And oil pipelines don't need to maintain near vacuums and if one leaks it's a minor environmental issue, not a slaughter.
Oil pipelines have to bear far greater masses, with far greater pumping loads, with much more complicated thermal regulation. A leak isn't a "minor environmental issue", it can get you hit with millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and cleanup costs, depending on the severity. And a bullet-sized hole in a Hyperloop tube (by the way, good luck shooting through an inch of steel with a handgun) isn't a "slaughter"; it would hardly even be noticeable. You're trying to rapidly fill up millions of cubic meters of low-pressure tube volume through a hole the size of a finger - good luck with that.
What's being described is a shock tube problem. Shock tubes are very well studied. The wavefront does move extremely fast - many times the speed of sound. But it carries almost no energy once you get any meaningful distance away from the source. You don't get this "wall" of atmospheric pressure air that you just run into from a near vacuum; you get a whisper, followed by a gradient that steadily builds over a long distance. The larger the shock tube, the less significant a hole becomes due to scaling factors: cross section increases with scale by the scaling factor squared, but volume increases by the scaling factor cubed.
Are you talking about "out of the tubes" or "out of the airlocks that capsules enter through"? If the former: absolutely, though irrelevant, since it's just a startup task. If the latter: A) not true (you can just have multiple tanks much larger than the air lock, each kept at a successively lower pressure, and then successively connect them to the airlock - effectively emptying it almost instantly. B) Irrelevant (you can have as many airlocks as you want, and thus take as long as you want to empty them).
From literally the headline of the article you linked: "Tesla drops $35,000 price from Model 3 page—insists plans haven’t changed. Tesla spokesperson says the company still plans to introduce a $35,000 model."
They removed it from the configuration page, because it's a configuration you can't get right now. Also not on the config page is non-PUP, air suspension, trailer hitch, cream interior for non-performance, and a trunk full of live bees.
Proving my point. 1/1000 atmosphere is vacuum retard
"Hard vacuum" and "soft vacuum" are relative terms to each other - hard vacuum meaning "lower pressure than a soft vacuum", without any universally agreed-on dividing line. Versions of evacuated-tube transport that lack compressors need to operate at much lower pressures than versions that have compressors; likewise, systems relying on air bearings must operate at much higher pressures than those without them. The former is about one thousandth of an atmosphere, while the latter is closer to one millionth, give or take an order of magnitude or two in either direction.
Takes the same pumps to get there as 1/10000.
Not even remotely.
The BMW i8 is excluded from Germany’s rebate too so that blows a hole wide open in your retarded conspiracy theory.
BMW i8 was A) never going to come close to falling under the line, and B) introduced two years after the rebate (2015 vs. 2013).
Buying any amount of cobal from Cuba is illegal and musk should be executed as a traitor.
Here, have my shovel and keep digging your hole into Ridiculousness Hill.
What about the Kona is a good value? It's the same size as a Leaf or a Bolt, only a marginally larger battery (and no better streamlining) than the Bolt or Leaf (aka, no Supercharging), no access to any better charging network than the Bolt, and is built around an ICE econobox that has a MSRP of $19500 - but for the electric version they want you to pay £24995 for one that has a battery only marginally larger than a Leaf's and does 0-100 kph in 9,7 seconds (not a typo), or £33995 if you want the slightly-larger-than-Bolt-sized battery and a 7,6 second 0-100. And even things like nav are an added option on the base version.
The WLTP ranges are 186 and 292 miles, respectively, which correspond to an EPA range (using the Leaf's 177:151 WLTP:EPA ratio) of 159 and 249mi, respectively. Charge times are 54 minutes to 80% from a CCS 100kW, and should be around 1 hour 20 minutes to 80% from the much more common 50kW CCS chargers. The former - that's the highest power charger they can take, a type that's not all that common, paired with the largest battery - corresponds to about 220mph charge rate. Model 3 hits nearly 500mph at low SoCs (most commonly up to ~50% on the LR), on a charge network that's almost everywhere, well spaced and well maintained.
Also, Hyundai has been famous for the Ioniq having only limited availability. I expect the same thing from the Kona. I see no evidence that Hyundai is putting in the resources to produce it in significant volumes.
