1. Source: "Zero Hedge is an English-language financial blog that aggregates news and presents editorial opinions from original and outside sources. The news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden" (a character from the novel and film Fight Club). Zero Hedge's content has been classified as anti-establishment, and economically pessimistic,[3] and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views.[1][4]"
2. This sort of idiocy comes up once every few months. Put yourself in a potential buyer's shoes. You're thinking about possibly getting a Tesla, but haven't made the decision yet. Your tax credit is about to expire. Do A) keep dallying, or B) rush to make your decision, and order before it expires?
Of course the closer you get to expiration the more people buy, and then as soon as it expires the orders plunge off a cliff. Because those sales are already baked into the numbers. What sort of moron buys three days after a tax credit expires? Whenever you have an announced, predictable price spike on any product, this will happen. And it takes months before sales restore.
This is one of the dumbest articles I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot.
1) SpaceX has been saving the US government a huge amount of money versus its formerly monopolistic competitor, ULA, which even still gets paid even when it doesn't launch anything. SpaceX charges a tiny fraction as much per launch as ULA does, and this before they get to widespread rocket reuse.
2) The federal EV credits were basically designed by GM, for the Volt. The credit is per-kWh and maxes out precisely at the pack capacity of the Volt (gee, what are the odds of that?). Furthermore, it expires on a per-manufacturer basis. This has the perverse effect that manufacturers of popular EVs - such as Tesla - get no credits (Tesla's phaseout starts next year), but their competitors who make less popular EVs will continue to be subsidized for years to come.
3) Tesla's reservations are in place despite the fact that its US customers know that most of them will be getting a partially-phased-out credit if any at all. That's because even without credits and without accounting for savings in energy and maintenance costs, the Model 3 outcompetes other vehicles in its class (BMW 3-Series, Audi A4, etc) on performance and features for its price point.
(Cue the Slashdotters rushing to pretend that there's no difference between standard features and performance in a midrange sedan and, say, a base-model Yaris. Because that's what these conversations usually devolve to;) )
4) Tesla Motors did get - like the Big Three - government loans during the auto bailout. But unlike some of the Big Three, they paid theirs back 100% with interest - and more to the point, years before they were due.
In large part, the subsidies that affect Tesla's products have had the perverse effect of hurting the company, giving them artificially supported competition. Musk frequently complains about them.
If you drive 60 miles a day, why do you need 400? I'm not following your logic. Every day your vehicle starts with a full "tank". The *short* range Model 3 would only use a quarter of its pack for your daily drive - you'd get home 3/4ths full (and that's assuming that you're driving on the highest speed limit roads). And please tell me you don't drive 400 miles without stops - that's not safe. Regardless of your vehicle type. Attention begins to wane after a couple hours behind the wheel.
As for your area, what's already built, there's 2 CHAdeMOs in Rosarito (at La Paloma on the south side), which a Model 3 will charge at about 172 mph on. Beyond that, if we don't count crossing the border, there's 2 other chargers in Rosarito, 7 in Tijuana, 1 in Tecate, 4 in Mexicali, 4 in Ensenada, and 14 on the roads north of Ensenada. That's what's already there, not what's coming in the next couple years. And if you want to count crossing the border there's a huge number, including 260mph/340mph Tesla superchargers and lots of CHAdeMO and CCS chargers. For example, there's 2 CHAdeMOs and CCS right at the mall just across the Tijuana River. San Diego, El Centro and Yuma all have superchargers, and there's 3 more under construction right now in San Diego. Mexico appears to be a new target of Tesla's supercharger network - there's only five in the country right now, in the area around Mexico City, but by the end of the year they're going to have finished ten more, forming a network running from Texas to Mexico City; given this, their plans to triple by the end of next year will almost certainly involve a big effort in the west as well.
Simply not true. Here's one of the most recent studies on the topic. Check out figure 5a. The blue and light purple at the bottom of the graph represent energy consumption in usage. The colours above that represent energy consumption in production. Of those colours on EVs, the light blue at the top only applies to small-volume battery production; for high volume battery production (e.g. gigafactories), only the green and dark purple apply. Note how similar they are to ICE energy consumption, and how small of a fraction of the ICE's total energy they represent.
1. It's not just a curve based on past datapoints; it's also a curve based on future datapoints. Tesla is in the middle of doubling their number of chargers over the course of this year. We're talking ongoing permitting, construction, etc. By the end of next year they'll be at threefold what they are today. VW is adding in a massive, brand new network. Everyone is unrolling massive charging station deployments - not just with past datapoints, but ongoing construction and future plans. And of course, this is only expected, as the rate of EV production expansion and order reservations has also grown exponentially, which represents future consumption.
2. There have been lots of studies on this fact, and the simple fact is, the grid has no problem adding in EV charging. Take the US, for example. Every region in the US already has enough spare capacity to allow for EV charging (which occurs primarily at night, where power consumption is much lower), except for the Pacific Northwest. Local grids need improved capacity for a full conversion to EVs; however, a full conversion is something that takes place over decades, not overnight, and thus over a timescale at which grid improvements normally occur.
3. You did your math wrong because for some bizarre reason you assume that an EV spends 24/7 charging at 7kW. Which would mean that everyone is consuming 168kWh per day, meaning that they're driving 672 miles per day. Every day. In reality, the average Model 3 will consume under 250kWh per month.
