That said, real demand seems to be meeting or exceeding the mandated percentage the last couple years, since I haven't seen a repeat of the crazy year-end sales and incentives.
Pretty soon BEV will be able to compete with ICEV on its own without any incentives. The general consensus is when the battery pack costs 100 $/kwh the electric drive train and ICE drive train will cost the same. Tesla claims it will reach that number end of this year. So converting from Elon time to real time, most likely middle of next year. Others are not far behind. When the price parity is achieved with ICE then it is a whole different ball game. Further electric drive trains still have lots of optimizations and cost reductions left in them. ICE drive trains improvements are in the third or fourth significant digit. So BEVs will start having initial cost advantage too after that.
The inherent advantages of BEVs are many (not including any larger benefit like smog or carbon or virtue signaling).
Electric miles are three to five times cheaper than gas miles. It is like getting gas at 75 cents / gallon.
Every day you start with a full tank of "gas", you save 10 minutes a week not going to gas stations for routine fill ups.
No oil change, saves you more time and money. No transmission fluid change no radiator flush or coolant refill...(Teslas need a battery coolant flush at 50K miles and every 100K miles afterwards)
Excellent handling and acceleration due to enormous instant electric torque and very low center of gravity.
The disadvantages are in the charge times in long distance travel, which is getting a lot more attention and confusion than it really deserves. On the days you need to drive more than 300 miles, you might spend 30 minutes to one hour more at the charging station compared to the gas car.(Assuming some time in the charger is used for restroom breaks and food breaks). Supercharging speed is not constant. On an empty battery, you start with 8 miles per minute charge speed, for about 20 minutes. Then 6 miles per min for 10 minutes, then 4 miles per min for 10 min, then 2 miles per min till full charge. Actual Tesla owners do not have range anxiety, given the quality of range prediction by the software, and the proliferation of superchargers.
But, as with all government subsidies, they are likely to continue long after the original need for it has been fulfilled.
The nine seater is similar to Beechcraft 1900D
Empty weight = 4700 kg, Fuel= 2000 kg, payload= 2800 kg. Typically 50% of the empty weight is structure, and 50% is the powerplant. Thus we have 4350 Kg for the engine and fuel. This is the mass budget we have battery + motor.
Tesla model 3 battery pack is 475 Kg for 75 kWh. Works out to 5700 kg. So we are already 1350 kg over the limit, and we have not added the motor yet. So what to do?
Tesla pack has active cooling and is designed for automotive use and it has some heavy shielding for road hazards etc. We should be able to save 20% on cooling. At altitude there is unlimited supply of very cold air, which can be used for cooling the battery pack. And during charging on ground, we would design a charging/cooling connections to blast it with refrigerated air and charge. We are at 4560 kg under this assumption.
Design the structure and the cell for aero application we can probably save another 10%. We are within ball park now 4100Kg. We have about 200 kg for two 260 kW motor. Not possible, but not totally out either.
Looks like it is a stretch to say we can do it with present day technology. But it needs just a some evolutionary improvements, not revolutionary breakthroughs to make this plane possible
A nine seater with such low operating cost will revolutionize Pacific island nations, Carribean islands, Australian outback, Alaska etc. So there is a huge market for it. Looks like it can happen. Sooner than we realized, is a defendable claim.
Blame the Christian missionaries working hand in glove with the merchants and the military for it. The cultures that survived the three pronged attack, the missionaries providing kind services like schools and hostpitals, while destroying the foundations of culture, pride and loyalty to their kings one one prong. Merchants dumping goods at loss to bankrupt the local uneducated merchant class was the second prong. Military attacking their governments was the third. Most countries succumbed to this in the early colonial era, India being the biggest crown jewel of that strategy.
Cultures that survived the onslaught has developed a very healthy immunity that is to be suspicious of all Western people. To gain respect in rural Japan, you need to work for three or four generations there showing respect. Then you will be treated well. Go in there with some superiority attitude, you will be smacked down hard.
It is interesting in Christianity you inherit the sins of your original parents, Adam and Eve. Western law says, you dont inherit the debt of your parents. Only any excess assets after settling the debts. In rural Japan you arrive with all the inherited sins of your forefathers.
It does not matter Tesla says at the start. At any time the union can force a vote for unionization. If 50% of those who show up to vote on a snowy winter night vote for it, all the workers are forced into the union and the union bosses decide the work rules. They can go for strike, and they can hold the company for ransom.
