After VAT (~20% in most of Europe), yes. Although some parts of Europe (such as Norway) don't have to pay VAT on EVs like they do on ICE vehicles. When you see the price of a car in the US, remember that there's no nationwide VAT over there.
The cheapest version you can get in Europe also has a 560km WLTP, AWD, comes with the premium package and does 0-100kph in 4,8 seconds.
Wrong. "Europe" is a misnomer. They're shipping only to Western Europe now, and not including Iceland. We have to keep waiting, along with Eastern Europe.:P There remains only one Model 3 in the country (which someone imported from the US, so it has the wrong charge connector).
Hopefully they'll open up sales here soon. If not by this summer than I may look into importing one from the Netherlands.
Tesla has long stated that it plans to pay off the bonds in cash. Their FCF in Q3 alone was nearly as much as the value of the bonds. It's a total non-issue.
Electric-powered non-stop transoceanic shipping is impractical with today's battery energy density; although cargo ships are very efficient, Atlantic trips would have their cargo capacity seriously slashed, and it'd be hard to cross the Pacific at all. The battery packs would also dramatically increase the cost of the ships, to impractical levels. That said, building oceanic "gigachargers" every ~700km using floating wind turbines (which exist, although they cost more than other wind turbines at present) and/or floating solar (starting to become common in reservoirs in China, and there's some small coastal pilot plants) could certainly do the trick with today's battery tech. Battery max charge rates are independent of battery size (in this case, about a gigawatt hour per ship), as are the rates in which a modular battery bank can discharge (the more modules for more storage capacity, the more power you can output). The same "0-80% in half an hour" that applies to cars can also apply to ships. The limiting factors for a ship would be docking time and connecting/disconnecting the (very) massive liquid-cooled cable with a crane. Stops would be once per day.
A Maersk Triple-E class ship with a gigawatt hour pack, by the time that battery production had scaled to the point of being able to supply such ships (already dropping under $100/kWh, probably $50-70/kWh by then at those scales), should run a similar cost to an existing Maersk Triple-E (~$190m). Deepwater wind / floating solar, although more expensive than near-shore and land-based alternatives, should still fuel ships at a cheaper cost than bunker fuel, particularly now that they're being forced to phase out sulfur-heavy fuels and putting their fuel in direct competition with diesel (there's also the advantage that one of the things that makes current deepwater wind projects expensive is the cost of connecting the turbines to shore, which is eliminated in this case). Having many GWh of storage sitting in port would also be a huge buffer to coastal power grids. Lastly - while it's hard to estimate (because you're factoring in widely varying ship rents atop all the existing price uncertainty of the above), some back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that you could even "export power" (e.g. to disaster areas or areas that are temporarily overloaded) over distances of a few hundred kilometers for a cost of a couple cents or so per kWh.
But as for nonstop trans-oceanic shipping of goods on electric power today? No, that's not realistic on today's battery tech. Electric ferries and the like may be starting to take over short-range shipping markets in parts of Europe, but long-distance goods transport is a different story.
There is no "exodus of people and companies from California to Texas". Including in this case. Did you forget that you're reading Slashdot, your source for the news of three days ago?;) Work is not "moving from" California; only prototypes are being built in Texas (because it's impractical to transport prototypes to Texas by ship for testing). Musk notes that in this case that the misinformation wasn't the LA Times's fault, it was SpaceX's fault for giving an unclear press statement.
I've long strongly supported Tesla, but it took the combined vitriol and stupidity of last summer's short seller assault to get me to finally put my money where my mouth is.
None of this is exactly a secret here on Slashdot.
Tesla dramatically, then laid off ~9% in Q2 (and in Q3 posted a hugely-expectations-beating ER). After Q2, the company steadily expanded by an additional 30%, then now is laying off 7% in Q1. Is this what you call a collapsing company?
A company's needs change over time. The faster the company grows, the more rapidly its needs change. Open new lines and facilities? You need to hire people. Make those lines more efficient and automated? Well... I guess the "nice" option would be to keep people around that you don't need. But that's not the economically efficient way.
