Tesla Plans To Power Its Gigafactory With Renewables Alone

AmiMoJo writes In his press conference, Elon Musk stated that the factory will produce all of its own energy using a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal. Engineering.com looks at the feasibility of the plans. Spoiler alert: it looks possible, though some storage will be required. Fortunately, if there is one thing the Gigafactory won't be short of it's batteries. From the article: "The numbers don’t lie. The site could realistically produce more than 2900 MWh of renewable electricity each day ... 20% more than it needs. These are conservative estimates on production and worst-case estimates on consumption, and it’s clear that there’s enough renewable energy to run the plant with some to spare."

Comments

WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

I think it is wonderful that they will try this out, but don't want my tax dollar to finance 40% (or whatever) of their power costs. Embed the cost in the finances of the company and the product cost, please. Then I'll be cheering you on for success.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[billyoc903]

If you live in the US, any factory built will use your tax money.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Guspaz]

If you live in Nevada, then they're indirectly getting your tax dollars (in that they are getting cheaper rates and tax breaks, rather than actual money handed over). However, the economic impact of the gigafactory is apparently expected to outstrip the tax breaks by a ratio of 80:1, so it sounds like a good deal... if the economic benefits the governor of Nevada is claiming are realized.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[morgauxo]

Considering all their competitor's factories benefit from huge tax incentives you are trying to put Tesla at a big disadvantage! How are they supposed to compete?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

Not to pay their energy bill.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

What states do to incentive businesses to locate is up to them. I am talking about using federal tax money to pay the power bill.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

Which companies are you referring to that are using federal tax dollars to pay their power bill? I think you are confusing State tax incentives for locating business.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Lumpy]

But you are OK with GM, Ford and Chrysler getting a monthly handout from not only the States but the Feds?

If you dont like it then start writing to your congress critters to end all corperate welfare. The problem is in Washington.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla has paid back its department of energy loan a long time back and last I checked, didn't take out another.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to offset their tax bills, pay for building/maintaining the roads to their facility & finance their construction at low/no interest. But no, usually not their energy bill, at least directly.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

Not OK with the handouts. And I am also not aware of those companies getting federal money specifically to pay their power bill. Which are you OK with?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[suutar]

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they're getting taxpayer money to cover their power bill. The linked article doesn't discuss the tax breaks; do you have another source of information?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

I didn't say the would get that tax money, I just said please don't take it. As we all know, there are generous tax incentives, often 33% to over 50%, to pay for certain renewable power installations and for forced purchase of power from those installation at much greater than wholesale rates. I don't mind a little help, and incentives for building the factory and creating the jobs, but don't put us on the hook to pay for their energy use, particularly from an overall highly expensive installation.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention that the gigafactory will go a long way towards ending the federal income tax credit. Tesla has to build 200K vehicles before it runs out. with full gigafactory production, it would still take 2 years to burn through that. after that, no more tax credit. Hopefully, by then the mass market electrics will be out and buying an electric would be like buying the hybrid, not that big a deal.

then again, I am biased. I want a generator pack in my EV, if only because I do make long trips. also, a multi KW AC generator would be amazing for camping and other outdoor activities. If they made a compact hatch edition with options for the generator, AWD, roof rack, and a class 1 hitch, It would be a fast "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" thing.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[suutar]

Ah, you're talking about subsidies for the panels and windmills. Gotcha.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[romanval]

Tesla is now worth 20 billion dollars, and their battery partners (Panasonic) are also chipping in on building the factory. I doubt they need much help from the public.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[jandrese]

BMW for one. Germany has been very aggressive in pushing green energy.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

So, BMW is getting US tax credits for power?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[jfengel]

They don't need it. They want it. Every dollar they save in taxes is a dollar that their shareholders (including Musk) get to pocket. And the state gives it to them willingly, in the hopes that it brings jobs to the area. Tesla really is a "jobs creator", unlike a lot of other self-proclaimed masters of the universe, and so the tax breaks really are win-win. It's not zero-sum because value is being added: raw materials come in and batteries go out.

That's what business looks like when it's working, and states compete to be in on it. Nevada won, this time, and one can hope that they're not being ripped off in the process. A lot of other companies have been lured with tax breaks in return for promises of economic value that they fail to provide. Often, it was obvious that they'd fail to provide it, but legislatures and governors can be pretty gullible when it comes to "jobs jobs jobs". I've got high hopes for Tesla, since Musk actually is interested in making money by making stuff, but we won't know until it's underway.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[MMC Monster]

Could be a while. as they don't even have a design released to the public for the Model 3 and the Model X is still pre-production.

I took a plung and bought the Model S.

Best car I've ever driven in any class with very good handling in the rain. This will be my first winter with it and I want to see how it will do with the original all-weather tires.

It's not for everyone at it's price tag. But I do get a lot of questions from people that own high-end luxury cars. Much more so than economy cars. Toyota has nothing to worry about from the current iteration. Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes do (and so do their dealers).

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which companies are you referring to that are using federal tax dollars to pay their power bill? I think you are confusing State tax incentives for locating business.

Where did he say "power bill"? A tax incentive costs me just as much no matter what it funds.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Lumpy]

I am not OK with any corporation getting any federal money for any reason.

But then I also am against paying farmers to not grow crops.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[HornWumpus]

Just for reference; 1 horsepower is about 650 Watts. So good luck getting around on the output of your 5kVA generator. Your car would have to be slower and smaller then a Honda 600N.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[geekoid]

Do you know why we pay farmers not to grow crops?
It costs less for the government to do that, then to pay to store grain they don't need.
It's one of the reason food system in the US is so stable.
The history of why we do that is pretty interesting.

Stability is the reason for the fed loans to GM et. al.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[geekoid]

"As we all know, there are generous tax incentives, often 33% to over 50%, "
do we now? please site an example where that happens for commercial green sources, as apposed to consumer(home) panels.

Frankly. incentive will help drive the market until they aren't needed.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see where the parent post specified 5 kVA. Regardless, it only takes ~20 hp to cruise at highways speeds, and if your goal is to extend range as opposed to run completely off of gas, you don't need to provide all of that with a generator. A 5 kVA generator could nearly double your range if mainly cruising on highways, at least until you hit traffic or mountains.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is wonderful that they will try this out, but don't want my tax dollar to finance 40% (or whatever) of their power costs. Embed the cost in the finances of the company and the product cost, please. Then I'll be cheering you on for success.

End the oil tax credits first. Renewable should get just as much in tax credits and tax breaks as fossil fuels, don't even get started on the trillions spent to protect fossil fuels by military force. Add all that up and give it to renewable energy research and build out. Till then piss off.

Re: WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for getting in.
I am new here, i need to know what is meant by 'Tesla plans' .. as i am interested in this topic.
Also how can i comment on the mainarticle ???

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[HornWumpus]

He talked about 'multi KW' like it was a lot of power. Also note: once your talking about a 10+kVA generator you are no longer talking about a small thing you could lift into your trunk when you are going somewhere distant.

20hp will not pull you up a normal highway hill, much less one in the mountains.

Also, class 1 hitch? How big is that generator going to have to be? Big enough to need a class 1 hitch to tow it.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Nevada even HAVE a personal income tax?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[dfsmith]

You need to feed your horses better. It's closer to 750W. ;-)

(33,000 ft-lbf per minute -> 745.7W.)

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

Just a few, easy to find sources of the multitudes of tax credits. Not to hard to find unless you are specifically not looking for them.

http://energy.gov/savings/busi...

http://en.openei.org/wiki/Corp...

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the reason blue state liberals bitch about red states getting more in taxes than they pay in.

If the government stopped distorting the market this way your taxes would go down but your food prices would go up.

Glad to hear you support this wealth transfer to the red states. Given your defense of this market distortion by the government I expect to never hear you bitch about red states net taxation being low relative to blue states.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[tomhath]

Renewable should get just as much in tax credits and tax breaks as fossil fuels

They already do get that - plus a bunch more.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[jbengt]

1 HP is more accurately 746 watts.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the company wasn't doing business in the state before, they probably weren't paying taxes to begin with. By continuing to charge them little or no tax when they do set up a factory doesn't really cost you anything. The taxes paid by the people who work there or are the suppliers more than outweigh any infrastructure improvements that may be needed. That is why states usually give these companies these incentives. It doesn't cost you anything.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow i've never seen someone so upset yet so ignorant of present federal solar energy tax incentives, which are the only federal subsidies available. They are also available to a myriad of other business capital expenses including a subtanital portion of telsas mfg and other industry manufacturing equipment. like the coal and oil equipment that likely funds your idiotic thinking. while it is true there is a special call out for solar, see your IRS 4562 for all the other forms of tax incentives businesses have been getting for decades. yawn.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Multi-National company BMW with HQ located in Germany with factories in Germany with Government renewable energy policies that is competive and by exporting BMW made cars worldwide which then helps Germanys trade balence.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

He talked about 'multi KW' like it was a lot of power.

It is a lot of power for the original context: camping. If you take any amount of power out of context, it can be big or small as needed to fit a strawman...

you are no longer talking about a small thing you could lift into your trunk when you are going somewhere distant.

Nothing was said about easily lifting it in and out of the trunk. That said, such a unit could still be lifted in and out by a single person if carefully designed.

20hp will not pull you up a normal highway hill, much less one in the mountains.

A half-way decent car will need only 15 hp for 60-70 mph on level ground, and 40 hp on a 6% grade at the same speed. If you had a 20 hp gas assist, you would be doubling your range assuming it was all uphill. A 10 hp boost wouldn't help as much, but rarely is a 6% grade going to last at highway speeds for more than a couple miles, and you still have the option of recovering energy on downward parts. Even a 2000 lb trailer would only add another 20 hp on the 6% grade at highway speeds, assuming you just don't slow down for a couple minutes like all of the trucks and RVs do. The point is not for the generator to do all of the work, but to have an adaptable hybrid, but without the large gas:electric ratio of something like a Prius.

Also, class 1 hitch? How big is that generator going to have to be? Big enough to need a class 1 hitch to tow it.

I have a 16 hp generator at 250 lb, and some of that weight is extraneous stuff not needed if it weren't a portable, self-contained unit. With a second person, I've lifted that into the trunk of my car before.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[12WTF$]

BMW Werk Leipzig Germany, where the electric and hybrid BMW i3 and i8 are manufactured, has 4x 2.5 MW wind turbines that more than cover the 36GWHr/year electricity used. The Leipzig Werk also manufactures X1, 1er and 2er series gas burners.
The factory tour to watch the birth of an i3 is awesome. There are a number of youtube video of the process as well.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The factory will offer job opportunities, the items produced will have to be transported away, more jobs. These workers in turn need stores, services, etc. Which create even more jobs. The factory gets profits from all around the country (world) and some bit of those profits end up where the factory is physically located. That funnels money (wealth) from else where to the local area, which is usually very good thing to any country and/or area.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Stuarticus]

You mean people are all so well fed we couldn't possibly use any more food? Or maybe food is just too cheap because there's far too much?

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Phoghat]

Better your tax money to Tesla, than to some fat oil company exec laughing at spill cleanups

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Mr D from 63]

Maybe, best would be less to both.

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[macpacheco]

EVs will be more expensive than hybrids. Charging a Tesla Model S with off peak residential mixed with some free supercharger top offs leads to Tesla Model S having at least 80% cheaper operating cost than either a high economy regular car or a hybrid.
Tesla Model S are designed to be extremely cheap to maintain, Elon Musk stated they don't want their service centers to be a profit center, plus charging a model S with electrons instead of gas is at least 80% cheaper.
Heavy Oil refineries use enough natural gas / electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline that would be enough to propel a Model S around 20 miles down the freeway.
Plus when you have solar panels in your house offsetting 100% of your electricity (including model S charging) they it gets over 90% cheaper with the current incentives.
I'm against the wind electricity production subsidies, those are killing the electric grid (killing baseload generation, both nuclear/coal/natural gas). But solar is much better, since we actually need lots of electricity when the sun is shining.
Wind shouldn't be allowed to earn any credits when the grid is running with negative costs (it has too much electricity, companies must pay to generate), since the credit is paid regardless of the electricity cost right at that moment, wind operators are being net paid to overload the grid (it already has more electricity than needed at that point).

Re:WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so my question would be: why is the government paying to store grain that we don't need in the first place? Just don't buy it and farmers won't grow it. Or, if they absolutely have to grow it, spend a little money to ship it somewhere people could use it.

Keep the sucking the Musk cock

[Anonymous Coward]

He's doing everything as a favor to us, just like creating PayPal!

Re:Keep the sucking the Musk cock

[Anonymous Coward]

On the upside, they don't seem to need all that much juice, which means they aren't selling so well and may be gone as soon as there is a change to a government that isn't so lavish with borrowing-and-spending. Still, hats off to Musk, he managed to build a new empire entirely on government subsidies.

Musk worship

[Zeio]

I get a little tired of the Musk worship.

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?

Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?

Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

Not sure why people need a super-hero.

3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable.

But instead we continue to give money to the cartoon guy.

