Tesla Plans To Power Its Gigafactory With Renewables Alone 260
AmiMoJo writes In his press conference, Elon Musk stated that the factory will produce all of its own energy using a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal. Engineering.com looks at the feasibility of the plans. Spoiler alert: it looks possible, though some storage will be required. Fortunately, if there is one thing the Gigafactory won't be short of it's batteries. From the article: "The numbers don’t lie. The site could realistically produce more than 2900 MWh of renewable electricity each day ... 20% more than it needs. These are conservative estimates on production and worst-case estimates on consumption, and it’s clear that there’s enough renewable energy to run the plant with some to spare."
WIl they use my tax money? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WIl they use my tax money? (Score:4, Informative)
If you live in Nevada, then they're indirectly getting your tax dollars (in that they are getting cheaper rates and tax breaks, rather than actual money handed over). However, the economic impact of the gigafactory is apparently expected to outstrip the tax breaks by a ratio of 80:1, so it sounds like a good deal... if the economic benefits the governor of Nevada is claiming are realized.
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Re:WIl they use my tax money? (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla has paid back its department of energy loan a long time back and last I checked, didn't take out another.
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Could be a while. as they don't even have a design released to the public for the Model 3 and the Model X is still pre-production.
I took a plung and bought the Model S.
Best car I've ever driven in any class with very good handling in the rain. This will be my first winter with it and I want to see how it will do with the original all-weather tires.
It's not for everyone at it's price tag. But I do get a lot of questions from people that own high-end luxury cars. Much more so than economy cars. Toyota has
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Just for reference; 1 horsepower is about 650 Watts. So good luck getting around on the output of your 5kVA generator. Your car would have to be slower and smaller then a Honda 600N.
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You need to feed your horses better. It's closer to 750W. ;-)
(33,000 ft-lbf per minute -> 745.7W.)
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He talked about 'multi KW' like it was a lot of power. Also note: once your talking about a 10+kVA generator you are no longer talking about a small thing you could lift into your trunk when you are going somewhere distant.
20hp will not pull you up a normal highway hill, much less one in the mountains.
Also, class 1 hitch? How big is that generator going to have to be? Big enough to need a class 1 hitch to tow it.
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Considering all their competitor's factories benefit from huge tax incentives you are trying to put Tesla at a big disadvantage! How are they supposed to compete?
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But you are OK with GM, Ford and Chrysler getting a monthly handout from not only the States but the Feds?
If you dont like it then start writing to your congress critters to end all corperate welfare. The problem is in Washington.
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I am not OK with any corporation getting any federal money for any reason.
But then I also am against paying farmers to not grow crops.
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Do you know why we pay farmers not to grow crops?
It costs less for the government to do that, then to pay to store grain they don't need.
It's one of the reason food system in the US is so stable.
The history of why we do that is pretty interesting.
Stability is the reason for the fed loans to GM et. al.
Re:WIl they use my tax money? (Score:4)
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they're getting taxpayer money to cover their power bill. The linked article doesn't discuss the tax breaks; do you have another source of information?
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Ah, you're talking about subsidies for the panels and windmills. Gotcha.
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"As we all know, there are generous tax incentives, often 33% to over 50%, "
do we now? please site an example where that happens for commercial green sources, as apposed to consumer(home) panels.
Frankly. incentive will help drive the market until they aren't needed.
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http://energy.gov/savings/busi... [energy.gov]
http://en.openei.org/wiki/Corp... [openei.org]
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Tesla is now worth 20 billion dollars, and their battery partners (Panasonic) are also chipping in on building the factory. I doubt they need much help from the public.
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They don't need it. They want it. Every dollar they save in taxes is a dollar that their shareholders (including Musk) get to pocket. And the state gives it to them willingly, in the hopes that it brings jobs to the area. Tesla really is a "jobs creator", unlike a lot of other self-proclaimed masters of the universe, and so the tax breaks really are win-win. It's not zero-sum because value is being added: raw materials come in and batteries go out.
That's what business looks like when it's working, and state
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Re:Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tras (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope Tesla stuffs every battery they produce into a "test lab" where they are charged during the sunny day and discharged during the evening.... by selling the excess power to the grid when its most needed (and most expensive I should imagine).
it helps Tesla figure out which batteries are good, and acts as exactly what renewable energy needs most - storage capabilities for the evening.