And in what journal were those zero studies published? Because I've read plenty of actual, peer-reviewed studies, which say exactly the opposite. Which should be patently obvious to anyone who takes half a second to think about it. A typical gasoline car burns its weight in gasoline every year, up in smoke. And the mass of a car gets largely recycled at end-of-life. The more valuable the material in a car, the more likely it is to be recycled.
Oh, and as for the whole "rare earths" canard? Teslas, for example, don't use rare earths. Neither in the batteries nor in the motors. They use AC induction motors - that is, aluminum and copper. The battery cell cathodes are varying combination of nickel, cobalt, aluminum and oxygen; the anodes carbon with optional silicon; there's thin separator membranes and organic electrolytes; and of course, lithium which intercalates in the anode and cathode, of which most is mined in the least environmentally destructive manner imaginable (from drying salar brine - even more to the point, many of the salars flood annually and reclaim the drying ponds every year).
More to the point... nor are rare earths actually rare. Want to know something that's actually rare? Precious metals in your catalytic converter and spark plugs. They don't use much, of course - but they're mined from ores in ppb quantities, so you have to move a lot of ore to get those small quantities.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to raise an issue of copper usage (you can also use aluminum, but we'll ignore that)... ironically Tesla's vehicles may be using less copper than gasoline vehicles. One thing Tesla has been very aggressive about is reducing the wiring harness, which has grown into huge, heavy complicated mass on conventional vehicles. The Model S's was 3km (the average car today is 4km). The Model 3's wiring harness is 1,5km. And they're looking to get the Model Y down to a tiny 100m, and raise the voltage, which means less copper. The thing will weigh almost nothing.
I have no interest in a charging network. I'm not going to sit around all day, every couple of days charging my car.
You have a strange impression of what charging entails. Fast charging today is half an hour to 80%. Next generation chargers - higher power, and with offboard sources of chilled coolant rather than having cars cool themselves with ambient-temperature coolant - will bring this down. As will next-generation batteries, with higher ion mobility. And unless you drive great distances every day, it's not "every couple days". Even the shortest range Tesla is 220 miles highway range.
More city range.
In any event electric cars cost way more than equivalent ICE cars
Not against others in their class. The Tesla Model 3, for example, is designed to compete with the BMW 3-series and similar. Comparing base models, it's faster, more agile, more passenger room, more storage room, more standard features (bringing the 3-Series up to the standard features of the Model 3 requires thousands of dollars of options), and cheaper, without accounting for tax credits and the money saved on maintenance and fuel. And it's received rave reviews from virtually every journalist that test drove it thusfar.
They're not targeting a Yaris, they're targeting BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Toyota, Honda, etc are also on their hitlist, but several years down the road (Model 3 is a midrange sedan, while the next release will be Model Y, a midrange crossover, and a Tesla semi. After that they're looking at a pickup, a low-end sedan, and a second generation Roadster)
your electricity bill will cost way more
Driving an EV is vastly cheaper than driving a gasoline car. Do the math yourself - the Model S charges at about 1/4 kWh per highway mile (less per city mile). It of course depends on your local gas and electricity prices; even where electricity is expensive and gas is cheap, it's cheaper to drive an EV; in places where I am where electricity is average priced but gasoline very expensive, it costs 1/10th as much to drive an EV.
and you'll be stuck needing to buy batteries (or new car) much sooner than you'd need to replace major components on an ICE.
Tesla Model 3 has a 8 year / 100k (or 120k for the long-range) mile warranty on the battery pack. Model S and X have the same 8 years but unlimited mileage. And for the record, the batteries don't just die - the rate of degradation slows over time.
When there is a breakthrough new battery technology
Not needed - the future is now. Heck, even the old weight canard is gone - a Tesla Model 3 weighs approximately the same as a BMW 3-Series.
And in fact, that is what's happening. Charging infrastructure is expanding exponentially. It's really amazing how quickly it's spreading. I think most people don't even notice it because they never look for it. But pull up, say, Plugshare and look at your city. Then compare to a year ago, or two.
Beyond destination chargers (at homes, at workplaces, at stores, curbside, etc), the current semi-global fast charging network (Tesla's - I don't consider CCS or CHAdeMO to be "fast charging") is set to triple by the end of next year. And it's apparently going to be joined by another one - Volkswagen's, which looks to also be a true fast charge network (150-350kW).
BTW, concerning Germany: they're probably the most backwards place in Europe in terms of EV charging infrastructure. But they're playing catch-up.
Well that will depend on the traffic level. Trains at my nearest station run every 2 hours, but there is no technical reason why they could not run every 2 minutes
Except that they don't. So their peak loadings are higher. So viaducts must be able to support the higher peak loads.
OTOH Hyperloop will require some spectacular civil engineering in hilly districts
The amount of towers, tunnels, etc is all laid out in Hyperloop Alpha.
... low pressure is easier to resist than high...
Not if the low pressure is a vacuum.
1. It's not. 2. That's wrong.
Go talk to anyone who's ever engineered a VDU and start lecturing them about how terrible the engineering is on vacuum systems.