Also, unicorns are real. I mean, while we're discussing fictions.
I'm not sure whether it's hilarious or sad that despite the $35k Model 3 (SR, non-PUP) being all over Tesla's website, Tesla repeatedly stating that no plans with it have changed, and that it remains on schedule for around the end of this year... the fact that the page for confirming orders doesn't mention it means that they're lying and the SR battery is secretly cancelled! You know what you also can't order there? Non-PUP, air suspension, a trailer hitch, cream interior for non-performance, and a trunk full of live bees. Because none of those things are currently available as options. It's an order page, for crying out loud.
"Hard vacuum and soft vacuum are terms that are defined with a dividing line defined differently by different sources, such as 1 Torr,[42][43] or 0.1 Torr,[44] the common denominator being that a hard vacuum is a higher vacuum than a soft one."
Re, Germany: Or, we can actually describe the real situation: Germany tried to help its local brands vs. Tesla by setting a limit on their EV subsidy at just below the price of a Model X. Tesla modified the Model X pricing structure in Germany so that a number of standard features (which most everyone would want) became optional, lowering the base price, but could be added back on via an option. Germany, responding to claims that the company wasn't actually selling the base version, dropped Tesla from their list of approved vehicles. Tesla counterclaimed that they do in fact sell the base version, and have more to the point delivered some; that it's just not very popular. Germany booted Tesla nonetheless. Tesla is paying for the subsidies for buyers that are being denied them, while it files an appeal with German regulators.
Re, cobalt: First, Tesla uses far less cobalt per kWh than its competitors. Its cathodes in its current 2170 cells (Model 3, powerpacks, etc) are less than 3% cobalt, while most manufacturers are struggling to achieve 10% in their next gen cells. Beyond that, though, this is an issue that was entirely initiated by Panasonic (a supplier of 18650 cells to Tesla, the type used in the Model S and Model X). Panasonic, discovering that the supplies of Sherrit International (a Canadian company) contained some intermingled Cuban cobalt, contacted the US Treasury Department for advice. Based on the feedback they received, they dropped Sherritt as a supplier.
Amazing the things you make a "scandal" out of. The latter one in particular: it's ridiculous that a Japanese company, making cells in Japan, because one minor component it uses is purchased from a Canadian company, and some small fraction of their cobalt comes from Cuba, from mines not associated with human rights problems, they have to stop all purchases of cobalt from said Canadian company, because the US has a half-century-old spat with Cuba.
Also, where should the labels stop? "Cultivated in a field fertilized with slaughterhouse waste"? "Handled by a snotty teenager with a cold"?
Not that I'd complain having a full traceable history logged to ids in the packaging or crates (NFC / RFID / QR / etc, depending on the exact implementation details);) Bunch of log records like "X cultivar was planted at Y location on Z day... products A and B were applied on day C.... " etc, where everything is hyperlinked to learn more about it.
It's mostly about transport times. If long-distance endpoint-to-endpoint transport can be made fast and not unduly expensive, I imagine you'll see fruit more often picked in a riper state and shipped in anti-crush containers. Rather than dumped into big boxes, hard and green, so that they can handle them like rocks.
Why on earth does a plant need to place all of that sugar and water to keep such tiny seeds fed to be able to grow?
To attract animals to eat the fruits and distribute the seeds. Duh. Yes, brix is a common measure of fruit quality, as consumers usually prefer higher brix fruits. But there's countless wild fruits that are higher brix than apples. Also, as a side note, but brix without corresponding TA often tastes bland or insipid.
Apples are not a particularly water-wasteful fruit to cultivate.
You're off the mark on this one. The big issue they need to tackle is the "picking fruit underripe so that it lasts long enough to distribute" issue. You actually do rob fruits of a lot of nutrients via picking underripe, and IMHO more seriously, rob them of their texture and flavour. Anyone who's ever compared a fully vine-ripened homegrown tomato (even of a common commercial hybrid cultivar) vs. a store tomato knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Also: it always seems weird to me that they see the need to modify existing fruits so heavily, when there's an endless array of other fruits out there that can be cultivated to add new taste/texture experiences to the market. Yesterday I had lucuma ice cream and a baobab milkshake, both delicious. I enjoy a bowl of acerola when I can get them. Always pick up some langsat when I get a chance, and love me some frozen jackfruit (although that one takes a couple tastes to acquire it). Oh, and don't even get me started on members of the mangosteen genus (Garcinia)! Oh great, now my mouth is watering... SO need to see if the asian food store near Hlemmur has some more mangosteens in stock...