Re: Most of it not tax financed, forced buy of tr (Score:2)
http://www.waste-management-wo... [waste-mana...-world.com]
Answer: Yes but lithium only makes up 3 percent of the cost of a lithium ion battery so recycling is uneconomical vs virgin production. If demand ever exceeds supply then that will likely change and old batteries which were thrown out will likely be reclaimed. Currently as I gather it there is about 12 pounds or $250-$350 worth of metallic lithium in a 75kwh battery pack. So currently lithium prices are a minimal impact on pack pricing considering that's a $20000 pack.
No, that's not what it says (Score:5, Informative)
"all of its own energy using a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal"
No, that's not what it says. It says it will be net-zero. That's a big difference.
This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.
Might use batteries too (Score:2)
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Peak Demand [wikipedia.org] is typically the middle of the work day (between ~8AM and ~8PM). Running the A/C for all those office buildings, keeping the factory lines running, and so on. For example, for running this factory. That sounds like an ideal time set for Solar usage to me. So your "production is highest when demand is lowest" is obviously false. A few specific climates with harsh winters will seasonally have increased night-time usage, but it's pretty rare.
Also, Geothermal is solid steady production for base load
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And that's the problem with green energy (other than hydro) - production is lowest when consumption is highest.
First of all when is production lowest when consumption is highest? I'm not sure where you get this. Peak hours is normally during 9-5 business day. For solar, that is also peak production. With wind, it is more more variable but the turbines are placed where there is some constant wind. Geothermal is pretty constant as well as hydro.
What are they going to do, use all those batteries to store electricity?
Maybe but the OP has specifically stated that the plant is likely grid-connected so it will produce power when it can and draw power from the grid when it cannot.
Does that mean if I buy an electric car I'm paying premium prices for a used battery with limited life?
Why would you
Hydro is NOT green. (Score:2)
Stop saying that. Dams are highly destructive of the environment. Entire fisheries wiped out. Valleys flooded. I just don't get it when bus loads of eco-protesters show up when someone wants to scrape 5 acres of desert for a factory, but flooding 10 of thousands of acres of virgin forest, destroying land and aquatic habitat upstream and downstream of the dam, and they say "Great! Green energy! Let me plug in my electric car!"
Please, please, next time you visit Yosemite, pay a visit to the Hetch Hetchy r
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So they will be drawing power from Fossil fueled Electric plants just like the rest of us. So much for carbon emissions being ZERO. But we already knew that wasn't in the cards, given that they will have to hire trucks to haul their batteries around.
I applaud their effort, but they are going to loose money on this. Not that it matters to Tesla, they already sell high priced, get out of the environmental guilt trip jail credits at insane costs for the rich and famous who need to look like they care and can afford it.
The Tesla S is about the size of a BMW 5-series. Costs about as much as a mid-range BMW 5-series. Has performance similar to a high-end BMW 5-series. Has space in excess of a BMW 5-series. And is more economical to operate than a Toyota Prius.
One does not need to be "rich and famous" to buy a $70k car (look at the sales numbers from Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Infinity, etc sometime); and one does not need to be on a guilt trip to buy one of the best cars in the price range.
Though if you are on a guilt
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My last car was $24K brand new (not doing that again though) . You want me to pay 3x that price for a Tesla? Not to mention that your price is about $25K too low. If you buy a Model S, with the big battery, internal fast charger and a home charging station (which is absolutely necessary if you intend to actually USE the car daily) you are going to be over $120K or so which is 5x what my last car cost and well beyond what 99.99% of us can afford to pay for a car.
Not going to do it. WAY too many reasons and
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No, that's not what it says. It says it will be net-zero. That's a big difference.
This plant will be grid-connected. It will simply produce as much energy as it uses. Not all the time, not 24 hours.
So they will be drawing power from Fossil fueled Electric plants just like the rest of us. So much for carbon emissions being ZERO.
You're going to have to explain to slow people like myself. Where is the following logic wrong?
