Tesla Gigafactories, News and Conversation

[catjones 1,702]

and the road ahead (pun intended) will be paved in california.  15 years is advance notice.  if germany and others want their green-cred, they'll follow suit.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/california-governor-gavin-newsom-bans-174438751.html

[jeba 4,364]

Quote

Musk’s unqualified assertion that Tesla will be manufacturing battery cells needs to be qualified in three crucial respects: (1) Tesla has not filed any application to do so yet; (2) the manufacturing process Tesla would use to save water does not yet exist; and (3) many of the other technical challenges to Tesla’s cell design plans will need to be overcome.

source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4376156-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-fast-elon?utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&mail_subject=must-read-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-so-fast-elon&utm_campaign=nl-must-read&utm_content=link-0

 

Seems not everybody is as enthusiastic as Mike.

 

 

[Keleth 9,321]

20 minutes ago, jeba said:

source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4376156-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-fast-elon?utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&mail_subject=must-read-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-so-fast-elon&utm_campaign=nl-must-read&utm_content=link-0

 

Seems not everybody is as enthusiastic as Mike.

 

 

Dont forget MM is the equivalent to a Trumpite in his absolute adoration of his hero.

[Janx Spirit 11,331]

Quoting "Seeking Alpha" is almost as bad as quoting Fox or QAnon!

 

Anyway, now Tesla have acquired Maxwell, I call bullshit.

 

...and Mike appears more enthusiastic than anything. Likening him to a Rabid Trumpeter is unfair, MM is always willing to stand corrected if supplied with a reliable source.

[Janx Spirit 11,331]

On 9/23/2020, 8:55:07, catjones said:

and the road ahead (pun intended) will be paved in california.  15 years is advance notice.  if germany and others want their green-cred, they'll follow suit.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/california-governor-gavin-newsom-bans-174438751.html

 

And Bavaria is at the starting post:

 

"Söder spricht sich für Verbrenner-Zulassungsverbot ab 2035 aus" (Söder speaks out in favor of a ban on combustion engines from 2035)

 

Quote

München, Berlin CSU-Chef Markus Söder spricht sich für eine zeitliche Befristung der Zulassung von Autos mit Benzin- und Diesel-Motoren nach dem Vorbild des US-Bundesstaats Kalifornien aus. Dort sollen von 2035 an keine Neuwagen mit Verbrennungsmotoren mehr zugelassen werden dürfen. „Das scheint mir ein sehr gutes Datum zu sein“, sagte der bayerische Ministerpräsident am Samstag auf einem virtuellen Parteitag der CSU in München.

 

Munich, Berlin CSU boss Markus Söder is in favor of a time limit for the approval of cars with gasoline and diesel engines based on the model of the US state of California. From 2035 onwards, new vehicles with internal combustion engines will no longer be permitted there. "That seems to me to be a very good date," said the Bavarian Prime Minister on Saturday at a virtual party conference of the CSU in Munich.()

https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/nach-kalifornischem-vorbild-soeder-spricht-sich-fuer-verbrenner-zulassungsverbot-ab-2035-aus/26221840.html?ticket=ST-2039003-ntsCHXr79b5LSwly5eBB-ap5

[Keleth 9,321]

8 hours ago, Janx Spirit said:

 

...and Mike appears more enthusiastic than anything. Likening him to a Rabid Trumpeter is unfair, MM is always willing to stand corrected if supplied with a reliable source.

Not concerning Tesla or hypocrisy he`s not.

[fraufruit 42,496]

He's just a fanboy. I don't find anything sinister in that.

[Metall 14,557]

23 hours ago, Janx Spirit said:

...and Mike appears more enthusiastic than anything. Likening him to a Rabid Trumpeter is unfair, MM is always willing to stand corrected if supplied with a reliable source.

 

 

7 minutes ago, fraufruit said:

He's just a fanboy. I don't find anything sinister in that.