Hope you dont actually engage in high risk short trades with such scant understanding of SEC rules. Two years the period it has to file charges. Then SEC can not. Individuals can still sue, upto three years, they need to demonstrate standing and injury and prove intent. SEC does not have show intent it can go after negligence.
Your trusted news sources and trading idea purveyors kept you in the dark about the shorting potential of Facebook, Twitter etc. shows you are being played like a violin.
Massive transfer of shareholder dollars directly into his pocket based on a fraudulent deal.
The two year look back window on that deal just expired two weeks ago. The Shortville was eagerly expecting SEC to file charges. Serious talk about massive fraud. blah blah blah. The deadline for SEC to file charges, reopen the deal, to clawback any fraudulent money passed without a ripple.
You are still repeating their nonsense.
A few months ago Facebook lost 120 billion in market cap on a single day. That is 12 times the value of Tesla shorts. Somebody made huge money shorting Facebook. If your trusted news sources, rumor sites, and whatsapp groups never even hinted you could make massive money shorting facebook, while continually focusing your attention on Tesla, you are being played like a violin.
Gotta love having a CEO who doesn't care whether he tanks the stock by saying things like it wouldn't bother him if his company went bankrupt if someone else made a better product;)
The casual remarks have no effect on the insiders. The fanbois wont sell, though the fanbois shout a lot and show very great support, but usually they are not rich enough to own significant amount of stock. Despite all the shorts painting the picture of fanbois popping up the stock, institutions own 85% of the float. These institutions rely on automated loss limiting programmed sale robots who just scan the head lines and trade. They are the ones who sell on these news. And these robots are being gamed. You are also getting a piece of the action. Lot more are piling on too. I don't trade at all, so I will just watch.
There are literally thousands of people within commuting distance, who are eagerly seeking jobs and have lots of experience in the car industry.
All of them used to union decreed levels of productivity. "My job is to move the robot to this point. It can only plugged in by the electrician. Even if the electrician plugs in three robots adjacent to each others, the work load will be calculated for the time taken to walk from his normal station to the robot three times and walk back three times. And you can only hire the niece of the union boss who has gone through the apprenticeship program, not the person who is actually more qualified. "
Wondering if that Roger and me guy would do a story on working with the UAW.
When the picketed a factory for some union action, none of the workers would actually man the picket lines. So the union hired people at minimum wage, no benefits, no union contractors to hold the placards and walk the picket line. There were no water buffalo for these hired help, no porta johns either. Of course no mandated breaks every two hours.
It does not have the money to buy anything. If the government makes it essentially free, it would take it. It needs a factory for Y and Semi. But it would not take it, even if it is free, it is bundled with UAW.
Ohio is a union state. Factory comes with UAW baggage and nonsense.
Tesla is not able to access capital markets according to the shorts, or does not want to access capital markets according to Tesla. It needs serious capex to do model Y, the Tesla Semi and to expand to 10K model 3 a week to make 35 K model 3 possible. Still it paid down 240 million in Q3 and is going to pay half of 2019 note in cash, another 480 million.
Any normal company would have raised and rolled the bonds, keeping the cash. Next Tesla factory would be in Europe. The one after that would most likely be an ex Boeing facility near Seattle WA, or near Austin TX. (Devils bargain to situate the factory there in return for direct access to Texas auto market.)
But Tesla is not a normal company. It does things, that appears to be quite irrational at the first glance.
If only there is a sort of black box like they have in airplanes...
Some company that tracks every email, every text, every search and logs them all, making it available for the police to reconstruct the last few events and keystrokes of a dead person.... If only such a company existed they can help the police....
Residential solar is more expensive than utility scale solar by a factor of 2 to 2.5. Even with more than double installation cost, you are close to breaking even.
The calculation you make is exactly the same calculation made to decide whether to own a car or to depend on public transport in 1960s. Economy of scale vs premium for independence. People peeled off the public transport, rich ones first and then upper middle class, and then...
Retired people in CA will not have the need to live in the overcrowded cities with stratospheric prices for real estate. They will sell their homes at a very high appreciation and move to cheaper satellite towns.
The regulation adds 10K to a home, median new home price is 500K in CA. So people might do it without this regulation, it makes economic sense. That is my point, pretty soon, without any prodding of incentive solar+wind+battery will thrive. PG&E with its bloat will drive people away from the grid. It will become a moribund utility begging the public for constant cash infusion.
I dont disagree with you. Just saying, the fossil fuel powerplants are on the way out.
