It's worked out nicely for me, at least;) The shorts are so bloody predictable. Too bad they've run out of rope. And I'm not talking about the fact that Tesla's non-GAAP automotive margins jumped 5% last quarter alone or that their production rates are skyrocketing. I'm talking about the fact that they can no longer keep holding down the stock price by upping their short stakes like they've been doing so far this year. There's almost no stock left to short, and what there is is charging high interest rates. And if they can't hold down the price, they can no longer stop the stock from going up when there's good news like increased production rates. When the stock goes up, heavily leveraged shorts get forced to cover. Which pushes the stock up. Forcing others to cover. Etc. Can you imagine what would happen to the price if contractual obligations forced people -in short order - to purchase literally a third of the stock, at whatever price it happened to be? It's going to be a bloodbath.
As was repeatedly pointed out above, that was a typo in my post. It should simply have read "power". If you have a 100kWh pack that you can charge in 30 minutes, a 200kWh pack with the same cells can charge at double the power.
it is, without any doubt, true that 350kW will represent a significant improvement in recharge times over 200-250 kW for the range of capacities required.
Which do you think would sell better: a $45k vehicle which goes 310 miles and charges 80% during a half-hour lunch break, or a $90k otherwise-identical-vehicle that does 200 miles range but can charge 80% in 15 minutes? Because that's literally the choice at hand. And I can tell you the answer to that question.
Nonsense alert - while energy density is a well-defined, meaningful metric, power density is at best a poorly defined one and at worst a meaningless juxtaposition of words, a.k.a. marketing.
Simply untrue. Different cells can charge and discharge at dramatically different C rates, relative to cell lifespan. If you want a higher C rate, as a general rule, you have to pay more and get a lower energy density. Tesla for example could go with titanates and do 5-10 minute charges, but they'd have ridiculously expensive packs and terrible range.
Sorry Rei, but this shows your bullshit detector is out of whack
No, it shows I made a typo in the middle of writing a very long post. I was very clearly talking about power, I had just been writing the word "density" so many times that it slipped in there.
but then it's not just cells that you have to add, is it? more power requires higher amperage wiring, better cooling
Tesla has waiting lists on all of its models. What determines sales numbers in each markets is how Tesla focuses on production overall, and delivery to specific markets. Not the state of demand.
Model S and X are a particularly notable case because Tesla has no plans to increase annual production. Building more than 100k per year S+X would require further capital investments in 18650 cell production, and Tesla is moving away from 18650 cells. So yes, expect some month to month fluctuation, but at the end of every year, expect total global annual S+X sales to be approximately 100k.
Most of the mission proposals for Venus have been much cheaper than those for Mars. It's Mars that they're spending many hundreds of millions to the lower billion dollars on these flagships, not Venus. As mentioned, Venus was first explored using 1960s Soviet technology. It does not require some sort of a breakthrough. There are of course new technologies that can yield new options for exploring Venus - high temperature processors for non-cooled probes, high temperature radiators for RTG probes, surface wind and solar (yes, solar actually works on the surface, for low power probes), inflatable bellows for the ability to fly up and down at will (including e.g. only short stays on the surface, then climbing to go to a new location and cool), and a whole range of others. But we can get massive science returns from little budget on Venus even as things stand.
Concerning floating long-term habitats on Venus: Link
Concerning testing technologies: your mention of "volcanoes" refers only to the surface, not most of the challenges in entry, descent, etc, and only applies to surface probes, and even in that case, only to the portions exposed to the heat and pressure. And that's not how they test probes for the surface, they use what's basically a big autoclave. But you cannot just test a Mars probe in the Atacama. That's a vastly different environment from Mars (orders of magnitude different pressure, major differences in gravity, radiation, etc), and does not remotely test the vehicle. You don't have to take my word on the testing differences, read some of the old interviews from the Soviet scientists who worked on their various programmes. Testing for Venus probes was found to be a lot simpler in most regards.
And, don't discount the science that will come from Mars once real people and geologists and chemists can get there with a rock hammer, a microscope, and a sense of adventure.
You may be surprised to learn that it's actually not that unrealistic - with modern technology, nothing far future - to have humans walking around on the surface of Venus. As usual, see the above link. More to the point, they could even fly in the process.
