Kenh, I was like you, very skeptical of batteries till about last year. Once I did the research and studied it, I was convinced. You have a four digit id. You will be convinced too, if you read about it.
My classmate is the chief engineer in a nuclear waste storage facility deep underground. He just ordered a HVAC system upgrade costing 130 million dollars, to deal with the diesel fumes. For that money you could buy 1 GWh of batteries. Enough to keep 40 Earth movers operating 24/7 with batteries on 8 hour use, 16 hour recharge cycle. The smaller HVAC, motors being four times cheaper than diesel makes the break even point is about one year! The price point has been reached. It is not happening right now because there is simply not enough battery making capacity, not because the cost is too high. Total world battery capacity is just 40 GWh. This one waste storage can absorb 2.5% of it! All earth moving companies have announced batter powered earth movers. Range is not an issue, hot swap battery packs will keep them going 24/7. Diesel earthmovers will die a sudden and quick death.
Yes batteries store energy. Solar and wind have free fuel. Their only cost is interest payment on their investment and payroll. Both very stable and predictable. Gas plants create energy but natural gas prices fluctuate a lot. And the maintenance is expensive. These batteries remove the indeterminacy of solar/wind. Utility scale batteries are coming. Already three gas peaker plants are being retired by PG&E to be replaced with batteries. Batteries are coming.
Kia Kona will have limited production, to be available only in CA.
Tesla is making gross margin on the car 20% or so on the higher end cars with average sale price above 50K. It does not have costs down to 30K to sell 35K model 3 with profits. Estimates are, the short range model will cost 28K to make at the volume of half a million a year. Tesla is still struggling to make 350 K a year consistently in Fremont.
Shorts have succeeded in cutting Tesla access to capital. So it is trying to fully fund the ramp up to 10K cars a week using existing sales and revenue, it is going to be slow. But it will get there.
Last year any negative story about Tesla immediately got several dozen postings. Then Dec18-Jan19 time frame many Tesla threads appeared and died without even breaking the 50 post mark. Then suddenly today a positive story about Tesla and hundred postings within six hours.
The click trackers will very quickly spot the trend. I think the click-bait stories in the coming months are going to be positive on Tesla.
And the institutional investors, bean counters, not starry eyed fanbois, own 60% of TSLA, they value it at 50 billion dollars. More than ford or gm. Nearly as much as VW, daimler etc.
They speak with actual cold hard cash. You write stuff in an obscure corner of the net.
Ihor Dusaniwsky has been posting the estimated short positions of TSLA (and other stocks) for a long time. Go through his twitter posts of last year. By 2018 Jun 42 million shares of TSLA were shorted. Now the number is 24 million.
We've only been calcing mark-to-market P\L since 2016.... 2016-2019 mark-to-market P\L for $TSLA is a $4.66 billion loss which includes $822 million in stock borrow financing costs (an average fee of 3.62% fee for the 3+ years.)
Who said anything about saving the world? The car does 0-60 in 5 seconds, handles so wonderfully, very pleasant to drive, and saves me so much of time not having to visit gas stations. Every day I leave home with 300 miles on the battery. Never have to look at the battery gauge on daily city driving. It is a wonderful car.
Why do you hate success? Or is it envy? I can afford a 100K car, but would not pay more than 25K for a gas car. Along comes Tesla, and I happily give them 55K. Instead of being green with jealousy you should try to learn a few things from us the one percenters.
It has already happened. The battery price has fallen by a factor of 16 in the last 28 years. It is expected to continue to fall to 60$/kWh in 2025. All hell will break loose when the price breaks through 90$/kWh automobiles total disruption, and then at 75$/kWh when solar/wind storage makes spot market for electricity vanish. Juicy margins of natural gas burning power plants come from that market. When it crashes through 60 $/kWh, domestic distributed storage will disrupt the utilities. Richer people will disconnect from the grid, and rest of the people still on the grid will face higher charges. More will defect. Utilities will follow the life cycle of bus lines and tram lines. All within the next 12 years.
Only tires, the torque wears out the tire more than ICEV. But you are good on brakes. There are S and X cars with 150K miles on the odo, with just 1/8 inch loss on the brake pads. The regenerative braking does 90 to 99% of the slowing down (when you measure by energy) and the brakes dont wear out at all!
The tipping point is closer than you think. At present the industry battery price is 140 $/kWh. Tesla is at 120 or 110$/kWh. The magic number is 90$/kWh at pack level. At that price point, ICEV and BEV will cost the same.
Investment in oil exploration has already dried up. Especially in the super expensive deep sea directional drilling platforms.
I can afford to pay even 100K for a car. But I wont pay more than 25K for a car. I made an exception for Tesla. There is a huge numbers of camry, accord owners who voluntarily stop at that price point. Give them a compelling reason, they will pay 60K.
