Hey, I like the shorts. Thanks to them I was able to buy TSLA at $267. Like most people, I'm generally fond of individuals who choose to give me their money.
I remember all the people over in Shortsville writing articles encouraging people not to "go wobbly" when Tesla was down in the 250s/260s, but to double down on the shorts.
$306,85 today;) And analyst factory checks showing that production appears to be up to nearly 3k per week now. Now you've even got long-time Tesla-despising shorts going long just to cash out on the squeeze of their fellow shorts. It's going to be a $10+B bloodbath.
Now that their old production canard is going away, they'll have to revert to their fallback, "But Tesla loses money on each Model 3!". Yes, that would be meaningful in a world where the cost of a vehicle exactly equaled the cost of the steel/aluminum and 3rd party parts that went into it, and the cost of labour and hardware depreciation was zero. Meanwhile in the real world, if you're producing an average a bit over 1k per week (Q1) with labour and hardware designed for 5k per week... well, of course that's going to be running a negative. It's impressive that they were only running a ~17% negative margin on Model 3 in Q1.
I'd think that one of the biggest challenges would actually be one of the safety features - the pyro fuse. It blows instantly in an accident, disabling all discharge.
That said, with the amount of energy that's stored in electric car batteries
Electrical energy stored != combustion potential energy, and combustion potential energy != energy that can be practically released in normal circumstances (there's five times more potential energy to be released from the combustion of 1000kg of alumium or graphite vs. 1000kg of nitroglycerine, but which one would you rather be next to in a crash?).
It is not the "energy" stored in the batteries in "lithium battery fires" as you put it. First off, they're lithium-ion batteries, not lithium batteries, and yes, there's a big difference. There's no metallic lithium in lithium-ion batteries unless they've been abused (plating out of lithium at the anode is a failure mode, due to attempting to overcharge a cell or charging at too low of temperatures - both of which are prevented in a proper EV battery pack). The power (not energy) of the cell may provide a (significant) short-circuit ignition source if crushed, but what happens thereout depends on the chemistry of the cell; the fire from a burning cell (in varieties that are capable of burning) is most often the electrolyte (of which there are many varieties). The rest of the cell just isn't that flammable; the anodes are predominantly carbon (graphite or amorphous, sometimes with silicon) and the cathodes are metal oxides. The lithium itself is present as ions (hence the name) intercalated (in small quantities) in the lattices of the graphite and metal oxides.
What happens in a battery pack, however, is a bit different from an isolated cell. In a ruptured, internally-short-circuiting cell in a battery pack, the heat and contents are released, but they're released into non-flammable temperature-regulated pack coolant. Aka, quenched. Packs also employ a variety of processes to physically isolate cells from each other. Normally, cell failures are self-extinguishing in a pack. The problem with this accident is that it was so energetic that it utterly mangled the battery pack. Which is hard to do, as the pack lies within the wheelbase, but "high speeds into a concrete barrier" is a huge amount of impact force. When storing this pack, there was almost certainly no coolant left, and a lot of damaged cells. Yes, the remaining charge was an ignition source, but it's not what you see physically burning; on its own, a short circuiting cell just makes itself very hot. Anything that happens after that is a result of the consequences of that heat - and more specifically, the results of that heat on the electrolyte.
Tesla will need to adjust the storage procedures for such heavily damaged wrecks. This appears to be the first case of reignition days after extinguishing in the company's history, but it'll need to be accounted for.
Either way, the rate of EV in general (and Tesla in specific) fires is much less than with ICEs.
Not with the previous release of AP2. It filtered out stationary objects to avoid spurious detections of hazards that were actually on the edges of the road.
The latest version - ironically, right before the accident (Tesla updates have a slow rollout process, so the driver almost certainly hadn't gotten it yet) - no longer appears to filter out stationary objects.
The big question is: why are we still talking about this accident that happened months ago? 3300 people die per day in car accidents. There's virtually no news in any of them, but every time it's a Tesla (AP or not), it's huge news. Which creates a misleading perception, given that Teslas have such a low rate of fatalities per mile (a point that's on this site frequently used against Tesla in arguing that Autopilot doesn't actually make a driver safer - the argument is that the vehicles are physically safer to begin with, so you can't credit that to Autopilot).
Again, this is getting creepy, you tracking me around. Why are you so obsessed over me?