We do have the budget for both Venus and Mars. Mars is used like a dumping ground for money; there is no reason whatsoever why Mars probes have to (in some of the cases) be multi-billion-dollar craft. The budget requests for Venus probes are tiny by comparison.
Mars is not a broken-down version of Earth; Venus is. As tough of a "fix-it-upper" Venus, Mars is even worse. You're never going to fix Mars' gravity. Good luck even fixing its nitrogen deficiency; the three main approaches to dealing with Venus's atmosphere (freezing, chemical sequestration, and ejectionrealistic all much more practical than replacing Mars' missing nitrogen, which in turn is far from its hardest problem.
Of course, any discussion of terraforming is an "extreme-long-term" theoretical concern. Hence, the above graphic concerning the short term.
If you followed his twitter feed, he's not upset about how many people are shorting Tesla, he's giggling about it. He finds them amusing. Just the other day he issued another one of his "oh by the way..." notices that he did the last two times right before there were short squeezes.
As for the two questions he didn't answer: Tony just jumped in, tried to take a third question without having been told he could (the normal rule is two), and asked about something that was right at the bloody top of the investor letter that everyone was supposed to have read before joining the call. Yes, that's a "boneheaded" move. The second was from Joseph Spak. I assume you don't know him in relation to Tesla, but he's been pushing this ridiculous pro-short hypothesis - which he was trying to do in the call there - that Tesla is somehow in danger because Model 3 conversion rates (people going from a waiting list to a purchase when their number comes up) are lower than average. Which is ridiculous for two reasons - firstly because of course they're low, because you can only get the car in a very limited number of configs right now, so of course a good chunk of people are going to choose the delay option. And secondly, with nearly half a million people on a (growing) waiting list with no advertising whatsoever, it doesn't matter a whit. There's zero chance whatsoever that they're going to run out of reservations. They're going to be supply-limited for years, not demand.
The YouTuber asked the best questions on the call. The questions Musk didn't answer was A) Tony Sacconaghi's third question (he was only allowed two, and he didn't even ask before launching into a third), asking about something that was in boldface right at the top of the investor letter that everyone was supposed to have read before joining the call. And B) Joseph Spak advocating for a short selling thesis he's been pushing where he argues that there's a low conversion rate on Model 3s - despite the fact that of course there is because people can only get a very limited subset of options right now, so the majority are deferring to get their desired options.
The YouTuber, by contrast, asked about:
1) Progress with the Tesla network 2) Production capacity on the 3 line at Fremont and how they're supposed to fit Y production in there 3) Daimler's statement about Semi "breaking the laws of physics", and whether they need a new battery technology to achieve it 4) Whether Tesla plans to go to 350kW supercharging like Porsche is talking about 5) Whether Tesla is still willing to open up the Supercharger network to competitors 6) Power rates and supply-side costs for Semi megachargers 7) Prioritization of home-scale vs. utility scale on energy storage products and the state of the market going forward
(He got to ask so many because: "We'll keep going if you (46:57) ask questions that are not boring"; he didn't just start butting in with extra questions like Tony)
And from these questions, we learned that:
* Musk thinks the software will be ready for full self driving for consumers in a year, but worries about regulatory acceptance
* A processing power upgrade might be required, they're not sure at this point - but it's a plug-in replacement.
* Musk thinks journalists are causing people to die by spreading scare stories about self-driving. Compares the scenario where you have a couple deaths with autonomous systems versus over a million per year otherwise (yet the former gets all of the coverage and the latter little) - and that this overemphasis makes people less likely to use systems that he feels significantly improves safety.
* Plans to release quarterly statistics showing the impact of Autopilot on safety
* The Reuters report that Model Y was going to be built in Fremont is completely wrong, and he has no clue where it came from. Fremont is packed to the gills already. No chance Y will be built there.
* Model Y will be released in about 24 months.
* Model Y capital spend is low right now, but will be dramatically ramping up next year. But decisions made this year will have a major impact on the capital costs for the Y next year.
* Model 3's current battery tech already supports a Semi with 500 miles range. They think they may be able to do 600 miles by the time it's in production.
