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Tesla To Close a Dozen Solar Facilities In 9 States (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Electric car maker Tesla's move last week to cut 9 percent of its workforce will sharply downsize the residential solar business it bought two years ago in a controversial $2.6 billion deal, according to three internal company documents and seven current and former Tesla solar employees. The latest cuts to the division that was once SolarCity -- a sales and installation company founded by two cousins of Tesla CEO Elon Musk -- include closing about a dozen installation facilities, according to internal company documents, and ending a retail partnership with Home Depot that the current and former employees said generated about half of its sales. About 60 installation facilities remain open, according to an internal company list reviewed by Reuters. An internal company email named 14 facilities slated for closure, but the other list included only 13 of those locations.
I've seen short sellers jumping on this, claiming Tesla's energy division is failing, claiming that this is confirmation that the Solar City buyout was a bailout for Elon's cousins.
What I see here is Tesla restructuring to be more efficient and consistent.
Tesla is a company that grew very quickly and incorporated into itself a few smaller companies, the largest of which is Solar City.
As a result of that past there are a lot of roles that grew out of a structure that fit a much smaller company that don't make sense now, roles that are redundant between Tesla and SC, etc.
As far as I understand, SC was more of a distributed solar power company that dealt with all aspects of installation, maintenance, financing, etc.
Tesla's residential energy division is transitioning more towards having solar and battery products being something the consumer or the house builder buys directly as product.
So they sold off the maintenance/upkeep contracts to other solar companies and they're bringing all their sales people inhouse, into the same stores they display and sell their cars in.
Tesla's battery storage division is growing significantly.
And sure, like the with the Model 3 production, their new solar tile/panel factory might be taking longer than expected to ramp up, but I wouldn't take that as failure by any stretch, I often see analysts looking at last year's number, comparing it to this year's number and deciding that because it's lower or higher it is worse, without even considering it in the actual context of how the company is run.
Which isn't remotely what happened here. A dozen solar install locations are not "20% of their business operations".
Tesla's solar division (formerly SolarCity) is transitioning from being a (low margin) installer of other people's solar panels into a solar roofing product manufacturer.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
We'll see in a few years how Tesla does. But California's rules should help Tesla's solar panel and battery business.
The New York Times says California will require that all new homes have solar power, starting in 2020.
Also, a rate change that takes effect in 2019
will charge California customers based on the time of day they use electricity. So homeowners with energy-efficiency features — a battery in particular, allowing energy to be stored for when it is most efficiently used — will avoid higher costs.
"Losing money left, right and centre doesn't mean you're not profitable."
Perhaps not, but there is often a strong correlation between losses and a lack of profitability. Plus which, it's a bit hard to classify closing facilities and firing workers as capital expenditure.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Solar City acquired its debt load working on the Solar City Gigafactory (Gigafactory 2). It had, and has under Tesla, continually been transitioning from its old, low margin business model to this.
If you have an issue with the facts, explain them, but these are the facts. You don't build the largest solar plant in the US with pocket change.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Musk made almost his only real profit while operating PayPal, whichh is a 'useful' entity but also a far shadier version of 'banking' than most banksters engage in.
Musk peddles hopes and dreams. He markets hype to believers in a dystopian future; his hype provides the illusion of a way out of the percieved dismal fate.
I mean, damnit, it is not that difficult to see the obvious.
In Musk-world, any investor who is dissatisfied is a 'short seller.'
Just one component of the illusion being spun.
Many good business ideas fail in the sales and marketing process. And partnering with Home Depot appears to be a weak spot. Can't make any money there and can't sell on your own (possibly as a condition of the HD sales channel). HD caters to crazy little old ladies who insist on buying a flower at a hardware store. Or DIYers who don't notice when they exchange their Blum cabinet hardware line for cheap Chinese knockoffs.
Have gnu, will travel.
And please keep in mind, batteries are NOT necessarily required to have an EV.
The Tesla drags a 1400 pound battery pack... Fuel Cells weight a whole lot less
While not a Musk fanboy this direct linking of PayPal with him is a bit strong. Most scummy activities happened after he (and the others) were bought out by ebay, in fact I can't remember anything dirty before that.
