with solar cells the cars could gather solar energy, store it and sell the excess to the power companies. Social chaos will soon follow. Just wait until the power companies have to hop scotch over homes that provide their own energy and the price of energy for homes on the grid goes through the roof. Big oil, coal, the nuclear industry as well as traditional car makers and associated trades could sink below the waves. The shifting of incredible amounts of money from those industries alone could generate financial chaos. Combined with breakthroughs like 3D printing we are entering an era in which we have no economic model to apply to this new way of life.
Facebook could have bought them instead of buying WhatsApp and Ocular, and spending just a little bit more.
Anybody interested in Grid-tie utility level battery energy storage systems should look at Fairbank's BESS, a 6.75 MWh battery system that's to cover any outages until alternate power can be spun up.
Of course, they're NiCad batteries right now, but given enough time, I can see LiIon being cheaper. Still, at $35M it's not cheap.
I don't read AC A human right
If you want to store grid surplus energy you also need circuits to feed it nack into the grid, like DC to AC converters and transformators. ... for nothing but storing excess grid energy, pointless, expensive, wasteful. If it was that easy, we already would do it.
In germany we have research projects how home owners, or more precisely residents, can connect the car to the grin in a way that the car itslef is the storage.
Extra batteries, like Li-ion or NiCad makes no real sense. After a few years they are worn out
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What's hilarious is that no one has seen the obvious: no company's "stock price is too high ... to just buy it"
Company A: valued at $X
Company B: valued at $Y
Company A+B: valued at $X+$Y
No one has to have the cash on hand to do a merger (the traditional form of "purchase"). If you wanted to actually make a "purchase", all you would have to do is involve a bank.
Of course, Elon Musk has absolutely no reason to sell his company to a bunch of people that wouldn't know how to run it!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Batteries for grid storage have different properties than batteries for cars.
So grid storage tends to use different battery technologies than vehicles.
That's all fantastic in your zero mass-zero friction theoretical land, but if you can't get financing based on not having enough value in your company that's the same thing as a stock price being too high. Otherwise, I'd be able to form a company tonight and buy Microsoft.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Easy solution, pump your car up onto the roof.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The real position in play is abstraction over the GRID and selling it back as a viable business model. EV's are transitional technologies on the way to the future. Tesla cars are proof-of-concepts that a future can work without petroleum dependancy. They spotlight those millions of tailpipe emissions which only electric and hydrogen eliminate.
Power markets refuse to invest in the capture of smokestack emissions at source so the exercise Tesla is running remains retail only. When hydrogen competes with electric fuel cells that day will mark petroleum's last tailpipe gasp. Then emissions at the smokestack are all that's left to capture then.
Tesla will be there and in position to sell you power for your business, home or car in whatever form required from an eco-conscious GRID that puts the cost of capture into the end product and puts producer's responsibility back onto the consumer end user.
exactly, look at comcast TW issue, the deal is for billions in stock, no cash at all
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'm not sure why you posted this, I didn't make any mention of size, weight, or efficiency. Still, to expand -
Grid storage is indeed not very concerned with size(volume, weight), but are interested in overall cost and efficiency. Everything I've read has LiIon being not just top of the line for energy density, but also comes out high for energy efficiency - this is where lead-acid tends to fall down. It's energy efficiency tends to be about equal to the Nickel chemistries - NiCad and NiMH.
I mentioned the price because LiIon has been becoming cheaper per joule per years, when the nickel in NiCad batteries has been increasing in price, driving up the cost of battery chemistries that use it. NiCad is still cheaper, but for how long? Musk is planning on chopping the cost of LiIon in half again with this factory.
The BESS ended up being $5 per watt-hour, but it's a complete UPS system. We don't know how much the batteries/chargers were specifically and how much was the facility and AC generation equipment.
I don't read AC A human right
It's the new and flashy technology. People are going to pay attention to it unlike the rest of the technology that has existed for their entire lives. If it wasn't for Tesla's flash and cutting edge technology they wouldn't make page 10 in section C of the New Crap Times. With the good comes the bad.
Get over it.
Your inability to buy Microsoft has nothing to do with Microsoft's stock price being "too high." And if you could convince a) Microsoft, and b) a bank (or the markets) that you could run Microsoft better than the current management the money would not be a significant hurdle.
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If Tesla makes the cars' power bidirectional, the excess capacity of cars plugged in for recharging (essentially) becomes a grid-connected battery itself. I recall seeing homebrew electric cars used as "generators" during brownouts a few years back. Tesla could do this on a massive scale using individuals' cars -- and pass some of the gains (peak power) back to the car owners.