SpaceX is a great case. SpaceX has been growing very rapidly. They got good at really churning out Falcon 9s - a couple a month. Now, though... what's the point? They're reusing their rockets; they don't need nearly as many of them. Now they're mainly just manufacturing the (much smaller) upper stages, with only the occasional lower stage. What's your plan... should they just keep producing at the same rate for the heck of it? Even though they plan to retire Falcon 9 once BFR is fully operational?
Layoffs suck. There's no question about that. I was once laid off; I know what it's like personally. But layoffs are also the most efficient way to run a business, which is why they're a normal business practice.
So your view is that a company refining its production line so that it doesn't need as many workers should have - back when more work hours were needed per vehicle -.... just never have hired people? So, what... just wait until a production line is at its maximum efficiency before you actually produce anything, regardless of whether its gross margins were well positive long before that point?
I sure hope you're not in charge of managing capital for a company.
Moderate-sized solar panel factories (500Wp or more production per year) routinely cost around $500m-$1bn
Meanwhile, Hinkley Point C (3,4GW) is the most expensive structure on the surface of the Earth, with an expected completion cost in the range of $25B (but some estimates put it at $38B total cost to ratepayers). Planning for it began in 2010, and is targeting opening in 2023. Expect overruns.
I'd like to say that this sort of thing is unusual. It's not.
Indeed, light has a lot of effects on the body beyond just D synthesis. When I first heard about phototherapy my reaction was, "Yeah, what a bunch of new-age hippie BS." After spending a lot of time reading peer-reviewed papers on the subject, I'm completely sold. Light has a lot of effects on the body. It's amazing the number of conditions that react to it - some beyond just the spot that's exposed (for example, the immunosuppressive effect of UV - which is actually good in many circumstances, when dealing with conditions involving inflammation). Most of the effects are confined to the skin at the point of exposure, however. UV encourages the replacement and renewal of the outer layers of skin (which helps with quite a few skin conditions), while red and NIR cause a "rejuvenation" effect (without direct replacement) in deeper tissue. Blue is interesting in that it has some of the effects of UV (including being antibacterial) but isn't as hazardous relative to the therapeutic dose (still some hazard associated with it, however, in the high powers used for medical treatment). Acne is one condition that can frequently be treated with intense blue light. Blue light is actually one of the oldest known phototherapies, as it's also been used for ages to treat jaundice**. And when you add skin photosensitizers to intense (often blue) light you get PDT (Photodynamic Therapy), which is used to treat serious skin conditions (incl. some skin cancers).
** The ability of light to treat jaundice was discovered by the home remedy of placing an affected baby by a window and letting the sun shine on them.
Still, one has to take the hazards into account, because just like how the benefits are quite real, the hazards are quite real as well.
HVDC and HVAC lines are extensively used in China (bringing power from the sparsely populated but energy-rich interior to the densely populated coast), and to a lesser extent in Europe. The US is a laggard.
And his argument is "Proof by I Can't Believe The Alternative Because It Involves Large Numbers"
Nuclear power plant construction is exceedingly slow and exceedingly expensive. You can produce power much faster by instead sinking that capital that he wants to sink into nuclear power plants instead into factories to produce solar panels, wind turbines, HVDC lines, and grid-scale storage.
The ability to produce solar panels and wind turbines - per dollar of capital invested - are reflected in their power prices. Which are much cheaper than nuclear. Regardless of whether the numbers sound large to one Joshua S. Goldstein.
Or to put it another way: Coal is already dying. Quickly. And it's not nuclear that's killing it. It's a mix of NG (low carbon), solar (near-zero carbon) and wind (near-zero carbon).
All tans are caused by damage, but not all tans are equal. There are three types of tan:
* Immediate pigment darkening: Rapid onset. Somewhat grayish appearance. Mostly gone within an hour.
* Persistent pigment darkening: Peaks within a couple hours. Mostly gone a day or so afterwards.
* Delayed tanning: Peaks after 4-7 days. Can take over a month to fully disappear.