I could go into how I haven't always lived here and the details of my life, but you know what? Believe it or not I don't enjoy giving out personal information to stalkers.
Apparently you don't know the meaning of "at the moment". I've had experience with Teslas on and off for years. Starting with an early production Roadster.
btw, why are you posting at 0218 Iceland time
Why are you obsessing over my sleep schedule? Are you my mother? I've got news for you, I usually don't go to bed until after 3 AM, unless I'm covering shifts.
I prefer two spaces in searching text. It's easier to write a regex that will match a sentence break without also matching common abbreviations like Mr./Mrs./Ms./St./ P.S./i.e./ex./ etc.
Yes, you have. The stock would have been held. Not for sale. Not available for purchase. By shorting, you make it available for purchase when it otherwise wouldn't have been. This increased supply on the market pushes down prices.
And yes, the stock would otherwise have been held and not available on the open market. Because a short has two parts: a person who is long and thinks the stock is going to rise, and a person who is short and things it is going to fall. If the former did not think the stock was going to rise over the term of the short, they wouldn't be holding it in the first place.
Every time a short seller shorts a stock, a new share of the stock that otherwise wouldn't have been available for purchase becomes available on the market.It has the same effect on the stock price as the creation of new shares. And the covering of a short has the inverse effect.
When you short a stock, you effectively create a new share of the stock, which you then sell
Shorting a stock does not create new shares
Notice the difference between these two sentences?
When stock is shorted, it puts stock - that otherwise would have been held - into the market. This dilutes the stock. When a short is covered, it takes the "added" stock back out of the market and gives it back to the owner who it was borrowed from. It's not the physical creation of shares, but it has the same effective result as the creation of shares (when shorted), and the opposite result (when covered).
I'm confused, is there a question in there somewhere? And why are you discussing an obsolete model which was charged in a stupid way which almost nobody does when driving long distances? You never charge that full unless you have to, as charge rates greatly slow down at the top of the SoC.
Real-world range depends on what options you choose (pack, wheels, etc) and how you drive. But regardless of whatever the baseline is, if you want to switch to a high power chemistry, you need to slash that baseline range heavily. Because whether you like it or not, there's an energy-power chemistry tradeoff.
That's not how it works. When you short a stock, you effectively create a new share of the stock, which you then sell; those shares effectively disappear when you cover your short. The reason shorting drives the stock down is that you're creating more supply. When you cover, you're reducing the supply. The price rise is fundamental to the reduced supply, not a transient phenomenon.
Also, for the record, your "weapons grade stupid" is the exact analysis that NASA uses. The requirement is a less than 1:500 chance of a fatal accident during launch, including launch escape systems. Rockets aren't required to have a "1:500 chance without the escape system firing".
And really, the above linked gif is for the worst case - pressure vessel failure (aka, instantaneous) on the upper stage. You don't get any faster "failure explosion propagating to the payload" scenario faster than that. Yet if that were a crewed Dragon 2, they would have survived..
"The escape system slated for the second version of Dragon would have — should certainly have taken the astronauts to a safe place after an anomaly like this," Shotwell said during a news conference following the accident Sunday. "In fact, it's designed to take a far more energetic event and get the astronauts safely away."
Furthermore:
Interestingly, the robotic Dragon apparently managed to survive Sunday's rocket explosion, at least initially, even though the capsule was right in the middle of the fray, SpaceX representatives said.
"We did have Dragon telemetry after the event, so Dragon was transmitting and appears to have been healthy for some period of time," Shotwell said.
The fact that the (much poorer protected) Dragon 1 survived is apparent by the fact that Amos 6's propellant didn't explode until the payload fell to the ground.
That's like saying that we shouldn't worry about safe refueling procedures on an F-15 because it has an ejection seat.
Does anyone worry about an F-15 exploding during fueling? No? Then your example doesn't work. People stand right next to F-15s while they're fueling, and they're also fueled midair.
Indeed, the whole point is to get the vehicles to the point that nobody worries about them exploding.
That's incredibly irresponsible and almost weapons grade stupid. Emergency escape systems are nice to have but not something you want to depend on
Exactly. They're for emergencies only. Are you telling me than an explosion isn't an emergency? No, they're not comfortable, but they save lives.
What's your "emergency escape" for people standing outside a rocket or not yet strapped in when it explodes? None, that's what. They're dead.
Furthermore explosions can happen MUCH faster than any escape system could carry the crew to safety.