The entire Tesla enterprise is a bet on a curve. The battery price will halve and the energy density will double every seven years. Sort of a Moore's Law for the batteries. The play book of Tesla is to find which segment of the car/suv market can be attacked at what price batteries. Roadster in 2008. S in 2012. X in 2015. 3 in 2018.
The auto industry is very mature. Almost all its parts have been refined and optimized over and over for a long time. The prices of components, crankshafts, body panels, differential gears, do not change significantly between the conception, design and production. They conditioned to think like this. "Today battery price is 200 $/kWh. The gasoline power train cost X$. Replacing it with electric would give me Y kWh battery, so... " They are not used to, "battery price to day is 190 $/kWh, four years from now it will 140$/kWh,...". This is the mistake they made in underestimating Tesla.
Also the temperament of Elon helped. He kept making impossible to believe claims. So they discounted everything he said. Had he been a staid stiff upper lip CEO, they might have taken him more seriously and started competing with him earlier. 11 years after the Roadster, still there is no electric roadster from any competition with comparable spec. 50 kWh battery, 240 mile range, peppy two seater.
While the media circus he created kept focusing on his "failures". What he delivered in his "failures" were still stunning ground breaking trail blazing machines.
The battery era is dawning. It is getting cheaper to store 1 GWh of electricity than to build an gas burning powerplant, in the usa! In deep mines, not having to suck out the diesel exhaust pays for the conversion to battery powered earth movers!
At the price of 90 $/kWh BEV and ICEV will cost the same off the dealership, for a 300 mile range car. At that price indeterminacy of solar and wind would not be an issue. We are in for a great battery powered future.
Very sensible attitude. You will not be disappointed when you get an electric car at the price you are comfortable with, be it Tesla or not.
Among the early adopters a vast majority are also the same sensible people, knowingly and willingly paying way over their normal price range for the model 3. The most common models traded in for the model 3 were Camrys, priuses and accords. My own comfort price range is 25K, and I paid 55K way beyond my comfort zone. I had heard numerous owners say the same thing.
As the prices fall, you might be tempted to stretch your price range too, it has that kind of effect, once you test drive one.
Tesla's idea was to radiate electricity from the tower using spherical wave front. The power density of the wave front degrades by the inverse square law. Double the distance, one quarter will be the energy density. There is no escaping from this. So it would not have worked.
Pencils of microwaves to transmit energy? Might work, but difficult to get it approved and built. Birds flying through the invisible beam will be cooked instantly.
From what you have revealed, it shows that you are likely to vote for the Democrats. Your employers already know that, and that is probably why they are not interested in promoting you or giving you a raise. You are likely to squander your raise on political contributions to the Democrats.
Like one could post interesting and enjoyable content and earn upvotes. Earning so many upvotes gives you a few upvotes to dispense to others. Instead of giving unlimited number of upvotes to random people, you can make the earn it.
Wonder if there is a site/forum that tries this. Does any one in slashdot know such a system?
We might argue here splitting hairs. But public is likely to side with NYPD than with first amendment warriors.
Back when speed limits was very low and there was no alternative to drinking and driving majority of the public hated the speed traps and DWI check points. And would be in a mood to support the dodgers because they might need to dodge it themselves at some point.
But now with easy Uber clones and public info campaign, most people avoid drinking and driving. Speed limits have gone up to 70. A very large majority of the the public no longer feel these checkpoints are targeting them, but instead they are targeting the "others", "them speed maniacs, and them drunken drivers". Public support is likely to be with NYPD, whether they win in courts or not. Google has a "win the court lose the people" dilemma in its hand.
Many of the "debt collectors" are themselves victims of fraud. They fall for "work from home, make phone calls, make money" schemes. They are sold completely uncollectable debt at cents per dollar, they pay money for "training" and "equipment", and services to trace address and phone numbers. In the end they are so desperate they will break all these laws, will resort to telling all kinds of lies, they are in despo situation themselves.
US lending institutions consider the ability to lend to people at an instant to fund impulse purchases a big money maker.
They know they may not be able to complete a thorough verification before the impulse to borrow passes. So they rush to lend. They know they make mistakes and lend to fraudsters. But to them it is cost of doing business, net profit from impulse lending is so great they do this knowingly.
Then, the fraudulently lent loans get written off, sold for pennies for a dollar to the debt collectors. These people come after you, get default judgements, demanding that you prove you did not borrow the money. Even if you do to one debt collector, he sells the loan to the next debt collector and it goes on.
Small things might help here:
Make a law, "Lenders can not sell defaulted loans without fully proving the identity of the borrower.".
Get a couple of precedent judgement, "if the bank sold a loan based on stolen identity, they are liable for slander and all damage caused to the person whose identity was compromised".