Utilities, with their economy of scale, will deliver green energy without much of pushing, prodding by the government.
And, as it happened with buslines, tramlines and other public transport, people who can afford it will peel off the grid. That will result in more cost for people still in the grid. At some point in dense urban jungles, the grid will continue to live, just like the public transport. Vast rural areas might be totally free of the grid.
Pretty soon it would not be needed. The economics are already favoring solar+wind+battery and such mandates might create scarcity and jack prices up.
We are at the tipping point already. Solar is 1.25 $/watt installation cost at utility levels. Battery is 125 $/kWh at pack level already. We consume 11 Terra Watt hours a day. Making that much at in 8 hours of sunshine would need 1.4 TW of installed capacity, costing 1.75 trillion dollars. We need to store half that energy in battery for night use, so at 125 $/kWh we need 750 billion in battery. Works out to 2.5 trillion dollars. Interest on that investment would be 100 billion a year at 4%. This cost needs to be added to annual production 11 Twh/day * 365 days, 4 billion kwh, works out to 2.5 cents per kWh. Electricity retails for about 6 cents/kWh, not counting distribution. Fuel, the sunlight, is free. So only other cost is maintenance of equipment. It is far simpler to maintain solar panels than powerplants. So the economics will work out.
The existing power plants all have life running into decades. But as they die off, replacement will be solar panels and batteries.
It makes economic sense to use solar, wind and batteries. Whether or not you believe in climate change or environments, pure economics is going to drive this industry.
Soon the traditional fossil fuel companies and powerplants will come with hats in hand begging for tax payer assistance.
How much we have spent on oil exploration? how much in cobalt exploration? Are you sure there is no more cobalt to find? Are you sure there is no substitute?
Powerplants bring home 150 billion a year in revenue. But their profits are in 5% range, they typically pay 3% dividend. 7.5 billion profit. Batteries are attacking its most profitable sector. The base load powerplants barely make money.
Remember, you are suggesting that we use batteries to hold the grid up for HOURS or DAYS when wind and solar are not producing enough power to meet demand. Right now, the battery being used is only capable of doing this for tens of min, and only while the grid is being reconfigured to fix what ever problem happened to trigger the event.
In less than a decade battery price will fall so much we can store days worth of electricity usage. My Tesla Model 3 stores 75 kWh. That is one week of usage by my home in the winter. 2 days of storage in the summer. We are there.
You are right about "Tesla" being unnecessary for this story. True. What wins is the battery, others are also capable of making such systems.
But, it is not an edge case or applicable only in isolated areas. PG&E is replacing three peaker power plants with battery storage. A well connected grid, and the application is not momentary load balance for frequency control. It is a well predicted clear rise in demand over four hours. Batteries are kicking the gas turbines out.
Again the story, needlessly puts Tesla front and center, no doubt for clicks, but the real hero here is the battery.
Batteries are taking huge bite out of the high premium, high profit sectors. The rest of the powerplants are going to be working on the razor thin margins of commodity base load power. The entire spot market for electricity could disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, real demand seems to be meeting or exceeding the mandated percentage the last couple years, since I haven't seen a repeat of the crazy year-end sales and incentives.
Pretty soon BEV will be able to compete with ICEV on its own without any incentives. The general consensus is when the battery pack costs 100 $/kwh the electric drive train and ICE drive train will cost the same. Tesla claims it will reach that number end of this year. So converting from Elon time to real time, most likely middle of next year. Others are not far behind. When the price parity is achieved with ICE then it is a whole different ball game. Further electric drive trains still have lots of optimizations and cost reductions left in them. ICE drive trains improvements are in the third or fourth significant digit. So BEVs will start having initial cost advantage too after that.
The inherent advantages of BEVs are many (not including any larger benefit like smog or carbon or virtue signaling).
The disadvantages are in the charge times in long distance travel, which is getting a lot more attention and confusion than it really deserves. On the days you need to drive more than 300 miles, you might spend 30 minutes to one hour more at the charging station compared to the gas car.(Assuming some time in the charger is used for restroom breaks and food breaks). Supercharging speed is not constant. On an empty battery, you start with 8 miles per minute charge speed, for about 20 minutes. Then 6 miles per min for 10 minutes, then 4 miles per min for 10 min, then 2 miles per min till full charge. Actual Tesla owners do not have range anxiety, given the quality of range prediction by the software, and the proliferation of superchargers.
But, as with all government subsidies, they are likely to continue long after the original need for it has been fulfilled.