No. And indeed, if that were the case, it wouldn't be an emergency escape, and wouldn't be approved.
If you actually are relying on the escape system rather than designing a safe refueling procedure then you have a poorly designed rocket and incompetent engineers.
Every system has a probability of failure. Period. The chance of a refueling failure will never be zero. Nor will the chance of a pre-fueled rocket exploding on the pad during crew failure. A proper analysis of failures has one metric: crew safety probabilities. And safety systems are very specifically a part of that. You cannot just discount the risk of people being killed during crew loading like you wish to. One obviously want the fuel loading risk to be as low as possible when crew is pre-loaded, just like one obviously wants the crew loading risk to be as low as possible when they're not. That doesn't mean you can just pretend that the former has all the risk and the latter has none, or that the availability vs. lack of emergency safety systems is irrelevant.
ED: "Are the reduced odds... less than..." . That is to say, if the odds of an explosion during propellant loading are a 1 in 200, and the escape system has a 95% reliability, then the odds of an explosion during crew loading of a pre-fueled rocket need to be lower than 1 in 4000 for it to be safer.
If you're in the capsule, and there's an explosion, the launch escape system fires and you're safe. If you're outside the capsule (or getting into it, but not yet to the point that you're strapped in and the abort system has been activated), and there's an explosion, you're dead.
The question is: are the odds of an explosion with the rocket pre-fueled, during the crew loading time, less than the odds of the crew escape system working? If no, then the SpaceX approach is safer. If yes, then SpaceX needs to fix their bloody crew escape system.
the soviets couldn't analyze the composition of venus,
They could and did.
you then talk about untested pie-in-the-sky tech,
I doubt you even skimmed over what is being discussed.
nor do we have the tech even be in the storm and acid-filled part of the atmosphere
Venus's middle cloud layer (the "earthlike" layer) is roughly about as "stormy" as Earth's troposphere.
The sulfuric acid mist is so sparse that you can see several kilometers through it. It's more like a smog (or more accurately, vog) than an acid bath. And yes, we absolutely do have materials that can withstand it - and have withstood it. A huge number of polymers are compatible with that environment (chloro- and fluoropolymers especially, but not exclusively)
venus is much further away than mars, takes more energy to get there.
I think I did cover the heat and pressure well in the disadvantages category. And the ESA is, of course, not NASA. I was complaining about NASA's unique attitude among space agencies of neglecting Venus. Now, having one agency neglecting Venus wouldn't be a big deal... if not for the fact that said agency has a vastly higher budget.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... there's a video of the tunnel. Is that CG?
I understand that some people are conspiracy theorists, but this is getting ridiculous.
Hey, I like the shorts. Thanks to them I was able to buy TSLA at $267. Like most people, I'm generally fond of individuals who choose to give me their money.
There's just under a billion cars in the world, meaning that fatal accidents per year average over 1 in every 1000 vehicles.
It's well known among Tesla owners.
Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day.
Were you unaware that Tesla sells vehicles worldwide?
I remember all the people over in Shortsville writing articles encouraging people not to "go wobbly" when Tesla was down in the 250s/260s, but to double down on the shorts.
$306,85 today ;) And analyst factory checks showing that production appears to be up to nearly 3k per week now. Now you've even got long-time Tesla-despising shorts going long just to cash out on the squeeze of their fellow shorts. It's going to be a $10+B bloodbath.
Now that their old production canard is going away, they'll have to revert to their fallback, "But Tesla loses money on each Model 3!". Yes, that would be meaningful in a world where the cost of a vehicle exactly equaled the cost of the steel/aluminum and 3rd party parts that went into it, and the cost of labour and hardware depreciation was zero. Meanwhile in the real world, if you're producing an average a bit over 1k per week (Q1) with labour and hardware designed for 5k per week... well, of course that's going to be running a negative. It's impressive that they were only running a ~17% negative margin on Model 3 in Q1.
I'd think that one of the biggest challenges would actually be one of the safety features - the pyro fuse. It blows instantly in an accident, disabling all discharge.
Electrical energy stored != combustion potential energy, and combustion potential energy != energy that can be practically released in normal circumstances (there's five times more potential energy to be released from the combustion of 1000kg of alumium or graphite vs. 1000kg of nitroglycerine, but which one would you rather be next to in a crash?).