Re:Musk worship

[Maury Markowitz]

> If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

You ask the local government. They all do it. They just have different ideas of which ones to fund and which ones not to.

But if you have a factory you want to build, and it's going to employ, say, 1000 people, you'll find a lineup of governments willing to give you a tax break.

Re:Musk worship

[turkeydance]

you posted your answer:politics.

Re:Musk worship

[beltsbear]

I am not for the tax breaks but the state of Arizona should come out ahead even after them. This factory will represent 3% of the states economy.

Tesla is building the factory for the purpose of getting the cost of batteries down to make a 4 door sedan in the 30k range though I expect it to cost more like 35k in the end AFTER government incentives.

As for the Toyota gas pedal thing, Tesla also got slapped with all of the 'fire' stories even though fires are more common in gas vehicles.

Re:Musk worship

[Njorthbiatr]

They get tax breaks because it's part of the deal to open the factory in said area. It's basically a big competition and everyone wants this factory since it brings with it the big four letter word JOBS. That's right jobs. It doesn't matter where they come from but jobs jobs jobs. American jobs. These here are good ol' American jobs which any politician will look at like the entire factory is actually made out of gold. Shiny, golden PR that will make them look like some kind of religious savior.

Tesla has been fighting really hard against the status quo, so go off pretending like they have every politician in their pocket is hilarious.

Elon Musk is rightfully placed as one of the better figures of humanity. The guy is a complete pioneer who is revolutionizing civilization one step at a time. He has talent, drive, ambition, and most importantly, isn't interested with petty politics or big fat bank accounts. He's a scientist at heart who just wants to see humanity move forward and is ACTUALLY DOING IT in a way and on a scale that no one else has before.

All that and he's this remarkably humble guy. Blows my mind.

Re:Musk worship

[netsavior]

I get it, I really do, but the romanticism of the electric car is far more justified than the romanticism of the Prius. The Prius is a gasoline car that is good at using gasoline. An electric car is a replacement for gasoline, a Prius is an iteration on gasoline. If you believe gasoline production/use is bad, you have to believe that electric = good, while Prius = less bad.

as far as creating an affordable electric car, everybody agrees Teslas are too expensive, even Musk.... well, that is the POINT of this factory. Batteries suck, and our best batteries are horribly expensive, the only way to make them cheaper is to make more, faster. They have a 3 year plan for a $35,000 sedan. To go from $128,000 to $69,000 to $35,000 in 8 years is amazing, and that is where the "Musk Worship" comes from. Some of the first cars were electric, and since then incredibly wealthy auto manufacturers around the world have been telling us it is all but impossible.

Re:Musk worship

[Baby Duck]

His company doesn't get tax breaks to succeed. He gets tax breaks to entice bringing lots of jobs to THAT state instead of some OTHER state. Getting lots of jobs gets you re-elected.

Re:Musk worship

[geekoid]

Musk does a lot of awesome things.

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?"
Is it getting major tax breaks?

"If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?"
don't make any money. Also, hire enough people where giving a company a tax breaks makes it worth while due to secondary a tertiary factors.

"Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive?"
becasue they are high end luxury vehicles. Do you send letter to Mercedes telling them their care a rudely expensive?

" Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K "
Yes.

"range like the Prius?"
Like the Prius? no, they will actually be good.

"Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?"
no more then any there similar company. Frankly I would rather people making clean energy get them, and coal and oil companies snot get them.

"when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?"
A bigger question is: Why didn't the media talk about the discovery that they where, in FACT, not bogus claims?

"3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable."
Funny you bring this up. I was just talking to Prius drivers this weekend, Many where bitching that the computer can get stuck in a loop and the car has to be off and sit before it will reset. apparently starting them up in the wrong way can cause this to happen.

Junk bond stats(b-) is based on they way it got money and that it's different the tradition automakers.
I"m pretty sure risk fro fighting the 3rd party car sales is also taken into account.

The man is changing the world.

Re:Musk worship

[MightyYar]

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

Offer to open a factory and let localities knock themselves out trying to woo you. This is not unique to Tesla.

Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?

It is junk because the business has a lot of risks, not because the business plan is fundamentally unsound. Bonds are rated according to risk. In the long run the riskier investments pay out more. Look at the stock price of Tesla if you want to see where the market thinks it is going.

Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?

You cannot buy a battery so large at the moment for such a low cost. In part, this factory is an attempt to get some economy of scale so that the price will come down. But also remember that the margins on a luxury car are far higher than the margins on a family sedan. Toyota makes something like 20% on each Lexus that it makes, but only 10% overall (including Lexus). You would be nuts (or very, very confident) to enter the sub-10% market with a new product. Tesla may very well enter the low-end market some day, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For now, think of them as Audi, BMW, or Mercedes.

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

Are you kidding? Just wait until Tesla slips up. They will eventually, and the media will jump all over them. The only thing that the media loves more than an underdog is the story of a fallen angel.

Not sure why people need a super-hero.

If you can solve that, you will change the world in a serious way. You'll put a lot of "personalities" out of business - from Obama and Putin to the gossip columnist at the Enquirer.

3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable.

Prius is not all electric. Tesla makes no hybrids. If the Prius were all electric it would probably cost another $10k, or it would have to downsize like the Leaf.

But instead we continue to give money to the cartoon guy.

I'm not sure why you are picking on Tesla. We give tons of tax breaks to Toyota. Google for "Toyota Plano tax breaks" to see about their new headquarters. Hell, the Prius was directly subsidized for years through the same federal tax credit as the Teslas. Nissan and Mitsubishi get the exact same tax credit as the Tesla.

Re:Musk worship

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I am not for the tax breaks but the state of Arizona should come out ahead even after them.

The factory will be in Nevada, you're getting your arid wastelands mixed up. Arizona = massive chasms/cacti, Nevada = slot machines/nuke tests.

Re:Musk worship

[Guspaz]

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

They don't need tax breaks to succeed, but since the states were competing to get the gigafactory, the state that offers the highest tax breaks wins. If no state offered tax breaks on the factory, they'd have built it anyhow.

Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?

The junk bond status is because S&P doesn't think Tesla will succeed. It's an opinion.

Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?

Tesla has always been very open about their strategy. Electric cars are very expensive to make. Their plan was to introduce a high-cost sports car (the roadster) to build experience/resources/etc, and use the revenue from that to design a luxury sedan (the model S), and use that to start to get some economies of scale and use the revenue from that to build a mass-market vehicle (the model 3).

Their next stage of vehicle will not be 20-30K, but it will be a 40K vehicle competing with sedans like the Camry. As soon as it is possible to build a car for 20-30K that will compete with ICE cars, you can be sure that they'll do it.

In other words, they're currently limited by technology (or rather the cost of the technology).

Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?

Errm, isn't that the way US politics work in general?

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

How is this Tesla's fault? In fact, the media has been rather harsh on Tesla for minor problems like the occasional fire in a crash, despite the fact that they're still less likely to have that happen than regular cars.

3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable.

The Prius has been on the market a lot longer than Tesla's cars. There's a guy putting 40K miles on his Roadster per year without issues, and they've got various warranties for batteries over the long haul.

But instead we continue to give money to the cartoon guy.

Nevada's government is claiming that they'll get an 80:1 return on investments for the tax breaks. If true, it seems like a good investment to me. I'm a bit skeptical that they'll get that high of a return, but it seems certain they'll get back more than their investment.

Re:Musk worship

[Lumpy]

A burning car you can get away from if you are in it, you stop and get out.. A car that is doing 80mph and accelerating you cant get away from if you are in it. Unless you want to die with most of your skin ripped off.

Toyota's failure was 900X worse than teslas biggest problems.

Re:Musk worship

[morgauxo]

-- Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?
It has to compete against every other company which also sit on huge piles of tax breaks.

-- If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
Build a factory. Promise to hire lots of people. Take government officials out for a series of expensive dinners where you talk about all the tax dollars your employees wages will bring. Do whatever else everyone else does.

-- Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?
I don't know. Maybe if you can be too big to fail you can also be to small to fail?

-- Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?
Nah, I'm sure the "big mouths" are just getting a drop in the bucket. There are plenty of tax subsidies going to bigger fish discussed only behind closed doors.

-- Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable
-- product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?
Was that entirely bogus? If so then I missed that. I was aware it was over-hyped. What isn't? News people are trying to make money too.

-- Not sure why people need a super-hero.
Do they? I didn't notice. Don't get me wrong, I think Elon Musk throwing away his cue cards in a press conference and anouncing "I am Iron Man" to the anoyance of his army buddy a day after kicking some bad guys ass in a flying suit he built himself would be AWESOME! But I for one don't NEED that. My life will be complete even if it never happens.

-- 3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out
-- the car is still useable.
So the pinacle of human technology has been reached! We need develop nothing more. Let's pull all of our kids out of school and go have some fun in our shiny new Priuses!

-- But instead we continue to give money to the cartoon guy.
LOL. Sure.. we give money to LOTS of cartoon guys. Many are doing much worse things with that money than trying to perfect an electric car. Let's pick just one and bitch about him so that all the other ones can keep up the status quot!

Re:Musk worship

[morgauxo]

-- This factory will represent 3% of the states economy.

Really? Wow, I didn't realize Arizona was that bad off! Seriously though, even if it seems to help in the short term do you really want a whole state to be dependant on one single factory for that large a piece of it's economy? Arizona, just go ask Michigan about that and then have a long, hard thinking session about the future.

Re:Musk worship

[LordLimecat]

A car that is doing 80mph and accelerating you cant get away from if you are in it.

Thats not really accurate, you can shift to neutral and hit the brakes.

I mean its bad but lets keep the BS in check.

Re:Musk worship

[LWATCDR]

" Some of the first cars were electric, and since then incredibly wealthy auto manufacturers around the world have been telling us it is all but impossible."
And it still is. Even Elon Musk can not do it. Maybe someday but today you have to spend as much as many peoples homes cost to buy a Tesla.

Re:Musk worship

[bigpat]

You ask the local government. They all do it. They just have different ideas of which ones to fund and which ones not to.

States and the Federal government should just set the corporate tax rate to 0% for all corporations. And increase the tax on higher incomes progressively to pay for it.

All those unproductive and wealth destroying things that corporations both large and small do in order to avoid the high corporate taxes in the United States could be avoided and the increased capital could go back into creating higher paying jobs and profits to shareholders which are all already taxed as income anyway.

Re:Musk worship

[rwa2]

Others have already answered this more succinctly ("politics"), but sure, I'll bite.

I get a little tired of the Musk worship.

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

Rich people can affect public policy to help them make more money. But in this case, think of it less as giving tax breaks, and more of giving tax incentives for finally succeeding at doing something we've been trying to do for a long time anyway. I'm sure Musk made plenty of threats to build this factory somewhere in Asia if he didn't get favorable treatment here in the US. At least, he would have been a dumbass not to.

Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?

S&P 's reasoning was that Tesla had all of their investment in one kind of product: electric cars and batteries. Not enough diversity to avoid risk. So if China preemptively opened their own Gigafactory and undercut Tesla's battery prices, all of Tesla's assets would be kind of worthless and they'd go kaput. It already happened with Solyndra, it could well happen again. Hell, we might as well give up and let China build batteries and electric cars for the world now.

Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?

OK, I'm not a Musk worshipper, but I've followed enough tech news that the "Model E".. oops, sorry Ford, "Model 3" will be priced at 35K after they finish fleecing the early adopters for funding all of the preliminary engineering R&D costs with the Model S and the Model X. And they would have come out with the Model 3 sooner, but one of the blockers is... the lack of a Gigafactory. Tesla already consumes the majority the world's supply of Li-ion batteries serving the Model S production as it is.

Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?

I dunno, ask your friends at Exxon and Monsanto? I would think Musk seems to be some kind of small fry in comparison. Oh, now you've got me looking up his bio... http://www.biography.com/peopl...

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

Heh, do you also remember the story about the faulty seatbelts back in the 90s, and Toyota blamed messy American fast food culture for spilling food in the clasp mechanisms and jamming up the works? Silly media. Anyway, I bet those companies also get some nice tax breaks. Maybe some of those tax breaks are expiring, because Ford/Mazda has been moving some of their assembly plants from Michigan to Mexico. BTW, if you're interested in that kind of news, http://www.thetruthaboutcars.c... tends to have pretty good coverage and typically includes a healthy helping of humor, wit, and sarcasm.

Not sure why people need a super-hero.

Er, are you suggesting that Musk should have gotten into boring venture capital financial firms after making his fortune? It seems to take a special kind of nerd to throw your finances at the relatively high-risk and low-margin pursuits of electric cars and space launch vehicles. Most other nerds I know do that kind of thing as a hobby.

3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable.

I like the Prius (at least the Gen2 Prius)... it's a very diff

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Not "someday". 2016.
http://www.nydailynews.com/aut...

Re:Musk worship

[kaliann]

I get a little tired of the Musk worship.

That's reasonable. Geeks are often excited about new innovative technologies, especially when they are disruptive to existing systems. People, not just geeks, are also susceptible to appealing narratives, which Musk has managed to develop.

Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?

