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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."
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.
"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.
> 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.
I figured they would power it with hype on Slashdot.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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.
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.
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.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Unless it starts raining and snowing upstream pretty soon, Hoover Dam isn't going to be a source of much electricity anymore.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
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
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95