Tesla is going to produce, on average, enough energy to run the gigafactory without getting any externally-created electricity. In reality, sometimes Tesla will not create enough energy, so it will draw from the grid. On the other hand, sometimes it will produce too much, and that goes back to the grid, where it is used elsewhere. The energy used elsewhere is used instead of fossil fuel-produced energy. There
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Lastly, I found it quite interesting that 85 windmills in Reno could produce more than twice the energy of 850,000 square meters of fixed solar panels...and it would be more if wind speeds were slightly higher. That seems crazy to me.
Maybe windmills COULD do what you say, not going to argue that, but when the wind isn't blowing what are you going to do? In the middle of the night or on a cloudy day? Where are you going to get your electric power from?
You are going to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity, that's what you are going to do.
So build your windmills and put up your solar panels, we will still need the fossil fueled plants to make up the difference and don't fool yourself, what you are doing costs MORE.
That's odd... (Score:4, Funny)
I figured they would power it with hype on Slashdot.
True North? (Score:5, Interesting)
from the linked article at engineering.com:
"Musk said that the factory would be aligned with true north so equipment could be located with GPS ..."
Can anyone here make sense of that statement? GPS only works when buildings are aligned with true north?
Re:True North? (Score:4, Informative)
My guess, without having any particular knowledge, is that the factory will have some kind of internal grid system (fairly common), and aligning the factory with a compass direction means you can easily convert between internal coordinates and lat/lon GPS coordinates. Of course assuming you aren't converting by hand, it's not really hard to convert even if the factory were not axis-aligned.
I could be way off, but I can't think of another way that statement could make sense.
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Even if it has an internal grid system, I can't come up with a plausible why you'd want to convert from GPS to the inte
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without even more custom software to handle random diagonals.
Because we shouldn't trust robots to do basic geometry on their own.
ironic (Score:2)
that's ironic, considering nevada has some of the cheapest electricity rates in the country, because of the hoover dam.
Re:ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it starts raining and snowing upstream pretty soon, Hoover Dam isn't going to be a source of much electricity anymore.
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Pumped storage at Hoover dam? One problem is obvious, pumped from WHERE?
If you look at the normal water cycle, that's pretty much what Hoover Dam is... We let the sun evaporate the water, it rains/snows up stream, and we recover the energy on the way down. Huge solar collector...
Tesla is a battery company (Score:3)
This confirms my suspicion that Tesla is really a battery company masquerading as a car company. The cars are just a vehicle to sell lots of batteries ;).
The grid in Reno might have a problem handling large swings in renewable power but since the factory should have lots of batteries, they can use them to smooth out the power fluctuations and use this as a demo site to sell battery grid backup systems.
2/3 of the power based on counting turbines (Score:2)
Maybe Musk reads the news... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Musk reads the news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would you pay more?
Natural Gas is cheaper! Why pay more?
Not to mention your numbers are a bit on the wishful thinking side of reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
According to the government's numbers, Natural Gas is 73% the cost of wind on average, and Solar is nearly 3 times more expensive than Natural Gas. Of course this is IN THE USA (important to remember) and does NOT include tax incentives or funding deals afforded renewable projects, but only actual costs for construction, fuel, and decommissioning the plant after 30 years. (this is the fully burdened cost which actually is more favorable to renewables which have HUGE upfront costs and no fuel costs over time.)
Of course if you WANT to pay more.. Feel free... Which is apparently the case with Tesla. There business model is not about selling cheap cars to the have not's to maximize profits, theirs is a niche market, selling high priced low volume vehicles to the super-rich "have's" who need to appear as champions of the environment and don't mind paying for the appearance of actually caring. Those who want to drive carbon free to catch their chartered jet for their tropical vacation.
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Because the price of gas is expected to go up, reasons being: dozens of gas power stations currently being built and the fact that gas is currently so cheap that some of the Frackers are selling their gas at below cost. Also relevant is that the cheapest resources are typically mined first, this is particularly the case with the current gas fracking boom, the current low gas price is highly unlikely to remain low after a handful of years.
Wind and sunlight OTOH are expect
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well..
A) Natural gas is finite.
B) Natural gas has other uses instead of just generating power. I thing saving a natural resource for other thing is a better long term strategy.
C) Natural gas price will continue to rise.