Most tanning beds use UVA, which penetrates deeper into the skin. It causes all three forms of tanning, although the delayed tanning is not as strong as with UVB. Relative to the "therapeutic" dose, UVA tends to cause the most damage to the skin (UVB is more damaging per joule, but you use significantly less)
UVB (and UVC, although nobody uses that) also causes tanning. It's not generally used in tanning beds because it also causes sunburn (UVA, particularly UVA2, can also cause sunburn, but it's not as prone to as UVB). A particular target region however is NB-UVB (narrowband), which only has 10-20% of the sunburn risk as BB-UVB (broadband, aka, the whole UVB spectrum). UVB does not penetrate as deeply into the skin as UVA. A "therapeutic" NB-UVB dose may cause mild erythema (reddening), but no immediate darkening. This then transitions to a strong delayed tanning response. UVB tans do more to protect against further sunburn than UVA tans.
An argument can be made for switching from UVA tanning to NB-UVB tanning. But one should be clear, both damage the skin. There are medical applications for UVA or NB-UVB exposure (skin conditions like eczema, vitiligo, etc), but vitamin D is not one of them; the safest way to get it is supplements. Indeed, if you only want vitamin D, you don't want either UVA (which contributes virtually nothing) or NB-UVB exposure; you want a band in the 293-300nm region, where vitamin D synthesis is at a maximum. You can use several orders of magnitude less power than you'd use for a NB-UVB tan (and even less still vs. a UVA tan) - just a couple dozen milliwatts per square meter - and still produce daily doses of vitamin D in minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep living in your TSLAQ bubble as long as your conspiracy-theory-loving head can manage it.
After VAT (~20% in most of Europe), yes. Although some parts of Europe (such as Norway) don't have to pay VAT on EVs like they do on ICE vehicles. When you see the price of a car in the US, remember that there's no nationwide VAT over there.
The cheapest version you can get in Europe also has a 560km WLTP, AWD, comes with the premium package and does 0-100kph in 4,8 seconds.
What do you mean 'will be'? No need for the future tense.
Hey, remember how the Bolt was supposed to blow away Tesla sales because of its large battery? Funny thing...
Yes, same "Tesla Killer" story we've been hearing for the past decade. Meanwhile, Tesla's lead only continues to grow.
Wrong. "Europe" is a misnomer. They're shipping only to Western Europe now, and not including Iceland. We have to keep waiting, along with Eastern Europe. :P There remains only one Model 3 in the country (which someone imported from the US, so it has the wrong charge connector).
Hopefully they'll open up sales here soon. If not by this summer than I may look into importing one from the Netherlands.
Tesla has long stated that it plans to pay off the bonds in cash. Their FCF in Q3 alone was nearly as much as the value of the bonds. It's a total non-issue.
It was mentioned in the very email that announced the 7% downsizing, for starters. Or if you want lots of links documenting the hiring, here's the hiring spree they went on after their Q2 layoff last year, here's the rate of growth at GF1 alone, etc.
TSLAQ is hilarious. They're the market equivalent of 9/11 Truthers. ;)
And as for the "cash bind", Tesla's FCF last quarter was nearly a billion dollars.
To play a nice game of "Missing the Joke": Model 3s are traveling to Europe on the Glovis RORO ships. They load up at Pier 80 in SF weekly. The furthest ahead one is the Glovis Captain, passed through the Panama Canal a day ago and is now en route to Zeebrugge. The second ship, Glovis Cosmos, is passing the tip of Baja en route to the canal. The third ship, Glovis Symphony, is at Pier 80 now. It's not certain, but they may be bringing in a second carrier for the China exports; we have to wait and see.
Electric-powered non-stop transoceanic shipping is impractical with today's battery energy density; although cargo ships are very efficient, Atlantic trips would have their cargo capacity seriously slashed, and it'd be hard to cross the Pacific at all. The battery packs would also dramatically increase the cost of the ships, to impractical levels. That said, building oceanic "gigachargers" every ~700km using floating wind turbines (which exist, although they cost more than other wind turbines at present) and/or floating solar (starting to become common in reservoirs in China, and there's some small coastal pilot plants) could certainly do the trick with today's battery tech. Battery max charge rates are independent of battery size (in this case, about a gigawatt hour per ship), as are the rates in which a modular battery bank can discharge (the more modules for more storage capacity, the more power you can output). The same "0-80% in half an hour" that applies to cars can also apply to ships. The limiting factors for a ship would be docking time and connecting/disconnecting the (very) massive liquid-cooled cable with a crane. Stops would be once per day.