Companies who provide jobs are incentivized by tax breaks. It may or may not be a horrible, corrupt system, but is a very well-established one. This is not a Tesla issue, it's a capitalism/politics issue. As an aside, taking advantage of tax breaks is so expected that if a company doesn't find ways to use them, they could conceivably be liable for failing their fiduciary duty to shareholders. It's simply poor business practice to not seek tax incentives. As an aside, there was some chatter about loosening environmental strictures, but I believe those were rejected by Tesla as poor return on mission.

If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?

Employ a bunch of people with a company that states and municipalities want to bring in.

Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?

Because a young, narrowly focused, small company is pretty risky. The entire house of cards could fall apart if another company comes out with a battery that outcompetes anything they can make. That said, lots of auto-makers have "junk bond status": "Even though the traditional U.S. automakers have now been profitable for the last four years, GM and Fiat Chrysler both still have junk bond status on their debt from S&P. Ford was only upgraded to the lowest investment grade rating last August." ~From the CNN article on S&P's Tesla bond rating.

Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive?

They are luxury vehicles. Those are very expensive. Why did the company choose to start with luxury vehicles? To gain capital when they still have low production capacity, to establish a luxury brand name, and to offset the cost of fairly new production methods and expensive components.

Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?

The third generation vehicle is predicted to have a starting price around 35K. It is likely that later models will follow the trend of lower prices, but a cheap 4-door sedan will be dependent on both the success of the model 3 and the success of gigafactory production as well as improvements in battery tech. Is there a plan? Probably. Is it something I'd expect in the near future? Nope. My bet would be a decade, if Tesla is still around making cars then.

Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?

Money. Corporations make it. Employees get it, and employed people are very happy to have it, which makes politicians happy to facilitate it. Then election campaigns get money from corporations and pols get votes from constituents. Also, the narrative of renewable energy, American products, and energy independence sells exceedingly well to people on all sides of the political spectrum.

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

I don't know. It could be that the 24 hour news cycle thrives on sensationalizing things like killer floor mats and batteries that catch fire when pierced at the right angle, and media have no interest in presenting informative, risk/benefit analyzed news. But maybe not. It's probably Musk's fault.

Not sure why people need a sup

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

The Prius isn't even that good at using gasoline. I used one as a company car quite a bit in my last job, it averaged 50mpg-ish. I can get that in my non-hybrid Honda Jazz, which also has better visibility and cleverer use of space. And a modern common rail diesel can do considerably better, albeit with horrendous repair costs if / when the injectors fail. (But what does a spare Prius main battery go for these days?...)

Re:Musk worship

[geoscodin]

Cab drivers are apparently liars, unless they are referring solely to the plug-in Prius model. I have a 2007 Prius and when the hybrid battery died at 178,000 miles the car would still drive, but it was jerky and too slow to legally drive on the interstate. I ran out of gas once and the car stopped running, too. You need gas AND the hybrid battery in working order for the car to drive. I bought a new hybrid battery that cost over $3000, and hopefully it will get me 200,000 more miles before I need another replacement hybrid battery.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

lol maybe in other states. in so cal houses are insane again. nice areas have seen houses like 600-800,000. fucking hell.

Re:Musk worship

[YesIAmAScript]

> Is it getting major tax breaks?

Yes. It's getting huge tax breaks here. It got a nearly free auto plant from California.

It gets $7500/car in subsidy from the feds. Many states give $1500 to $5000 on top of that. Some countries they sell into give tens of thousands equivalent.

And this is beyond the emissions trading money it gets, which is a subsidy, but not directly from governments, just enforced by the government.

>becasue they are high end luxury vehicles. Do you send letter to Mercedes telling them their care a rudely expensive?

If they charged $90K for a car which is luxury equivalent to a Hyundai Sonata I would. It's a nice car, but it doesn't measure up to other $90K cars on luxury.

Re: Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. The gas pedal thing was actually the Ghost Driver package. The problem is they are all suicidal.

Re:Musk worship

[DigiShaman]

http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/...

Re:Musk worship

[frinkster]

The Prius isn't even that good at using gasoline. I used one as a company car quite a bit in my last job, it averaged 50mpg-ish. I can get that in my non-hybrid Honda Jazz, which also has better visibility and cleverer use of space. And a modern common rail diesel can do considerably better, albeit with horrendous repair costs if / when the injectors fail. (But what does a spare Prius main battery go for these days?...)

If your driving was purely urban, your Prius would beat your Jazz (called the Fit in North America, BTW) handily. Yes, the Fit/Jazz is extremely space efficient, but it is still quite a bit smaller than a Prius. There are certain uses in which a hybrid beats everything. Diesel is the same way - long distance motorway speed, optionally with a heavy load to carry. But getting a diesel to meet anything more than basic emissions requirements has made them very complicated and expensive, with high maintenance and repair bills on top of that. Financially, they make less sense than they used to, especially now that the small turbocharged gasoline engines are available fairly cheaply.

As for electric cars, well, once Tesla's gigafactory is running at full capacity, Tesla will be able to build enough cars to grab an approximately 0.5% worldwide market share. It's a drop in the bucket. Now, slice that battery pack up into 10 or 15 pieces and install them into some plug-in hybrid cars with small turbo gasoline engines, and you have all the makings of a company that can compete with BMW and Mercedes Benz.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

That was part of the problem with the Prius, you can't shift to neutral or shut off the car unless the computer lets you!

Re:Musk worship

[ericloewe]

I thought it was crystal clear by now that the "unintended" acceleration was not an uncommanded acceleration.

Yes, the software was a mess - but the "problem" magically disappeared overnight when the news stopped... After it magically began overnight after the unlucky family crashed because their loaner Lexus had the wrong floor mats installed, leading to a jammed accelerator pedal.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

The man is changing the world.
 
Nissan is changing the world. Elon is just making a dog and pony show of it.

Re:Musk worship

[Chas]

All setting a corporate tax rate like that would do is create a massive tax dodge, while penalizing the workers.

I, for one, don't want to be ass-raped for 75% of my paycheck just so we can keep the government going.

Re: Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he's just the dude who got all the money from the PayPal in it's early years, who has new hustles going now.

A true geek hero because PayPal.

Re:Musk worship

[Johnny Mnemonic]

For starters, OP meant Nevada, not Arizona. And it's better to have some manufacturing base than none. NV is currently dependent on tourism, which is even more fickle. I'm sure that NV is hoping that the gigafactory spawns even more EV mfg investment in the state.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolute rubbish. You know how you power off a frozen computer? Same thing with push-button-on cars. Push and hold.

Re:Musk worship

[bigpat]

Corporate income taxes appear to be less than 10% of Federal tax revenue, compared to around 80% for individual income taxes and payroll taxes. I believe you could eliminate corporate taxes and keep it deficit neutral with a relatively modest increase in higher bracket income taxes on those making over a million dollars per year. Or you could just not worry about the deficit (because the Federal Reserve will fund deficits with new money creation) and do it anyway.

I think some math is certainly in order to come up with some numbers, but personally I would say you could use a good bending over if you are making millions of dollars a year and paying just 20% or even 30% while the rest of society is becoming an inequitable mess. I'm all for lower middle class taxes also, regardless of the effect on the deficit.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear sir.
By my knowledge this is drive by wire design. If the computer is not sending the message thru can bus, you can fiddle as much as you want with your selector or break pedal. No shift to neutral. I did drive manual. I know what are you trying to say.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18485-toyota-car-recall-sparks-drive-by-wire-concerns.html

So I check my bullshit.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

We have seen record high levels of efficiency already, high taxes or low.

And we have plummetting salaries and layoffs to offshore companies because the workers offshore can live without 24-hour electricity and so forth.

So you expect me to believe that lower taxes are going to magically turn corporations into high-paying domestic employers when lower domestic per-employee costs didn't?

Re:Musk worship

[gspear]

Not that I agree with you, but I recently saw a Tesla with a license plate of: "WWEMD"

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

"becasue they are high end luxury vehicles."
 
LOLZZZZ!!!! You guys are just too much with all that "They're a luxury vehicle!" talk. These things have about as much luxury as a 30k Ford Fusion. Yes, I can most certainly say that with a straight face. Get out of here with all that "Lucksery Vee-Hickle!!!" talk.
 
The only thing luxury about the is their price.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is it getting major tax breaks?

Yes. It's getting huge tax breaks here. It got a nearly free auto plant from California.

I don't know about that. I know that their half-billion-dollar upgrade to increase production got a $24-million tax break from CA (who expects to bring in $50million or so in new taxes from it)

It gets $7500/car in subsidy from the feds. Many states give $1500 to $5000 on top of that. Some countries they sell into give tens of thousands equivalent.

And this is beyond the emissions trading money it gets, which is a subsidy, but not directly from governments, just enforced by the government.

I believe your number are exaggerated, but the point is true. The governments to offer subsidies for hybrids and electrics up to a point. This is true for all companies producing them; not just Tesla.

>becasue they are high end luxury vehicles. Do you send letter to Mercedes telling them their care a rudely expensive?

If they charged $90K for a car which is luxury equivalent to a Hyundai Sonata I would. It's a nice car, but it doesn't measure up to other $90K cars on luxury.

$90k? So we are discussing the Model S 85kw performance model? (as you've pointed out: there's up to $10k in rebates available; but I'll call it $90k).

It's direct competitors include one of my loves: the BMW 550i (this is a car with the same 0-60 time as the Tesla).
Now the BMW does start at $64k. That's a $25k advantage to be sure... well: unless you want any options. There are individual packages for the 5-series taht are in excess of $6k. Indeed: when I spec'd out my 528i (base $47k), it was $78k by the time I was done.

So really: you've got maybe a $5k advantage on the BMW (which you don't have because of those rebates you mentioned).

You get similar performance... well, not really. The Tesla has a better torque curve, so its 60-120 speed is better.
You get similar space... well, no, the Tesla has quite a bit more sotrage space and two additional seats. To come close you would need to move to a 7-series and that's going to make the Tesla much cheaper.
You get similar handling... well, not exactly. Though both are 50/50 weighted, the Tesla has a much lower center of gravity.

I won't even pretend the economy is similar: the Tesla will cost you far less to operate.
It's also got a far longer warranty (8 years).
It is cheaper to maintain.
It has fewer parts.
It is the safest car on the road.

Actually: There's an excellent chance my next car will be a Tesla S (unless they do really well with the $30k car); replacing my existing 535.

Re:Musk worship

[Ravaldy]

Thanks for writing this. Someone had to say it. Not all politicians head to bribe city. I would even say that most have good intensions until they get tempted by bribes and other incentives. Becoming a politician isn't the easiest road and it's definitively not the quickest path to financial success.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Nissan is doing it today and has been for 4 years. Sure, they don't have the range but the range excuse is just that for 90% of the entire market.
 
Tell me why you think a car with 3 times the range should cost more than twice as much when Nissan says they can sell the battery for less than 6k? Tesla's batteries are a bit more advanced but not that much. Just go out and look at the weight of the battery compared to the range and you'll see all Tesla is doing is cramming in more battery.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, what you really need to do is pretty simple.

Set the tax rate for everyone (corporations, churches, charities, and people) to a flat X%. No deductions, for ANY reason. Tax all income at that %.

Then, make the first Y income tax free, to help those who make less.

This would partially destroy the special interests (who often are trying to get tax loop holes put into the system so they pay less tax) and would ensure that EVERYONE pays a fair share.

On the political side of things, campaign reform is relatively simple. Allow anyone to run, but fix their spending limit to Z, and have that money PAID to them by the government. You would NOT be allowed to use personal funds, and only your allowance would be allowed to be used for you. Other parties would also NOT be allowed to campaign for candidates (no fucking Super PACs) and donations to your campaign fund would be made illegal.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Toyota's problem was that some its cars were driven by elderly people and inexperienced drivers who couldn't tell the difference between the gas and the brake. That is not the politically correct answer, but it is the truth. America was going through a jingoism induced moral panic at the time. 2/3rds of their domestic automakers have gone bankrupt. Their economy had collapsed. The number one automaker in the country was Toyota. Going on witch hunts during times of crisis is what Americans do best, and Toyota was a victim of their mass hysteria.

This problem did not occur in other countries. This problem effected elderly and inexperienced drivers much greater than statistical chance.

Re:Musk worship

[MattskEE]

Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?

Are you kidding? Just wait until Tesla slips up. They will eventually, and the media will jump all over them. The only thing that the media loves more than an underdog is the story of a fallen angel.

Media are jumping all over Tesla already.

It's happened with the Tesla car fires, which are still less common per mile driven than gasoline car fires. New York Times published a likely faked review where Tesla's data logging disagrees with the reporters account, and shows that the reporter only charged the battery to a small fraction of the capacity and ignored the low battery warnings while driving past charging stations. Top Gear also faked battery trouble on their show (it was apparently in the script before they even received the car from Tesla).

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I don't get about the Prius is that every time I pass one that is parking (i.e. driving really slowly) the engine is running???

Also I know someone who has a hybrid Land Cruiser and hates it because it consumes a shit load of fuel.