Most assuredly. Perhaps. As the sideshow-like oil industry must have developed a secret plot to substitute culking and axle grease sales to the Navy and take over the cart and buggy market.
And laughably try to oppose with their puny "kerosene", the huge and unbreacheable whale oil cartels, while underhandedly aspiring in reality to corner the essential oil lantern sector - imposing their untested and entirely unreliable "kerosene lamps". All in one breath.
That will not, 'Sur', I repeat, will not aspire to happen! The very idea deigns to invoke nothing but the most guileless mirth. If not derision.
Still blindered and stuck on that batteries thing, eh?
Nissan offers a "whole house UPS" feature for its Leaf EV in Japan. In the event of a power failure your car can run important appliances like the fridge for a few days. You can use it to reduce your energy bills by storing solar energy not used during the day too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Company A takes enormous write off when they finally admit they paid too much.
Company A valued at A + log2(B)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
...No.
(What was the question again?)
Actually make that A + log2(B) - B, because A is now out the cash/stock they paid for B.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
You're pretty inexperienced in investment aren't you.
You'll be pretty hard pressed to get ANYONE regardless of your 'skills' to put together a deal to LOAN you the money to buy Microsoft.
Contrary to your theoretical little world, in the real world, people don't invest billions of dollars in random people just because they say 'I can run it better than the guy running it now' unless the guy running it now is utterly destroying it, in which case the value of the company drops considerably making it a more lucrative possibility and making the risk easier.
There is no chance in hell that you could gather enough money to buy Microsoft as it stands, even if Ballmer was still in charge. To 'buy' Microsoft you have to buy more than half of all shares in existence, public, private, restricted or whatever. Even the slightest hint that someone was trying to do that would drive the stock price through the roof. If you started buying the stock ... again, price is going to go through the roof. So yes, your ability to buy Microsoft has EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE STOCK PRICE BEING TOO HIGH FOR YOU TO AFFORD IT. This is basic 3rd grade economics. You have $10, You need $1,000,000,000,000. Regardless of what fantasy you live in, you aren't going to buy the product with that many zeros difference.
In the real world, people aren't as silly as you seem to be used to in your little fantasy world.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Microsoft's stock price is too high.
How big would a battery have to be to run the USA overnight so we can run everything off of solar power? How much material would this take? How much would it all cost?
I've seen these numbers before and it's not good. We are going to be a coal powered nation for a very long time. I see wind power as promising, the price isn't too far off from what natural gas and coal costs. Solar is just so extremely expensive that it is only considered in the most unusual cases. Wind and solar both rely on cheap electric storage which I don't see happening any time soon.
If people start building grid level electric storage because materials get cheap then the demand for those materials will drive the price back up. I say that instead of trying to store electricity when it's produced by unreliable wind and solar that we should develop technology so that cheap energy like coal, natural gas, and nuclear can load follow like the expensive natural gas and oil fired generators.
If the concern is CO2 output then nothing can beat nuclear, not even wind and solar. We have drawings of nuclear power plants that can load follow, we need to make them real and see how they compare to the theory. I think nuclear the the future, not big batteries.
For those that scream, "What about the nuclear waste?" I say look up waste annihilating molten salt reactor.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Giga-factory is no more panasonic than tesla belongs to Mercedes and Toyota. It belongs mostly to Musk/Tesla. In addition, it is vastly re-engineered from what panasonic runs. With this factory, they will more than double the world's production of lithium batteries, while using less than 1/10 of the labor that panasonic does.
So few ppl understand Musk, but his real claim to fame is NOT simple engineering. It is Industrial engineering. In all aspects he is looking at the economics of how this works. For example, SpaceX F9 is mostly cheap because of 10 engines all the same. In addition, how their bell is manufactured is a fraction of what other's costs.
Tesla is the same way.
And solar city will be either buying an American solar panel company, OR will build their own in the states, within 2 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...at one of our manufacturing plants. In fact we're displacing a bunch of office space for the batteries themselves.
I expect to see it in place in the next few months.
So, yea, I'd say Tesla is getting into the grid storage business.
How can a people be so stupid?