* Tesla doesn't agree that going to 350kW is wise for passenger cars; looks to go to 200-250kW. With batteries, you get energy density or power density, but not both; high power density cells are not only more expensive, but less energy dense. And you can up the power density just by adding more cells. He feels you get a way better vehicle and driving experience for your money going with more energy dense than power dense, and compares it to what it would be like if you could buy a phone that could charge twice as fast but you had to charge it multiple times per day.
* Wants, and has tried, to get other automakers to use their supercharger network. Thinks "moats" are dumb, and if you're relying on a moat to keep competition at bay, you won't last long. All other automakers need to agree to is to use their connector (or an adapter) and for their vehicles to pay for the power. None have taken Tesla up on the offer.
* Finds the Nikola "windshield" lawsuit laughable - not just on its merits, but the underlying premise: people don't reserve semis for their looks, flee
I would prefer to respond to Youtuber comments over having a Wall Street putz on the phone let alone talking to one.
Just ask your average person what they would do to a Wall Street banker, then realize that few people know enough about the human body to hurt others really severely.
Now get this, let's go over this. This was the best call I've heard in a long time, and I'll tell you why. Everyone wants to cut off Tony Sacconaghi. He is Mr. Negative. Most of the CEOs that I talk to say, "That guy! That guy! All he does is talk negatively!" So he went negative? Elon Musk had had it. I like that!
Secondly, how about this gem: 'We have no interest in satisfying the interest of day traders. I couldn't care less. Please sell our stock and don't buy it'. How good is that?? That is the truth!
And then finally! He says about the individual investors, he says it to Gallileo, not to Copernicus or Einstein, but a guy named Gallileo on the call, 'I think that if people are concerned about volatility they should not buy our stock. I'm not here to convince you to buy our stock. Do not buy it if volatility is scary.' AMEN! Isn't that exactly what we want? If I were Elon Musk, I would have done the Exact Same Thing. I would have done the exact same thing.
No, I am not kidding. Tony Sacconaghi? I have had enough of him too! I am with Elon. Let's go to YouTube, okay?
No. It's simply an agency hobbled by congressional mandates influenced by politics which guarantee that it can't do anything affordably or have a coherent long-term strategy. There's lots of great people working for NASA.
If Venera had been designed to be a long-term monitoring station, you would have a point. It did the mission it was designed to do. There are also design proposals for longer-lived explorers, both surface, flying, and probes designed to switch between surface and flying modes.
There are no "huge temperature differences between sunny and shady parts". Surface night temperatures are pretty much the same as day temperatures, due to the dense superrotating atmosphere. Said superrotation being yet another poorly understood aspect of Venus. There's so many huge unanswered questions about just the atmosphere alone... for example, we know Venus has lightning, and it appears to be as common as on Earth... but we have no clue A) where, or B) why.
There is no problem putting a relay satellite in Venus orbit.
I guess to be fair it could be pointed out that "frozen water" on Mars is more like a brine permafrost. And that there's some pretty nasty toxic stuff on Mars' surface (perchlorates, hexavalent chromium, etc).
Getting water on Mars certainly can be done, but it's not a simple matter of "step outside, scoop up some snow and put it on the kettle".
Oh, and to elaborate on why the Soviets had better luck with Venus than Mars... people focus (of course) on the heat and pressure due to the dense atmosphere. And it's of course a real issue, although one that even Soviet tech developed in the 1960s could deal with. But this neglects to mention the aspects of Venus that make it easier than Earth. Its similarity to Earth first off makes testing many aspects of a mission simpler. But beyond that, the thick atmosphere is a big fluffy cushion. One of the Soviet craft actually had its parachute unexpectedly break off, putting it into a freefall, and it still survived and transmitted information from the surface, because its terminal velocity was so low. Many Mars missions have been "eaten by the ghoul" due to landing / deployment issues that just don't apply to Venus. It's been calculated that with the right trajectory, you could fire a simple hollow titanium sphere from Earth, with no other hardware onboard - no entry aeroshell, no drogue chute, no main chute, no landing retrothrusters, nothing - and have it land perfectly intact on the surface.
So yes, there are some disadvantages, but there also are advantages.
Of course, on Venus, landing is overrated. It's easy to loft very heavy probes in Venus's atmosphere (unlike Mars), and since it superrotates, Venus takes your probe across the whole world, gathering data all the way.