As a simple example, try how much vacuum a toy balloon will take compared with pressure.
That doesn't even make sense.
2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading.
You are forgetting wind loads.
I'm not "forgetting" anything. Wind loads in normal conditions are almost irrelevant. 3,3 m^2 per m of cross section, a Cd of 1,17 with Cat-5 70m/s winds is 1,225 * 1,17 * 70^2 * 3,3 N/m = 23,2kN/m, roughly the same as a 26 tonne *empty*, 15m long, passengers-plus-3x-vehicles capsule plus the track mass. More to the point, the tube has to maintain alignment with vehicles passing over it; if you eliminate alignment requirements (aka shut it down due to your category 5 hurricane) the ability to bear loads becomes vastly higher.
Transient loadings do not impose less stress than static ones.
You're mixing up terms. They impose the same force, but for a much reduced period of time. Try this. Hold a steel bar between your hands and have someone swing a 2kg hammer at it at 10m/s, with the hammer coming to a stop in 10ms. No problem, right? That was 20kN force. Now instead of hitting the bar with a hammer, park a 2 tonne car on that bar. How are you doing holding that up? Because that's the same amount of force.
Time is absolutely relevant in terms of how hard a load is to bear.
(BTW, before you plan to pivot to "Well, but the deflection from a pod passing over would be too great...", actually run the numbers. It's not.)
(My bold) You can say that again. You are not going to find much public right-of-way straight enough for Hyperloop
Except mapping it out is literally what they did in the Hyperloop Alpha document. That you can be so dismissive of something that's literally already done tickles me.
4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation
I have no idea what "something" you are referring to there.
The noun clause ("public right of way") immediately preceding the descriptive clause ("something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation)". Do I really need to diagram the sentence for you?
But here, we know pretty well what happens to a vacuum tube when its integrity is even slightly damaged -- you get a catastrophic failure
Right, which is why VDUs and the lines that feed them are constantly catastrophically imploding, right?
Sorry, but engineering for vacuum is no harder than engineering for pressure, and a lot safer in the event of a failure. Let me tell you, given the choice between a problem in a VDU and a hydrocracker, you'd much rather be working on the VDU. Of course you can make an implosion in something not designed for holding vacuum - that's why you hire bloody engineers, to prevent that. Which means some combination of appropriate wall thickness and regularly spaced reinforcing rings.
Or during a breakdown when they're stuck halfway between destinations.
Again, if you'd read the Hyperloop Alpha document, you'd be aware that the design calls for emergency exits at periodic intervals. The pods move on wheels at low speeds.
Now, if your issue is that "they haven't been demonstrated", nobody said that they have, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. It's a new concept, with test facilities just starting to come online.
Technically, Hyperloop isn't even limited to those speeds. The main limitation is that you can't get too close to the speed of sound, as it causes a lot of problems with the concept. But the speed of sound is not a universal constant. It can be raised either by increasing temperature (which may well happen on its own; rarified atmospheres are terrible heat conductors) or by using light gases in the tube rather than leaked air. The latter means better pumping requirements, but the amount of gases involved (H2, He, H2O, CH4 or NH3) is very small, and too sparse to pose combustion or corrosion/embrittlement risks (with the possible exception of in the compressors/skis)
Except if you knew anything about Hyperloop and had read the Alpha document you'd realize that not only is it not "a vacuum transport tube", the capsules wouldn't even work in a hard vacuum. It's a linear air bearing, avoiding the need for maglev (which is very expensive), operating akin to an extreme ground-effect aircraft in a very rarified atmosphere - and getting around the air buildup problem via a compressor. No, this concept is not old. No, it does not resemble ET3. It's specifically designed to avoid the problems that have presented ET3-style systems (the cost of maglev).
Note, however, that people have taken to using "Hyperloop" to describe things very different than in the alpha document that unveiled the concept. For example, Hyperloop One is just maglev-in-a-tube like ET3 (a very old concept). So your criticism against them applies perfectly well.
I don't think you understand anything about Hyperloop (like 98% of the people who complain about the concept).
* Hyperloop pods leave every few minutes. There is no "schedule" like with trains.
* Hyperloop pods in the "large" variant carry cars. And that seems to be the variant that Musk is pursuing.
* As for cost (and this gets very tedious having to go into this on every thread): the reason for the costs in Hyperloop Alpha being low vs. HSR are.. first, the fundamentals:
1) Hyperloop costs are budgeted at rates similar to (but more expensive than) pipelines, on a "length times cross section" basis. Because it is a pipeline, not a railroad. It has a number of aspects that make it more expensive than a pipeline (greater straightness requirements, interior polishing, higher elevation, human factors, partial-vacuum pumping) and cheaper (low pressure is easier to resist than high, vastly lower pumping energy requirements, no risk of environmental contamination making approval expensive, vastly lower mass loadings, little to no thermal management needs, etc).
2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading. Hyperloop pods are an order of magnitude lighter than HSR trains. The peak loadings are also much more transient, which is much easier to resist.
3) Because the elevation cost is reduced, it lets them build the whole thing elevated over public right-of-ways (assuming the government has buy-in - which for getting a high speed transport system at no cost to them, is not an unrealistic expectation), greatly reducing acquisition costs. This is limited by bending radii.