I'm sticking with my BMW diesel for the moment. When it goes kaput, I"m getting myself a BMW i3 and am hoping by then,the autonomy will even be better. Also American engineering kinda sucks.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do keep your taxes like you are. Canada could use a few more Burger King-like acquisitions.

Re:Musk worship

[thrig]

Moving forward to a product that already has one marketplace failure under its belt? Oil cars slaughtered electric in the free market ~100 years ago, so this recent fuss about bringing back electric seems more about affordable oil pricing itself out of the market than anything new in the wheel'd battery department—but life in the Faust lane certainly has conditioned this culture to see only onwards and upwards, so uh I guess hooray for ACTUALLY DOING IT and all that jazz.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're not lying. As a cheapass that bought a recently decommed taxi, it had previously been driven with a hole in the intake manifold, a pair of clogged catalytic converters, a leaky exhaust manifold, and metal on metal brakes. Imagine now lovely that was to drive about. Well, the fact it could barely go above 40 explains why he finally broke down and sold it for peanuts.

Basically, if a cabbie tells you a car lasts to XXX,XXX miles, that's the point at which the engine finally seized up, and they're tired of swapping in junkyard trannies for the past two years. 300,000 is pretty shitty, actually--the venerable crown vic typically did 500,000 before it was completely and totally fucked.

Re:Musk worship

[geekoid]

The news didn't stop until a patch had been released.

The floor mat issue was a separate problem.

The Prius was uncommanded acceleration.

Re:Musk worship

[Thud457]

I don't buy your story. By my extensive study of the anecdocti, Senior Citizen Braking Syndrome is almost always terminated by the nearest farmers market. Look it up, it's on teh intarwebs.

Re:Musk worship

[Tom]

He gets tax breaks to entice bringing lots of jobs to THAT state instead of some OTHER state.

That's the problem there, can you spot it?

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

* g u s p a z . * F u c k s . c . A S S . c c c *
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A`cccccccc|ccccccccccccc|cccccccc\|ccccccc|cccccA
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*cc\cccccc\/ccc_--~~cccccccccc~--__|c\ccccc|cccc*
Sccc\cccccc\_-~cccccccccccccccccccc~-_\cccc|ccccL
Ucccc\_ccccc\cccccccc_.--------.______\|ccc|ccccI
Ccccccc\ccccc\______//c_c___c_c(_(__>cc\ccc|ccccC
Kccccccc\ccc.ccCc___)cc______c(_(____>cc|cc/ccccK
Sccccccc/\c|cccCc____)/Guspaz\c(_____>cc|_/cccccS
*cccccc/c/\|cccC_____)_Fucks_|cc(___>ccc/cc\cccc*
Fccccc|ccc(ccc_C_____)\_ASS _/cc//c_/c/ccccc\cccM
Accccc|cccc\cc|__ccc\\_________//c(__/ccccccc|ccA
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*cccc|cc\_cccccccccc___\ccccccc/_cccccccccc_/c|cC
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c g u s p a z . . F u c k s . c . A S S c c c c c

Red alert. Go to red alert. Fag alarm. This fucking vidiot sexless fat poor health bad physical condition racist fat ultra left wing nationalist asshole idiot is speaking
GO TO RED ALERT. Space and Time are grinding to a halt.
Fucking idiot SHITSTAIN McGuspaz is speaking.
Fat man living off of government or with parents with no sex jerking off to pedophile porn and trolling Slashdot is speaking. WOOP WOOP.
Captain, people cant take much more of this shit. I'm giving it all shez got.
WOOP WOOP

The alien Guspaz, with his corpulent fat face and fronds of flash drooping over belly into cheap assed keyboard try is coming. He farted on the left nacelle!
Should we fly up his ass to hide?

NO!!!!! That will massage his prostate, GUSPAZ likes anal pleasure, we must go to warp 69!
FAT SEXLESS GUSPAZ pursues the captain in a long brown skidmarking journey through space.
Fat fucking pig. Fat stupid. All Your Base Are Belong To Us was meant to be funny, its not the 11th commandment you dumb motherfucker.
FUCKING ASSHOLE ALARM.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

and don't forget the legal brothels

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a little tired of the Musk worship.

Then stop imagining it. Because that's the only reason you're seeing any.

Re: Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't confuse PayPal as it is now (pack of thieves), long after Musk sold it, to how it began (revolutionary internet technology).

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

And who pays payroll taxes? A big chunk of it comes from corporations.

Re:Musk worship

[ksheff]

They wouldn't have to go through all the effort of setting up shell corporations in various countries and could bring money earned outside of the US back to the US to find projects, pay dividends to stock holders, etc.

Re:Musk worship

[Damarkus13]

You really have to allow deductions though. Otherwise, you're taxing revenue, not profits.

Let's say I own a corporation. Said corporation has an income of $1,000,000. However, between research and development costs, manufacturing, and other overhead, my expenses are $900,000. If you tax my corporation's income at 25% (without being able to deduct any expenses) I'm $150,000 in the red after taxes, despite running a fairly successful business.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

But Tesla does get zero emissions credits from California that it then sells to other auto manufacturers. It's be estimated that they earn $30-40 thousand per vehicle using that bit of cronyism.

Re:Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times will Tesla have bankrupt GM, for them to smell the coffee!

Re:Musk worship

[baka_toroi]

Modded -1: pessimist

Re:Musk worship

[AmiMoJo]

They would just switch to hiding their executive's income instead. Set them up as individual private companies, pay them a nominal salary and the rest in more tax bonuses and perks.

The EU has a pretty good solution. Companies will pay tax where they do business. If 30% of their global income is done in France they pay French corporation tax on 30% of it. Doesn't matter if they move it all to Ireland or pretend that the French subsidiary lost money, they pay their taxes end of.

Re:Musk worship

[AmiMoJo]

All of Toyota's failures are attributable to driver error. The researchers were only able to create a dangerous fault using a debugger. They never managed to demonstrate it happening spontaneously.

Once the lawyers were involved that ceased to matter though.

Re:Musk worship

[fgouget]

Yes. It's getting huge tax breaks here. It got a nearly free auto plant from California.

It gets $7500/car in subsidy from the feds. Many states give $1500 to $5000 on top of that. Some countries they sell into give tens of thousands equivalent.

The feds don't give that $7500 subsidy because the brand of the car is 'Tesla'. They give it because it's an electric car. There's over a dozen models from BMW, Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Nissan and others that get the same subsidy. So spinning this subsidy as "the feds are helping Tesla" is a lie. Same thing for the state subsidies.

If they charged $90K for a car which is luxury equivalent to a Hyundai Sonata I would. It's a nice car, but it doesn't measure up to other $90K cars on luxury.

The Tesla Model S is a full-size luxury liftback which ranks second against other "Super Luxury" cars and has a 0-60 acceleration of 4.2 to 5.9 seconds (depending on model). The Hyundai Sonata is nowhere close to being in the same class seeing as it's a mid-size car and not as sporty with a 0-60 acceleration of 6.5 to 8.5 seconds. So again you're ill-informed or disingenuous.

Re:Musk worship

[david_thornley]

The fault, if it exists, is very rare. Otherwise, we'd have all sorts of reports of runaway acceleration. This means that failing to demonstrate a case where it happens means nothing, and the fact that they could reach a dangerous state with a debugger is significant.

Re:Musk worship

[david_thornley]

And, fortunately for your prognostication, technology has not changed in the past century. Sheesh.

Re:Musk worship

[radl33t]

really? your thesis relies on 100 years of stagnant technology and manufacturing. you lose big time. +cute points for thinking the initial failure was free market dynamics.

No, that's not what it says

[Maury Markowitz]

"all of its own energy using a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal"

No, that's not what it says. It says it will be net-zero. That's a big difference.

This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[knightghost]

And that's the problem with green energy (other than hydro) - production is lowest when consumption is highest. What are they going to do, use all those batteries to store electricity? Does that mean if I buy an electric car I'm paying premium prices for a used battery with limited life?

Re:No, that's not what it says

[bobbied]

No, that's not what it says. It says it will be net-zero. That's a big difference.

This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.

So they will be drawing power from Fossil fueled Electric plants just like the rest of us. So much for carbon emissions being ZERO. But we already knew that wasn't in the cards, given that they will have to hire trucks to haul their batteries around.

I applaud their effort, but they are going to loose money on this. Not that it matters to Tesla, they already sell high priced, get out of the environmental guilt trip jail credits at insane costs for the rich and famous who need to look like they care and can afford it.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anguirel]

Peak Demand is typically the middle of the work day (between ~8AM and ~8PM). Running the A/C for all those office buildings, keeping the factory lines running, and so on. For example, for running this factory. That sounds like an ideal time set for Solar usage to me. So your "production is highest when demand is lowest" is obviously false. A few specific climates with harsh winters will seasonally have increased night-time usage, but it's pretty rare.

Also, Geothermal is solid steady production for base load, and Hydro is good for both on-demand and (with pumps) for storage.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Solandri]

The incentive package Nevada offered Tesla includes $8 million in discounted electricity rates. So it's definitely a net-zero thing, not off-grid. In fact I'm still trying to figure out if it's net-zero in electrical production, or net-zero in electricity cost (i.e. sell solar to the grid during the day when rates are high, buy it back at night when rates are lower).

Re:No, that's not what it says

[UnknowingFool]

And that's the problem with green energy (other than hydro) - production is lowest when consumption is highest.

First of all when is production lowest when consumption is highest? I'm not sure where you get this. Peak hours is normally during 9-5 business day. For solar, that is also peak production. With wind, it is more more variable but the turbines are placed where there is some constant wind. Geothermal is pretty constant as well as hydro.

What are they going to do, use all those batteries to store electricity?

Maybe but the OP has specifically stated that the plant is likely grid-connected so it will produce power when it can and draw power from the grid when it cannot.

Does that mean if I buy an electric car I'm paying premium prices for a used battery with limited life?

Why would you even think this? Most car manufacturers make cars for their own internal use for factories like cargo vans and pickup trucks. These vehicles are sold to the general public as used after the manufacturer retires them. They are not sold to the public as new. The car manufacturer also sells brand new vehicles to the public of the same model.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[JerryLove]

So they will be drawing power from Fossil fueled Electric plants just like the rest of us. So much for carbon emissions being ZERO. But we already knew that wasn't in the cards, given that they will have to hire trucks to haul their batteries around.

I applaud their effort, but they are going to loose money on this. Not that it matters to Tesla, they already sell high priced, get out of the environmental guilt trip jail credits at insane costs for the rich and famous who need to look like they care and can afford it.

The Tesla S is about the size of a BMW 5-series. Costs about as much as a mid-range BMW 5-series. Has performance similar to a high-end BMW 5-series. Has space in excess of a BMW 5-series. And is more economical to operate than a Toyota Prius.

One does not need to be "rich and famous" to buy a $70k car (look at the sales numbers from Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Infinity, etc sometime); and one does not need to be on a guilt trip to buy one of the best cars in the price range.

Though if you are on a guilt trip: it's the nicest to the environment.
OTOH: If you are on a safety trip: It's also the safest car on the road.
OTOOH: If you are on a performance trip: that torque curve is amazing.
OTOOOH: If you want to haul 5 kids without getting a van/SUV: It's your only option.

Hrm. Seems like there's lots of reasons someone might want this car.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[butalearner]

No, that's not what it says. It says it will be net-zero. That's a big difference.

This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.

So they will be drawing power from Fossil fueled Electric plants just like the rest of us. So much for carbon emissions being ZERO.

You're going to have to explain to slow people like myself. Where is the following logic wrong?

Tesla is going to produce, on average, enough energy to run the gigafactory without getting any externally-created electricity. In reality, sometimes Tesla will not create enough energy, so it will draw from the grid. On the other hand, sometimes it will produce too much, and that goes back to the grid, where it is used elsewhere. The energy used elsewhere is used instead of fossil fuel-produced energy. Therefore, effectively, carbon emissions from energy production will be zero (though, as you say, their equipment will produce produce greenhouse gases).

Anyway, I don't get why this should be disappointing to anybody. It sounds like awesome news to me; if everybody did this, we would be a lot better off.

Lastly, I found it quite interesting that 85 windmills in Reno could produce more than twice the energy of 850,000 square meters of fixed solar panels...and it would be more if wind speeds were slightly higher. That seems crazy to me.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 5 kids without a van/SUV. The other options are 7-seat station wagons: Mercedes E350, Kia Rondo, and Chevy Orlando. The E350 and Rondo have better 3rd row seating than the Model S. The Rondo offers the best value. IMO the Orlando isn't worth considering.

I am a 1%er (just barely), but with 5 kids there is no way I can afford to splurge $70K on a family car. Hence you don't find too many Model S owners with 5 kids, except for Elon Musk.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

>You're going to have to explain to slow people like myself. Where is the following logic wrong?

You are relying on dirty power. What happens if everyone does what Tesla is doing? Yes, everything is better, but it isn't SOLVED. The issue is that the dirty power will need to continue to exist and be generated due to peak demand relying on it.

It's half of a solution. Which is better than NO solution, but it's still not a full, complete solution.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[bobbied]

Lastly, I found it quite interesting that 85 windmills in Reno could produce more than twice the energy of 850,000 square meters of fixed solar panels...and it would be more if wind speeds were slightly higher. That seems crazy to me.

