Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#321

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:38 AM UTC

nemo846 wrote: post #298

eloff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has his faults for sure, and he really needs some people reviewing his twitter posts before they go live. But I find it amusing that people are so quick to point out his faults and criticize the guy when he's accomplished more in his life to date than any single one of his critics, with at most a couple exceptions, like Bezos. Basically if he's a wanker, what's that make you? I don't think it's fallacious reason…

I utterly hate the cult of personality around him. It makes any kind of discussion impossible. Look at the person you relied to, his post is already grey. The guy is kind of a wanker: https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/29/elon-musk... Everyone just give him a free pass which is bullshit. Personally I think the guy is a narcissist given how m…

Regardless of how you feel about this person or any other, would you please not post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for better than this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#322

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:39 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #182

eloff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's one of the most heavily shorted stocks on the index. Basically Tesla has always been the underdog and tons of people are itching to see them fail. So watching them succeed against the odds and the naysayers getting burned is quite satisfying - just speaking from a human story perspective.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think Tesla is fine. But I think Musk is a bit of a wanker and I have an allergic reaction to the hero-worship that's grown around him.

Can you please not take HN threads into tedious flamewars? Of all the stupid loops we get into, Musk Mania—hate him, love him, boo, yay—is about the stupidest. It's worse than bickering about Spiderman.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#323

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

foobaw wrote: post #10

chollida1 wrote: post #4

One thing to consider that an analyst pointed out. Telsa has alot of net 60 and 90 and 120 day relationships with suppliers, but gets paid from car sales much quicker. This means that they can "financially engineer" quarters to make their cash flow look much better than it would if the payment periods were all net 30. Pre Close: - bit of a perfect storm for Tesla to make a profit - Model X ramp up spend is mostly don…

it seems like you post negative comments on anything Tesla related. Any motivations?

This breaks the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules from now on.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#324

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:49 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #247

Brakenshire wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla currently has 400 supercharger sites in Europe, 2400 bays in total, by 2020 Ionity, which is a consortium of Daimler, BMW, Porsche, Ford, Audi and VW, is planning to build 400 sites, 2400 bays total, most with a 350kW charging capacity, which is double the power of Tesla’s chargers. There are also about 5000 CCS chargers already existing in Europe, lower power but ‘destination chargers’ will probably be valuabl…

All chargers are not created equal. "Planning" to build something is not building it. 350kW is a lot of energy and you need to pay for all the power electronics to run that much DC power. I have no doubt the'll start building chargers but I think the ramp up will be slower and the power levels will be lower than what people think. Most cars can't even charge at 350kW because their batteries are too small. You'd damag…

350kW is about 1800 m^2 of PV panels; you need twice that plus a battery bank to operate at night. You might want a grid tie only so you can do net metering. At current prices for Chinese panels (not counting the Trump tariff) that's on the order of a million dollars. Now double that to pay for the electronic chargers themselves. So $2 million in capital costs and no recurring costs except maintenance. That's almost certainly cheaper to build and permit and operate than a petrol station, and those seem to pop up everywhere.

I don't think it will take more than a couple of years for well-maintained superchargers to be ubiquitous, and that's if you give away the power for free with government subsidies. If you charge customers for the energy, it might happen even faster.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#325

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:58 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #185

andrewmunsell wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually, yes, it will become a commodity. But the issue is, someone has to spend a lot of money to build out these chargers. Tesla has a big incentive to do it-- their very survival depended on early adopters willing to buy their car, which also means they need a place to charge it. Being able to go 100 miles from your house before you have to turn around was never going to work for car owners, hence Tesla's initi…

Other carmakers don't need to build their own charging network. It's already being handled for them by thousands of businesses installing standards-compatible chargers. There are 3 new chargers on my block that were installed within the last month. Another 6 scheduled to be installed in my building's garage in the next month. That's in addition to the dozens that are already located in my part of LA. In Santa Monica,…

I rented a Tesla for a few days for a long drive, and very quickly I learned to ignore any charging station that wasn't a supercharger. For a gas station analogy, non-superchargers are a broken-down single-pump station with peeling paint in a bad neighborhood that may or may not be open, and a supercharger is a clean, brightly-lit 24-hour Shell station. Which would you prefer for filling up your car?

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#326

Post by nemo846 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 7:22 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #321

nemo846 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I utterly hate the cult of personality around him. It makes any kind of discussion impossible. Look at the person you relied to, his post is already grey. The guy is kind of a wanker: https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/29/elon-musk... Everyone just give him a free pass which is bullshit. Personally I think the guy is a narcissist given how m…

Regardless of how you feel about this person or any other, would you please not post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for better than this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Unsubstantiated? I even posted links.