Don't be caught in the natural gas bubble. It's temporary. Waiting until we are out of other source would be a pretty bad time to start trying to get more renewals.
"Those who want to drive carbon free to catch their chartered jet for their tropical vacation."
ad hom and a non sequitor.
You have
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well.. A) Natural gas is finite. B) Natural gas has other uses instead of just generating power. I thing saving a natural resource for other thing is a better long term strategy.
A and B are obviously true, although A is arguable in practical ways. Creating methane is not that hard. I agree with you on B, Natural Gas is better suited to other things (motor fuel and heating) but it is a CLEAN source of heat to generate electricity from and that's why it's being used, well that and it burns really clean compared to other fuels.
C) Natural gas price will continue to rise.
However, C is where we really part company. Short term, Natural Gas is NOT going to rise in price. In fact the projections are for steady to falling natural
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Here's a chart of 25 years of natual gas prices [barchart.com]. See if you can work out why NG is not a panacea.
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Sorry: this chart [barchart.com] is clearer. (Didn't really want the 10-yr bonds in there too!)
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"some storage" (Score:3)
From the article:
"Reno gets an average of five peak sun hours per day."
Remember, as soon as you say the word "average" you are counting on a huge amount of storage so that you get the average amount of energy every day, even if that day is below average. And even if every day for the last two weeks has been below average.
In in fact, if you are using solar, you have to understand that nearly every day between the autumn equinox and the spring equinox is below average. That means you need enough storage to store up electricity all summer so you can use it in the winter! This is not at all realistic. More realistic is to make sure you produce more than you need in the summer and enough in the winter.
This does use more than solar though. However, I can't believe this guy counted the windmills in a PR picture.
Anyway, buying and erecting a 3MW windmill costs about $10M. That would mean Tesla would spend $850M on windmills. You cannot seriously think that Tesla is going to spend $850M on windmills before the plant even opens.
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"you are counting on a huge amount of storage"
Remember, this is a battery manufacturing plant. They may have an idea or two about huge amounts of storage.
batteries cost money (Score:3)
And those batteries cannot hold a charge for 6 months anyway.
Even if they could, you're talking about a deficit of about 1/3rd at the peak of winter and a corresponding surplus in the summer. So let's assume you have a 1/3rd total energy surplus for 2 months in the summer and have to hold it 6 months until winter where you use it up.
That'd be 2900MWh times 61 or 177GWh. that's 177M kWh. A Tesla pack holds 85kWh, let's assume it's about to become 100kWh. And the pack costs over $10K, we'll assume it costs $5
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With all due respect to your calculations, I'm willing to believe an authority figure more than math.
FTFY. Simply because he's correct on some things, doesn't mean he's infallible.
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SolarCity is a horrid company. I am going through a nightmare. I told them not to come out and they did. They put a small hole in my roof which they claim they patched, but refuse to tell me where on the roof they put the hole. The keep sending my electronic documents to sigh even though I cancelled the whole thing.
SO yeah I've heard of them, and the can bite my shiny metal ass.
Wonder if (Score:2)
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Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Insightful)
> If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
You ask the local government. They all do it. They just have different ideas of which ones to fund and which ones not to.
But if you have a factory you want to build, and it's going to employ, say, 1000 people, you'll find a lineup of governments willing to give you a tax break.
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You ask the local government. They all do it. They just have different ideas of which ones to fund and which ones not to.
States and the Federal government should just set the corporate tax rate to 0% for all corporations. And increase the tax on higher incomes progressively to pay for it.
All those unproductive and wealth destroying things that corporations both large and small do in order to avoid the high corporate taxes in the United States could be avoided and the increased capital could go back into creating higher paying jobs and profits to shareholders which are all already taxed as income anyway.
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All setting a corporate tax rate like that would do is create a massive tax dodge, while penalizing the workers.
I, for one, don't want to be ass-raped for 75% of my paycheck just so we can keep the government going.
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Corporate income taxes appear to be less than 10% of Federal tax revenue, compared to around 80% for individual income taxes and payroll taxes. I believe you could eliminate corporate taxes and keep it deficit neutral with a relatively modest increase in higher bracket income taxes on those making over a million dollars per year. Or you could just not worry about the deficit (because the Federal Reserve will fund deficits with new money creation) and do it anyway.