4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation - is much cheaper than permitting for greenfield development.
Now for the cheats in the Alpha document:
5) Hyperloop serves fewer passenger trips than CA-HSR - it's in-between HSR numbers and air passenger numbers.
6) It stops in fewer locations - it's just a direct LA-SF route.
7) It doesn't go into town. It's far more expensive to build in-town than out of town. The document excuses this on the premise that airports are located out of town - but airports are located there because they often must be, not because people want them there.
8) To get government permission to use right-of-ways, they should be expected to have impositions for more stops (just like HSR had to) and/or in-town terminals (as HSR has to pay for).
A note about the cost: there are small tunneling sections in Hyperloop Alpha; however, none of them are in-town (which is very expensive). They're budgeted at standard tunneling rates per unit length times cross section (the tube is very low cross section compared to road and water tunnels). However, this ignores what Musk is trying to achieve with Boring Company (major reductions in tunneling cost); if Boring Company succeeds, then this portion of Hyperloop Alpha is overbudgeted.
Part of the problem that will come up is that they never made any indication that its use was trademarked previously, and repeatedly stressed that they're describing an "open source transportation concept". They may have trouble on defense.
Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.
Elon: "No, no, I have no interest in doing this myself, all of you go ahead."
Investors: "Good, because we know how hard it would be to compete with you for contracts and further capital because of your name recognition and because you established the concept."
(Much later)
Investors: ".. There we go, now our money is all tied up in these Hyperloop startups. Thank god Elon isn't personally involved in this field."
Elon: "Psych! I'm back in!"
That said... Hyperloop One, the furthest along, has just turned it into some uninteresting maglev-train-in-a-pipe concept. Hyperloop Alpha specifically was designed to avoid maglev because of how expensive it is; it's one of the fundamental design features that sets the concept apart. So I'm more interested in Elon's work here.
You forgot the solar business and energy storage business (both now part of Tesla) and tunnel boring business (Boring Company);) And he's involved in OpenAI. And started Neuralink. I wonder when he's going to get around to his electric airplane plans, too.
Completely in contradiction with the facts, but nice try.
There have been over half a million reservations, and only a bit over 10% cancelled - despite Tesla's heavy attempt at anti-sell to try to push people to the Model S. They're currently netting (new minus cancellations) about 1800 a day.
They're using Musk as a canary. When his company gets something that actually sells, they'll make better versions, sell ten times as many and just price him completely out of the market.
Yes, because US automakers are famous for making good versions of things? Yes, because they've succeeded at competing with Tesla so far?
The big automakers if anything are burdened by their existing outdated infrastructure, while Tesla's is the latest technology. Tesla can hire away people with decades of experience at will. Against most startups, the big automakers could cite their cash advantages. But Tesla is worth more than them; they can finance anything that will ultimately help their bottom line with equity.
Here, try this on for size: where are their gigafactories? No, seriously. Mass battery manufacturing is a fundamental requirement for mass-scale EV production. You think something like that just pops up overnight? A consortium of German automakers just announced plans to make one, slightly larger than Tesla's. Construction however won't start for two years (because they're just now entering the conceptual stage) and full production is long way down the road. Meanwhile Tesla is already doing the design work on something like six more Gigafactories.
This notion that the existing major automakers are going to sleep for the next few years and then suddenly whip out a couple million EVs per year that everyone wants to buy is fantasy. They're on the defensive.
The recent meeting of Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are having a Blackberry moment. Their hopes of a diesel future look dashed, and Tesla is putting the Model 3 straight against the BMW 3 series and similar, beating it on standard features, performance, and price without even having to take into account subsidies and fuel savings (which in Europe can be thousands of dollars per year). They're meeting to try to figure out what to do. But the way forward is not going to be easy. They waited too long.
BTW, for Model 3, it looks like they're an always present icon at the bottom. (That's just a mockup based on videos people took during the unveiling, but it gives a general sense). So zero levels deep.
It's also worth noting that Tesla has various climate autoconfiguration options for drivers and passengers.
And I'm sure you're typing this message from your special web browser keyboard and using your special web browser mouse, which is different from the one you use for word processing, which is different from the ones you use for each different video game... because of course it makes total sense to have different controls for each task rather than multifunction.
If you can't hit a button this big on a 15" touchscreen that's right in front of you, there's something wrong with you. No "three levels of menus", it's one level, and accessible by steering wheel controls.
apparently the designers expect everyone to have a long pre-planned playlist ready for every trip or something.
What exactly is your use case? Want to listen to a specific artist or song? Press the voice command button and say to play their name. Try doing that in your specialized-control-for-each-device interface.
Corporate valuations are based on what investors think your companies are going to be earning, amortized and with respect to the risk. Someone's corporate assets being valuable means that investors think that their companies are really onto something and want a piece of it.
It's not hard to see why Tesla's value is high. Their profit margin on their current models is a solid 25%, similar figures are expected for the Model 3, and they have customers lining up years in advance for a car they can't even test drive yet. The fact that they're burning through cash scaling up to meet demand is completely expected; scaleup costs huge amounts of money, which is why you get investors in the first place. They invest because they can see the writing on the wall that they're going to be converting these hundreds of thousands of waiting customers into dollars in their pockets. And they see even more beyond that.