You really don't have a clue, do you?
The Solar Roof is aimed squarely at new construction, where it won't be expensive, especially when Tesla's warranty is included in the calculations. CA just mandated solar on new houses, and Tesla Solar is uniquely positioned to satisfy the demand produced by this new mandate.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
> But the tech is there
Yes, electrolysis and fuel cells exist and have for some decades now. The question is if they are good enough and cheap enough to replace gasoline engines. The answer so far is no, and by such a wide margin that the only people still advocating for such are either hucksters or die-hard hopefuls.
Here's why;
The larger of the two models you linked (The $4000 one) is listed as producing 0.5 liters per minute at 7 bar. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles start at 340 bar, such as the Honda Clarity with it's ~4kg storage tank. The only other HFC vehicle I know of is the Toyota Mirai which uses a 700 bar tank...
Hydrogen is just under 0.0001 kg/L at STP. So for 4kg you need 40,000 liters of gas. That's 80,000 minutes to fill a tank, or just over 55 days. (The pressure difference is so large that the 7 bar is almost negligible here). The Clarity has an EPA rating of 240 miles per tank. It takes over 50 days to refill 240 miles worth of driving, or an equivalent of 0.18 miles of added drivable range per hour.
Compare to an EV recharging at L1 rates, which maxes out at 1.4KW. Even a mediocre EV will get 3 miles per KWh, so at L1 (standard wall outlet) that's about 4 miles of added drivable range per hour. L2 charging at home is about 5 times faster but let's keep it simple.
To get the equivalent hydrogen refueling rate, you'd need about 22 of those units... or $88,000 worth of electrolysis machines. Compressors not included. (The EVSE that plugs your electric car into the wall costs ~$200 for a nice one, and you get one with the car itself.)
The only way to make this economically viable is to consolidate, and leverage economies of scale. An electrolysis setup specially engineered for refueling a single vehicle overnight (8 hours max) might cost $20,000 to be very optimistic, but a $2,000,000 centralized station can perhaps refuel well over 100 cars per day at a few minutes each. Problem is, now you have to built enough $2,000,000 hydrogen fuel stations before enough people will buy HFC vehicles to make it a profitable thing to do. Once upon a time gasoline cars had a similar problem, but considering the only competition at the time was horses or steam powered trucks - and the fact that gasoline stores and transports rather nicely - it wasn't an insurmountable problem.
Hydrogen doesn't even make a whole lot of sense for stationary storage; The losses from electrolysis to storage to generation add up quick, and it has a tough time competing with chemical batteries for $/KWh.
=Smidge=
(I suppose to be perfectly fair with comparisons, a typical gas pump dispenses ~10 GPM, resulting in about 18,000 drivable miles per hour equivalent...)
Only in the US is there a lack
This is an incredibly stupid thing to say. There are essentially zero countries which have well developed hydrogen vehicle infrastructure. While some countries are better than others, there are certainly far more countries where hydrogen fuel for vehicles is essentially nonexistent than there are countries where it's commonly available.
Those particular 8 words are pretty much the worst thing you could have said if you actually want to be taken seriously on the subject.
According the rollout at Nikola, those stations will be built and maintained by Ryder and available to all hydrogen vehicles.
Great, those 800 stations are a nice start, assuming they actually get built. They only need to add another 113,733 gas stations and then we can fully get rid of ICE vehicles. Meanwhile the number of BEV charging stations can be a fraction of that due to the fact that a significant percentage of the population can charge them at home.
Yes, you have to pay... But believe it or not, with a Tesla too, you just paid up front. With the newer Teslas, the "all free" model has been withdrawn.
This is a red herring. Nobody has ever argued that "free refueling" is a benefit of BEV, so you bringing it up here makes zero sense. The actual argument is that you pay more for hydrogen because it's far less efficient, ergo more expensive.
All of that on top of the fact that the Myrai is a shit car which is badly underpowered compared to a Tesla. Call me back when someone develops a comparable hydrogen vehicle so we can actually look at efficiency/range/price/etc when comparing two evenly matched cars.