The Soviets had more success doing on-ground exploration on Venus than on Mars. You can also explore on-ground on Mercury... all terrestrial planets, really. And planetary moons. Not that the ground is the only interesting part of a planet. Mars is also slightly further (transit times, dV) than Venus.
The US has neglected Venus to an obscene extent. While Mars gets about one mission every two years (sometimes multi-part missions), the last dedicated NASA mission to Venus was launched in 1989 - nearly three decades ago. NASA's scientists keep proposing interesting missions to Venus, but they keep getting rejected by management in favour of the more-popular-thanks-to-sci-fi destination of Mars.
And the return on science investment is so much less on Mars. We've studied Mars so much, while some really bloody basic things remain entirely unanswered on Venus. The longest river in the solar system is on Venus. What carved it? We have no bloody clue. Why does Venus absorb so much UV? Who knows? What happened to all of the mercury in Venus's crust - after all, it should have baked out into the atmosphere, yet isn't there? One guess is as good as another. Does it rain, snow, or frost in Venus's clouds, and if so, of what materials and where? Not a bloody clue. What are the (apparently multiple types of) metallic / semiconductive frosts in Venus's highlands? Beats us. We can't even image them well - in our best-resolution parts of Venus's surface, a football pitch would take up two pixels. Are Venus's terrae remnant granitic crust or not (and thus, if so, since Venus had oceans before Earth did and they likely lasted for at least a billion years, are their fossils? Maybe, maybe not. Why doesn't VVvenus have an intrinsic magnetic field (the slow rotation rate, according to dynamo theory, doesn't explain it)? We can only guess at its internal structure to hypothesize as to why. Why the bloody heck is Venus so different from Earth, and is it Earth's fate? Lots of competing theories based on various parameters, not nearly enough evidence to back them up. And it's pretty bloody important to know whether terrestrial planets teeter on a knife's edge between habitable and hell or not.
"Back to Mars"? NASA is obsessed with Mars, in a way no other space agency is. A grossly disproportionate amount of their planetary science budget goes to this one destination. Why act like they've been neglecting Mars?
Not even remotely true. Your should check the news [reuters.com]. The big automakers are making big investments [reuters.com] into EVs
Read my other posts elsewhere in this thread, where I've discussed their investments. I think it's great that some of them have finally, recently started making (frequently backloaded) capex investments of appropriate scale. But these won't pay off for several years. I really look forward to seeing real competition several years from now. But pretending that this is equivalent to the short term market is wishful thinking.
??? Spending money just to spend money is idiotic.
Developing technology that works in a real world, mass-manufacturing environment, while simultaneously securing market share and real-world data collection, is in no way "spending money just to spend money". Weak EV R&D spending and weak production volumes just do not compete; they guarantee you fall behind.
A chassis is still a chassis.
Actually, EV chassis are generally quite different from ICE chassis, at least in design. The battery pack functions as a stiffening element, and the loadbearing needs and available space are totally different. Real-world driving data shows how effectively your designs play out in practice.
A suspension is still a suspension.
Given that even well-known Tesla hater Sandy Munroe has referred to the Model 3's new suspension design as amazing and among the components that other automakers ignore at their own peril, and its handling has received glowing reviews, you could have picked a better example. No, it's not EV specific, but since you bring it up... (and actually, being an EV does affect suspension because of the lower weight distribution)
The vast majority of the vehicle is more or less identical to stuff Ford and GM have been doing forever.
The "dinosaur technology" is something any company - including Tesla - can hire countless existing people from the existing auto industry all around the world to fill its ranks with. That's a meaningless issue. The problem is that the rest of the auto industry can't do the reverse, at least not nearly to the same extent. They can leach random Tesla talent, and do from time to time, but there's just not enough people with EV component experience to go around. And not nearly as much EV tech is public and well established knowledge.
EV tech is the core of the vehicle. You start with the batteries, which are in turn a composite of cathode, anode, electrolyte, separator and structural tech elements and their integration thereof into an efficient mass manufacturing process. I know your plan is just "hire an existing batterymaker". Sure, if you've got years and billions in capex, go ahead. But that's precisely the point: these things don't happen overnight or without massive investments.