Maybe windmills COULD do what you say, not going to argue that, but when the wind isn't blowing what are you going to do? In the middle of the night or on a cloudy day? Where are you going to get your electric power from?

You are going to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity, that's what you are going to do.

So build your windmills and put up your solar panels, we will still need the fossil fueled plants to make up the difference and don't fool yourself, what you are doing costs MORE.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[bobbied]

My last car was $24K brand new (not doing that again though) . You want me to pay 3x that price for a Tesla? Not to mention that your price is about $25K too low. If you buy a Model S, with the big battery, internal fast charger and a home charging station (which is absolutely necessary if you intend to actually USE the car daily) you are going to be over $120K or so which is 5x what my last car cost and well beyond what 99.99% of us can afford to pay for a car.

Not going to do it. WAY too many reasons and it starts with PRICE. No way I'm making the payments on a Tesla and paying my mortgage too. No way I'm driving a car with maybe a 200 mile range and then takes 30 min to "refuel" for the next 100 miles. No way I'm buying a car that I cannot quickly refuel where the in-laws live, even though I could GET there on a charge, I'd be stuck there for the duration of the charging process using 110V15A extension cord, and believe you me, that's TOO long there. (3.7 miles per HOUR of charge! Ouch, I'm going to be there at least 1.5 days to get my empty battery back to 200 miles capacity...)

No, Tesla's are mostly for show, for the people who can afford to spend $100K on a toy. Few buy them for actually DRIVING someplace except for maybe work and back. Can you imagine trying to drive one of these cross country? Portland to LA? I'm sure it would be an adventure, but if all you got was 200 miles per charge, you are going to be on the road a LONG time.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[JerryLove]

My last car was $24K brand new (not doing that again though) . You want me to pay 3x that price for a Tesla?

No. I really don't care what you do.

Not to mention that your price is about $25K too low. If you buy a Model S, with the big battery, internal fast charger and a home charging station (which is absolutely necessary if you intend to actually USE the car daily) you are going to be over $120K or so which is 5x what my last car cost and well beyond what 99.99% of us can afford to pay for a car.

The larger battery Tesla is $81k (assuming you aren't arguing you need the sport model; which would be specious at best). The wall connector is $1,200 (and you'll pay an electrician $200 to install it). So you are at $83k. Which is comparable to a moderately equipped BMW 550i.

Of course: I'll get between $7k and $10k back in tax incentives. Also: the 8-year warranty is standard (getting the CPO warranty and maintenance contracts on the BMW is going to push it's costs up almost $10k). So now Tesla has a $10k-$20k advantage. For simplicity, we'll just apply that as a credit to the Tesla (as opposed to a bill on the BMW) and we are now looking at the (equivalent cost) of a $60k BMW... a moderately appointed 528 or stripped 535.

Except that I'm also going to save a lot of money on gas.

Your 99% number is complete and utter crap. The 98th percentile (you know, the 1% after the top 1%) likely make about $250k annually (the IRS doesn't track, but it's a good guess). That would put a Tesla at about 40% of annual income. This would be equivilant to someone making $50k buying a $12k car (actually: more like someone making $50k buying an $8k car because not all expenses scale and disposable income is a higher percentage for upper income brackets)

Not going to do it. WAY too many reasons and it starts with PRICE. No way I'm making the payments on a Tesla and paying my mortgage too. No way I'm driving a car with maybe a 200 mile range and then takes 30 min to "refuel" for the next 100 miles. No way I'm buying a car that I cannot quickly refuel where the in-laws live, even though I could GET there on a charge, I'd be stuck there for the duration of the charging process using 110V15A extension cord, and believe you me, that's TOO long there. (3.7 miles per HOUR of charge! Ouch, I'm going to be there at least 1.5 days to get my empty battery back to 200 miles capacity...)

No, Tesla's are mostly for show, for the people who can afford to spend $100K on a toy. Few buy them for actually DRIVING someplace except for maybe work and back. Can you imagine trying to drive one of these cross country? Portland to LA? I'm sure it would be an adventure, but if all you got was 200 miles per charge, you are going to be on the road a LONG time.

On my recent trip from PA to FL, I saw two Tesla in the middle of a long-distance trip (at a charging station in NC where I stopped for the night).

But I own two cars. I don't use both for cross-country trips. If (when?) I get a Tesla it is likely to be used almost exclusively for destinations within 200miles.

That said: You can also change out batteries at a super-station. It costs $80, but you get fully charged in 1 minute. It's barely more expensive than the gas for the same trip and, when you aren't running cross-country, you have no costs at all.

It's not for you? Fine. Don't get one. But your caricature is false.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[bobbied]

All I can say is you are falling for the hype and not the actual facts.

1. There are exactly ZERO places you can swap you battery quickly, and it takes more than 1 min, even when Tesla demonstrated the fast change could be done. The cost of this service is yet to be fully documented, as is how exactly it would end up working.

As to the REST, I'm taking my prices from the WikiPedia page for the Model S as follows:

1. Short range (sub 200 mile range) 60Kw/h battery car = $69,000 (no frills)

2. Long Range (just over 200 miles) 85Kw/h battery base car = $79,900 (no frills)

3. Long Range (Just over 200 Miles) 85Kw/h battery premium car = $93,400

4. Internal Quick Charger = $2,500 (60Kw/h car only)

5. Home Charger = $2K? (Best guess installed)

6. +10 Year battery Warranty = $10,000

7. Warranty years 4-8 = $4,000

So, if you buy the big battery and a home charger you are into $100K (Tax, title, license, warranties) and this car MIGHT be able to do 200 miles on a charge, and still will only let you recharge overnight. If you want the "performance" model, add another $13K.

This is well beyond what a lot of people pay for their HOUSES so it's not a practical car.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[ultranova]

One does not need to be "rich and famous" to buy a $70k car

If you can afford to pay $70k for a car, you're rich. Fame isn't necessary, though.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[lymond01]

I'd searched on what kind of income it takes to afford a $40K+ car. There was a BMW forum asking the same question. Many of the replies were what you'd expect. Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers -- people who simply make not $100,000 per year, but hundreds of thousands if not millions per year. And then there were those who simply prioritize differently -- they rent their home for cheap (under $1000/month), have a moderate income ($50-$60K), and want a nice car and feel like they can pay the $800/month for the lease or loan. I'm with you though -- the Tesla Model S is sweet, but way beyond what I'd pay for a car unless I was making $20K/month or more. That's a lot more than you need, of course, but I'm not so excited about any automobile to blow $70-$100K on it.

The Model 3, should it ever arrive, at a predicted pricepoint of $35K-$50K...that's a possibility. Given that it's electric, I'd consider saving up. Otherwise I might look at the Audi S3.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

several hundred thousand people a year buy a car in the class of the model S. You are not one of them. Your crowing is lost on them and anyone else that can spot your outmoded thinking.. There will always be idiots with calcified thinking; thankfully you are so frequent that I became financially independent betting against you. While I also will not buy a new car. I will own a model S in about 3 years when the price falls into my range. of course a pps of $320 on tesla stock will increase my allowable purchase price by 20%. Thanks sucker.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[radl33t]

LCOE solar is cheaper than coal and non-fracked natural gasin Reno, NV. It will also be cheaper than natural gas when that is fairly regulated. besides, the different can always be made up with peaking natural gas plants, just as we do now since you know, and this may be a shocker to you, 1) demand curve changes by a factor of 2 and 2) capacity factor on base load fossil fuel plants is less than 100%.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically you believe that the "factory" they are building is a giant dormitory for their workers? And that when the morning comes and solar power production ramps up, the workers go out into the fields and start digging in the ground with picks and shovels looking for batteries, not using any power all day? And then when the sun sets they return to the factory and start making coffee and watching TV?

Re:No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing you always have to remember when discussing electrical energy consumption and production is the fact that production _ALWAYS_ matches consumption. There isn't any real large scale electrical storage somewhere where excess production could go, so production side always matches consumption. This is done by adjusting production processes, and in lesser scale by wasting excess production. Hydroelecric plants are commonly used as load following plants, gas turbines are commonly used for the very highest peaks. The thing is, renewables don't work too well as load followers or peakers, so they can mostly replace base production (as they should, because the actual production is "free"). But because their production isn't very even (compared to nuclear or coal or oil) having more wind and solatr means we need more load following plants and peak power plants. Which are expensive to run.

Teslas imagined batteries won't solve the grid wide storage problem.

Re:No, that's not what it says

[bobbied]

I see you admit that solar needs to be "fairly regulated" vrs natural gas. What you are saying is we need to artificially make NG more expensive though regulation.

So the truth remains, Solar is more expensive and you want the world to pay MORE for energy, meaning the poor will put more of that small income into paying the electric bill and less into food, medication and the like. You want us to LOWER our standard of living, which may not harm me all that much, but the people who can least afford it will suffer greatly. How nice and caring of you.

You people never look past the first level.. Never ask yourself what's logically going to happen next? Never understand that the world does not revolve around your ideas of what *should* be, morally, technically, or politically. Does anybody care that we are turning corn into motor fuel with the blending mandate? Doesn't anybody understand what that does to the price of corn and what that does to the price of food? Meat, eggs, Milk, cheese and even soda is being driven up in price because of this. Who's being harmed? Everybody, but disproportionally the poor pay for such stupidity.

But the biggest problem for you is that how can we be sure China and Russia won't just keep burning their cheap fossil fuels? That they will then use that to better their position and control of the world's resources? Who here is stupid enough to think China and/or Russia would be as benevolent as the USA to the rest of the world? Do I need to point you to your history to show you how stupid this would be?

That's odd...

[Black Parrot]

I figured they would power it with hype on Slashdot.

Re:That's odd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah that'd overload the system and shut everything down. We most certainly DON'T want to do THAT.

Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of trash

[raymorris]

Sure, your tax money will continue to pour into Tesla, because green. Most of this won't be tax-financed, though. It'll be paid for by forcing Nevada homeowners to pay Tesla for the lunchtime power production that'll be shunted to ground since they aren't home to use it.

True North?

[Jodka]

from the linked article at engineering.com:

"Musk said that the factory would be aligned with true north so equipment could be located with GPS ..."

Can anyone here make sense of that statement? GPS only works when buildings are aligned with true north?

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect its less that its aligned true north, and that all the equipment and building are following a similar alignment gps isn't usually precise enough to define the edge of a work space and make a clean border, but if the alignment is known and approximate center is known it would make positioning autonomous workers along the right side of it easier...

Re:True North?

[Trepidity]

My guess, without having any particular knowledge, is that the factory will have some kind of internal grid system (fairly common), and aligning the factory with a compass direction means you can easily convert between internal coordinates and lat/lon GPS coordinates. Of course assuming you aren't converting by hand, it's not really hard to convert even if the factory were not axis-aligned.

I could be way off, but I can't think of another way that statement could make sense.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that aligning the building with True North has little to do with getting GPS working as opposed to having the building line up everything inside so that they can internally geotag things to make them easier for robots to map. If the building maps to lat/long in a simple grid (straight lines rather than diagonals), then it will be a lot easier to make the robots get from point A to B without even more custom software to handle random diagonals.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes it easier to connect position (by GPS) with precise heading (given by the building/walls orientation) on the ground. Thus pose as position & orientation can be retrieved easily anywhere inside the facility.

Re:True North?

[ChefJeff789]

I think the idea is to give factory workers a map with a north-south, east-west grid rather than one that is slightly 'misaligned.' This could instantly make using grid coordinates inside the massive factory simpler and more accessible to a lot of lay-persons, though I understand your point; that sentence makes no sense. My OCD self can also appreciate the desire to align things perfectly with true north. Just don't try giving the factory workers a compass...

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

from the linked article at engineering.com:

"Musk said that the factory would be aligned with true north so equipment could be located with GPS ..."

Can anyone here make sense of that statement? GPS only works when buildings are aligned with true north?

My guess that when the corridors of a building run exactly north/south and east/west, it is easier for a person to guide themselves to a specific GPS coordinate within that building with no computer assistance. The individual would only need to memorize the GPS coordinates of two opposing corners of a rectangular building.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd assume that the internal coordinates will be trivially convertible to GPS coordinates, e.g. they will just be the digits after the decimal point of the seconds.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would make it simpler to apply the coordinates to a map and keep the map "square" to the viewport it's displayed on...

Also, they're going to have a fun time getting GPS to work inside a building. GPS is microwave from a satellite. That's line-of-sight only, AFAIK. So either the building is roofless (dumb idea), or they have a repeater (everything shows up at the repeater's coordinates, or they're Full of Shit(tm).

Given the less-than-useful nature of the square-to-north idea combined with this, I'll be voting for Full of Shit(tm).

Re:True North?

[wiredlogic]

without even more custom software to handle random diagonals.

Because we shouldn't trust robots to do basic geometry on their own.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that the GPS doesn't work, it's that aligning the buildings to north means that it's easier for a human to find a given GPS location and walk there because you know that the axis of the building is north-south.