The question isn't whether Tesla should be worth a lot. The question is how much exactly it should be worth. And because there's so much disagreement on this, you get both a lot of buys and a lot of shorts. But there's one thing that does not determine a company's price, and that is "how much is the company currently in the black without any consideration of future revenues and how much they're spending on scaleup to achieve those revenues"
Slashdot Mirror
1. Source: "Zero Hedge is an English-language financial blog that aggregates news and presents editorial opinions from original and outside sources. The news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym "Tyler Durden" (a character from the novel and film Fight Club). Zero Hedge's content has been classified as anti-establishment, and economically pessimistic,[3] and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views.[1][4]"
2. This sort of idiocy comes up once every few months. Put yourself in a potential buyer's shoes. You're thinking about possibly getting a Tesla, but haven't made the decision yet. Your tax credit is about to expire. Do A) keep dallying, or B) rush to make your decision, and order before it expires?
Of course the closer you get to expiration the more people buy, and then as soon as it expires the orders plunge off a cliff. Because those sales are already baked into the numbers. What sort of moron buys three days after a tax credit expires? Whenever you have an announced, predictable price spike on any product, this will happen. And it takes months before sales restore.
So, giant subsidies in neural interfaces and tunnels, then? Because those are his most recent companies.
I know, we'll soon be calling any government contracts to build any sort of tunnels "subsidies" and damning him for taking them.
This is one of the dumbest articles I've ever seen on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot.
1) SpaceX has been saving the US government a huge amount of money versus its formerly monopolistic competitor, ULA, which even still gets paid even when it doesn't launch anything. SpaceX charges a tiny fraction as much per launch as ULA does, and this before they get to widespread rocket reuse.
2) The federal EV credits were basically designed by GM, for the Volt. The credit is per-kWh and maxes out precisely at the pack capacity of the Volt (gee, what are the odds of that?). Furthermore, it expires on a per-manufacturer basis. This has the perverse effect that manufacturers of popular EVs - such as Tesla - get no credits (Tesla's phaseout starts next year), but their competitors who make less popular EVs will continue to be subsidized for years to come.
3) Tesla's reservations are in place despite the fact that its US customers know that most of them will be getting a partially-phased-out credit if any at all. That's because even without credits and without accounting for savings in energy and maintenance costs, the Model 3 outcompetes other vehicles in its class (BMW 3-Series, Audi A4, etc) on performance and features for its price point.
(Cue the Slashdotters rushing to pretend that there's no difference between standard features and performance in a midrange sedan and, say, a base-model Yaris. Because that's what these conversations usually devolve to ;) )
4) Tesla Motors did get - like the Big Three - government loans during the auto bailout. But unlike some of the Big Three, they paid theirs back 100% with interest - and more to the point, years before they were due.
In large part, the subsidies that affect Tesla's products have had the perverse effect of hurting the company, giving them artificially supported competition. Musk frequently complains about them.
If you drive 60 miles a day, why do you need 400? I'm not following your logic. Every day your vehicle starts with a full "tank". The *short* range Model 3 would only use a quarter of its pack for your daily drive - you'd get home 3/4ths full (and that's assuming that you're driving on the highest speed limit roads). And please tell me you don't drive 400 miles without stops - that's not safe. Regardless of your vehicle type. Attention begins to wane after a couple hours behind the wheel.
As for your area, what's already built, there's 2 CHAdeMOs in Rosarito (at La Paloma on the south side), which a Model 3 will charge at about 172 mph on. Beyond that, if we don't count crossing the border, there's 2 other chargers in Rosarito, 7 in Tijuana, 1 in Tecate, 4 in Mexicali, 4 in Ensenada, and 14 on the roads north of Ensenada. That's what's already there, not what's coming in the next couple years. And if you want to count crossing the border there's a huge number, including 260mph/340mph Tesla superchargers and lots of CHAdeMO and CCS chargers. For example, there's 2 CHAdeMOs and CCS right at the mall just across the Tijuana River. San Diego, El Centro and Yuma all have superchargers, and there's 3 more under construction right now in San Diego. Mexico appears to be a new target of Tesla's supercharger network - there's only five in the country right now, in the area around Mexico City, but by the end of the year they're going to have finished ten more, forming a network running from Texas to Mexico City; given this, their plans to triple by the end of next year will almost certainly involve a big effort in the west as well.
Simply not true. Here's one of the most recent studies on the topic. Check out figure 5a. The blue and light purple at the bottom of the graph represent energy consumption in usage. The colours above that represent energy consumption in production. Of those colours on EVs, the light blue at the top only applies to small-volume battery production; for high volume battery production (e.g. gigafactories), only the green and dark purple apply. Note how similar they are to ICE energy consumption, and how small of a fraction of the ICE's total energy they represent.
1. It's not just a curve based on past datapoints; it's also a curve based on future datapoints. Tesla is in the middle of doubling their number of chargers over the course of this year. We're talking ongoing permitting, construction, etc. By the end of next year they'll be at threefold what they are today. VW is adding in a massive, brand new network. Everyone is unrolling massive charging station deployments - not just with past datapoints, but ongoing construction and future plans. And of course, this is only expected, as the rate of EV production expansion and order reservations has also grown exponentially, which represents future consumption.