So all we are suppose to do is sing his praises on this site?

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#327

Post by consp » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 7:30 AM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #324

mlindner wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All chargers are not created equal. "Planning" to build something is not building it. 350kW is a lot of energy and you need to pay for all the power electronics to run that much DC power. I have no doubt the'll start building chargers but I think the ramp up will be slower and the power levels will be lower than what people think. Most cars can't even charge at 350kW because their batteries are too small. You'd damag…

350kW is about 1800 m^2 of PV panels; you need twice that plus a battery bank to operate at night. You might want a grid tie only so you can do net metering. At current prices for Chinese panels (not counting the Trump tariff) that's on the order of a million dollars. Now double that to pay for the electronic chargers themselves. So $2 million in capital costs and no recurring costs except maintenance. That's almost…

> 350kW is about 1800 m^2 of PV panels;

Or about 1/7th of a windmill.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#328

Post by flexie » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 7:32 AM UTC

andrewmunsell wrote: post #32

One massive advantage that I'm not sure most people realize quite yet is the Supercharger network. No manufacturer (other than Porsche talking about it recently) has actually built out chargers for their cars. Every other electric car has to rely on a broken, sparse, expensive charger network. Blink chargers and some ChargePoint chargers are expensive in many places ($2 an hour!), and Blink is notorious for having br…

The supercharger network is indeed a massive advantage for Tesla. For now, it's obviously necessary, since the range of the cars on the road is generally limited to 200-300 miles. But even in 3-4 years, when new Teslas likely have a range of 400 miles, or in 7-8 years when the standard range is maybe 600 miles, it will grant drivers the certainty that even if they forget to charge at home or at work for several days, or even if they wanna do a road trip that exceeds the range, there will be the fall back of the super chargers.

Given that the amount of Teslas on the roads is growing exponentially these months, Tesla will probably have to grow the supercharger network too. Until recently, there were around 300,000 Teslas on the roads worldwide sharing some 11,000 charging points at 1,350 super charging stations. Soon there are twice as many Teslas on the roads. Next Christmas maybe close to 1 million Teslas in total. They will need to expand with new locations, more charging points per location and faster charging times.

Also, in 3-4 years there will be millions of old Teslas with today's "short" range that still will have to be serviced by super chargers.

Most importantly, many apartment dwellers, i.e. the younger buyers in the cities that will constitute a great deal of the core customer base for Model 3 and Model Y once prices drop to $35,000 or below, may find it more convenient to use super chargers in stead of charging at home. This is especially true, if charging times can be reduced a bit.

Going forward, Tesla can use the charging stations for all kind of things like promoting other products (solar tiles, powerwall batteries etc.) and even selling third party products, just like regular gas stations.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#329

Post by Latteland » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #229

andrewmunsell wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually, yes, it will become a commodity. But the issue is, someone has to spend a lot of money to build out these chargers. Tesla has a big incentive to do it-- their very survival depended on early adopters willing to buy their car, which also means they need a place to charge it. Being able to go 100 miles from your house before you have to turn around was never going to work for car owners, hence Tesla's initi…

Tesla currently has 400 supercharger sites in Europe, 2400 bays in total, by 2020 Ionity, which is a consortium of Daimler, BMW, Porsche, Ford, Audi and VW, is planning to build 400 sites, 2400 bays total, most with a 350kW charging capacity, which is double the power of Tesla’s chargers. There are also about 5000 CCS chargers already existing in Europe, lower power but ‘destination chargers’ will probably be valuabl…

Don't forget tesla's can charge on ccs in europe too.

Re: Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

#330

Post by Sherl » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

andrewmunsell wrote: post #32

One massive advantage that I'm not sure most people realize quite yet is the Supercharger network. No manufacturer (other than Porsche talking about it recently) has actually built out chargers for their cars. Every other electric car has to rely on a broken, sparse, expensive charger network. Blink chargers and some ChargePoint chargers are expensive in many places ($2 an hour!), and Blink is notorious for having br…

But I do see that planning a road trip in Tesla is going to require a lot of additional stops. Last time when when I planned for a coast to coast ride, it was 14 hours additional to a regular ride because of the charging time. It's 3000 mile so 10 stops. Sure I can kill those charging times if they bring their 600 mile range roadsters.