Yeah, its not like solar, wind, and micro hydro ever use DC->ac converters, and transformers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nuclear is NOT carbon free you have to build it...with plenty of fuel burning equipment. Salt reactor? Why are not there many? Theory doesn't sell except to the unwise. Just stop using so damn much power people! Be passively cooled, heated. The existing manufacture of lithium batteries has maxed out all the resources in the world, right now. A peak has been reached. And that's why Tesla HAS to build the next big thing. They said so in their press release. They will be beginning with research and development of new power storage units and they don't even know what it is yet! They just know it's up to themselves because no one else is going to help them. I wish them luck...
Having installed this scenario, LMFTFY: Solarcity installs a system (panels, storage, chargers/inverters) on your premises at zero cost to you. They also have options from $0 down to fully paying for the system. They get the tax subsidy offered for the installation. This is correct except where it's required by law to go to the owner of the home; I live in Oregon which has $1500/year for 4 years that is required to go to the homeowner. SC offsets this credit by charging $75/month extra for 4 years, which means I have a net credit of $600 each year coming my way. You roof is now occupied by solarcity. Yes, the roof has solar panels on it. They sell you electricity AND what you don't use, they sell to your local utility. The power back to the grid goes as a credit on your account and is pulled watt-for-watt when you use more than the solar panels can produce (aka at night). The systems are guaranteed for a certain number of watts per year and, if it comes in under that, SC actually writes you a check for the difference. You have now switched energy providers and are STILL paying power bills. Yes. You pay for the system based on the power it generates. I can't really tell if your comment here is trying to be naive; you expect a $0 down system to not charge you for the power? I fully recognize they they take on what maintenance there is on this plant... But there isn't much and they are completely unregulated. They charge the home owner whatever they please, just so it's below the regulated utility. Maintenance, hopefully, is minimal. However, they provide full insurance for the roof (where it was installed) as well as theft (apparently it's a problem). They are regulated by the contract that is signed at the beginning. The price is based on the contract; one option is to have a variable rate per year, the other is to pay (in my case $250) up front and have a fixed price for the term of the contract, which is $20 years. My price came in slightly lower than my utility company was charging at the time and is set for $20 years; this with the fact that my power company raises rates every year and is in the process to do a relatively large jump to pay for some new complexes, I think I am in a very good position. And to touch on some of your reply below this: Uhhh... it's unfair in that solarcity uses the tax benefit/subsidies due the homeowner AND has the homeowner's roof locked up under a 20 year lease? I've calculated that at retail levels, equipment costs and installation is paid off in 10 years. That's before the tax benefits/subsidies are applied. Not sure what pricing you're using; I have a 4.9kw system which would be close to a $23,000 system installed. My fixed price for 20 years is 0.0984/kWh and qualifying credits I could get is around $16,000, bringing the total cost to around $7,000 meaning 14 years before my SC would break even on a private system, after credits. And that implies you have $23,000 in cash to pay for the system. How you believe it is unfair to sign a contract, I do not know. Most tax benefits/subsidies are due to the owner of the system, not the homeowner. And the roof is not what is 'locked up', the lease and the system are. You are fully allowed to have the system moved (at cost of labor) to a new home. Now, let's add a peculiar California spin on this (my state). The utilities have been required by law to add storage capacity to the grid for something known as regulation... Fill in. This means regulating the grid up and down. When they regulate the grid up... They feed energy to the grid. Regulating down means absorbing from the grid. These activities are extraordinarily lucrative and the property owner get's none of that but it uses the "plant" they have effectively paid for. I'll reiterate that power to and from the grid is exchanged watt-for-watt. This is also why the utilities are crying foul over the lack of grid maintenance fees by the entities with this type of operation (there are only a few, but they're all big, pretending to be small). They get to act like an energy provid
I think the GP poster was pretty spot on, and it was sort of tongue in cheek in terms of the idea of buying Microsoft.
Of course nobody in "the real world" would bother to loan some random homeless dude off the street and give them a few billion dollars to make a leveraged buyout of Microsoft. That is because no average person has the talent nor the ability to operate a company like Microsoft and have it continue to earn money for its investors (which in this case would be the bank). Besides, if the bank had that kind of money burning a hole it its pocket where a random dude could be put in charge of the company and run it, that bank would have purchased the company a long time ago and would have cut you out of the deal a long time ago.
Also, most banks like loans for investment purposes to also have the person involved having some "skin in the game". In other words, even if you are using a bank to assist in a major financial purchase, you also need to have a substantial fraction of the company (at the bare minimum 10% of the investment capital... likely in this case more like 50%-80% for Microsoft). It isn't strictly required (sort of what you are suggesting), but it depends on how much risk the bank is willing to take with such an investment.