Once you make the banks eat all the losses, and prevent damage to people whose identity is compromised, they will do the basic necessary things to verify identity.
The tracks are privately owned and they have to be maintained by private funds.
The roads are used by both tax payers and heavy commercial trucks of the 80,000 lb class. The damage done by on truck equals the wear and tear of some 9000 private cars. The cost of road and bridge project to accept 80,000 lb trucks makes them so expensive. But they get massively subsidized by the tax payers.
But there is very strongly embedded idea among the people that railroads are tax subsidized white elephants, while the commercial trucks are the epitome of free market and competition.
Slashdot Mirror
My classmate is the chief engineer in a nuclear waste storage facility deep underground. He just ordered a HVAC system upgrade costing 130 million dollars, to deal with the diesel fumes. For that money you could buy 1 GWh of batteries. Enough to keep 40 Earth movers operating 24/7 with batteries on 8 hour use, 16 hour recharge cycle. The smaller HVAC, motors being four times cheaper than diesel makes the break even point is about one year! The price point has been reached. It is not happening right now because there is simply not enough battery making capacity, not because the cost is too high. Total world battery capacity is just 40 GWh. This one waste storage can absorb 2.5% of it! All earth moving companies have announced batter powered earth movers. Range is not an issue, hot swap battery packs will keep them going 24/7. Diesel earthmovers will die a sudden and quick death.
Yes batteries store energy. Solar and wind have free fuel. Their only cost is interest payment on their investment and payroll. Both very stable and predictable. Gas plants create energy but natural gas prices fluctuate a lot. And the maintenance is expensive. These batteries remove the indeterminacy of solar/wind. Utility scale batteries are coming. Already three gas peaker plants are being retired by PG&E to be replaced with batteries. Batteries are coming.
Tesla is making gross margin on the car 20% or so on the higher end cars with average sale price above 50K. It does not have costs down to 30K to sell 35K model 3 with profits. Estimates are, the short range model will cost 28K to make at the volume of half a million a year. Tesla is still struggling to make 350 K a year consistently in Fremont.
Shorts have succeeded in cutting Tesla access to capital. So it is trying to fully fund the ramp up to 10K cars a week using existing sales and revenue, it is going to be slow. But it will get there.
The click trackers will very quickly spot the trend. I think the click-bait stories in the coming months are going to be positive on Tesla.
They speak with actual cold hard cash. You write stuff in an obscure corner of the net.
We've only been calcing mark-to-market P\L since 2016 .... 2016-2019 mark-to-market P\L for $TSLA is a $4.66 billion loss which includes $822 million in stock borrow financing costs (an average fee of 3.62% fee for the 3+ years.)
Who said anything about saving the world? The car does 0-60 in 5 seconds, handles so wonderfully, very pleasant to drive, and saves me so much of time not having to visit gas stations. Every day I leave home with 300 miles on the battery. Never have to look at the battery gauge on daily city driving. It is a wonderful car.
Why do you hate success? Or is it envy? I can afford a 100K car, but would not pay more than 25K for a gas car. Along comes Tesla, and I happily give them 55K. Instead of being green with jealousy you should try to learn a few things from us the one percenters.
It has already happened. The battery price has fallen by a factor of 16 in the last 28 years. It is expected to continue to fall to 60$/kWh in 2025. All hell will break loose when the price breaks through 90$/kWh automobiles total disruption, and then at 75$/kWh when solar/wind storage makes spot market for electricity vanish. Juicy margins of natural gas burning power plants come from that market. When it crashes through 60 $/kWh, domestic distributed storage will disrupt the utilities. Richer people will disconnect from the grid, and rest of the people still on the grid will face higher charges. More will defect. Utilities will follow the life cycle of bus lines and tram lines. All within the next 12 years.
It was a big mistake by Nissan to scrimp on active thermal management of the battery. All other car makers benefit from that lesson learned.
The tipping point is closer than you think. At present the industry battery price is 140 $/kWh. Tesla is at 120 or 110$ /kWh. The magic number is 90$/kWh at pack level. At that price point, ICEV and BEV will cost the same.
Investment in oil exploration has already dried up. Especially in the super expensive deep sea directional drilling platforms.
I can afford to pay even 100K for a car. But I wont pay more than 25K for a car. I made an exception for Tesla. There is a huge numbers of camry, accord owners who voluntarily stop at that price point. Give them a compelling reason, they will pay 60K.
You represent a very tiny market. Further you are unlikely to pay much for what you desire. The market might not serve you.
The entire Tesla enterprise is a bet on a curve. The battery price will halve and the energy density will double every seven years. Sort of a Moore's Law for the batteries. The play book of Tesla is to find which segment of the car/suv market can be attacked at what price batteries. Roadster in 2008. S in 2012. X in 2015. 3 in 2018.