Re:True North?

[DerekLyons]

My guess, without having any particular knowledge, is that the factory will have some kind of internal grid system (fairly common), and aligning the factory with a compass direction means you can easily convert between internal coordinates and lat/lon GPS coordinates. Of course assuming you aren't converting by hand, it's not really hard to convert even if the factory were not axis-aligned.

Even if it has an internal grid system, I can't come up with a plausible why you'd want to convert from GPS to the internal grid. To be accurate enough to use GPS to locate yourself on the grid... well, unless the grid is good sized (at least 2-3 meters on a side) you simply can't, not in real time anyway. And once the building is closed in, the accuracy will likely degrade even further. Using GPS to establish the grid... well, again the compass heading of the grid is easy to correct for. There's no particular advantage to aligning to any particular compass heading because you can correct in software, and that's already common.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, Musk just wants to make it easier to micro SCVs for his 1-factory opening.

Re:True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes absolutely no sense. If it's a robot it surely can align and transform any coordinate system to any other trivially on the fly.

I love this... The numbers don’t lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but... I love when articles say numbers never lie.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

Tesla's in Nevada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoover dam is in Nevada. It matters not how they power their factory.

case closed.

Re:Tesla's in Nevada?

[mspohr]

Geography... it matters.
Hoover dam is in Southern Nevada, the factory is in Northern Nevada... big desert between them with not much infrastructure.
Also, most of the power from Hoover Dam goes to Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas.
Also... climate change and drought.

Re:Tesla's in Nevada?

[Billy the Mountain]

Yeah, as long as Lake Mead has water, which should be at least a few more years, give or take.

Re:Tesla's in Nevada?

[bobbied]

Hoover dam is in Nevada. It matters not how they power their factory.

case closed.

Except for one tiny detail.... Part of Hoover Dam is in Arizona... Case still open unless you have something else...

Re:Tesla's in Nevada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Las Vegas uses _all_ of the power from Hoover Dam plus quite a bit of the power from the coal-fired power plant on nearby Navajo land. There is no surplus of Hoover Dam power available.

Re:Tesla's in Nevada?

[geekoid]

Nope.

from: http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverd...

How is the firm energy generated at Hoover Dam allocated?

Arizona - 18.9527 percent
Nevada - 23.3706 percent
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California - 28.5393 percent
Burbank, CA - 0.5876 percent
Glendale, CA - 1.5874 percent
Pasadena, CA - 1.3629 percent
Los Angeles, CA - 15.4229 percent
Southern California Edison Co. - 5.5377 percent
Azusa, CA - 0.1104 percent
Anaheim, CA - 1.1487 percent
Banning, CA - 0.0442 percent
Colton, CA - 0.0884 percent
Riverside, CA - 0.8615 percent
Vernon, CA - 0.6185 percent
Boulder City, NV - 1.7672 percent

yo dawg i heard you like batteries...

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahaa.

Might use batteries too

[grimJester]

Obviously a battery factory will have some amount of batteries on site. The 2400 MWh/day figure from the article would be around 30 000 full Model S battery packs, so going completely off-grid using whatever batteries they have lying around is unfeasible. Anyway, no point in not using them, right?

Re:Might use batteries too

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Battery testing and overnight energy storage == win win? It makes things more complicated though, but that's a design issue.

ironic

[tekrat]

that's ironic, considering nevada has some of the cheapest electricity rates in the country, because of the hoover dam.

Re:ironic

[bobbied]

Unless it starts raining and snowing upstream pretty soon, Hoover Dam isn't going to be a source of much electricity anymore.

Re:ironic

[timeOday]

The Hoover dam seems like an ideal candidate for pumped-storage hydro, turning it into the world's largest "battery" for renewable energy.

Re:ironic

[bobbied]

Pumped storage at Hoover dam? One problem is obvious, pumped from WHERE?

If you look at the normal water cycle, that's pretty much what Hoover Dam is... We let the sun evaporate the water, it rains/snows up stream, and we recover the energy on the way down. Huge solar collector...

Re:ironic

[amorsen]

The neat thing about reservoir-based hydro power is that you can multiply its output by using pretty much any intermittent power source. If the rainfall is cut in half, you "just" build enough wind turbines or solar cells or whichever to provide the missing half of yearly energy output, and save up water whenever you can. At a large enough scale, you can boost hydro power many times over, assuming the hydro generators themselves are large enough. Luckily hydro generators are reasonably cheap to upgrade, whereas reservoir capacity is hard to come by.

Re:ironic

[timeOday]

The point of pumping the water back uphill is so you can re-generate power from the same water over and over.

Re:ironic

[bobbied]

I get that, the problem is that once you release the water from Hoover Dam, where does it go? Down stream. Next stop is about 30 Km down stream and 439 feet lower in elevation, with only part of that being useable head for Hoover's generators. Won't be efficient.

But, you are missing my point, there isn't any water up or down stream from Hoover Dam, at least not enough to make it worth while to pump it into lake Mead then release it for power generation later. Besides, the ISSUE right now with Lake Mead is water for drinking and farming. There simply isn't enough for that much less doing very much electric generation.

Re:ironic

[Actually, I do RTFA]

because of the hoover dam.

Which is all green energy, so it's easy for Tesla to live up to their claims.

Re:ironic

[bobbied]

Not going to argue the logic, except to say that unless you have some water to pump up hill, it's not viable. This is the desert south west here at the Hoover Dam... There isn't much to pump up hill and right now they are fighting over what's left in Lake Mead because people need to drink something...

So, I would suggest that there are better locations for this kind of thing, preferably some place with more water to be pumping.... I believe there was something almost exactly like this in MO...

Re:ironic

[amorsen]

That is the trick: You do not need to pump water anywhere. You just avoid using water when other forms of energy are delivering. If there is a power surplus even with the turbines off, you try to export that somewhere, and if no one wants it even for free, you stop the wind turbines or solar plants or whatever. If you happen to have pumped storage available for the few hours a year with low or negative prices, great, but otherwise it is not a great loss.

Re:ironic

[bobbied]

Um... You do understand that hydro-electric is prized for it's ability to supply on peak demand already. Where most generation plants can take weeks to schedule power output, some can throttle up and down in hours and some can handle short power variations in terms of min, hydroelectric has the ability to throttle almost instantly, while not wasting energy. If you have the generator turning and synced, all you have to do is open the gates and you are pushing power.

I say all this to point out the following. That's what we've been doing with hydro-electric all along, filling out peak loads and making up the gaps when some unforeseen circumstances takes expected capacity off line. It's the main reason these things where built (that and flood control) because as far as costs go, hydroelectric is insanely expensive and have huge environmental impacts compared to fossil fueled plants. But, for peak loads, there isn't anything better.

True North?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it must be either a misquote by the journalist (and this particular one I think would be rather inexcusable when your website is called "engineering.com"), or Musk doesn't have a clue about both GPS and solar panels.

Solar panels can be aligned with true south for maximum power production, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you just lay them flat on the roof, as the picture clearly shows. Also, because the are constructed of conducting a semi-conducting materials, they tend to be pretty good at shielding RF, so I'd say there is zero chance you'll get a GPS fix under that roof, even with the latest GPS chipsets.

If they need energy storage, I guess they could use every batterypack for a number of cycles (10-20 cycles or so) before delivering them in a car; that way, with the added bonus of stress-testing every single pack!

Tesla is a battery company

[mspohr]

This confirms my suspicion that Tesla is really a battery company masquerading as a car company. The cars are just a vehicle to sell lots of batteries ;).
The grid in Reno might have a problem handling large swings in renewable power but since the factory should have lots of batteries, they can use them to smooth out the power fluctuations and use this as a demo site to sell battery grid backup systems.

Re:Tesla is a battery company

[Anonymous Coward]

That's killer application EV!

Yay, units!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now this is a convoluted energy unit: MWh/day! Like measuring time in miles/kmh!

Nerds: get a grip.

Re:Yay, units!

[by (1706743)]

In fairness, there really aren't Good Units for dealing with this sort of thing. Yes, you can use "proper" energy units (J), but because we really don't use "metric time," a kJ/MJ/etc. isn't wonderful for everyday use (given that we're familiar with Watts).

If all you care about is running calculations and making them look pretty, then yeah...stick with SI. But if you want something to be intuitive, unfortunately, sometimes really stupid units make more sense.

2/3 of the power based on counting turbines

[MerlynEmrys67]

So 1800 of the 2900 MWh of power is based on the ability to count the number of wind turbines shown in the marking picture of the factory? And we are taking this as truth of the number that are deploy-able in the area. This based on the fact that they are building the building Magnetic north aligned to help with GPS? Wow - lets grab Tesla's marketing materials and just swallow what comes out.

Maybe Musk reads the news...

[mdsolar]

Wind is going for 2.5 cents per kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... and solar is going for 5 cents a kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... Why would you pay more?

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[bobbied]

Why would you pay more?

Natural Gas is cheaper! Why pay more?

Not to mention your numbers are a bit on the wishful thinking side of reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

According to the government's numbers, Natural Gas is 73% the cost of wind on average, and Solar is nearly 3 times more expensive than Natural Gas. Of course this is IN THE USA (important to remember) and does NOT include tax incentives or funding deals afforded renewable projects, but only actual costs for construction, fuel, and decommissioning the plant after 30 years. (this is the fully burdened cost which actually is more favorable to renewables which have HUGE upfront costs and no fuel costs over time.)

Of course if you WANT to pay more.. Feel free... Which is apparently the case with Tesla. There business model is not about selling cheap cars to the have not's to maximize profits, theirs is a niche market, selling high priced low volume vehicles to the super-rich "have's" who need to appear as champions of the environment and don't mind paying for the appearance of actually caring. Those who want to drive carbon free to catch their chartered jet for their tropical vacation.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[MrL0G1C]

Natural Gas is cheaper! Why pay more?

Because the price of gas is expected to go up, reasons being: dozens of gas power stations currently being built and the fact that gas is currently so cheap that some of the Frackers are selling their gas at below cost. Also relevant is that the cheapest resources are typically mined first, this is particularly the case with the current gas fracking boom, the current low gas price is highly unlikely to remain low after a handful of years.

Wind and sunlight OTOH are expected to remain very cheap.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[mdsolar]

So, gas is trading around $4/MMBTU and you get about 175 kWh of electricity from that $4 with a good combined cycle gas plant. So, the fuel cost is about 2.5 cents per kWh, about the same as delivered wind power. For a peaker plant, competing with solar, the fuel cost would be over 5 cents per kWh. That is just the fuel cost. So, why pay more?

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[geekoid]

well..
A) Natural gas is finite.
B) Natural gas has other uses instead of just generating power. I thing saving a natural resource for other thing is a better long term strategy.
C) Natural gas price will continue to rise.

Don't be caught in the natural gas bubble. It's temporary. Waiting until we are out of other source would be a pretty bad time to start trying to get more renewals.

"Those who want to drive carbon free to catch their chartered jet for their tropical vacation."
ad hom and a non sequitor.
You have to change the system, from inside the system.
They don't have solar planes yet.
It's really a poor argument .

As a side note, you really shouldn't just look at one factor. There are many factor besides 1 cost variable.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[bobbied]

well.. A) Natural gas is finite. B) Natural gas has other uses instead of just generating power. I thing saving a natural resource for other thing is a better long term strategy.

A and B are obviously true, although A is arguable in practical ways. Creating methane is not that hard. I agree with you on B, Natural Gas is better suited to other things (motor fuel and heating) but it is a CLEAN source of heat to generate electricity from and that's why it's being used, well that and it burns really clean compared to other fuels.

C) Natural gas price will continue to rise.

However, C is where we really part company. Short term, Natural Gas is NOT going to rise in price. In fact the projections are for steady to falling natural gas prices for at least a decade. We can only build out the available gas fields so fast and fracking has made much more natural gas recoverable. We've not even started exploiting this resource. Eventually, Natural Gas WILL increase in cost, but that increase will only make MORE of this resource economically recoverable. Assuming no spikes in demand or massive disruptions in supply infrastructure, Natural Gas will continue to be CHEAP for at least the next 5 years, and likely will only slightly outpace inflation for the next few decades.

On the rest, you miss my point. The rich who can afford a Tesla, may be concerned with the environment, but apparently they are NOT willing to change their lifestyle in order to really do some good. They buy Tesla's for show, to prove they are environmentally responsible. They cry crocodile tears for the polar bears and penguins, but still insist on huge homes, high flying aircraft with carbon foot prints equivalent to 10 times my family's while imploring me to conserve more. Personally, I'm not impressed. These same folks then implore that I change MY lifestyle or agree to pay more to keep my lights on, but they consume more resources than I can even dream about, but they get a pass because they own a Tesla?

This Tesla renewable claim is about PR, it's about their brand name. It's not about reality, because you can bet that the CEO will have the AC cranked up in his office if he's uncomfortable...

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[dfsmith]

Here's a chart of 25 years of natual gas prices. See if you can work out why NG is not a panacea.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[dfsmith]

Sorry: this chart is clearer. (Didn't really want the 10-yr bonds in there too!)

