Hey, do you know how many Dogecoin you could buy for $500K? He could corner the Dogecoin market and do a 51% attack on himself and essentially become a trillionaire overnight!
And $50/hour is quite a bit for hiring mid-level engineers in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. My RF guy is in San Diego, the PCB layout person I used in the past was in Nebraska. The guy in SD is making pretty good at $80/hour...
So why are we giving all that money in the first place? And if you read the articles, you'll find that most consider the $100 billion annually as the starting point, intended to go up from there. Why are we giving all that money?
I use Upwork (formerly oDesk). I've hired domestic and foreign contract engineering labor. For a server I needed setup and configured, I hired a guy in Vietnam and for $18/hour (and 5 hours) he had it doing everything I needed. Hired a guy in India to do some custom CSS work for me, for $80. Hired a Ph.D. applied math/physics professor in Russia for some advanced 3D FEA modeling software - he was $35 an hour, but great quality C code from him. Hired several electrical/RF engineers here in the US to do some spot PCB/schematic/RF design work when my team was overloaded. All were between $50-$80/hour.
All turned out really well, did what I needed and when I needed it, and at a price that was reasonable. Having a US IT guy quote $2500 to set up a Windows server with SVN, Wiki, and a few other features was crazy, but I didn't have the time to do it myself. Having a guy in Vietnam do it for $100 was exactly what I needed. And finding a Ph.D. professor with a background in applied math and physics was essentially a needle in a haystack - I got lucky, the fact he was $35/hour was insane (I would have gladly paid 3X that amount). Currently using an MSEE to solve a hairy GSM noise issue on a PCB, and he's worth it at $80/hour.
Moral of the story: if you're doing basic, simple work - you're not going to be able to compete with overseas where there are millions of people who can do basic, simple work for a lot cheaper than you. If you're doing more complex, advanced things, you can most likely charge a lot more and still get work...
Agree - Upwork. I've hired plenty of contract labor from Upwork, from a mix of web devs to hardcore RF engineers. Simple to use, pretty good site overall...
Either way - it's a tangible product today in exchange (maybe temporarily) for a promise at a time to be named later. It's false to even claim the Model 3 base vehicle is better than the Bolt - given there are exactly zero base Model 3's available.
Check Tesla's financials. They lose money before you include R&D or capital expenditures - startup costs. Basically, the cost of the product (cost of revenue) and the administration/sales support for that product (SG&A) already put them negative.
Last quarter they had $3.4B in revenue, and the cost of that revenue was $2.95B, leaving them with $450MM in gross profit. SG&A was $686MM - meaning that just the cost of the product and the sales/administrative overhead to sell that vehicle results in a $236MM loss.
R&D, Interest Expenses, capital expenditures - those aren't even discussed at this point, we're already at a loss. It's not startup costs that are killing Tesla - it's too little gross margin on their product for their current SG&A level. Either they have to massively (and I mean by 50% or more) slash their sales and administrative costs, or they need to increase the price of their product. If Tesla completely SG&A (an impossibility, but we'll say they can for now), they still lose money based on R&D and interest. And we haven't even discussed capital expenditures.
Fundamentally, their financials simply don't work. They need to either dramatically change everything about everything they do, or they have to increase the revenue (price) of each product by 40% or more. It doesn't work out any other way.
One thing they could do is eliminate their own dealerships and let others run them. If you look at Ford, GM, BMW, etc. you'll see their SG&A is less than half that of Tesla's, per car. And it's predominantly because a huge chunk of the cost of sales, administration, support is covered by the dealers, who get a 10% margin on the vehicles sold. So the normal car companies "give" 10% of their margin to dealers, in exchange for taking on more than 60% of the SG&A costs. Tesla is trying to do it, so it's "saving" 10% of revenue and eating 230% of the SG&A than a normal car company should. Company car stores don't make sense - they are a financial death-blow, but Tesla won't change that, it's too much of their "mystique". But that one change there could well put them close to profitability...