I think some math is certainly in order to
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Re:Musk worship (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not for the tax breaks but the state of Arizona should come out ahead even after them. This factory will represent 3% of the states economy.
Tesla is building the factory for the purpose of getting the cost of batteries down to make a 4 door sedan in the 30k range though I expect it to cost more like 35k in the end AFTER government incentives.
As for the Toyota gas pedal thing, Tesla also got slapped with all of the 'fire' stories even though fires are more common in gas vehicles.
Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Funny)
I am not for the tax breaks but the state of Arizona should come out ahead even after them.
The factory will be in Nevada, you're getting your arid wastelands mixed up. Arizona = massive chasms/cacti, Nevada = slot machines/nuke tests.
Re:Musk worship (Score:4, Insightful)
A burning car you can get away from if you are in it, you stop and get out.. A car that is doing 80mph and accelerating you cant get away from if you are in it. Unless you want to die with most of your skin ripped off.
Toyota's failure was 900X worse than teslas biggest problems.
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A car that is doing 80mph and accelerating you cant get away from if you are in it.
Thats not really accurate, you can shift to neutral and hit the brakes.
I mean its bad but lets keep the BS in check.
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I thought it was crystal clear by now that the "unintended" acceleration was not an uncommanded acceleration.
Yes, the software was a mess - but the "problem" magically disappeared overnight when the news stopped... After it magically began overnight after the unlucky family crashed because their loaner Lexus had the wrong floor mats installed, leading to a jammed accelerator pedal.
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The news didn't stop until a patch had been released.
The floor mat issue was a separate problem.
The Prius was uncommanded acceleration.
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-- This factory will represent 3% of the states economy.
Really? Wow, I didn't realize Arizona was that bad off! Seriously though, even if it seems to help in the short term do you really want a whole state to be dependant on one single factory for that large a piece of it's economy? Arizona, just go ask Michigan about that and then have a long, hard thinking session about the future.
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Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Interesting)
They get tax breaks because it's part of the deal to open the factory in said area. It's basically a big competition and everyone wants this factory since it brings with it the big four letter word JOBS. That's right jobs. It doesn't matter where they come from but jobs jobs jobs. American jobs. These here are good ol' American jobs which any politician will look at like the entire factory is actually made out of gold. Shiny, golden PR that will make them look like some kind of religious savior.
Tesla has been fighting really hard against the status quo, so go off pretending like they have every politician in their pocket is hilarious.
Elon Musk is rightfully placed as one of the better figures of humanity. The guy is a complete pioneer who is revolutionizing civilization one step at a time. He has talent, drive, ambition, and most importantly, isn't interested with petty politics or big fat bank accounts. He's a scientist at heart who just wants to see humanity move forward and is ACTUALLY DOING IT in a way and on a scale that no one else has before.
All that and he's this remarkably humble guy. Blows my mind.
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Thanks for writing this. Someone had to say it. Not all politicians head to bribe city. I would even say that most have good intensions until they get tempted by bribes and other incentives. Becoming a politician isn't the easiest road and it's definitively not the quickest path to financial success.
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Moving forward to a product that already has one marketplace failure under its belt? Oil cars slaughtered electric in the free market ~100 years ago, so this recent fuss about bringing back electric seems more about affordable oil pricing itself out of the market than anything new in the wheel'd battery department—but life in the Faust lane certainly has conditioned this culture to see only onwards and upwards, so uh I guess hooray for ACTUALLY DOING IT and all that jazz.
Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Interesting)
as far as creating an affordable electric car, everybody agrees Teslas are too expensive, even Musk. [time.com]... well, that is the POINT of this factory. Batteries suck, and our best batteries are horribly expensive, the only way to make them cheaper is to make more, faster. They have a 3 year plan for a $35,000 sedan. To go from $128,000 to $69,000 to $35,000 in 8 years is amazing, and that is where the "Musk Worship" comes from. Some of the first cars were electric, and since then incredibly wealthy auto manufacturers around the world have been telling us it is all but impossible.
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The Prius isn't even that good at using gasoline. I used one as a company car quite a bit in my last job, it averaged 50mpg-ish. I can get that in my non-hybrid Honda Jazz, which also has better visibility and cleverer use of space. And a modern common rail diesel can do considerably better, albeit with horrendous repair costs if / when the injectors fail. (But what does a spare Prius main battery go for these days?...)