2. There have been lots of studies on this fact, and the simple fact is, the grid has no problem adding in EV charging. Take the US, for example. Every region in the US already has enough spare capacity to allow for EV charging (which occurs primarily at night, where power consumption is much lower), except for the Pacific Northwest. Local grids need improved capacity for a full conversion to EVs; however, a full conversion is something that takes place over decades, not overnight, and thus over a timescale at which grid improvements normally occur.
3. You did your math wrong because for some bizarre reason you assume that an EV spends 24/7 charging at 7kW. Which would mean that everyone is consuming 168kWh per day, meaning that they're driving 672 miles per day. Every day. In reality, the average Model 3 will consume under 250kWh per month.
And in what journal were those zero studies published? Because I've read plenty of actual, peer-reviewed studies, which say exactly the opposite. Which should be patently obvious to anyone who takes half a second to think about it. A typical gasoline car burns its weight in gasoline every year, up in smoke. And the mass of a car gets largely recycled at end-of-life. The more valuable the material in a car, the more likely it is to be recycled.
Oh, and as for the whole "rare earths" canard? Teslas, for example, don't use rare earths. Neither in the batteries nor in the motors. They use AC induction motors - that is, aluminum and copper. The battery cell cathodes are varying combination of nickel, cobalt, aluminum and oxygen; the anodes carbon with optional silicon; there's thin separator membranes and organic electrolytes; and of course, lithium which intercalates in the anode and cathode, of which most is mined in the least environmentally destructive manner imaginable (from drying salar brine - even more to the point, many of the salars flood annually and reclaim the drying ponds every year).
More to the point... nor are rare earths actually rare. Want to know something that's actually rare? Precious metals in your catalytic converter and spark plugs. They don't use much, of course - but they're mined from ores in ppb quantities, so you have to move a lot of ore to get those small quantities.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to raise an issue of copper usage (you can also use aluminum, but we'll ignore that)... ironically Tesla's vehicles may be using less copper than gasoline vehicles. One thing Tesla has been very aggressive about is reducing the wiring harness, which has grown into huge, heavy complicated mass on conventional vehicles. The Model S's was 3km (the average car today is 4km). The Model 3's wiring harness is 1,5km. And they're looking to get the Model Y down to a tiny 100m, and raise the voltage, which means less copper. The thing will weigh almost nothing.
You have a strange impression of what charging entails. Fast charging today is half an hour to 80%. Next generation chargers - higher power, and with offboard sources of chilled coolant rather than having cars cool themselves with ambient-temperature coolant - will bring this down. As will next-generation batteries, with higher ion mobility. And unless you drive great distances every day, it's not "every couple days". Even the shortest range Tesla is 220 miles highway range.
More city range.
Not against others in their class. The Tesla Model 3, for example, is designed to compete with the BMW 3-series and similar. Comparing base models, it's faster, more agile, more passenger room, more storage room, more standard features (bringing the 3-Series up to the standard features of the Model 3 requires thousands of dollars of options), and cheaper, without accounting for tax credits and the money saved on maintenance and fuel. And it's received rave reviews from virtually every journalist that test drove it thusfar.
They're not targeting a Yaris, they're targeting BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Toyota, Honda, etc are also on their hitlist, but several years down the road (Model 3 is a midrange sedan, while the next release will be Model Y, a midrange crossover, and a Tesla semi. After that they're looking at a pickup, a low-end sedan, and a second generation Roadster)
Driving an EV is vastly cheaper than driving a gasoline car. Do the math yourself - the Model S charges at about 1/4 kWh per highway mile (less per city mile). It of course depends on your local gas and electricity prices; even where electricity is expensive and gas is cheap, it's cheaper to drive an EV; in places where I am where electricity is average priced but gasoline very expensive, it costs 1/10th as much to drive an EV.
Tesla Model 3 has a 8 year / 100k (or 120k for the long-range) mile warranty on the battery pack. Model S and X have the same 8 years but unlimited mileage. And for the record, the batteries don't just die - the rate of degradation slows over time.
Not needed - the future is now. Heck, even the old weight canard is gone - a Tesla Model 3 weighs approximately the same as a BMW 3-Series.
And in fact, that is what's happening. Charging infrastructure is expanding exponentially. It's really amazing how quickly it's spreading. I think most people don't even notice it because they never look for it. But pull up, say, Plugshare and look at your city. Then compare to a year ago, or two.
Beyond destination chargers (at homes, at workplaces, at stores, curbside, etc), the current semi-global fast charging network (Tesla's - I don't consider CCS or CHAdeMO to be "fast charging") is set to triple by the end of next year. And it's apparently going to be joined by another one - Volkswagen's, which looks to also be a true fast charge network (150-350kW).
BTW, concerning Germany: they're probably the most backwards place in Europe in terms of EV charging infrastructure. But they're playing catch-up.
Except that they don't. So their peak loadings are higher. So viaducts must be able to support the higher peak loads.
The amount of towers, tunnels, etc is all laid out in Hyperloop Alpha.
1. It's not.
2. That's wrong.
Go talk to anyone who's ever engineered a VDU and start lecturing them about how terrible the engineering is on vacuum systems.
That doesn't even make sense.