It is not the "energy" stored in the batteries in "lithium battery fires" as you put it. First off, they're lithium-ion batteries, not lithium batteries, and yes, there's a big difference. There's no metallic lithium in lithium-ion batteries unless they've been abused (plating out of lithium at the anode is a failure mode, due to attempting to overcharge a cell or charging at too low of temperatures - both of which are prevented in a proper EV battery pack). The power (not energy) of the cell may provide a (significant) short-circuit ignition source if crushed, but what happens thereout depends on the chemistry of the cell; the fire from a burning cell (in varieties that are capable of burning) is most often the electrolyte (of which there are many varieties). The rest of the cell just isn't that flammable; the anodes are predominantly carbon (graphite or amorphous, sometimes with silicon) and the cathodes are metal oxides. The lithium itself is present as ions (hence the name) intercalated (in small quantities) in the lattices of the graphite and metal oxides.
What happens in a battery pack, however, is a bit different from an isolated cell. In a ruptured, internally-short-circuiting cell in a battery pack, the heat and contents are released, but they're released into non-flammable temperature-regulated pack coolant. Aka, quenched. Packs also employ a variety of processes to physically isolate cells from each other. Normally, cell failures are self-extinguishing in a pack. The problem with this accident is that it was so energetic that it utterly mangled the battery pack. Which is hard to do, as the pack lies within the wheelbase, but "high speeds into a concrete barrier" is a huge amount of impact force. When storing this pack, there was almost certainly no coolant left, and a lot of damaged cells. Yes, the remaining charge was an ignition source, but it's not what you see physically burning; on its own, a short circuiting cell just makes itself very hot. Anything that happens after that is a result of the consequences of that heat - and more specifically, the results of that heat on the electrolyte.
Tesla will need to adjust the storage procedures for such heavily damaged wrecks. This appears to be the first case of reignition days after extinguishing in the company's history, but it'll need to be accounted for.
Either way, the rate of EV in general (and Tesla in specific) fires is much less than with ICEs.
Not with the previous release of AP2. It filtered out stationary objects to avoid spurious detections of hazards that were actually on the edges of the road.
The latest version - ironically, right before the accident (Tesla updates have a slow rollout process, so the driver almost certainly hadn't gotten it yet) - no longer appears to filter out stationary objects.
The big question is: why are we still talking about this accident that happened months ago? 3300 people die per day in car accidents. There's virtually no news in any of them, but every time it's a Tesla (AP or not), it's huge news. Which creates a misleading perception, given that Teslas have such a low rate of fatalities per mile (a point that's on this site frequently used against Tesla in arguing that Autopilot doesn't actually make a driver safer - the argument is that the vehicles are physically safer to begin with, so you can't credit that to Autopilot).
Again, this is getting creepy, you tracking me around. Why are you so obsessed over me?
I could go into how I haven't always lived here and the details of my life, but you know what? Believe it or not I don't enjoy giving out personal information to stalkers.
Find a better use of your time.
Apparently you don't know the meaning of "at the moment". I've had experience with Teslas on and off for years. Starting with an early production Roadster.
Why are you obsessing over my sleep schedule? Are you my mother? I've got news for you, I usually don't go to bed until after 3 AM, unless I'm covering shifts.
I prefer two spaces in searching text. It's easier to write a regex that will match a sentence break without also matching common abbreviations like Mr./Mrs./Ms./St./ P.S./i.e./ex./ etc.
Teslaless at the moment. Awaiting my Model 3.
Yes, you have. The stock would have been held. Not for sale. Not available for purchase. By shorting, you make it available for purchase when it otherwise wouldn't have been. This increased supply on the market pushes down prices.
And yes, the stock would otherwise have been held and not available on the open market. Because a short has two parts: a person who is long and thinks the stock is going to rise, and a person who is short and things it is going to fall. If the former did not think the stock was going to rise over the term of the short, they wouldn't be holding it in the first place.
Every time a short seller shorts a stock, a new share of the stock that otherwise wouldn't have been available for purchase becomes available on the market.It has the same effect on the stock price as the creation of new shares. And the covering of a short has the inverse effect.
Notice the difference between these two sentences?
When stock is shorted, it puts stock - that otherwise would have been held - into the market. This dilutes the stock. When a short is covered, it takes the "added" stock back out of the market and gives it back to the owner who it was borrowed from. It's not the physical creation of shares, but it has the same effective result as the creation of shares (when shorted), and the opposite result (when covered).