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's look at the data.

Peak residential cost for Natural Gas is over $20/MMBTU - 5 times higher than you quoted.
Solar is a hedge against instability.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[bobbied]

Take out inflation and average throughout the year. Doesn't look too bad to me. Especially the last decade. The Peak price this year is 1/3rd the peak price of the last 10 years, with the lowest price showing similar ratios. Last year we bounced off of 2 and 5 and currently are between these two.

You do understand that the big spikes are related to variations in demand and to the variations in competitive fuel stocks right? It also seem to be pretty much peaking in winter, which is a huge surprise right? (um not to me). But the real problem with your side of the argument (and for your cool chart) is that with the advent of fracking and the development of the new NG resources this technology allows has driven the price down.

What your chart really says is that it's not a good idea to invest in NG wells. They are NOT going to be making lots of money selling gas. However, it IS a good time to be investing in infrastructure that burns the stuff. Or, if we can manage it, invest in technology to STORE natural gas. Prices more than doubled from the spring lows to the winter highs (and it was a cold winter) so there is quite a bit of possible money to be made on that.

And that's why industry is telling itself that Natural Gas is the play for the next decade. It's going to be a cheap fuel for a long time. Spikes in price are expected, but the average cost is going to be pretty much consistently where it is now (allowing for inflation).

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[bobbied]

OK, so are you going to build a plant that is profitable TODAY or one that won't break even for decades?

Wind/Solar both are *MORE* expensive to build and operate 30 years (fuel included) than a NG plant. This means the renewables have their costs UP FRONT, which is a serious problem for them. This means (all things being equal) you have to finance nearly ALL your development costs. Banks and bond holders expect to get their money back with interest so that windmill needs to be able to turn out enough energy to make the payments. Right now, interest rates are extremely low, but this won't last much longer. Those renewable operators who try to refinance their debt are going to be in a serious world of hurt in a year or so when interest rates start to rise.

Your NG plant builder faces much lower up front costs. He finances a lot less capital and can start turning a profit a lot sooner. Yes, he pays for fuel, but he does so over time, as an expense related to the cost of making what he sells. It's not capital equipment, it's cost of sales. This guy is poised to make money on his investment in a few years, where the windmill operator has a decade or more to wait, while the long term bonds and bank loans get paid back.

About all I can say for Solar (pv) and Wind, is that if you can finance long term it at today's interest rates, you might be poised to clean up on paper once inflation kicks in. But you could make even more money on paper in currency trading in that case and you'd be better off just investing in gold...

But, this so called rush to renewables is really just a government induced fad. There are special tax treatments and financing rules given to renewables. there has to be, or they'd not be even close to making financial sense. These government props can get kicked out at any time and would pretty much drive the operators of these renewable energy collectors into bankruptcy. A whole lot of people would loos their shirts, their lively hoods, and we would have a plight of industrial blight to deal with, taking down the abandoned windmills and solar arrays that would make the EPA super fund sites of yore look tame in cost.

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[mdsolar]

Why do we care about residential?

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol you are one of two accounts who are simply here to spew FUD on renewables and EVs. get a life. you have already lost. unless of course you wan to put your money where your mouth is. I'll lend you my tesla shares to sell short if you like. I'l even give you a killer deal for your natural gas sexplosion scenario You can sell short all my tesla shares and I'll only charge you interest based on the daily close above todays henry hub price. say, i'll compound daily on the % difference. If you're right, you'll win double fold, Tesla is doomed and you'll make a fortune, and gas will only get cheaper so I'll pay you!!! win win!, except for betting against about 1800 billion and counting of private capital moving out of your make pretend future!

Re:Maybe Musk reads the news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk pretty much won, and is the market leader emerging EV Industry!

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla isn't green. They're making a Lithium battery factory which will plague the planet for millions of years. Did someone learn how to recycle lithium in the past two years instead of putting it barrels that will eventually leak and leave an unmanageable mess for millions of years?

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[Anonymous Coward]

Your right. Tesla batteries change the lithium at a nucular level nd thers no whey to recycling it. It isn't a problem, though. All that lithoum can just be burryd in that big government pit they dug next door a few years back.

The future dinosaurs that will rule the earth millions of years from now will know we were here due to all the lithium contamination from Tesla batteries that will literally cover every square inch of the US to a layer three feet deep.

If you want a green car for the environment, you should be pushing for vehicle-sized, small nuclear reactors that can be retrofitted to existing vehicle chassis.

No, that's not what it says

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, they probably won't be completely off grid. But seeing as how they are a battery factory just as a matter of quality control testing they may keep several megawatt hours worth of batteries grid attached for charge/discharge testing. A perfect application for renewable load utilization.

Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of trash

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you know it's possible to store electricity? Tesla, not being a dinosauric utility company, just might be forward thinking enough to actually do this so they can release their spare electricity onto the grid at night.

Re:Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tras

[gbjbaanb]

I would hope Tesla stuffs every battery they produce into a "test lab" where they are charged during the sunny day and discharged during the evening.... by selling the excess power to the grid when its most needed (and most expensive I should imagine).

it helps Tesla figure out which batteries are good, and acts as exactly what renewable energy needs most - storage capabilities for the evening.

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, best troll I've read on here in hours...

And Nat Gas plants will back up Tesla ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind is going for 2.5 cents per kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... and solar is going for 5 cents a kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... Why would you pay more?

To get the power when you need it, not when and if it happens to be available.

Re-newable sites are often paired with non-renewables for that reason. One of the big political proponents of solar in Germany is the coal industry. New coal plants are being built to backup the renewable plants. Similar story hear. If there is not sufficient excess power on the grid to serve Tesla then you will probably see some new natural gas based plants be built to make sure such excess is available.

Re:And Nat Gas plants will back up Tesla ...

[mdsolar]

RTFA. They are building batteries.

Re:And Nat Gas plants will back up Tesla ...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. They are building batteries.

The bottleneck on Tesla production is batteries. The batteries manufactured are to go into Teslas to be sold.

Even if more expensive batteries are used rather than less expensive natural gas you **assume** that renewables will produce enough power of a power **surplus** to charge the batteries in the first place. Telsa won't leave things to chance. They will have nat gas backup.

Re:And Nat Gas plants will back up Tesla ...

[mdsolar]

OK, there is discussion up thread that this is net zero emissions. So, they'll be on the grid. Likely that will be a revenue stream for them.

New Nat gas plants going up ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.

And the current local grid probably does not have enough excess to supply Tesla. So expect some new natural gas plants to go up.

Just like in Germany where coal based plants are going up to backup solar and wind.

Saudi Arabia produces most electricity from solar

[WillAffleckUW]

Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have a number of solar units that produce their current electricity supply from solar.

That said, the zero tax exemption Musk got for the plant makes this more viable.

Which is shorthand for saying everyone in that state will be subsidizing this.

"some storage"

[YesIAmAScript]

From the article:

"Reno gets an average of five peak sun hours per day."

Remember, as soon as you say the word "average" you are counting on a huge amount of storage so that you get the average amount of energy every day, even if that day is below average. And even if every day for the last two weeks has been below average.

In in fact, if you are using solar, you have to understand that nearly every day between the autumn equinox and the spring equinox is below average. That means you need enough storage to store up electricity all summer so you can use it in the winter! This is not at all realistic. More realistic is to make sure you produce more than you need in the summer and enough in the winter.

This does use more than solar though. However, I can't believe this guy counted the windmills in a PR picture.

Anyway, buying and erecting a 3MW windmill costs about $10M. That would mean Tesla would spend $850M on windmills. You cannot seriously think that Tesla is going to spend $850M on windmills before the plant even opens.

Re:"some storage"

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect to your calculations, I'm willing to believe that a serial entrepreneur who has figured out how to launch rockets to the ISS and is on the threshold of being able to land boosters is more than capable of doing the math on a terrestrial factory's power budget. Anyone heard of SolarCity?.

Re:"some storage"

[radarskiy]

"you are counting on a huge amount of storage"

Remember, this is a battery manufacturing plant. They may have an idea or two about huge amounts of storage.

Re:"some storage"

[brambus]

With all due respect to your calculations, I'm willing to believe an authority figure more than math.

FTFY. Simply because he's correct on some things, doesn't mean he's infallible.

Re:"some storage"

[geekoid]

SolarCity is a horrid company. I am going through a nightmare. I told them not to come out and they did. They put a small hole in my roof which they claim they patched, but refuse to tell me where on the roof they put the hole. The keep sending my electronic documents to sigh even though I cancelled the whole thing.

SO yeah I've heard of them, and the can bite my shiny metal ass.

Re:"some storage"

[MildlyTangy]

SolarCity is a horrid company. I am going through a nightmare. I told them not to come out and they did. They put a small hole in my roof which they claim they patched, but refuse to tell me where on the roof they put the hole. The keep sending my electronic documents to sigh even though I cancelled the whole thing.

SO yeah I've heard of them, and the can bite my shiny metal ass.

You think sudden butsecks is bad, it dont hold a candle to sudden solar panel installation.

Re:"some storage"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn. Seeing as how the payback on a windmill is about 9 months (without batteries), even if the battery plant never opens he can start making $ in less than a year after construction of the power source. How does that NOT make sense.

Re:"some storage"

[Anonymous Coward]

Entirely possible if they are selling that power to the grid. I predict the installation will go up in modules so it can start producing at small output immediately.

Re:"some storage"

[AmiMoJo]

Your scenario assumes they only have just enough energy to cover their needs on the brightest day of the year. That's clearly ridiculous. They will build enough capacity to cover the winter months without long term storage. That way they can still the excess to the grid in the summer too.

Their wind turbines won't cost anything like 10m either. They own the land, no planning issues, no need for expensive grid contractions because they are using/storing on site and end up with smoothed output. Newer turbines bought in bulk cost nowhere near 10m on their own.

Besides which, even if they spent $1bn on energy it would be worth it for a factory consuming that much. With grid feed-in during the summer and only maintenance costs at other times it would pay for itself pretty quickly.

Re:"some storage"

[brambus]

Besides which, even if they spent $1bn on energy it would be worth it for a factory consuming that much. With grid feed-in during the summer and only maintenance costs at other times it would pay for itself pretty quickly.

Go ahead, run the numbers on that. By my estimation, $1bn at ~$0.07/kWh (industrial rate) and an average 2400MWh consumption a day would buy them over 15 years' worth. Meanwhile, the cost of covering 1/2 of their roof (gotta leave some gaps) at a 10% capacity factor with panels at $1/W would cost ~$130M and would provide all of ~13% of their yearly demand. If you extrapolate to 100% of their yearly demand, the cost of such a solar installation comes to around $1bn. And that's before you get to storage. Even adding something modest like 1 day's worth of storage in batteries at $100/kWh inflates the cost to $1.25bn without even talking about power electronics, environmental conditioning systems and actually building a functioning system out of it (rather than just a warehouse full of cells). Add even modest amounts of storage, like 3-4 days and the whole cost structure spirals wildly out of control.
Like you said, they'll stay firmly connected to the grid, use its generation capacity for bridging the times when their own solar & wind will be useless and then sell the surplus back at a nice fat feed-in rate, IOW everybody else on the grid will subsidize them. Meanwhile, greenwashers like yourself will keep posting BS articles about how "green" the factory is, smugly feel you've done enough for the environment, while CO2 emissions will not really decline very much and the atmosphere will again take one for the team.

Re:"some storage"

[david_thornley]

With all due respect to your calculations, I'm willing to believe an authority figure more than your math and assumptions.

FTFY. Math tells us nothing about the real world. It enables us to apply what we know in different ways. You started with all sorts of assumptions, and I personally trust Musk's research more than your assumptions.

Re:"some storage"

[brambus]

1. I wasn't the one that calculated that
2. If the speaker disagrees with the assumptions, challenge the assumptions rather than resorting to an argument from authority.
Must can be wrong and has been wrong. Most likely though we're not getting the full scoop in the story here. There's probably a load of caveats and detail to their plan that cannot simply be boiled down to a simple marketing snippet. Unfortunately, that's how marketing works.

Re:"some storage"

[david_thornley]

He's been wrong before. On the other hand, given the success he's had, I want to hear some convincing evidence before thinking that he's wrong and a pseudonymous person on Slashdot is right.

solar cells on sand

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf shows most solar cells on sand. much more than on the building ...

Trying renewing the lithium

[Anonymous Coward]

The energy may be renewable, but not the resources.

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[Anonymous Coward]

His right? What about his left? Did you think of that?

Don't buy this for a second

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire reason Tesla decided not to make their new factory in California is that they demanded we waive our environmental laws to give them an exclusion, and we refused to do that.

Elon Musk may be putting on a show of being environmentally friendly, but when it comes down to it he deliberately picked the location with the weakest environmental protection.

Why not

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? It worked for Mad Max.

Musk worship

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you got downmoddled for telling the truth. They can;t hear you. The leftists have gradually displaced Obama with his crony Musk. A million of these losers keep Tesla's stock price elevated. They will all come to a bad end.