A Maersk Triple-E class ship with a gigawatt hour pack, by the time that battery production had scaled to the point of being able to supply such ships (already dropping under $100/kWh, probably $50-70/kWh by then at those scales), should run a similar cost to an existing Maersk Triple-E (~$190m). Deepwater wind / floating solar, although more expensive than near-shore and land-based alternatives, should still fuel ships at a cheaper cost than bunker fuel, particularly now that they're being forced to phase out sulfur-heavy fuels and putting their fuel in direct competition with diesel (there's also the advantage that one of the things that makes current deepwater wind projects expensive is the cost of connecting the turbines to shore, which is eliminated in this case). Having many GWh of storage sitting in port would also be a huge buffer to coastal power grids. Lastly - while it's hard to estimate (because you're factoring in widely varying ship rents atop all the existing price uncertainty of the above), some back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that you could even "export power" (e.g. to disaster areas or areas that are temporarily overloaded) over distances of a few hundred kilometers for a cost of a couple cents or so per kWh.
But as for nonstop trans-oceanic shipping of goods on electric power today? No, that's not realistic on today's battery tech. Electric ferries and the like may be starting to take over short-range shipping markets in parts of Europe, but long-distance goods transport is a different story.
There is no "exodus of people and companies from California to Texas". Including in this case. Did you forget that you're reading Slashdot, your source for the news of three days ago? ;) Work is not "moving from" California; only prototypes are being built in Texas (because it's impractical to transport prototypes to Texas by ship for testing). Musk notes that in this case that the misinformation wasn't the LA Times's fault, it was SpaceX's fault for giving an unclear press statement.
I've long strongly supported Tesla, but it took the combined vitriol and stupidity of last summer's short seller assault to get me to finally put my money where my mouth is.
None of this is exactly a secret here on Slashdot.
You realize that tour links undercut what you write about them, don't you?
As a side note: Q4 ER date announced for 30 January. Over two weeks before the median Q4 ER ;)
Bullish AF. Also, I might roll my options forward a week and get a bit more leverage going into the report. Too awesome :)
LOL. Sure, I totally believe you have internal Tesla documents. Totally. This is my believing-you face. See it? Totally believing you.
Have you been living in a cave?
Are you kidding? Healthy companies do layoffs all the time to boost their bottom line.
Wow, you have internal Tesla documents showing the ratio of layoffs in each department? By all means, share them!
Tesla dramatically, then laid off ~9% in Q2 (and in Q3 posted a hugely-expectations-beating ER). After Q2, the company steadily expanded by an additional 30%, then now is laying off 7% in Q1. Is this what you call a collapsing company?
A company's needs change over time. The faster the company grows, the more rapidly its needs change. Open new lines and facilities? You need to hire people. Make those lines more efficient and automated? Well... I guess the "nice" option would be to keep people around that you don't need. But that's not the economically efficient way.
SpaceX is a great case. SpaceX has been growing very rapidly. They got good at really churning out Falcon 9s - a couple a month. Now, though... what's the point? They're reusing their rockets; they don't need nearly as many of them. Now they're mainly just manufacturing the (much smaller) upper stages, with only the occasional lower stage. What's your plan... should they just keep producing at the same rate for the heck of it? Even though they plan to retire Falcon 9 once BFR is fully operational?
Layoffs suck. There's no question about that. I was once laid off; I know what it's like personally. But layoffs are also the most efficient way to run a business, which is why they're a normal business practice.
So your view is that a company refining its production line so that it doesn't need as many workers should have - back when more work hours were needed per vehicle -.... just never have hired people? So, what... just wait until a production line is at its maximum efficiency before you actually produce anything, regardless of whether its gross margins were well positive long before that point?
I sure hope you're not in charge of managing capital for a company.
Meanwhile, Hinkley Point C (3,4GW) is the most expensive structure on the surface of the Earth, with an expected completion cost in the range of $25B (but some estimates put it at $38B total cost to ratepayers). Planning for it began in 2010, and is targeting opening in 2023. Expect overruns.
I'd like to say that this sort of thing is unusual. It's not.