That's the main reason that Hyperloop Alpha avoided maglev - traditional maglev is crazy expensive. InducTrac is cheaper, but still pricey.
Hard vacuums also require really expensive pumping hardware and a lot of power to achieve and maintain, so it's no surprise that they wanted to avoid those too.
What you want is Loop, not Hyperloop. Loop is PRT... think "underground SkyTran", with both people and vehicle capsules. Hyperloop only makes sense for between cities with a significant spacing between them.
Boring Company is pursuing both, but Loop is first on their schedule.
Not sure that there's much tech to steal. Both of these companies - unlike the original Hyperloop Alpha design from SpaceX, which was an air-bearing train in low-pressure air - are pursuing vactrains (maglev, hard vacuum). China already has plenty of experience with maglev.
I remember one company getting funded whose business plan was.... no business plan. Their entire idea was, "we're a group of people who have organized ourselves into a company; you give us a business plan and funding, and we'll implement it." Got a couple million dollars, if I remember right.
More recently, they nailed Bitcoin right around its peak (Aww, too soon?;) ).
You are wrong. Look at the financials. As a percent of of revenue, SG&A for the last 4 quarters has been 20%, 21%, 22%, and 19%.
Anything older than Q4 is pretty meaningless (maybe Q3, but that's pretty arguable), given that the point is to see how SG&A responds to Model 3 delivery rates, and they were meaningless before then.
Q4 Model 3 deliveries: 1550 Q1 Model 3 deliveries: 8180
Q4 automotive revenues: $ 2,702,195 k Q1 automotive revenues: $ 2,735,317 k
Q4 SG&A: $682,290 k Q1 SG&A: $686,404 k
The revenues aspect is misleading, however, as they did a serious inventory liquidation in Q4, and Q1 had much higher in-transit numbers at the end of the quarter. But the key point is: SG&A was virtually flat.
Just wait a couple weeks for the Q2 report. I guarantee you that (once you factor for in-transit inventory - Q2's is *massive*, due to the need to delay hitting 200k until the end of the quarter), revenue growth will well outpace SG&A growth, despite the severance hit.
Here you go again with year-over-year, rather than quarter-over-quarter. If you want to know how SG&A responds to growth in Model 3 production rates, you need to look quarter-over-quarter.
Not year-over-year - quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year says nothing whatsoever about the impact of Model 3 scaleup on SG&A. Despite the large growth in Model 3 production across Q1, SG&A in Q1 was basically identical to in Q4. Just wait for the Q2 report; I guarantee you it won't even remotely come close to linearly tracking Model 3 volumes (there will be a small hit in Q2 from layoff severance, but that'll turn into a benefit in Q3).
For your hypothesis to work, SG&A needs to roughly scale linearly with Model 3 volume. Otherwise, Model 3 revenue swamps it.
They average around 25%, that's not a "small gross margin" by any standards in the automotive world. They dipped down when they started Model 3 production but it's been recovering well, already around 19%.
SG&A has been flat despite Model 3 growth. Much of SG&A has to be paid in advance of scaleup, and much is nonlinear. Also, the supercharger network is being transitioned from a loss leader to paying for its own growth.
For your "SG&A will kill them" hypothesis to work out, SG&A needs to grow roughly linearly with the massive increase in revenue from Model 3s they're taking in. There's no evidence that this is happening, and good evidence that it won't. Heck, haven't even mentioned the layoffs, whose benefits will go straight to the SG&A bottom line in Q3.
Slashdot Mirror
Oil pipelines have to bear far greater masses, with far greater pumping loads, with much more complicated thermal regulation. A leak isn't a "minor environmental issue", it can get you hit with millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and cleanup costs, depending on the severity. And a bullet-sized hole in a Hyperloop tube (by the way, good luck shooting through an inch of steel with a handgun) isn't a "slaughter"; it would hardly even be noticeable. You're trying to rapidly fill up millions of cubic meters of low-pressure tube volume through a hole the size of a finger - good luck with that.