WIl they use my tax money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is wonderful that they will try this out, but don't want my tax dollar to finance 40% (or whatever) of their power costs. Embed the cost in the finances of the company and the product cost, please. Then I'll be cheering you on for success.

And so what if they use YOUR tax money. You pay tax because you earn. Lucky you. Also given it means there will be less pollution YOUR tax dollars are paying for something from which you will benefit.

Germany still building coal plants ...

[Anonymous Coward]

BMW for one. Germany has been very aggressive in pushing green energy.

And just as aggressively building coal plants to back up the green sources. Coal has been a huge benefactor of the green push in Germany. Now admittedly these are modern, efficient and cleaner burning coal plants than what typically comes to mind. However the point needs to be made that renewables are almost always backed up by fossil fuels.

Expect some new nat gas plant to go up near Tesla too.

Re:Germany still building coal plants ...

[blind monkey 3]

BMW for one. Germany has been very aggressive in pushing green energy.

And just as aggressively building coal plants to back up the green sources. Coal has been a huge benefactor of the green push in Germany. Now admittedly these are modern, efficient and cleaner burning coal plants than what typically comes to mind. However the point needs to be made that renewables are almost always backed up by fossil fuels.

Expect some new nat gas plant to go up near Tesla too.

True. You should also mention that the coal plants built were to replace the older brown coal plants.
In the first half of 2014 Solar grew by 28 per cent in the first half of 2014 compared to 2013 and wind power grew by 19 per cent over the same period last year. brown coal generation is down four per cent and the production of hard coal-fired power plants decreased 11 per cent from 2013. Gas had the biggest decrease (preparing for the Russia /Ukraine challenge maybe?). Pity, gas would be preferable to coal imo.
the amount produced by coal has decreased and renewables increased.
There's a pretty graph in the linked page.
The 2013 figure for brown coal was about the highest it's been though.



I'm keen to see how well Tesla manages this.

Wonder if

[mdsolar]

They'll test the batteries? Wonder if they'll ship them charged? Wonder if there might be lots of storage available if the answers are yes and no respectively.

Re:Wonder if

[tomhath]

The logistics of connecting, charging, discharging, disconnecting enough batteries to make a difference seems very uneconomical.

Re:Wonder if

[mdsolar]

Unless you have to do it anyway.

Re:Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tras

[tomhath]

If they're generating electricity from "solar, wind, and geothermal" it will be heavily subsidized by state and federal governments, probably around 50%.

batteries cost money

[YesIAmAScript]

And those batteries cannot hold a charge for 6 months anyway.

Even if they could, you're talking about a deficit of about 1/3rd at the peak of winter and a corresponding surplus in the summer. So let's assume you have a 1/3rd total energy surplus for 2 months in the summer and have to hold it 6 months until winter where you use it up.

That'd be 2900MWh times 61 or 177GWh. that's 177M kWh. A Tesla pack holds 85kWh, let's assume it's about to become 100kWh. And the pack costs over $10K, we'll assume it costs $5K.

That would mean they need 1,770,000 packs, at $5K a piece or $89B worth of packs. It's also the entire output of the plant for 3.5 years.

Does this seem workable to you?

I think you're not getting a good grip on the actual size of the problem.

Re:batteries cost money

[Anonymous Coward]

> And those batteries cannot hold a charge for 6 months anyway.

I thought it was being built in Reno, not Greenland?

Re:batteries cost money

[Anonymous Coward]

> So let's assume you have a 1/3rd total energy surplus for 2 months in the summer and have to hold it 6 months until winter where you use it up.

You are making many assumptions there.

You can also assume that 50% of the energy is going to come from hydro and geo, and then you could build sufficient solar such that you had 100% of your energy requirements, on average, all year round, with just small top ups required here and there towards winter, being provided by battery backup. There will be a lot of work put into designing a total system such that it is feasible and affordable, I am sure.

More likely (which seems to be the case) you'd go for net zero over a year, at least to begin with. If you were over net zero you would run into regulatory issues, very probably, as you'd be running a power generation site with an incidental battery factory.

It does, though, give Tesla a fantastic research facility for testing buffering to batteries, and buffering to and from the grid, giving them a bunk up in terms of becoming a supplier to the energy industry as a whole.

Re:batteries cost money

[YesIAmAScript]

I forgot to do the 30% part.

2900MWh times 61 * 0.3 or 53GWh, 53M kWh. 530,000 packs or $2.66B worth of packs (apparently I misplaced a decimal point before). 1 year of entire plant output.

A lot closer to workable, but still unworkable.

This is why grid-scale electricity storage is considered a nascent technology instead of a solved one.

Hydro is NOT green.

[dbc]

Stop saying that. Dams are highly destructive of the environment. Entire fisheries wiped out. Valleys flooded. I just don't get it when bus loads of eco-protesters show up when someone wants to scrape 5 acres of desert for a factory, but flooding 10 of thousands of acres of virgin forest, destroying land and aquatic habitat upstream and downstream of the dam, and they say "Great! Green energy! Let me plug in my electric car!"

Please, please, next time you visit Yosemite, pay a visit to the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Then tell me how green hydro is.

Re:Hydro is NOT green.

[ultranova]

Dams are highly destructive of the environment.

All renewables have high enviromental impact, due to requiring huge areas dedicated to gathering disperse energy. The only even theoretically low-impact one is geothermal, since the gathering area is deep beneath what's usually considered environment, but sadly we lack drilling technology needed to utilize it in non-volcanic areas.

The only low-impact way of generating energy we currently have is nuclear, and that's dead in the water, so the future looks dark, but at least it'll be warm.

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tr

[FishTankX]

http://www.waste-management-wo...

Answer: Yes but lithium only makes up 3 percent of the cost of a lithium ion battery so recycling is uneconomical vs virgin production. If demand ever exceeds supply then that will likely change and old batteries which were thrown out will likely be reclaimed. Currently as I gather it there is about 12 pounds or $250-$350 worth of metallic lithium in a 75kwh battery pack. So currently lithium prices are a minimal impact on pack pricing considering that's a $20000 pack.

No they don't...

[denzacar]

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

From TFA:

Saudi Arabia has announced it is on track to start work on its first major solar farm early next year. ...
He added the project was on track to begin feeding electricity into the grid by 2015 and will mark the first step on the government's path towards delivering 41GW of solar capacity by 2032, through a combination of solar PV and solar thermal technologies.

And they are planing to be producing 120 GW by 2020 - of which only those 41GW will be solar. By 2032. 17GW will be nuclear.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...

UAE as of 2011 was producing 26.1 GW of electricity.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...
With plans for 28.8 megawatts (MW) wind farm and a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with 100 MW capacity.
While building at least 4 nuclear reactors, first two 1.4 GW ones planned to come on-line in 2017.

Neither country cares much about renewable sources because 1) oil and gas and 2) they are investing in nuclear.

Re:No they don't...

[WillAffleckUW]

You seem to have the ability to confuse solar PV with passive solar. Passive solar has a high ROI, oil is finite, and they're adapting to that.

There are many methods to use solar, entire buildings in Dubai and Saudi Arabia and other nearby areas use solar convection for heating/cooling, some use PV.

It makes more sense for them to sell finite oil to other countries than to burn it for electricity for their own urban and remote consumption.

The nuclear reactors may or may not survive. Just ask Iran.

Re:No they don't...

[denzacar]

You seem to have trouble with reading comprehension.

The numbers listed and those in the linked reports are for electricity they ARE producing, and the numbers they WILL BE producing.
From ALL renewable resources and from nuclear reactors.

Everything else, and you got MUCH HIGHER numbers for that too, is electricity created by burning oil and gas.
And that's just the electricity production.

When you're used to living in a lifeless desert, with insane temperatures, on top of an oil well, why would you give a flying fuck about melting icecaps, changing climate or more of the world turning into a desert while you're racking in billions in the process?
It's gonna get hotter? April and May will be like July? So what? It's gonna get colder? Great!
More deserts? So what? Food will be more expensive?
More expensive than shipping it into a middle of nowhere IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT?
Oil will become more expensive? FANTASTIC!

THEY. DON'T. GIVE A FUCK.

They are not EU countries like Germany, who do have something to lose and a lot more people who will complain about things like dead bears - so they are switching completely to renewable sources.

Camel spiders and scorpions might die from heat? EXCELLENT!
That's why UAE's PLANS, not current production but PLANS, for renewable sources are trivial compared to same old same old burning of oil and gas, while SA's are a mere fraction of what they are producing from oil and gas, and similarly, it's all "down the road, someday".
They have nothing to lose due to global warming. Not their problem.

Damns probably saved forests ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern damns are greener than the old ones, they include alternate paths and/or fish ladders and such to allow migrations.

And for an area with hundreds of thousands of acres of virgin forest the 10 thousand flooded acres is not terrible. If the damn is only flooding a small percentage of the habitat then the net gain is probably a win. Your argument is similar to a degree with that of the protesters wanting to preserve the 5 acres of desert, both a myopic perspective ignoring larger issues.

You need to look at the bigger picture. If not for those damns you decry how many forests would have been scraped away for coal mining, how much coal would have been burned, how much more pollution and acid rain in the air, how many acres of forest would have died from this additional pollution?

Things are far more complicated than you suggest.

Re:Damns probably saved forests ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A damn is a curse or condemnation. A dam is a thing that blocks the flow of water.

Got some change to go with that hope?

[raymorris]

> I would hope

Hope is good. Got some change to go with that? That's what'l solve everything - hope and change. (I'm hoping for some change right about now).

Re:Got some change to go with that hope?

[BasilBrush]

Testing multi-thousand dollar battery pack is a given. As is the factory's need of stored energy. The speculation that these two will go together is well worth making.

I know that everything "green" upsets you, and hurts your world view. But try not to be so grumpy.

Not corny

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing for sure. It won't be powered by ethanol.

Battery testing

[Anonymous Coward]

Have to test out all those big batteries somehow!

AmiMojo is a dumb feminazi shitcunt

[Anonymous Coward]

no text.

Re:Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tras

[haruchai]

Peak daytime costs are much higher than the evening in most of the sunny parts of the USA.

your imagination isn't working well :)

[stomv]

In Nevada and California, electric power is needed most -- and is most expensive -- during hot daytime hours. This is true throughout most of the country, and won't change until there are metric library of congress tonnes of it throughout the grid. Someday, with oodles of PV, the peak will shift a few hours later in the day, to just after sundown (on hot weekdays).

Note: there are some parts of the country, notably the deep southeast, that are winter peaking. Winter peaks tend to be weekdays at around 6-7am.

Credit Downgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I would give Exxon a credit downgrade within 16 years! At Exxon and other companies in the oil and gas the reason Elon Musk is winning because it is only business.

signed,
conservative analysis

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of t

[LostMyBeaver]

Where does the lithium go when the rest of the battery is recycled?

Big blue barrels buried under the dirt where someone will live some day?

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of

[LostMyBeaver]

Hmmm... I saw the link afterwards... I would like to see a ruling that explicitly requires battery manufacturers to recycle their own batteries and most specifically the lithium. I don't care what it costs. It shouldn't be the duty of the tax payer to clean their mess and based on history, if you don't force it from the start, it'll never get taken care of when the problem is out of control.

Not renewable

[jbee02]

Technically geothermal energy isnt renewable. It is possible to use it to the point where the earth cools down in said locations. This has been seen in areas around the world where georhermal energy is heavilly used

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[macpacheco]

Can you quote us a source for lithium being difficult to recycle ?
I remember reading from Elon Musk that not only the tech to fully recycle the Li-Ion base components exist, but it's also cheaper to recycle than to get new raw materials.
It's one of the questions, wouldn't it be better to recycle Tesla Model S batteries that are too degraded to function as model S batteries or to use those for stationary energy storage. With an efficient enough giga factory it might be better to recycle soon, and use new batteries to stationary storage instead.

New definition

[volmtech]

I pulled out my 1988 copy of The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary. The definitions of subsidize and subsidy only mention use of public money for a benefit. Paying less than a maximum tax is not listed. After searching over ten web sites I found one listing a tax break as a subsidy. Kind of like the school bully taking everyone's lunch money. One day he only takes half of yours. All the others now claim the bully is subsidizing you.

We have been brainwashed into thinking all money belongs to the government so anyone keeping any is being subsidized by everyone else.

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tra

[Optali]

Since when is Lithium an environmental hazard? Are you aware that Li is a light metal? It actually lighter than Aluminium... ever heard about Aluminium contamination?

Do you know that Lithium is also easily recyclable? No?

Well, in this case I would recommend to use Google, because, you know... you aren't the only one that can use a keyboard and has a computer, you may be the only one in your redneck teabagging club, but don take it for granted outside of your town in the Rocky's

My greetings to your sister and to Bigfoot!

Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of t

[Optali]

Li has no restrictions, it can be put into landfills, it's a light metal belonging to the first period and quite reactive. Not a big deal actually. So no blue barrels needed.

It is not chemically dangerous but in powder form it is... (I bet you will love this): Explosive!!!

So, now I need to find a way to get the Li from the batteries and create my very own Mythbusters lab in the backyard!!! Whoooooooooooooo!