Cells are of course just a small part of the picture. From the cells you make batteries, which are far more complex beasts than most people give them credit for, in regards to charge management, heat management (between different vehicle subsystems), fire protection, structural integrity, etc. The charger's costs need to be kept down and the power kept up. Motor tech is a particularly complex research field with many fronts advancing simultaneously, and Tesla's PMSRM work is at the forefront. Again, motor tech determines cost, weight, power, and efficiency, and thus other factors like range and handling.
Then you have the broader infrastructure developed alongside the EV powertrain. For example, Tesla has already migrated the Model 3 to a hub-based communication and power system, cutting the wiring harness in half compared to a typical car (both connections and weight). Model Y is looking to take it even further and upgrade to a HV wiring harness, eliminating most of the 1
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It's worked out nicely for me, at least ;) The shorts are so bloody predictable. Too bad they've run out of rope. And I'm not talking about the fact that Tesla's non-GAAP automotive margins jumped 5% last quarter alone or that their production rates are skyrocketing. I'm talking about the fact that they can no longer keep holding down the stock price by upping their short stakes like they've been doing so far this year. There's almost no stock left to short, and what there is is charging high interest rates. And if they can't hold down the price, they can no longer stop the stock from going up when there's good news like increased production rates. When the stock goes up, heavily leveraged shorts get forced to cover. Which pushes the stock up. Forcing others to cover. Etc. Can you imagine what would happen to the price if contractual obligations forced people -in short order - to purchase literally a third of the stock, at whatever price it happened to be? It's going to be a bloodbath.
As was repeatedly pointed out above, that was a typo in my post. It should simply have read "power". If you have a 100kWh pack that you can charge in 30 minutes, a 200kWh pack with the same cells can charge at double the power.
Which do you think would sell better: a $45k vehicle which goes 310 miles and charges 80% during a half-hour lunch break, or a $90k otherwise-identical-vehicle that does 200 miles range but can charge 80% in 15 minutes? Because that's literally the choice at hand. And I can tell you the answer to that question.
Yes, that was a typo.
Simply untrue. Different cells can charge and discharge at dramatically different C rates, relative to cell lifespan. If you want a higher C rate, as a general rule, you have to pay more and get a lower energy density. Tesla for example could go with titanates and do 5-10 minute charges, but they'd have ridiculously expensive packs and terrible range.
No, it shows I made a typo in the middle of writing a very long post. I was very clearly talking about power, I had just been writing the word "density" so many times that it slipped in there.
Duh.
Tesla has waiting lists on all of its models. What determines sales numbers in each markets is how Tesla focuses on production overall, and delivery to specific markets. Not the state of demand.
Model S and X are a particularly notable case because Tesla has no plans to increase annual production. Building more than 100k per year S+X would require further capital investments in 18650 cell production, and Tesla is moving away from 18650 cells. So yes, expect some month to month fluctuation, but at the end of every year, expect total global annual S+X sales to be approximately 100k.
It distinctly does; terraforming is one of the main topics of the last chapter.
Most of the mission proposals for Venus have been much cheaper than those for Mars. It's Mars that they're spending many hundreds of millions to the lower billion dollars on these flagships, not Venus. As mentioned, Venus was first explored using 1960s Soviet technology. It does not require some sort of a breakthrough. There are of course new technologies that can yield new options for exploring Venus - high temperature processors for non-cooled probes, high temperature radiators for RTG probes, surface wind and solar (yes, solar actually works on the surface, for low power probes), inflatable bellows for the ability to fly up and down at will (including e.g. only short stays on the surface, then climbing to go to a new location and cool), and a whole range of others. But we can get massive science returns from little budget on Venus even as things stand.
Concerning floating long-term habitats on Venus: Link
Concerning testing technologies: your mention of "volcanoes" refers only to the surface, not most of the challenges in entry, descent, etc, and only applies to surface probes, and even in that case, only to the portions exposed to the heat and pressure. And that's not how they test probes for the surface, they use what's basically a big autoclave. But you cannot just test a Mars probe in the Atacama. That's a vastly different environment from Mars (orders of magnitude different pressure, major differences in gravity, radiation, etc), and does not remotely test the vehicle. You don't have to take my word on the testing differences, read some of the old interviews from the Soviet scientists who worked on their various programmes. Testing for Venus probes was found to be a lot simpler in most regards.