Some one whatsapped me about this...
Tesla model 3 battery pack is 475 Kg for 75 kWh. Works out to 5700 kg. So we are already 1350 kg over the limit, and we have not added the motor yet. So what to do?
Tesla pack has active cooling and is designed for automotive use and it has some heavy shielding for road hazards etc. We should be able to save 20% on cooling. At altitude there is unlimited supply of very cold air, which can be used for cooling the battery pack. And during charging on ground, we would design a charging/cooling connections to blast it with refrigerated air and charge. We are at 4560 kg under this assumption.
Design the structure and the cell for aero application we can probably save another 10%. We are within ball park now 4100Kg. We have about 200 kg for two 260 kW motor. Not possible, but not totally out either.
Looks like it is a stretch to say we can do it with present day technology. But it needs just a some evolutionary improvements, not revolutionary breakthroughs to make this plane possible
A nine seater with such low operating cost will revolutionize Pacific island nations, Carribean islands, Australian outback, Alaska etc. So there is a huge market for it. Looks like it can happen. Sooner than we realized, is a defendable claim.
Cultures that survived the onslaught has developed a very healthy immunity that is to be suspicious of all Western people. To gain respect in rural Japan, you need to work for three or four generations there showing respect. Then you will be treated well. Go in there with some superiority attitude, you will be smacked down hard.
It is interesting in Christianity you inherit the sins of your original parents, Adam and Eve. Western law says, you dont inherit the debt of your parents. Only any excess assets after settling the debts. In rural Japan you arrive with all the inherited sins of your forefathers.
It does not matter Tesla says at the start. At any time the union can force a vote for unionization. If 50% of those who show up to vote on a snowy winter night vote for it, all the workers are forced into the union and the union bosses decide the work rules. They can go for strike, and they can hold the company for ransom.
Your trusted news sources and trading idea purveyors kept you in the dark about the shorting potential of Facebook, Twitter etc. shows you are being played like a violin.
So why aren't Ford GM and Toyota not selling at a higher price? They are eligible too?
bottom is zero in this graph
Massive transfer of shareholder dollars directly into his pocket based on a fraudulent deal.
The two year look back window on that deal just expired two weeks ago. The Shortville was eagerly expecting SEC to file charges. Serious talk about massive fraud. blah blah blah. The deadline for SEC to file charges, reopen the deal, to clawback any fraudulent money passed without a ripple.
You are still repeating their nonsense.
A few months ago Facebook lost 120 billion in market cap on a single day. That is 12 times the value of Tesla shorts. Somebody made huge money shorting Facebook. If your trusted news sources, rumor sites, and whatsapp groups never even hinted you could make massive money shorting facebook, while continually focusing your attention on Tesla, you are being played like a violin.
That subsidy goes to the buyer of the car, not the seller of the car.
Gotta love having a CEO who doesn't care whether he tanks the stock by saying things like it wouldn't bother him if his company went bankrupt if someone else made a better product ;)
The casual remarks have no effect on the insiders. The fanbois wont sell, though the fanbois shout a lot and show very great support, but usually they are not rich enough to own significant amount of stock. Despite all the shorts painting the picture of fanbois popping up the stock, institutions own 85% of the float. These institutions rely on automated loss limiting programmed sale robots who just scan the head lines and trade. They are the ones who sell on these news. And these robots are being gamed. You are also getting a piece of the action. Lot more are piling on too. I don't trade at all, so I will just watch.
There are literally thousands of people within commuting distance, who are eagerly seeking jobs and have lots of experience in the car industry.
All of them used to union decreed levels of productivity. "My job is to move the robot to this point. It can only plugged in by the electrician. Even if the electrician plugs in three robots adjacent to each others, the work load will be calculated for the time taken to walk from his normal station to the robot three times and walk back three times. And you can only hire the niece of the union boss who has gone through the apprenticeship program, not the person who is actually more qualified. "
Wondering if that Roger and me guy would do a story on working with the UAW.
When the picketed a factory for some union action, none of the workers would actually man the picket lines. So the union hired people at minimum wage, no benefits, no union contractors to hold the placards and walk the picket line. There were no water buffalo for these hired help, no porta johns either. Of course no mandated breaks every two hours.
It does not have the money to buy anything. If the government makes it essentially free, it would take it. It needs a factory for Y and Semi. But it would not take it, even if it is free, it is bundled with UAW.