What's being described is a shock tube problem. Shock tubes are very well studied. The wavefront does move extremely fast - many times the speed of sound. But it carries almost no energy once you get any meaningful distance away from the source. You don't get this "wall" of atmospheric pressure air that you just run into from a near vacuum; you get a whisper, followed by a gradient that steadily builds over a long distance. The larger the shock tube, the less significant a hole becomes due to scaling factors: cross section increases with scale by the scaling factor squared, but volume increases by the scaling factor cubed.
Are you talking about "out of the tubes" or "out of the airlocks that capsules enter through"? If the former: absolutely, though irrelevant, since it's just a startup task. If the latter: A) not true (you can just have multiple tanks much larger than the air lock, each kept at a successively lower pressure, and then successively connect them to the airlock - effectively emptying it almost instantly. B) Irrelevant (you can have as many airlocks as you want, and thus take as long as you want to empty them).
From literally the headline of the article you linked: "Tesla drops $35,000 price from Model 3 page—insists plans haven’t changed. Tesla spokesperson says the company still plans to introduce a $35,000 model."
They removed it from the configuration page, because it's a configuration you can't get right now. Also not on the config page is non-PUP, air suspension, trailer hitch, cream interior for non-performance, and a trunk full of live bees.
"Hard vacuum" and "soft vacuum" are relative terms to each other - hard vacuum meaning "lower pressure than a soft vacuum", without any universally agreed-on dividing line. Versions of evacuated-tube transport that lack compressors need to operate at much lower pressures than versions that have compressors; likewise, systems relying on air bearings must operate at much higher pressures than those without them. The former is about one thousandth of an atmosphere, while the latter is closer to one millionth, give or take an order of magnitude or two in either direction.
Not even remotely.
BMW i8 was A) never going to come close to falling under the line, and B) introduced two years after the rebate (2015 vs. 2013).
Here, have my shovel and keep digging your hole into Ridiculousness Hill.
What about the Kona is a good value? It's the same size as a Leaf or a Bolt, only a marginally larger battery (and no better streamlining) than the Bolt or Leaf (aka, no Supercharging), no access to any better charging network than the Bolt, and is built around an ICE econobox that has a MSRP of $19500 - but for the electric version they want you to pay £24995 for one that has a battery only marginally larger than a Leaf's and does 0-100 kph in 9,7 seconds (not a typo), or £33995 if you want the slightly-larger-than-Bolt-sized battery and a 7,6 second 0-100. And even things like nav are an added option on the base version.
The WLTP ranges are 186 and 292 miles, respectively, which correspond to an EPA range (using the Leaf's 177:151 WLTP:EPA ratio) of 159 and 249mi, respectively. Charge times are 54 minutes to 80% from a CCS 100kW, and should be around 1 hour 20 minutes to 80% from the much more common 50kW CCS chargers. The former - that's the highest power charger they can take, a type that's not all that common, paired with the largest battery - corresponds to about 220mph charge rate. Model 3 hits nearly 500mph at low SoCs (most commonly up to ~50% on the LR), on a charge network that's almost everywhere, well spaced and well maintained.
Also, Hyundai has been famous for the Ioniq having only limited availability. I expect the same thing from the Kona. I see no evidence that Hyundai is putting in the resources to produce it in significant volumes.
Lastly: have you seen how they did the battery pack on this thing? My god, if you ever see road debris, swerve.
On the upside, Hyundai's battery tech is leaps and bounds beyond Leaf's, and more comparable to Bolt's. There should be no #Rapidgate here.
Also, unicorns are real. I mean, while we're discussing fictions.
I'm not sure whether it's hilarious or sad that despite the $35k Model 3 (SR, non-PUP) being all over Tesla's website, Tesla repeatedly stating that no plans with it have changed, and that it remains on schedule for around the end of this year... the fact that the page for confirming orders doesn't mention it means that they're lying and the SR battery is secretly cancelled! You know what you also can't order there? Non-PUP, air suspension, a trailer hitch, cream interior for non-performance, and a trunk full of live bees. Because none of those things are currently available as options. It's an order page, for crying out loud.