Indeed, light has a lot of effects on the body beyond just D synthesis. When I first heard about phototherapy my reaction was, "Yeah, what a bunch of new-age hippie BS." After spending a lot of time reading peer-reviewed papers on the subject, I'm completely sold. Light has a lot of effects on the body. It's amazing the number of conditions that react to it - some beyond just the spot that's exposed (for example, the immunosuppressive effect of UV - which is actually good in many circumstances, when dealing with conditions involving inflammation). Most of the effects are confined to the skin at the point of exposure, however. UV encourages the replacement and renewal of the outer layers of skin (which helps with quite a few skin conditions), while red and NIR cause a "rejuvenation" effect (without direct replacement) in deeper tissue. Blue is interesting in that it has some of the effects of UV (including being antibacterial) but isn't as hazardous relative to the therapeutic dose (still some hazard associated with it, however, in the high powers used for medical treatment). Acne is one condition that can frequently be treated with intense blue light. Blue light is actually one of the oldest known phototherapies, as it's also been used for ages to treat jaundice**. And when you add skin photosensitizers to intense (often blue) light you get PDT (Photodynamic Therapy), which is used to treat serious skin conditions (incl. some skin cancers).
** The ability of light to treat jaundice was discovered by the home remedy of placing an affected baby by a window and letting the sun shine on them.
Still, one has to take the hazards into account, because just like how the benefits are quite real, the hazards are quite real as well.
HVDC and HVAC lines are extensively used in China (bringing power from the sparsely populated but energy-rich interior to the densely populated coast), and to a lesser extent in Europe. The US is a laggard.
And his argument is "Proof by I Can't Believe The Alternative Because It Involves Large Numbers"
Nuclear power plant construction is exceedingly slow and exceedingly expensive. You can produce power much faster by instead sinking that capital that he wants to sink into nuclear power plants instead into factories to produce solar panels, wind turbines, HVDC lines, and grid-scale storage.
The ability to produce solar panels and wind turbines - per dollar of capital invested - are reflected in their power prices. Which are much cheaper than nuclear. Regardless of whether the numbers sound large to one Joshua S. Goldstein.
Or to put it another way: Coal is already dying. Quickly. And it's not nuclear that's killing it. It's a mix of NG (low carbon), solar (near-zero carbon) and wind (near-zero carbon).
... and by "a horse", I mean "Barbaro after the 2006 Preakness"...
All tans are caused by damage, but not all tans are equal. There are three types of tan:
* Immediate pigment darkening: Rapid onset. Somewhat grayish appearance. Mostly gone within an hour.
* Persistent pigment darkening: Peaks within a couple hours. Mostly gone a day or so afterwards.
* Delayed tanning: Peaks after 4-7 days. Can take over a month to fully disappear.
Most tanning beds use UVA, which penetrates deeper into the skin. It causes all three forms of tanning, although the delayed tanning is not as strong as with UVB. Relative to the "therapeutic" dose, UVA tends to cause the most damage to the skin (UVB is more damaging per joule, but you use significantly less)
UVB (and UVC, although nobody uses that) also causes tanning. It's not generally used in tanning beds because it also causes sunburn (UVA, particularly UVA2, can also cause sunburn, but it's not as prone to as UVB). A particular target region however is NB-UVB (narrowband), which only has 10-20% of the sunburn risk as BB-UVB (broadband, aka, the whole UVB spectrum). UVB does not penetrate as deeply into the skin as UVA. A "therapeutic" NB-UVB dose may cause mild erythema (reddening), but no immediate darkening. This then transitions to a strong delayed tanning response. UVB tans do more to protect against further sunburn than UVA tans.
An argument can be made for switching from UVA tanning to NB-UVB tanning. But one should be clear, both damage the skin. There are medical applications for UVA or NB-UVB exposure (skin conditions like eczema, vitiligo, etc), but vitamin D is not one of them; the safest way to get it is supplements. Indeed, if you only want vitamin D, you don't want either UVA (which contributes virtually nothing) or NB-UVB exposure; you want a band in the 293-300nm region, where vitamin D synthesis is at a maximum. You can use several orders of magnitude less power than you'd use for a NB-UVB tan (and even less still vs. a UVA tan) - just a couple dozen milliwatts per square meter - and still produce daily doses of vitamin D in minutes.