 

I've met Mike in person, he's a Tesla/technology enthusiast and a very normal person with a nice family.

[MikeMelga 7,325]

On 9/26/2020, 9:16:20, jeba said:

source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4376156-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-fast-elon?utm_medium=email&utm_source=seeking_alpha&mail_subject=must-read-tesla-to-make-cells-in-germany-umm-not-so-fast-elon&utm_campaign=nl-must-read&utm_content=link-0

 

Seems not everybody is as enthusiastic as Mike.

 

 

I still don't know the details but this is what I found so far:

- they had to drastically cut down the investment in Berlin battery section due to water usage issues

- some rumors said that the battery factory would be placed somewhere else

- Tesla says that they will do it in Berlin, despite water problems

 

My conclusion: they will only make the new batteries there, which have 10x less footprint, much small resource consumption, so perhaps water is not a problem any more. As an investor, I'm following many discussions on the topic, will post update.

 

Regarding the rest of the article, I'm still digesting the whole battery day and my conclusion as of now is that the claimed 56% reduction of cost will take years, but a big chunk of it is coming soon. Not only that, there are reports that some of the changes already made way to some cars. So you will not get 56% reduction now, but phased over 3 years.

 

Regarding the acquisition of Maxwell, it seems their technology is far from useful right now. That was very clear on presentation, as Musk could not disguise it. Point is, their plan is not based on one thing, it is a multitude of small improvements that stack up.

 

Regarding Berlin:

They just got the water permit: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-berlin-water-consumption-finally-approved/

It was also reported they are well ahead of schedule and they might start producing in Q1 2021 !!

On a related news, they are trying to hire 8000 ppl. Here I see the risk that they might have to pay more for experienced engineers to move to Berlin.

 

[MikeMelga 7,325]

39 minutes ago, fraufruit said:

He's just a fanboy. I don't find anything sinister in that.

Actually what drives me nuts is the lack of understanding from people on the revolution about to come. This started not with Tesla. This started in the 1990's with the Internet and with cheaper and more powerful computers. Computer modelling, aided by AI and a huge amount of investment is going to change our lives faster every time.

Smartphones were the first example. A new model every year, always better. Look at Corona! A potential vaccine and several treatments after less than 1 year! They are using huge databases of all the known drugs trying to simulate (computer modelling again) which ones could handle the virus better. This would be impossible 20 years ago.

 

Regarding being fanboy, I remember telling my family back in 2010 that Musk was posed to be one of the most important persons of this century. This was before Tesla got known. I read a lot of what he was doing with SpaceX, even before his first major successes with Falcon 9.

His recipe is super simple and shows a complete different mindset:

- use what you have available, don't wait for fantastic technologies to save the day

- iterative development, like a SW team

 

Before this I was betting on fusion power and hydrogen cars to solve our problems, but on a distant horizon. Why wait? We have all we need right now to solve climate change, to solve Europe's energy dependency. We don't do it because big oil does not want it! We need someone like Musk to force the change.

[catjones 1,702]

Does anyone know what the power generation need would be if all vehicles were converted to electric?  If you add up all the barrels of oil needed to fuel today's vehicles and compute the energy released, what would that look like compared to today's electric power output?

[Janx Spirit 11,331]

"Tesla’s $25,000 Electric Car Means Game Over For Gas And Oil"

 

Quote

Without much more than a single slide and a couple of sentences, Elon Musk delivered the punchline revealing where all the minor improvements up until that point in the presentation were leading. Numerically, it was a 56% reduction in battery costs.

But then he explained that this would enable a $25,000 Tesla TSLA +5% “with fully autonomous capability”. In atypical style for Musk, he didn’t make any bolder claims about what this car would be able to deliver, but we can read between the lines.

...