On the other hand, if you were able to convince them that a leveraged buy-out of Microsoft could get you running the company and allow them to repay the loans with substantial interest + extra profits, there is no doubt that a reasonable bank would jump on the chance. The trick is convincing the loan officer (and for that kind of money, the board of directors for the bank and likely the local Federal Reserve Bank board too) that you really are the kind of person who could get the company producing profits like when Bill Gates was running the company. That has the proverbial chance of a snowball surviving inside of the Sun's photosphere for any length of time.
Getting back onto topic, the question is if one of the other major automobile companies could do a better job of running an electric automobile manufacturing company? It should be apparent that there are some very experienced and capable people at Toyota, GM, Daimler, and Ford that could in theory run Tesla, possibly even better than Elon Musk seems to be doing so at the moment. The question then becomes one of cash flow for these major companies and if they can leverage the money needed for the purchase.
Tesla stock prices are high enough that a hostile take-over is now simply out of the question. If Toyota was to advertise that they were willing to pay $200 per share for the company (this does happen... usually in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal when it is so blatant), odds are likely that the exchange prices will soar to $250 or more. By the time the chase is over, it is likely that Tesla would buy out Toyota instead. Sort of like what happened when Pixar bought out Disney.
Nuclear is NOT carbon free you have to build it...with plenty of fuel burning equipment.
I didn't claim it was carbon free, I stated it had the least output of CO2/watt than any other power source available to us now.
Salt reactor? Why are not there many?
Because the country that developed the technology, USA, has created a regulatory structure that favors solid fueled reactors. Why it is that way is a very long story. Other nations only have the papers published on the technology and therefore are a few years behind the USA on the technology but are catching up fast. Sounds like Canada will be building some very soon.
Just stop using so damn much power people!
Tell that to the people that live in mud huts. If this technology gets developed we can turn seawater into clean fresh water and electricity, and do so at a profit.
You seem to think that there is some inherent evil in consuming energy, I do not believe so. There is almost always room to improve energy efficiency but we need energy to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves. Once we are warm, fed, and happy we need energy to communicate, learn, and explore. We are not going to land on the moon with solar panels. Windmills won't make airplanes fly.
Without nuclear power we revert to near caveman lifestyles. Without nuclear power we need to burn things, wood, coal, whatever. Civilizations have ended because they had to choose between getting apples from the tree in the spring or burning it to survive the winter. That generally works for all bio-fuels, we get to eat OR stay warm. We can't have both if we burn our food.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I run a regular household with 42" tv, Double-door fridge, electric oven and computers etc. off he grid since 2008 in Spain. Utility prices have skyrocketed here some 30% over the last 2 years. The investment in the system, with some expansions over the years has been less than 20.000 USD. The panels will live far beyond me but let's put them at 30 years. The regular Lead Acid batteries steadily decline with each cycle and will become unusable (expected) in 4-5 years. At a cost of 5000 USD, rougly every 10 years. The electricity cost of houshold as big as ours for people in this area ranges between 200-250 USD per month. Yes there is a generator which gets about 500 liters of Diesel every year (@1.80 USD).
1900 : 2400 at the current rates...And my power is more reliable than the grid here ;-)
Erm, hydro uses DC/AC converters, or wind for that matter? Thats new to me. Also it is a slight difference if you have _one_ transformer for a plant yielding a few hundred or thousand MW, or if you need a transformer for every small battery storage of a few kWh of storage.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So when they wear out 4-5 years (and go downhill in capacity along the way ontop of accelerated loss in extreme weather(merely freezing temps )
You get to pay premium prices for the replacements.
Used Cars -- same issue whopping bill if that used car is about due for battery replacements - some significant percentage of the NEW price.
Bet that dealer never told you all these things....
Dont forget to check the carbon footprint of producing all those replacements you would need over the lifespan of the car.
I wonder if the toxics require the old ones to be dumped down in Mexico like lead acid batteries are?
From several account I have read the power companies charged around $25,000 for a new drop to be installed about 100' from the existing road lines. Now consider building 300' from the existing road lines, does cost go to $75,000 for just wire to the meter and installation? How many solar panels can you get for $25,000? or $75,000?
Now keeping in mind that most panels have a 25-year guarantee on output and initially out produce that rating.
Several people have used 1970's era GE Elec-trak tractors to do the same thing in emergencies, and that is with lead-acid batteries.