If your driving was purely urban, your Prius would beat your Jazz (called the Fit in North America, BTW) handily. Yes, the Fit/Jazz is extremely space efficient, but it is still quite a bit smaller than a Prius. There are certain uses in which a hybrid beats everything. Diesel is the same way - long distance motorway speed, optionally with a heavy load to carry. But getting a diesel to meet anything more than basic emissions requirements has made them very complicated and expensive, with high maintenanc
Re:Musk worship (Score:4, Insightful)
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He gets tax breaks to entice bringing lots of jobs to THAT state instead of some OTHER state.
That's the problem there, can you spot it?
Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk does a lot of awesome things.
Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?"
Is it getting major tax breaks?
"If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?"
don't make any money. Also, hire enough people where giving a company a tax breaks makes it worth while due to secondary a tertiary factors.
"Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive?"
becasue they are high end luxury vehicles. Do you send letter to Mercedes telling them their care a rudely expensive?
" Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K "
Yes.
"range like the Prius?"
Like the Prius? no, they will actually be good.
"Why is it that a guy with a big mouth and political friends on all sides gets so much tax subsidy, loans, breaks and deals?"
no more then any there similar company. Frankly I would rather people making clean energy get them, and coal and oil companies snot get them.
"when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?"
A bigger question is: Why didn't the media talk about the discovery that they where, in FACT, not bogus claims?
"3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable."
Funny you bring this up. I was just talking to Prius drivers this weekend, Many where bitching that the computer can get stuck in a loop and the car has to be off and sit before it will reset. apparently starting them up in the wrong way can cause this to happen.
Junk bond stats(b-) is based on they way it got money and that it's different the tradition automakers.
I"m pretty sure risk fro fighting the 3rd party car sales is also taken into account.
The man is changing the world.
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> Is it getting major tax breaks?
Yes. It's getting huge tax breaks here. It got a nearly free auto plant from California.
It gets $7500/car in subsidy from the feds. Many states give $1500 to $5000 on top of that. Some countries they sell into give tens of thousands equivalent.
And this is beyond the emissions trading money it gets, which is a subsidy, but not directly from governments, just enforced by the government.
>becasue they are high end luxury vehicles. Do you send letter to Mercedes telling the
Re:Musk worship (Score:5, Informative)
Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
Offer to open a factory and let localities knock themselves out trying to woo you. This is not unique to Tesla.
Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?
It is junk because the business has a lot of risks, not because the business plan is fundamentally unsound. Bonds are rated according to risk. In the long run the riskier investments pay out more. Look at the stock price of Tesla if you want to see where the market thinks it is going.
Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?
You cannot buy a battery so large at the moment for such a low cost. In part, this factory is an attempt to get some economy of scale so that the price will come down. But also remember that the margins on a luxury car are far higher than the margins on a family sedan. Toyota makes something like 20% on each Lexus that it makes, but only 10% overall (including Lexus). You would be nuts (or very, very confident) to enter the sub-10% market with a new product. Tesla may very well enter the low-end market some day, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For now, think of them as Audi, BMW, or Mercedes.
Why are guys who run factories employing tons of US citizens in US based factories (like Toyota) who produce super reliable product with great mileage get slapped by the media when a bogus story about a gas pedal getting stuck?
Are you kidding? Just wait until Tesla slips up. They will eventually, and the media will jump all over them. The only thing that the media loves more than an underdog is the story of a fallen angel.
Not sure why people need a super-hero.
If you can solve that, you will change the world in a serious way. You'll put a lot of "personalities" out of business - from Obama and Putin to the gossip columnist at the Enquirer.
3.8 million priuses have been sold and cab drivers will tell you they easily go into the 300K range and even if the battery runs out the car is still useable.
Prius is not all electric. Tesla makes no hybrids. If the Prius were all electric it would probably cost another $10k, or it would have to downsize like the Leaf.
But instead we continue to give money to the cartoon guy.