Which would you choose for $25,000 – a Tesla Model 2 EV or a VW Golf with a conventional fossil fuel engine? No longer will the argument hold that “I can’t buy the EV because it’s too expensive”, because they will be the same price. You could still say “300 miles is not enough to get me all the way from New York to Los Angeles or London to Edinburgh in one go”, but who really does that?

 

In three years from now, recharging will be much more ubiquitous, too – and it’s hardly a trial for Tesla owners already. When you can buy an EV with over 300 miles of range that is faster and equipped with better technology than an internal combustion engine VW Golf, as well as being much cheaper to run, only groundless anti-electric prejudice will stop you. There won’t be any real reason to buy a car that runs on fuel derived from oil and gas anymore.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2020/09/26/teslas-25000-electric-car-means-game-over-for-gas-and-oil/#6e3c5ec81ee7

[MikeMelga 7,325]

4 hours ago, catjones said:

Does anyone know what the power generation need would be if all vehicles were converted to electric?  If you add up all the barrels of oil needed to fuel today's vehicles and compute the energy released, what would that look like compared to today's electric power output?

You can charge a large chunk of them for "free", without grid investment nor more electricity production increase. This depends heavily on how you get your electricity.

Night is the time when consumption is the lowest, so the grid will experience no peak compared to 8pm. Also, depending on your country, energy is produced but not spend during the night. Examples are wind power, coal and nuclear power stations. It is just energy thrown away. As an example, Portugal has 3x more production capability than needed, because of peak times. You can and should also invest in battery farms to spread the load during the day.

 

My personal consumption is around 2000kWh per year for one car. This is less than the rest of the house consumes. Considering two cars, I would say roughly I need to double my house consumption. I haven't found the numbers for Germany, but considering Portugal produces 3x more than required, if you couple that with battery farms, it means that no more electricity would need to be generated, by a large margin.

So your answer for a country like Portugal, using battery farms, would be ZERO increase in production and the only investment on the grid would be the battery farms.

 

Alternative to battery farms are self generation, which I believe will become mainstream within 10 years. A new house being built 5 years from now will most likely have solar panels, batteries, heat pump and 1-2 electric cars.

I also think within 20 years the energy production plants will suffer dramatic reduction, as most companies and buildings will produced their own electricity, relying on the grid only for a few hours per day.

[jeba 4,364]

7 hours ago, catjones said:

Does anyone know what the power generation need would be if all vehicles were converted to electric?  If you add up all the barrels of oil needed to fuel today's vehicles and compute the energy released, what would that look like compared to today's electric power output?

I don´t remember the exact numbers but according to Prof. Sinn it would require more than total current energy production. If you have command of German you can listen to his lectures on youtube, e. g. this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKc7vwt-5Ho

[Krieg 15,074]

So you guys are telling me, nope, we should not change to RENEWABLE energy because it will need too much investment, instead let's continue with
NON-RENEWABLE energy thinking it will last forever.

 

 

P.S., IMO, fossil energy should be soon considered as too valuable to be used in city cars to commute to work,   They concentrate plenty of energy and it is easily transportable, it should be used for more important things than moving small cars.

[arsenal21 401]

15 hours ago, Janx Spirit said:

"Tesla’s $25,000 Electric Car Means Game Over For Gas And Oil"

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2020/09/26/teslas-25000-electric-car-means-game-over-for-gas-and-oil/#6e3c5ec81ee7

 

2 years ago: $25000 Tesla in 3 years

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/18/elon-musk-tesla-could-produce-a-25000-car-in-3-years--.html

 

Last week: $25000 Tesla in 3 years...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/business/tesla-elon-musk-battery-day.html

 

[yesterday 2,027]

17 hours ago, catjones said:

Does anyone know what the power generation need would be if all vehicles were converted to electric?  If you add up all the barrels of oil needed to fuel today's vehicles and compute the energy released, what would that look like compared to today's electric power output?