The car companies are profitable; EVs generally are not. BAIC is making the best attempt at it (as they are the largest EV maker in the world, with Nissan close behind for 2nd place), but they are barely breaking even and probably would be failing as bad as Tesla if it wasn't for the huge support from Beijing.
So it's per-person that matters, not the actual amount of CO2? So if China had 99% of the per-person CO2 output as the US, they would be better than us, from an ecological standpoint, even though they'd have over 4 times the CO2 output? Really - is that what you want to argue?
That's curious, I didn't realize there was a supply shortage of solar panels and wind turbines. Would that be the reason they are so expensive to deploy?
Scientific American from March 2018 says the US' CO2 emissions are falling, and the EU CO2 emissions are rising. You can talk about "targets" and "goals" all you want - actual results show the US is cutting CO2 output, and Europe and Asia are increasing CO2 output.
Well, in this thread alone, Bing and probably Cedric believe Tesla is a scam. And you can add me to that list, too... Considering they lose money on each car they make, and that is BEFORE they include R&D or capital expenses, I don't see how they're going to ever turn a profit. It's like the old dot-bomb days, when it was OK to lose money on sale because somehow you'd make it up with volume.
What Tesla HAS done is suck up a lot of VC and investor capital, and make it harder for other companies to raise funds... But it's not shown a path towards profitability, and everything says it's immensely overvalued, and every time there's the slightest hiccup the CEO comes out with some great new pronouncement (new Roadster, opening orders, shiny new fire-breathing object to play with, etc.) in an attempt to distract from the reality: they are losing billions a year, selling tens of thousands of cars.
It's not the amount of electricity needed - it's the storage and transport of that electricity on a plane. The absolute best batteries available today are around 1.8 MJ/kg in storage. Compare that with jet fuel which is around 43 MJ/kg. Now cut the range your airplane can fly by a factor of (43/1.8) ~24 and you'll see the issue.
Battery powered airplanes are a curiosity, but to be useful in any meaningful manner, you have to figure out how to increase battery capacity by 20X. Or it just won't fly.
CO2 output from the US is falling. CO2 output from China, India, and the EU is rising. I'm curious about how you reach the conclusion that the "US is set to become the #1 polluter".
The problem is, the models used to tell us we HAVE TO DO THIS PARIS ACCORD OR DIE! all get the temperature trends wrong. They don't line up with reality. So do we continue going on with actions based on flawed models, or do we just say "screw it" and start over? As Feynman so well stated, if data and your model disagree - the model is wrong.
The treaty called for the US to provide $100 billion annually to China, India, and the rest of the developing world. Cash-up-front to be spent on "renewable energy", supposedly. With no audits, of course. Perhaps you should go and read the Paris accord and realize how much money was supposed to go from the US and Europe to the rest of the world...
You really expect a developing economy, responsibly for almost none of the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere and very little of the new CO2, to be held to the same standard as rich developed economies who got rich by doing exactly the thing we want those developing nations to avoid?.
I do.
I thought that wind and solar was cheaper than coal and natural gas and nuclear, so those who are deploying new electricity in the 3rd and 2nd world should benefit from cheaper, more plentiful, and lower CO2-emission power generation. Or is that not the case, and wind and solar actually cost MORE than coal and natural gas and nuclear?
Why would a developing nation deploy the more expensive source of electricity? If "clean power" is really lower cost, then why not deploy that from the beginning, in which case why do they need exemptions from CO2 generation?
We're actually reducing our emissions in the US, agreement or not. The EU is increasing their emissions. Yet somehow the US is the bad guy for actually taking positive action but ignoring the fancy language...
Slashdot Mirror
At least with gambling in Vegas, you can get a free drink whilst letting it ride...
Nah, just over $100,000 was the prediction. So only missed by 94%!
Hey, do you know how many Dogecoin you could buy for $500K? He could corner the Dogecoin market and do a 51% attack on himself and essentially become a trillionaire overnight!