I'm not sure why you are picking on Tesla. We give tons of tax breaks to Toyota. Google for "Toyota Plano tax breaks" to see about their new headquarters. Hell, the Prius was directly subsidized for years through the same federal tax credit as the Teslas. Nissan and Mitsubishi get the exact same tax credit as the Tesla.
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Media are jumping all over Tesla already.
It's happened with the Tesla car fires, whic
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Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
They don't need tax breaks to succeed, but since the states were competing to get the gigafactory, the state that offers the highest tax breaks wins. If no state offered tax breaks on the factory, they'd have built it anyhow.
Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?
The junk bond status is because S&P doesn't think Tesla will succeed. It's an opinion.
Why are Tesla's cars so rudely expensive? Is there a plan for a 4 door sedan that a real family can afford in the 20K - 30K range like the Prius?
Tesla has always been very open about their strategy. Electric cars are very expensive to make. Their plan was to introduce a high-cost sports car (the roadster) to build experience/resources/etc,
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-- Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?
It has to compete against every other company which also sit on huge piles of tax breaks.
-- If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
Build a factory. Promise to hire lots of people. Take government officials out for a series of expensive dinners where you talk about all the tax dollars your employees wages will bring. Do whatever else everyone else does.
-- Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he contin
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Others have already answered this more succinctly ("politics"), but sure, I'll bite.
I get a little tired of the Musk worship.
Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed? If I open a company tomorrow, how can I get away with not paying taxes?
Rich people can affect public policy to help them make more money. But in this case, think of it less as giving tax breaks, and more of giving tax incentives for finally succeeding at doing something we've been trying to do for a long time anyway. I'm sure Musk made plenty of threats to build this factory somewhere in Asia if he didn't get favorable treatment here in the US. At least, he would have been a dumbass not to.
Why are Tesla's debt bonds in Junk status but he continues to get freebies from states?
S
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I get a little tired of the Musk worship.
That's reasonable. Geeks are often excited about new innovative technologies, especially when they are disruptive to existing systems. People, not just geeks, are also susceptible to appealing narratives, which Musk has managed to develop.
Why does his company need a huge pile of tax breaks to succeed?
Companies who provide jobs are incentivized by tax breaks. It may or may not be a horrible, corrupt system, but is a very well-established one. This is not a Tesla issue, it's a capitalism/politics issue. As an aside, taking advantage of tax breaks is so expected that
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Geography... it matters.
Hoover dam is in Southern Nevada, the factory is in Northern Nevada... big desert between them with not much infrastructure.
Also, most of the power from Hoover Dam goes to Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas.
Also... climate change and drought.
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Nope.
from: http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverd... [usbr.gov]
How is the firm energy generated at Hoover Dam allocated?
Arizona - 18.9527 percent
Nevada - 23.3706 percent
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California - 28.5393 percent
Burbank, CA - 0.5876 percent
Glendale, CA - 1.5874 percent
Pasadena, CA - 1.3629 percent
Los Angeles, CA - 15.4229 percent
Southern California Edison Co. - 5.5377 percent
Azusa, CA - 0.1104 percent
Anaheim, CA - 1.1487 percent
Banning, CA - 0.0442 percent
Colton, CA - 0.0884 percent
Riverside, CA - 0.8
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Hoover dam is in Nevada. It matters not how they power their factory.
case closed.
Except for one tiny detail.... Part of Hoover Dam is in Arizona... Case still open unless you have something else...
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If all you care about is running calculations and making them look pretty, then yeah...stick with SI. But if you want something to be intuitive, unfortunately, sometimes really stupid units make more sense.
No they don't... (Score:2)
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
From TFA:
Saudi Arabia has announced it is on track to start work on its first major solar farm early next year. ...
He added the project was on track to begin feeding electricity into the grid by 2015 and will mark the first step on the government's path towards delivering 41GW of solar capacity by 2032, through a combination of solar PV and solar thermal technologies.
And they are planing to be producing 120 GW by 2020 - of which only those 41GW will be solar. By 2032. 17GW will be nuclear.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c... [eia.gov]
UAE as of 2011 was producing 26.1 GW of electricity.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c... [eia.gov]
With plans for 28.8 megawatts (MW) wind farm and a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with 100 MW capacity.
While building at least 4 nuclear reactors, first two 1.4 GW ones planned to come on-line in 2017.
Neither country cares