 

Interesting video, about the California's Renewable Energy Problem

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5cm7HOAqZY

 

Basically even in a place like California's ( lots of sunshine), there is no real solution from Renewable sources at the moment and not in the future either , to cut the pollution problems, this video just talks about the basic energy requirements  California has, to cover air-con, lights, household use and manufacturing. It does not even consider, what happens if a lot of people want to get into electric cars etc.

 

Unless, we get a new technology or cut back on energy usage, then this planet is going to face the full damage of climate change, whether we buy electric cars or not.

 

Basically, electric cars seem to use less coal / gas ( used to make the electricity in the first place ) than ICE cars use just burning petrol and diesel. However you still are polluting what ever you do, unless you use nuclear, which a lot of people do not like and has down sides as well. Unless we can find a way to generate electricity in a clean way, the end result is more pollution, I am sorry to say.   At the moment e-cars are like top of the range smart phones, in that if you have the money they impress the hell out of people but do not address the main problem. Most people do not want to splash out 60000 euro on a car.

 

[jeba 4,364]

36 minutes ago, Krieg said:

So you guys are telling me, nope, we should not change to RENEWABLE energy because it will need too much investment, instead let's continue with
NON-RENEWABLE energy thinking it will last forever.

As long as elecricity isn´t produced from renewables only electric vehicles aren´t that much more environmentylly friendly as they´re made to be. As Sinn puts it they´re merelydisplacing the production of undesirables like exhausts to out of town. And there are combustion engines that run on renewables like bio-Diesel or ethanol. I remember a friend of mine filling canola oil from Norma in the tank of his Audi bio Diesel as it was cheaper than what he could buy a the petrol station. And that was back in the early eighties.

[Krieg 15,074]

23 minutes ago, jeba said:

As long as elecricity isn´t produced from renewables only electric vehicles aren´t that much more environmentylly friendly as they´re made to be. As Sinn puts it they´re merelydisplacing the production of undesirables like exhausts to out of town. And there are combustion engines that run on renewables like bio-Diesel or ethanol. I remember a friend of mine filling canola oil from Norma in the tank of his Audi bio Diesel as it was cheaper than what he could buy a the petrol station. And that was back in the early eighties.

 

Even if you burn petrol to transform it into electricity to run EVs you will be saving a gazillions of lives if you burn that petrol outside of the city.   The combustion of fossils INSIDE the cities is killing a bunch of people right now.

 

Bio-diesel is not really a solution in the big scheme of things, we don't have enough space in the planet to farm such amounts of food.   The biggest experiment that indeed happened was in Brazil, for like half a century (more if you include E5) they have run a bunch of cars on bio-alkohol, the experiment at the end kind of failed and they had to adapt.    In order to keep things going on they had to make mandatory the fuel mix (E25) and then "flexible" cars were developed, so they can take different types of fuel mixtures, from E25 (25% ethanol) to E100 (100% ethanol) and the car can detect the type of fuel and act accordingly.   In former time you had to choose a car either for ethanol or for benzine.   Flex cars are now a majority in Brazil.
 

P.S. E100 cars were always problematic to start in cold (read cold as under 15C), so even in Brazil it was an issue so they had to have a secondary benzine tank to start the car and then switch to Ethanol.   Until some years ago when Bosch developed a system that can start the E100 cars in cold weather.

 

P.P.S, The energy balance of biomass is kind of bad, you have to put 1 unit of energy to produce 1.3.   Brazil has much better numbers and they can get to have their ethanol cars because they are located in an optimal place to get the ethanol out of sugar cane plantations that grow easily because of more than optimal conditions.   But it is an exception and not the norm.   The Brazilian case can't be easily replicated.

[jeba 4,364]

29 minutes ago, Krieg said:

Bio-diesel is not really a solution in the big scheme of things, we don't have enough space in the planet to farm such amounts of food.

But that doesn´t mean you should ban it (as Söder suggested yesterday). It could still be part of a solution. Regulators should determine the aim, not the means to achieve it.