You may be surprised to learn that it's actually not that unrealistic - with modern technology, nothing far future - to have humans walking around on the surface of Venus. As usual, see the above link. More to the point, they could even fly in the process.
We do have the budget for both Venus and Mars. Mars is used like a dumping ground for money; there is no reason whatsoever why Mars probes have to (in some of the cases) be multi-billion-dollar craft. The budget requests for Venus probes are tiny by comparison.
Not as good of one as Venus.
Mars is not a broken-down version of Earth; Venus is. As tough of a "fix-it-upper" Venus, Mars is even worse. You're never going to fix Mars' gravity. Good luck even fixing its nitrogen deficiency; the three main approaches to dealing with Venus's atmosphere (freezing, chemical sequestration, and ejectionrealistic all much more practical than replacing Mars' missing nitrogen, which in turn is far from its hardest problem.
Of course, any discussion of terraforming is an "extreme-long-term" theoretical concern. Hence, the above graphic concerning the short term.
No.
If you followed his twitter feed, he's not upset about how many people are shorting Tesla, he's giggling about it. He finds them amusing. Just the other day he issued another one of his "oh by the way..." notices that he did the last two times right before there were short squeezes.
As for the two questions he didn't answer: Tony just jumped in, tried to take a third question without having been told he could (the normal rule is two), and asked about something that was right at the bloody top of the investor letter that everyone was supposed to have read before joining the call. Yes, that's a "boneheaded" move. The second was from Joseph Spak. I assume you don't know him in relation to Tesla, but he's been pushing this ridiculous pro-short hypothesis - which he was trying to do in the call there - that Tesla is somehow in danger because Model 3 conversion rates (people going from a waiting list to a purchase when their number comes up) are lower than average. Which is ridiculous for two reasons - firstly because of course they're low, because you can only get the car in a very limited number of configs right now, so of course a good chunk of people are going to choose the delay option. And secondly, with nearly half a million people on a (growing) waiting list with no advertising whatsoever, it doesn't matter a whit. There's zero chance whatsoever that they're going to run out of reservations. They're going to be supply-limited for years, not demand.
The YouTuber asked the best questions on the call. The questions Musk didn't answer was A) Tony Sacconaghi's third question (he was only allowed two, and he didn't even ask before launching into a third), asking about something that was in boldface right at the top of the investor letter that everyone was supposed to have read before joining the call. And B) Joseph Spak advocating for a short selling thesis he's been pushing where he argues that there's a low conversion rate on Model 3s - despite the fact that of course there is because people can only get a very limited subset of options right now, so the majority are deferring to get their desired options.
The YouTuber, by contrast, asked about:
1) Progress with the Tesla network
2) Production capacity on the 3 line at Fremont and how they're supposed to fit Y production in there
3) Daimler's statement about Semi "breaking the laws of physics", and whether they need a new battery technology to achieve it
4) Whether Tesla plans to go to 350kW supercharging like Porsche is talking about
5) Whether Tesla is still willing to open up the Supercharger network to competitors
6) Power rates and supply-side costs for Semi megachargers
7) Prioritization of home-scale vs. utility scale on energy storage products and the state of the market going forward
(He got to ask so many because: "We'll keep going if you (46:57) ask questions that are not boring"; he didn't just start butting in with extra questions like Tony)
And from these questions, we learned that:
* Musk thinks the software will be ready for full self driving for consumers in a year, but worries about regulatory acceptance
* A processing power upgrade might be required, they're not sure at this point - but it's a plug-in replacement.
* Musk thinks journalists are causing people to die by spreading scare stories about self-driving. Compares the scenario where you have a couple deaths with autonomous systems versus over a million per year otherwise (yet the former gets all of the coverage and the latter little) - and that this overemphasis makes people less likely to use systems that he feels significantly improves safety.
* Plans to release quarterly statistics showing the impact of Autopilot on safety
* The Reuters report that Model Y was going to be built in Fremont is completely wrong, and he has no clue where it came from. Fremont is packed to the gills already. No chance Y will be built there.
* Model Y will be released in about 24 months.
* Model Y capital spend is low right now, but will be dramatically ramping up next year. But decisions made this year will have a major impact on the capital costs for the Y next year.