"Hard vacuum and soft vacuum are terms that are defined with a dividing line defined differently by different sources, such as 1 Torr,[42][43] or 0.1 Torr,[44] the common denominator being that a hard vacuum is a higher vacuum than a soft one."
Re, Germany: Or, we can actually describe the real situation: Germany tried to help its local brands vs. Tesla by setting a limit on their EV subsidy at just below the price of a Model X. Tesla modified the Model X pricing structure in Germany so that a number of standard features (which most everyone would want) became optional, lowering the base price, but could be added back on via an option. Germany, responding to claims that the company wasn't actually selling the base version, dropped Tesla from their list of approved vehicles. Tesla counterclaimed that they do in fact sell the base version, and have more to the point delivered some; that it's just not very popular. Germany booted Tesla nonetheless. Tesla is paying for the subsidies for buyers that are being denied them, while it files an appeal with German regulators.
Re, cobalt: First, Tesla uses far less cobalt per kWh than its competitors. Its cathodes in its current 2170 cells (Model 3, powerpacks, etc) are less than 3% cobalt, while most manufacturers are struggling to achieve 10% in their next gen cells. Beyond that, though, this is an issue that was entirely initiated by Panasonic (a supplier of 18650 cells to Tesla, the type used in the Model S and Model X). Panasonic, discovering that the supplies of Sherrit International (a Canadian company) contained some intermingled Cuban cobalt, contacted the US Treasury Department for advice. Based on the feedback they received, they dropped Sherritt as a supplier.
Amazing the things you make a "scandal" out of. The latter one in particular: it's ridiculous that a Japanese company, making cells in Japan, because one minor component it uses is purchased from a Canadian company, and some small fraction of their cobalt comes from Cuba, from mines not associated with human rights problems, they have to stop all purchases of cobalt from said Canadian company, because the US has a half-century-old spat with Cuba.
Also, where should the labels stop? "Cultivated in a field fertilized with slaughterhouse waste"? "Handled by a snotty teenager with a cold"?
Not that I'd complain having a full traceable history logged to ids in the packaging or crates (NFC / RFID / QR / etc, depending on the exact implementation details) ;) Bunch of log records like "X cultivar was planted at Y location on Z day... products A and B were applied on day C.... " etc, where everything is hyperlinked to learn more about it.
What about a sleevewarmerdog?
It's mostly about transport times. If long-distance endpoint-to-endpoint transport can be made fast and not unduly expensive, I imagine you'll see fruit more often picked in a riper state and shipped in anti-crush containers. Rather than dumped into big boxes, hard and green, so that they can handle them like rocks.
Oooohh, annonas too! Cherimoya, sugar apple, guanabana, biribá.... *swoon*
To attract animals to eat the fruits and distribute the seeds. Duh. Yes, brix is a common measure of fruit quality, as consumers usually prefer higher brix fruits. But there's countless wild fruits that are higher brix than apples. Also, as a side note, but brix without corresponding TA often tastes bland or insipid.
Apples are not a particularly water-wasteful fruit to cultivate.
You're off the mark on this one. The big issue they need to tackle is the "picking fruit underripe so that it lasts long enough to distribute" issue. You actually do rob fruits of a lot of nutrients via picking underripe, and IMHO more seriously, rob them of their texture and flavour. Anyone who's ever compared a fully vine-ripened homegrown tomato (even of a common commercial hybrid cultivar) vs. a store tomato knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Also: it always seems weird to me that they see the need to modify existing fruits so heavily, when there's an endless array of other fruits out there that can be cultivated to add new taste/texture experiences to the market. Yesterday I had lucuma ice cream and a baobab milkshake, both delicious. I enjoy a bowl of acerola when I can get them. Always pick up some langsat when I get a chance, and love me some frozen jackfruit (although that one takes a couple tastes to acquire it). Oh, and don't even get me started on members of the mangosteen genus (Garcinia)! Oh great, now my mouth is watering... SO need to see if the asian food store near Hlemmur has some more mangosteens in stock...