The auto industry is very mature. Almost all its parts have been refined and optimized over and over for a long time. The prices of components, crankshafts, body panels, differential gears, do not change significantly between the conception, design and production. They conditioned to think like this. "Today battery price is 200 $/kWh. The gasoline power train cost X$. Replacing it with electric would give me Y kWh battery, so... " They are not used to, "battery price to day is 190 $/kWh, four years from now it will 140$/kWh, ...". This is the mistake they made in underestimating Tesla.
Also the temperament of Elon helped. He kept making impossible to believe claims. So they discounted everything he said. Had he been a staid stiff upper lip CEO, they might have taken him more seriously and started competing with him earlier. 11 years after the Roadster, still there is no electric roadster from any competition with comparable spec. 50 kWh battery, 240 mile range, peppy two seater.
While the media circus he created kept focusing on his "failures". What he delivered in his "failures" were still stunning ground breaking trail blazing machines.
The battery era is dawning. It is getting cheaper to store 1 GWh of electricity than to build an gas burning powerplant, in the usa! In deep mines, not having to suck out the diesel exhaust pays for the conversion to battery powered earth movers!
At the price of 90 $/kWh BEV and ICEV will cost the same off the dealership, for a 300 mile range car. At that price indeterminacy of solar and wind would not be an issue. We are in for a great battery powered future.
Among the early adopters a vast majority are also the same sensible people, knowingly and willingly paying way over their normal price range for the model 3. The most common models traded in for the model 3 were Camrys, priuses and accords. My own comfort price range is 25K, and I paid 55K way beyond my comfort zone. I had heard numerous owners say the same thing.
As the prices fall, you might be tempted to stretch your price range too, it has that kind of effect, once you test drive one.
Pencils of microwaves to transmit energy? Might work, but difficult to get it approved and built. Birds flying through the invisible beam will be cooked instantly.
When I speak with a tongue in cheek, I end up chewing my tongue. Looks like boldfacing slashdot is not enough.
From what you have revealed, it shows that you are likely to vote for the Democrats. Your employers already know that, and that is probably why they are not interested in promoting you or giving you a raise. You are likely to squander your raise on political contributions to the Democrats.
Wonder if there is a site/forum that tries this. Does any one in slashdot know such a system?
This is how privilege escalation starts. Combine this with an exploit to break out of the sandbox, voila! you pwn the whole car.
Anyway red light cameras with fines are going away. People vote out politicians who support red light cameras with fine.
Back when speed limits was very low and there was no alternative to drinking and driving majority of the public hated the speed traps and DWI check points. And would be in a mood to support the dodgers because they might need to dodge it themselves at some point.
But now with easy Uber clones and public info campaign, most people avoid drinking and driving. Speed limits have gone up to 70. A very large majority of the the public no longer feel these checkpoints are targeting them, but instead they are targeting the "others", "them speed maniacs, and them drunken drivers". Public support is likely to be with NYPD, whether they win in courts or not. Google has a "win the court lose the people" dilemma in its hand.
Many of the "debt collectors" are themselves victims of fraud. They fall for "work from home, make phone calls, make money" schemes. They are sold completely uncollectable debt at cents per dollar, they pay money for "training" and "equipment", and services to trace address and phone numbers. In the end they are so desperate they will break all these laws, will resort to telling all kinds of lies, they are in despo situation themselves.
They know they may not be able to complete a thorough verification before the impulse to borrow passes. So they rush to lend. They know they make mistakes and lend to fraudsters. But to them it is cost of doing business, net profit from impulse lending is so great they do this knowingly.
Then, the fraudulently lent loans get written off, sold for pennies for a dollar to the debt collectors. These people come after you, get default judgements, demanding that you prove you did not borrow the money. Even if you do to one debt collector, he sells the loan to the next debt collector and it goes on.
Small things might help here:
Make a law, "Lenders can not sell defaulted loans without fully proving the identity of the borrower.".
Get a couple of precedent judgement, "if the bank sold a loan based on stolen identity, they are liable for slander and all damage caused to the person whose identity was compromised".
Once you make the banks eat all the losses, and prevent damage to people whose identity is compromised, they will do the basic necessary things to verify identity.
If women are so smart how come most of them end up marrying men?
The roads are used by both tax payers and heavy commercial trucks of the 80,000 lb class. The damage done by on truck equals the wear and tear of some 9000 private cars. The cost of road and bridge project to accept 80,000 lb trucks makes them so expensive. But they get massively subsidized by the tax payers.
But there is very strongly embedded idea among the people that railroads are tax subsidized white elephants, while the commercial trucks are the epitome of free market and competition.