* Model 3's current battery tech already supports a Semi with 500 miles range. They think they may be able to do 600 miles by the time it's in production.
* Tesla doesn't agree that going to 350kW is wise for passenger cars; looks to go to 200-250kW. With batteries, you get energy density or power density, but not both; high power density cells are not only more expensive, but less energy dense. And you can up the power density just by adding more cells. He feels you get a way better vehicle and driving experience for your money going with more energy dense than power dense, and compares it to what it would be like if you could buy a phone that could charge twice as fast but you had to charge it multiple times per day.
* Wants, and has tried, to get other automakers to use their supercharger network. Thinks "moats" are dumb, and if you're relying on a moat to keep competition at bay, you won't last long. All other automakers need to agree to is to use their connector (or an adapter) and for their vehicles to pay for the power. None have taken Tesla up on the offer.
* Finds the Nikola "windshield" lawsuit laughable - not just on its merits, but the underlying premise: people don't reserve semis for their looks, flee
Actually, your reaction is pretty much the same as CNBC's Jim Cramer.
No. It's simply an agency hobbled by congressional mandates influenced by politics which guarantee that it can't do anything affordably or have a coherent long-term strategy. There's lots of great people working for NASA.
If Venera had been designed to be a long-term monitoring station, you would have a point. It did the mission it was designed to do. There are also design proposals for longer-lived explorers, both surface, flying, and probes designed to switch between surface and flying modes.
There are no "huge temperature differences between sunny and shady parts". Surface night temperatures are pretty much the same as day temperatures, due to the dense superrotating atmosphere. Said superrotation being yet another poorly understood aspect of Venus. There's so many huge unanswered questions about just the atmosphere alone... for example, we know Venus has lightning, and it appears to be as common as on Earth... but we have no clue A) where, or B) why.
There is no problem putting a relay satellite in Venus orbit.
I guess to be fair it could be pointed out that "frozen water" on Mars is more like a brine permafrost. And that there's some pretty nasty toxic stuff on Mars' surface (perchlorates, hexavalent chromium, etc).
Getting water on Mars certainly can be done, but it's not a simple matter of "step outside, scoop up some snow and put it on the kettle".
Oh, and to elaborate on why the Soviets had better luck with Venus than Mars... people focus (of course) on the heat and pressure due to the dense atmosphere. And it's of course a real issue, although one that even Soviet tech developed in the 1960s could deal with. But this neglects to mention the aspects of Venus that make it easier than Earth. Its similarity to Earth first off makes testing many aspects of a mission simpler. But beyond that, the thick atmosphere is a big fluffy cushion. One of the Soviet craft actually had its parachute unexpectedly break off, putting it into a freefall, and it still survived and transmitted information from the surface, because its terminal velocity was so low. Many Mars missions have been "eaten by the ghoul" due to landing / deployment issues that just don't apply to Venus. It's been calculated that with the right trajectory, you could fire a simple hollow titanium sphere from Earth, with no other hardware onboard - no entry aeroshell, no drogue chute, no main chute, no landing retrothrusters, nothing - and have it land perfectly intact on the surface.
So yes, there are some disadvantages, but there also are advantages.
Of course, on Venus, landing is overrated. It's easy to loft very heavy probes in Venus's atmosphere (unlike Mars), and since it superrotates, Venus takes your probe across the whole world, gathering data all the way.
The Soviets had more success doing on-ground exploration on Venus than on Mars. You can also explore on-ground on Mercury... all terrestrial planets, really. And planetary moons. Not that the ground is the only interesting part of a planet. Mars is also slightly further (transit times, dV) than Venus.
The US has neglected Venus to an obscene extent. While Mars gets about one mission every two years (sometimes multi-part missions), the last dedicated NASA mission to Venus was launched in 1989 - nearly three decades ago. NASA's scientists keep proposing interesting missions to Venus, but they keep getting rejected by management in favour of the more-popular-thanks-to-sci-fi destination of Mars.
