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Tesla raises $1.8B

reuters.com

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Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#161

Post by rohit2412 »

rock_hard wrote: post #107
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #59

Let's talk about Solar City. Their product is intended to be a solar roof, indistinguishable from a typical roof from street level. Costs look to be in the $50,000+ range. The marketing is that homeowners will not only drive electric vehicles, but go completely off grid by storing the energy collected into Tesla batteries. In order for this to make financial sense, there needs to be an ROI for the homeowner. So... ho…

You are missing the point. Tesla customers care about money as much as Apple customers do...they don't. What they care about is being part of the future...today! Tesla customers look at ICE cars and grid dependence like Apple owners look at feature phones...pity full.

That's what I disagree with. Tesla customers are just looking for the next status symbol.

I have talked to enough tesla owners and fans to tell you that they haven't even heard of Renault Zoe or BYD ev300. And they would never consider Chevy bolt. Its all about the brand name, and not about futuristic electric cars. Tesla could start making ICE cars and they will still buy them

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#162

Post by semi-extrinsic »

coob wrote: post #158
monkmartinez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal roof mounted solar doesn't pay for itself unless you plan on staying in the same home for a longggg time.

It pays for itself when you sell the house.

How so? Unless you assume the buyer is too stupid to do the same math? Then you might as well go full-blown McMansion.

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#164

Post by brianwawok »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #75
epistasis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeowners often pay extra for aesthetics that appeal to them. But lets pretend they don't. How quickly does a normal roof recoup its costs? For at least the beginnings of a fair comparison, you should look at recouping the surplus over the normal cost of a roof. Also, how are you spending $25k on batteries? This sort of comment seems to attempt to try to take the most negative reasonable possible look on the situati…

My home's roof has another 20 years on it. So I'll be tossing half of it's lifetime if I replaced it now. That's partly why I mentioned new home construction would likely be an easier market. Moreover, it's a 3000 sq ft ranch, with larger than the average roof area. The Tesla roof is likely going to start at $50,000, (I said "$50,000+") so I'm thinking $65,000 for my house. Batteries are probably in the range of $10,…

I doubt you would need all 3000 sq ft of roof to be solar.

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#165

Post by zzzzzzzza »

Tomminn wrote: post #116
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #59

Let's talk about Solar City. Their product is intended to be a solar roof, indistinguishable from a typical roof from street level. Costs look to be in the $50,000+ range. The marketing is that homeowners will not only drive electric vehicles, but go completely off grid by storing the energy collected into Tesla batteries. In order for this to make financial sense, there needs to be an ROI for the homeowner. So... ho…

For the exact same reason Tesla won't be able to sell the Model S, because taking the difference between electricity and petrol prices, it will take 50 years to pay off the price difference from a Toyota.

Tesla's sales of model s's seem to have peaked at a level where the model s may never have a net profit margin. (manipulated gross margin figures not withstanding)

If the market isn't big enough the company isn't viable.

Personally I think the long run place of private cars in a TaaS world is questionable.

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#166

Post by brianwawok »

dayaz36 wrote: post #104
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #59

Let's talk about Solar City. Their product is intended to be a solar roof, indistinguishable from a typical roof from street level. Costs look to be in the $50,000+ range. The marketing is that homeowners will not only drive electric vehicles, but go completely off grid by storing the energy collected into Tesla batteries. In order for this to make financial sense, there needs to be an ROI for the homeowner. So... ho…

Actually the solar roofs are made to be about the same cost or cheaper than conventional rooftops WITHOUT factoring in the money saved from the electrcity. So anyone that needs a roof replacement (5 million households/yr is the market size iir) might as well get solar roofs. In that sense their ROI is immediate and they have nothing to lose. It only doesn't make sense financially if they weren't planning on roof repl…

Only true if you look at designer roofs.

I got 30 year shingles on my roof last year. About 2000 square feet (I know roofs are measured in squares but I forgot the square number). Cost like $6500 installed. Solar city roof is like 45k.

Sure it looks better. And if you compare it to a 25k nice looking roof, the math is way better. But tons of us do not have 25k roofs, we have 5-10k roofs..

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#167

Post by semi-extrinsic »

hwillis wrote: post #135
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home's roof has another 20 years on it. So I'll be tossing half of it's lifetime if I replaced it now. That's partly why I mentioned new home construction would likely be an easier market. Moreover, it's a 3000 sq ft ranch, with larger than the average roof area. The Tesla roof is likely going to start at $50,000, (I said "$50,000+") so I'm thinking $65,000 for my house. Batteries are probably in the range of $10,…

They have a calculator. Check it out instead of guessing wildly

FWIW, I have some colleagues who are researching how to reduce energy usage in buildings. It's a lot harder than you would assume just based on pure math, since you have to take Jevon's paradox [1] and other "psychological" effects into account. I.e. when energy gets cheaper, you use more of it.

In my area (same latitude as Anchorage, ~ 65% of the incoming solar energy as in San Francisco), they calculated that solar roof panels on a typical house doesn't break even over a 25 year period, you're still thousands of dollars in the red.

Only the "cheap" air-to-air heat pumps (AC in reverse) and solar heating of your hot water give good ROI. What both these have in common is that the purchase and installation cost is much lower than e.g. rooftop solar.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#168

Post by ghaff »

jacobush wrote: post #140
posguy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, Tesla is very much like Apple in the sense that they expect their employees to be 100% compliant and not "overshare", with overbearing corporate security that'll handle you if you step out of line one iota. I don't see why Tesla would change, apparently working conditions are terrible at their factories: http://www.thedailybeast.com/workers-say-tesla-is-trying-to-... On a vaguely related tangent, the shee…

Funny you should say that about Apple. I think about the saying about software reflecting the organization in structure. Apples effectively static binaries are a bit the same thing. (The ".app" folders.) They contain everything needed to run the application, no libraries are shared between apps. Massive waste, but at the same time, the system is more robust this way. Apps can be upgraded and redone without caring abo…

That's the general direction that things are headed more broadly with containers. It's sort of amusing how this came about because containers are really an outgrowth of OS virtualization work while app virtualization never really went anywhere in a mainstream way--but os virt (containers) has really developed into a way of encapsulating apps.

Storage is cheap. It's much more efficient overall to bundle apps with essentially everything they need to run--modulo the kernel although there's some debate about that last point.

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#169

Post by ghaff »

coob wrote: post #158
monkmartinez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal roof mounted solar doesn't pay for itself unless you plan on staying in the same home for a longggg time.

It pays for itself when you sell the house.

Unclear. It may be a negative if it looks ugly or if it's an old system.

The complicated financing deals with some solar can also be a problem when you sell if you don't actually own the panels.

Re: Tesla raises $1.8B

#170

Post by ghaff »

prostoalex wrote: post #143
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #59

Let's talk about Solar City. Their product is intended to be a solar roof, indistinguishable from a typical roof from street level. Costs look to be in the $50,000+ range. The marketing is that homeowners will not only drive electric vehicles, but go completely off grid by storing the energy collected into Tesla batteries. In order for this to make financial sense, there needs to be an ROI for the homeowner. So... ho…

> I am currently spending about $125/month on electricity. That's $1,500 per year. That right there is not the market they're targeting. You'll also see very few solar panel pitches in Washington and Oregon, as the hydropower costs are so low, the solar system will take a while to recoup. Think sunny but AC-dependent homes of Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Florida or Georgia. I live…

>That right there is not the market they're targeting.

They think they can anyway. You have solar salesmen all over you in Massachusetts and I'm in exactly the same situation. I have basically no AC--I may pop in a small window unit in a heat wave--and pay Hard to see the payoff with solar.

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