I'm not "forgetting" anything. Wind loads in normal conditions are almost irrelevant. 3,3 m^2 per m of cross section, a Cd of 1,17 with Cat-5 70m/s winds is 1,225 * 1,17 * 70^2 * 3,3 N/m = 23,2kN/m, roughly the same as a 26 tonne *empty*, 15m long, passengers-plus-3x-vehicles capsule plus the track mass. More to the point, the tube has to maintain alignment with vehicles passing over it; if you eliminate alignment requirements (aka shut it down due to your category 5 hurricane) the ability to bear loads becomes vastly higher.
You're mixing up terms. They impose the same force, but for a much reduced period of time. Try this. Hold a steel bar between your hands and have someone swing a 2kg hammer at it at 10m/s, with the hammer coming to a stop in 10ms. No problem, right? That was 20kN force. Now instead of hitting the bar with a hammer, park a 2 tonne car on that bar. How are you doing holding that up? Because that's the same amount of force.
Time is absolutely relevant in terms of how hard a load is to bear.
(BTW, before you plan to pivot to "Well, but the deflection from a pod passing over would be too great...", actually run the numbers. It's not.)
Except mapping it out is literally what they did in the Hyperloop Alpha document. That you can be so dismissive of something that's literally already done tickles me.
The noun clause ("public right of way") immediately preceding the descriptive clause ("something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation)". Do I really need to diagram the sentence for you?
Right, which is why VDUs and the lines that feed them are constantly catastrophically imploding, right?
Sorry, but engineering for vacuum is no harder than engineering for pressure, and a lot safer in the event of a failure. Let me tell you, given the choice between a problem in a VDU and a hydrocracker, you'd much rather be working on the VDU. Of course you can make an implosion in something not designed for holding vacuum - that's why you hire bloody engineers, to prevent that. Which means some combination of appropriate wall thickness and regularly spaced reinforcing rings.
Again, if you'd read the Hyperloop Alpha document, you'd be aware that the design calls for emergency exits at periodic intervals. The pods move on wheels at low speeds.
Now, if your issue is that "they haven't been demonstrated", nobody said that they have, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. It's a new concept, with test facilities just starting to come online.
Technically, Hyperloop isn't even limited to those speeds. The main limitation is that you can't get too close to the speed of sound, as it causes a lot of problems with the concept. But the speed of sound is not a universal constant. It can be raised either by increasing temperature (which may well happen on its own; rarified atmospheres are terrible heat conductors) or by using light gases in the tube rather than leaked air. The latter means better pumping requirements, but the amount of gases involved (H2, He, H2O, CH4 or NH3) is very small, and too sparse to pose combustion or corrosion/embrittlement risks (with the possible exception of in the compressors/skis)
And now we add in the second thing people routinely confuse with Hyperloop (pneumatic tubes). Let's be clear:
Pneumatic train != Maglev-in-a-tube != Hyperloop Alpha
Except if you knew anything about Hyperloop and had read the Alpha document you'd realize that not only is it not "a vacuum transport tube", the capsules wouldn't even work in a hard vacuum. It's a linear air bearing, avoiding the need for maglev (which is very expensive), operating akin to an extreme ground-effect aircraft in a very rarified atmosphere - and getting around the air buildup problem via a compressor. No, this concept is not old. No, it does not resemble ET3. It's specifically designed to avoid the problems that have presented ET3-style systems (the cost of maglev).
Note, however, that people have taken to using "Hyperloop" to describe things very different than in the alpha document that unveiled the concept. For example, Hyperloop One is just maglev-in-a-tube like ET3 (a very old concept). So your criticism against them applies perfectly well.
I don't think you understand anything about Hyperloop (like 98% of the people who complain about the concept).
* Hyperloop pods leave every few minutes. There is no "schedule" like with trains.
* Hyperloop pods in the "large" variant carry cars. And that seems to be the variant that Musk is pursuing.
* As for cost (and this gets very tedious having to go into this on every thread): the reason for the costs in Hyperloop Alpha being low vs. HSR are.. first, the fundamentals:
1) Hyperloop costs are budgeted at rates similar to (but more expensive than) pipelines, on a "length times cross section" basis. Because it is a pipeline, not a railroad. It has a number of aspects that make it more expensive than a pipeline (greater straightness requirements, interior polishing, higher elevation, human factors, partial-vacuum pumping) and cheaper (low pressure is easier to resist than high, vastly lower pumping energy requirements, no risk of environmental contamination making approval expensive, vastly lower mass loadings, little to no thermal management needs, etc).
2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading. Hyperloop pods are an order of magnitude lighter than HSR trains. The peak loadings are also much more transient, which is much easier to resist.
3) Because the elevation cost is reduced, it lets them build the whole thing elevated over public right-of-ways (assuming the government has buy-in - which for getting a high speed transport system at no cost to them, is not an unrealistic expectation), greatly reducing acquisition costs. This is limited by bending radii.
4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation - is much cheaper than permitting for greenfield development.
Now for the cheats in the Alpha document:
5) Hyperloop serves fewer passenger trips than CA-HSR - it's in-between HSR numbers and air passenger numbers.
6) It stops in fewer locations - it's just a direct LA-SF route.