And $50/hour is quite a bit for hiring mid-level engineers in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. My RF guy is in San Diego, the PCB layout person I used in the past was in Nebraska. The guy in SD is making pretty good at $80/hour...
So why are we giving all that money in the first place? And if you read the articles, you'll find that most consider the $100 billion annually as the starting point, intended to go up from there. Why are we giving all that money?
I use Upwork (formerly oDesk). I've hired domestic and foreign contract engineering labor. For a server I needed setup and configured, I hired a guy in Vietnam and for $18/hour (and 5 hours) he had it doing everything I needed. Hired a guy in India to do some custom CSS work for me, for $80. Hired a Ph.D. applied math/physics professor in Russia for some advanced 3D FEA modeling software - he was $35 an hour, but great quality C code from him. Hired several electrical/RF engineers here in the US to do some spot PCB/schematic/RF design work when my team was overloaded. All were between $50-$80/hour.
All turned out really well, did what I needed and when I needed it, and at a price that was reasonable. Having a US IT guy quote $2500 to set up a Windows server with SVN, Wiki, and a few other features was crazy, but I didn't have the time to do it myself. Having a guy in Vietnam do it for $100 was exactly what I needed. And finding a Ph.D. professor with a background in applied math and physics was essentially a needle in a haystack - I got lucky, the fact he was $35/hour was insane (I would have gladly paid 3X that amount). Currently using an MSEE to solve a hairy GSM noise issue on a PCB, and he's worth it at $80/hour.
Moral of the story: if you're doing basic, simple work - you're not going to be able to compete with overseas where there are millions of people who can do basic, simple work for a lot cheaper than you. If you're doing more complex, advanced things, you can most likely charge a lot more and still get work...
Agree - Upwork. I've hired plenty of contract labor from Upwork, from a mix of web devs to hardcore RF engineers. Simple to use, pretty good site overall...
So what you're saying is that deploying solar and wind is more expensive than deploying coal or natural gas? It's a simple yes or no question...
You should learn to use Google.
Either way - it's a tangible product today in exchange (maybe temporarily) for a promise at a time to be named later. It's false to even claim the Model 3 base vehicle is better than the Bolt - given there are exactly zero base Model 3's available.
Check Tesla's financials. They lose money before you include R&D or capital expenditures - startup costs. Basically, the cost of the product (cost of revenue) and the administration/sales support for that product (SG&A) already put them negative.
Last quarter they had $3.4B in revenue, and the cost of that revenue was $2.95B, leaving them with $450MM in gross profit. SG&A was $686MM - meaning that just the cost of the product and the sales/administrative overhead to sell that vehicle results in a $236MM loss.
R&D, Interest Expenses, capital expenditures - those aren't even discussed at this point, we're already at a loss. It's not startup costs that are killing Tesla - it's too little gross margin on their product for their current SG&A level. Either they have to massively (and I mean by 50% or more) slash their sales and administrative costs, or they need to increase the price of their product. If Tesla completely SG&A (an impossibility, but we'll say they can for now), they still lose money based on R&D and interest. And we haven't even discussed capital expenditures.
Fundamentally, their financials simply don't work. They need to either dramatically change everything about everything they do, or they have to increase the revenue (price) of each product by 40% or more. It doesn't work out any other way.
One thing they could do is eliminate their own dealerships and let others run them. If you look at Ford, GM, BMW, etc. you'll see their SG&A is less than half that of Tesla's, per car. And it's predominantly because a huge chunk of the cost of sales, administration, support is covered by the dealers, who get a 10% margin on the vehicles sold. So the normal car companies "give" 10% of their margin to dealers, in exchange for taking on more than 60% of the SG&A costs. Tesla is trying to do it, so it's "saving" 10% of revenue and eating 230% of the SG&A than a normal car company should. Company car stores don't make sense - they are a financial death-blow, but Tesla won't change that, it's too much of their "mystique". But that one change there could well put them close to profitability...