And the return on science investment is so much less on Mars. We've studied Mars so much, while some really bloody basic things remain entirely unanswered on Venus. The longest river in the solar system is on Venus. What carved it? We have no bloody clue. Why does Venus absorb so much UV? Who knows? What happened to all of the mercury in Venus's crust - after all, it should have baked out into the atmosphere, yet isn't there? One guess is as good as another. Does it rain, snow, or frost in Venus's clouds, and if so, of what materials and where? Not a bloody clue. What are the (apparently multiple types of) metallic / semiconductive frosts in Venus's highlands? Beats us. We can't even image them well - in our best-resolution parts of Venus's surface, a football pitch would take up two pixels. Are Venus's terrae remnant granitic crust or not (and thus, if so, since Venus had oceans before Earth did and they likely lasted for at least a billion years, are their fossils? Maybe, maybe not. Why doesn't VVvenus have an intrinsic magnetic field (the slow rotation rate, according to dynamo theory, doesn't explain it)? We can only guess at its internal structure to hypothesize as to why. Why the bloody heck is Venus so different from Earth, and is it Earth's fate? Lots of competing theories based on various parameters, not nearly enough evidence to back them up. And it's pretty bloody important to know whether terrestrial planets teeter on a knife's edge between habitable and hell or not.
"Back to Mars"? NASA is obsessed with Mars, in a way no other space agency is. A grossly disproportionate amount of their planetary science budget goes to this one destination. Why act like they've been neglecting Mars?
Meanwhile, in the real world, Consumer Reports rates Model S as above average in reliability. But thanks for playing.
Want it in simpler terms?
You Don't Get Thing Without Paying For Said Thing
Apparently you don't know how to read. But that's okay, help is available.
And
Read my other posts elsewhere in this thread, where I've discussed their investments. I think it's great that some of them have finally, recently started making (frequently backloaded) capex investments of appropriate scale. But these won't pay off for several years. I really look forward to seeing real competition several years from now. But pretending that this is equivalent to the short term market is wishful thinking.
Developing technology that works in a real world, mass-manufacturing environment, while simultaneously securing market share and real-world data collection, is in no way "spending money just to spend money". Weak EV R&D spending and weak production volumes just do not compete; they guarantee you fall behind.
Actually, EV chassis are generally quite different from ICE chassis, at least in design. The battery pack functions as a stiffening element, and the loadbearing needs and available space are totally different. Real-world driving data shows how effectively your designs play out in practice.
Given that even well-known Tesla hater Sandy Munroe has referred to the Model 3's new suspension design as amazing and among the components that other automakers ignore at their own peril, and its handling has received glowing reviews, you could have picked a better example. No, it's not EV specific, but since you bring it up... (and actually, being an EV does affect suspension because of the lower weight distribution)
The "dinosaur technology" is something any company - including Tesla - can hire countless existing people from the existing auto industry all around the world to fill its ranks with. That's a meaningless issue. The problem is that the rest of the auto industry can't do the reverse, at least not nearly to the same extent. They can leach random Tesla talent, and do from time to time, but there's just not enough people with EV component experience to go around. And not nearly as much EV tech is public and well established knowledge.
EV tech is the core of the vehicle. You start with the batteries, which are in turn a composite of cathode, anode, electrolyte, separator and structural tech elements and their integration thereof into an efficient mass manufacturing process. I know your plan is just "hire an existing batterymaker". Sure, if you've got years and billions in capex, go ahead. But that's precisely the point: these things don't happen overnight or without massive investments.
Cells are of course just a small part of the picture. From the cells you make batteries, which are far more complex beasts than most people give them credit for, in regards to charge management, heat management (between different vehicle subsystems), fire protection, structural integrity, etc. The charger's costs need to be kept down and the power kept up. Motor tech is a particularly complex research field with many fronts advancing simultaneously, and Tesla's PMSRM work is at the forefront. Again, motor tech determines cost, weight, power, and efficiency, and thus other factors like range and handling.
Then you have the broader infrastructure developed alongside the EV powertrain. For example, Tesla has already migrated the Model 3 to a hub-based communication and power system, cutting the wiring harness in half compared to a typical car (both connections and weight). Model Y is looking to take it even further and upgrade to a HV wiring harness, eliminating most of the 1
Tesla's GAAP margin is over 19% (up a percent from last quarter) and non-GAAP margin is over 18% (up 5% from last quarter).
Don't confuse capex and pre-scaled SG&A with margins.
Model Ss depreciate slower than its gasoline competitors, and Model 3's battery chemistry should be even more stable.