7) It doesn't go into town. It's far more expensive to build in-town than out of town. The document excuses this on the premise that airports are located out of town - but airports are located there because they often must be, not because people want them there.
8) To get government permission to use right-of-ways, they should be expected to have impositions for more stops (just like HSR had to) and/or in-town terminals (as HSR has to pay for).
A note about the cost: there are small tunneling sections in Hyperloop Alpha; however, none of them are in-town (which is very expensive). They're budgeted at standard tunneling rates per unit length times cross section (the tube is very low cross section compared to road and water tunnels). However, this ignores what Musk is trying to achieve with Boring Company (major reductions in tunneling cost); if Boring Company succeeds, then this portion of Hyperloop Alpha is overbudgeted.
That is all.
This isn't about Boring Company, which has up to this point just ostensibly been about tunnels. This is about Musk building a Hyperloop himself.
Musk's companies are juggernauts, and he raises capital with ease. This is going to be a tough wave for the other startups to weather.
Part of the problem that will come up is that they never made any indication that its use was trademarked previously, and repeatedly stressed that they're describing an "open source transportation concept". They may have trouble on defense.
Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.
That said... Hyperloop One, the furthest along, has just turned it into some uninteresting maglev-train-in-a-pipe concept. Hyperloop Alpha specifically was designed to avoid maglev because of how expensive it is; it's one of the fundamental design features that sets the concept apart. So I'm more interested in Elon's work here.
You forgot the solar business and energy storage business (both now part of Tesla) and tunnel boring business (Boring Company) ;) And he's involved in OpenAI. And started Neuralink. I wonder when he's going to get around to his electric airplane plans, too.
Indeed. More to the point, with 500k produced per year going on the roads, there's easily enough demand to justify a solid aftermarket parts business.
Completely in contradiction with the facts, but nice try.
There have been over half a million reservations, and only a bit over 10% cancelled - despite Tesla's heavy attempt at anti-sell to try to push people to the Model S. They're currently netting (new minus cancellations) about 1800 a day.
Yes, because US automakers are famous for making good versions of things?
Yes, because they've succeeded at competing with Tesla so far?
The big automakers if anything are burdened by their existing outdated infrastructure, while Tesla's is the latest technology. Tesla can hire away people with decades of experience at will. Against most startups, the big automakers could cite their cash advantages. But Tesla is worth more than them; they can finance anything that will ultimately help their bottom line with equity.
Here, try this on for size: where are their gigafactories? No, seriously. Mass battery manufacturing is a fundamental requirement for mass-scale EV production. You think something like that just pops up overnight? A consortium of German automakers just announced plans to make one, slightly larger than Tesla's. Construction however won't start for two years (because they're just now entering the conceptual stage) and full production is long way down the road. Meanwhile Tesla is already doing the design work on something like six more Gigafactories.
This notion that the existing major automakers are going to sleep for the next few years and then suddenly whip out a couple million EVs per year that everyone wants to buy is fantasy. They're on the defensive.
The recent meeting of Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are having a Blackberry moment. Their hopes of a diesel future look dashed, and Tesla is putting the Model 3 straight against the BMW 3 series and similar, beating it on standard features, performance, and price without even having to take into account subsidies and fuel savings (which in Europe can be thousands of dollars per year). They're meeting to try to figure out what to do. But the way forward is not going to be easy. They waited too long.
The free market prices didn't even approach the buyback prices. Tesla would offer you $35k for a car that you could sell for $55k on Ebay.
BTW, for Model 3, it looks like they're an always present icon at the bottom. (That's just a mockup based on videos people took during the unveiling, but it gives a general sense). So zero levels deep.
It's also worth noting that Tesla has various climate autoconfiguration options for drivers and passengers.
You mean that miniature screen far away from the driver? Yeah, totally the same thing.
And I'm sure you're typing this message from your special web browser keyboard and using your special web browser mouse, which is different from the one you use for word processing, which is different from the ones you use for each different video game... because of course it makes total sense to have different controls for each task rather than multifunction.
If you can't hit a button this big on a 15" touchscreen that's right in front of you, there's something wrong with you. No "three levels of menus", it's one level, and accessible by steering wheel controls.
What exactly is your use case? Want to listen to a specific artist or song? Press the voice command button and say to play their name. Try doing that in your specialized-control-for-each-device interface.
Corporate valuations are based on what investors think your companies are going to be earning, amortized and with respect to the risk. Someone's corporate assets being valuable means that investors think that their companies are really onto something and want a piece of it.
It's not hard to see why Tesla's value is high. Their profit margin on their current models is a solid 25%, similar figures are expected for the Model 3, and they have customers lining up years in advance for a car they can't even test drive yet. The fact that they're burning through cash scaling up to meet demand is completely expected; scaleup costs huge amounts of money, which is why you get investors in the first place. They invest because they can see the writing on the wall that they're going to be converting these hundreds of thousands of waiting customers into dollars in their pockets. And they see even more beyond that.
The question isn't whether Tesla should be worth a lot. The question is how much exactly it should be worth. And because there's so much disagreement on this, you get both a lot of buys and a lot of shorts. But there's one thing that does not determine a company's price, and that is "how much is the company currently in the black without any consideration of future revenues and how much they're spending on scaleup to achieve those revenues"