Nor (to the best of my knowledge) has a crew escape system failed (although there have been some injuries).
I'm confused, is there a question in there somewhere? And why are you discussing an obsolete model which was charged in a stupid way which almost nobody does when driving long distances? You never charge that full unless you have to, as charge rates greatly slow down at the top of the SoC.
Real-world range depends on what options you choose (pack, wheels, etc) and how you drive. But regardless of whatever the baseline is, if you want to switch to a high power chemistry, you need to slash that baseline range heavily. Because whether you like it or not, there's an energy-power chemistry tradeoff.
That's not how it works. When you short a stock, you effectively create a new share of the stock, which you then sell; those shares effectively disappear when you cover your short. The reason shorting drives the stock down is that you're creating more supply. When you cover, you're reducing the supply. The price rise is fundamental to the reduced supply, not a transient phenomenon.
Look at past short squeezes to see what happens.
Also, for the record, your "weapons grade stupid" is the exact analysis that NASA uses. The requirement is a less than 1:500 chance of a fatal accident during launch, including launch escape systems. Rockets aren't required to have a "1:500 chance without the escape system firing".
And really, the above linked gif is for the worst case - pressure vessel failure (aka, instantaneous) on the upper stage. You don't get any faster "failure explosion propagating to the payload" scenario faster than that. Yet if that were a crewed Dragon 2, they would have survived..
Furthermore:
The fact that the (much poorer protected) Dragon 1 survived is apparent by the fact that Amos 6's propellant didn't explode until the payload fell to the ground.
Does anyone worry about an F-15 exploding during fueling? No? Then your example doesn't work. People stand right next to F-15s while they're fueling, and they're also fueled midair.
Indeed, the whole point is to get the vehicles to the point that nobody worries about them exploding.
Exactly. They're for emergencies only. Are you telling me than an explosion isn't an emergency? No, they're not comfortable, but they save lives.
What's your "emergency escape" for people standing outside a rocket or not yet strapped in when it explodes? None, that's what. They're dead.
No. And indeed, if that were the case, it wouldn't be an emergency escape, and wouldn't be approved.
Every system has a probability of failure. Period. The chance of a refueling failure will never be zero. Nor will the chance of a pre-fueled rocket exploding on the pad during crew failure. A proper analysis of failures has one metric: crew safety probabilities. And safety systems are very specifically a part of that. You cannot just discount the risk of people being killed during crew loading like you wish to. One obviously want the fuel loading risk to be as low as possible when crew is pre-loaded, just like one obviously wants the crew loading risk to be as low as possible when they're not. That doesn't mean you can just pretend that the former has all the risk and the latter has none, or that the availability vs. lack of emergency safety systems is irrelevant.
They don't do anything at the moment; there are none.
ED: "Are the reduced odds ... less than..." . That is to say, if the odds of an explosion during propellant loading are a 1 in 200, and the escape system has a 95% reliability, then the odds of an explosion during crew loading of a pre-fueled rocket need to be lower than 1 in 4000 for it to be safer.
I actually disagree.
If you're in the capsule, and there's an explosion, the launch escape system fires and you're safe.
If you're outside the capsule (or getting into it, but not yet to the point that you're strapped in and the abort system has been activated), and there's an explosion, you're dead.
The question is: are the odds of an explosion with the rocket pre-fueled, during the crew loading time, less than the odds of the crew escape system working? If no, then the SpaceX approach is safer. If yes, then SpaceX needs to fix their bloody crew escape system.
They could and did.
I doubt you even skimmed over what is being discussed.
Venus's middle cloud layer (the "earthlike" layer) is roughly about as "stormy" as Earth's troposphere.
The sulfuric acid mist is so sparse that you can see several kilometers through it. It's more like a smog (or more accurately, vog) than an acid bath. And yes, we absolutely do have materials that can withstand it - and have withstood it. A huge number of polymers are compatible with that environment (chloro- and fluoropolymers especially, but not exclusively)
Wrong, and wrong.
Skip to the last chapter.
Also covered in the book.
I think I did cover the heat and pressure well in the disadvantages category. And the ESA is, of course, not NASA. I was complaining about NASA's unique attitude among space agencies of neglecting Venus. Now, having one agency neglecting Venus wouldn't be a big deal... if not for the fact that said agency has a vastly higher budget.