That's the main reason that Hyperloop Alpha avoided maglev - traditional maglev is crazy expensive. InducTrac is cheaper, but still pricey.
Hard vacuums also require really expensive pumping hardware and a lot of power to achieve and maintain, so it's no surprise that they wanted to avoid those too.
What you want is Loop, not Hyperloop. Loop is PRT... think "underground SkyTran", with both people and vehicle capsules. Hyperloop only makes sense for between cities with a significant spacing between them.
Boring Company is pursuing both, but Loop is first on their schedule.
Unfortunately, not in San Jose ;)
Not sure that there's much tech to steal. Both of these companies - unlike the original Hyperloop Alpha design from SpaceX, which was an air-bearing train in low-pressure air - are pursuing vactrains (maglev, hard vacuum). China already has plenty of experience with maglev.
The Onion hit the nail on the head quite a few times, back in the day. E.g.:
Species Of Blue-Green Algae Announces IPO
AOL Acquires Time-Warner In Largest-Ever Expenditure Of Pretend Internet Money
I remember one company getting funded whose business plan was.... no business plan. Their entire idea was, "we're a group of people who have organized ourselves into a company; you give us a business plan and funding, and we'll implement it." Got a couple million dollars, if I remember right.
More recently, they nailed Bitcoin right around its peak (Aww, too soon? ;) ).
Bitcoin Plunge Reveals Possible Vulnerabilities In Crazy Imaginary Internet Money
They've not yet poked fun at the self-driving bubble as heavily, so I guess we have a little more time yet ;)
Anything older than Q4 is pretty meaningless (maybe Q3, but that's pretty arguable), given that the point is to see how SG&A responds to Model 3 delivery rates, and they were meaningless before then.
Q4 Model 3 deliveries: 1550
Q1 Model 3 deliveries: 8180
Q4 automotive revenues: $ 2,702,195 k
Q1 automotive revenues: $ 2,735,317 k
Q4 SG&A: $682,290 k
Q1 SG&A: $686,404 k
The revenues aspect is misleading, however, as they did a serious inventory liquidation in Q4, and Q1 had much higher in-transit numbers at the end of the quarter. But the key point is: SG&A was virtually flat.
Just wait a couple weeks for the Q2 report. I guarantee you that (once you factor for in-transit inventory - Q2's is *massive*, due to the need to delay hitting 200k until the end of the quarter), revenue growth will well outpace SG&A growth, despite the severance hit.
Here you go again with year-over-year, rather than quarter-over-quarter. If you want to know how SG&A responds to growth in Model 3 production rates, you need to look quarter-over-quarter.
Yes, they are charging Model 3 owners. There is no way to get free supercharging on a Model 3.
You were more fun when you spent your time here calling everyone "space nutters"
Are you really unable to spot when you're being trolled, or are you just playing along?
If I posted it, you'd see my name up there.
New flash: I'm not the only person who likes Tesla here.
Not year-over-year - quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year says nothing whatsoever about the impact of Model 3 scaleup on SG&A. Despite the large growth in Model 3 production across Q1, SG&A in Q1 was basically identical to in Q4. Just wait for the Q2 report; I guarantee you it won't even remotely come close to linearly tracking Model 3 volumes (there will be a small hit in Q2 from layoff severance, but that'll turn into a benefit in Q3).
For your hypothesis to work, SG&A needs to roughly scale linearly with Model 3 volume. Otherwise, Model 3 revenue swamps it.
They average around 25%, that's not a "small gross margin" by any standards in the automotive world. They dipped down when they started Model 3 production but it's been recovering well, already around 19%.
SG&A has been flat despite Model 3 growth. Much of SG&A has to be paid in advance of scaleup, and much is nonlinear. Also, the supercharger network is being transitioned from a loss leader to paying for its own growth.
For your "SG&A will kill them" hypothesis to work out, SG&A needs to grow roughly linearly with the massive increase in revenue from Model 3s they're taking in. There's no evidence that this is happening, and good evidence that it won't. Heck, haven't even mentioned the layoffs, whose benefits will go straight to the SG&A bottom line in Q3.
Slashdot's ability to spot trolling sure isn't what it used to be.