The car companies are profitable; EVs generally are not. BAIC is making the best attempt at it (as they are the largest EV maker in the world, with Nissan close behind for 2nd place), but they are barely breaking even and probably would be failing as bad as Tesla if it wasn't for the huge support from Beijing.
So it's per-person that matters, not the actual amount of CO2? So if China had 99% of the per-person CO2 output as the US, they would be better than us, from an ecological standpoint, even though they'd have over 4 times the CO2 output? Really - is that what you want to argue?
That's curious, I didn't realize there was a supply shortage of solar panels and wind turbines. Would that be the reason they are so expensive to deploy?
AC is wrong, China has about twice the CO2 output as the US.
Scientific American from March 2018 says the US' CO2 emissions are falling, and the EU CO2 emissions are rising. You can talk about "targets" and "goals" all you want - actual results show the US is cutting CO2 output, and Europe and Asia are increasing CO2 output.
"Econobox" I can drive today, or a 6+ month wait for a car I can drive later... Hmmm, decisions decisions!
Well, in this thread alone, Bing and probably Cedric believe Tesla is a scam. And you can add me to that list, too... Considering they lose money on each car they make, and that is BEFORE they include R&D or capital expenses, I don't see how they're going to ever turn a profit. It's like the old dot-bomb days, when it was OK to lose money on sale because somehow you'd make it up with volume.
What Tesla HAS done is suck up a lot of VC and investor capital, and make it harder for other companies to raise funds... But it's not shown a path towards profitability, and everything says it's immensely overvalued, and every time there's the slightest hiccup the CEO comes out with some great new pronouncement (new Roadster, opening orders, shiny new fire-breathing object to play with, etc.) in an attempt to distract from the reality: they are losing billions a year, selling tens of thousands of cars.
Heck of a tunnel to dig for that SFO to Shanghai, or NYC to London train!
It's not the amount of electricity needed - it's the storage and transport of that electricity on a plane. The absolute best batteries available today are around 1.8 MJ/kg in storage. Compare that with jet fuel which is around 43 MJ/kg. Now cut the range your airplane can fly by a factor of (43/1.8) ~24 and you'll see the issue.
Battery powered airplanes are a curiosity, but to be useful in any meaningful manner, you have to figure out how to increase battery capacity by 20X. Or it just won't fly.
CO2 output from the US is falling. CO2 output from China, India, and the EU is rising. I'm curious about how you reach the conclusion that the "US is set to become the #1 polluter".
The problem is, the models used to tell us we HAVE TO DO THIS PARIS ACCORD OR DIE! all get the temperature trends wrong. They don't line up with reality. So do we continue going on with actions based on flawed models, or do we just say "screw it" and start over? As Feynman so well stated, if data and your model disagree - the model is wrong.
The treaty called for the US to provide $100 billion annually to China, India, and the rest of the developing world. Cash-up-front to be spent on "renewable energy", supposedly. With no audits, of course. Perhaps you should go and read the Paris accord and realize how much money was supposed to go from the US and Europe to the rest of the world...
You really expect a developing economy, responsibly for almost none of the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere and very little of the new CO2, to be held to the same standard as rich developed economies who got rich by doing exactly the thing we want those developing nations to avoid?.
I do.
I thought that wind and solar was cheaper than coal and natural gas and nuclear, so those who are deploying new electricity in the 3rd and 2nd world should benefit from cheaper, more plentiful, and lower CO2-emission power generation. Or is that not the case, and wind and solar actually cost MORE than coal and natural gas and nuclear?
Why would a developing nation deploy the more expensive source of electricity? If "clean power" is really lower cost, then why not deploy that from the beginning, in which case why do they need exemptions from CO2 generation?
We're actually reducing our emissions in the US, agreement or not. The EU is increasing their emissions. Yet somehow the US is the bad guy for actually taking positive action but ignoring the fancy language...