Tesla is not able to access capital markets according to the shorts, or does not want to access capital markets according to Tesla. It needs serious capex to do model Y, the Tesla Semi and to expand to 10K model 3 a week to make 35 K model 3 possible. Still it paid down 240 million in Q3 and is going to pay half of 2019 note in cash, another 480 million.
Any normal company would have raised and rolled the bonds, keeping the cash. Next Tesla factory would be in Europe. The one after that would most likely be an ex Boeing facility near Seattle WA, or near Austin TX. (Devils bargain to situate the factory there in return for direct access to Texas auto market.)
But Tesla is not a normal company. It does things, that appears to be quite irrational at the first glance.
whooosh.
Some company that tracks every email, every text, every search and logs them all, making it available for the police to reconstruct the last few events and keystrokes of a dead person .... If only such a company existed they can help the police ....
The calculation you make is exactly the same calculation made to decide whether to own a car or to depend on public transport in 1960s. Economy of scale vs premium for independence. People peeled off the public transport, rich ones first and then upper middle class, and then ...
Retired people in CA will not have the need to live in the overcrowded cities with stratospheric prices for real estate. They will sell their homes at a very high appreciation and move to cheaper satellite towns.
The regulation adds 10K to a home, median new home price is 500K in CA. So people might do it without this regulation, it makes economic sense. That is my point, pretty soon, without any prodding of incentive solar+wind+battery will thrive. PG&E with its bloat will drive people away from the grid. It will become a moribund utility begging the public for constant cash infusion.
Utilities, with their economy of scale, will deliver green energy without much of pushing, prodding by the government.
And, as it happened with buslines, tramlines and other public transport, people who can afford it will peel off the grid. That will result in more cost for people still in the grid. At some point in dense urban jungles, the grid will continue to live, just like the public transport. Vast rural areas might be totally free of the grid.
We are at the tipping point already. Solar is 1.25 $/watt installation cost at utility levels. Battery is 125 $/kWh at pack level already. We consume 11 Terra Watt hours a day. Making that much at in 8 hours of sunshine would need 1.4 TW of installed capacity, costing 1.75 trillion dollars. We need to store half that energy in battery for night use, so at 125 $/kWh we need 750 billion in battery. Works out to 2.5 trillion dollars. Interest on that investment would be 100 billion a year at 4%. This cost needs to be added to annual production 11 Twh /day * 365 days, 4 billion kwh, works out to 2.5 cents per kWh. Electricity retails for about 6 cents/kWh, not counting distribution. Fuel, the sunlight, is free. So only other cost is maintenance of equipment. It is far simpler to maintain solar panels than powerplants. So the economics will work out.
The existing power plants all have life running into decades. But as they die off, replacement will be solar panels and batteries.
It makes economic sense to use solar, wind and batteries. Whether or not you believe in climate change or environments, pure economics is going to drive this industry.
Soon the traditional fossil fuel companies and powerplants will come with hats in hand begging for tax payer assistance.
How much we have spent on oil exploration? how much in cobalt exploration? Are you sure there is no more cobalt to find? Are you sure there is no substitute?
It looks like the false negative rate is 10%. any number on false positives?
... stock market. Especially the futures and options market.
Powerplants bring home 150 billion a year in revenue. But their profits are in 5% range, they typically pay 3% dividend. 7.5 billion profit. Batteries are attacking its most profitable sector. The base load powerplants barely make money.
Remember, you are suggesting that we use batteries to hold the grid up for HOURS or DAYS when wind and solar are not producing enough power to meet demand. Right now, the battery being used is only capable of doing this for tens of min, and only while the grid is being reconfigured to fix what ever problem happened to trigger the event.
PG&E is retiring three, count them, one, two , three, peaker plants and replacing them with batteries. They are designed to store 1.2 GWh, 300 MW for four hours. Already.
In less than a decade battery price will fall so much we can store days worth of electricity usage. My Tesla Model 3 stores 75 kWh. That is one week of usage by my home in the winter. 2 days of storage in the summer. We are there.
But, it is not an edge case or applicable only in isolated areas. PG&E is replacing three peaker power plants with battery storage. A well connected grid, and the application is not momentary load balance for frequency control. It is a well predicted clear rise in demand over four hours. Batteries are kicking the gas turbines out.
Again the story, needlessly puts Tesla front and center, no doubt for clicks, but the real hero here is the battery.
Batteries are taking huge bite out of the high premium, high profit sectors. The rest of the powerplants are going to be working on the razor thin margins of commodity base load power. The entire spot market for electricity could disappear.