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$50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

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61–70 of 181 posts

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#61

> State government documents put the final price tag at $958,600,000 for the property, building construction and equipment. The cost for the equipment alone is close to $300 million. What a staggering number. How does our government get away with wasting so much money without any accountability?

They count on a few things: * you don't hear about all the millions of times this happens * You will still hear about thousands of times that it happens, and it happens so often you feel that can't possibly fight it all * you don't have alternative options to vote for * any alternative option is crushed with voter suppression and/or the massive campaign chests of the incumbents

> any alternative option is crushed with voter suppression

With early voting, free or very cheap ID for poor people, mail in ballots, and literally a year or more to confirm one’s voter registration, voter suppression is a ridiculous excuse. If people cared about voting, they would do it. I honestly don’t want people voting that can’t be bothered to take the responsibility seriously enough that they allow themselves to be “suppressed.” More voters isn’t the answer: more voters that care about fiscal responsibility is the answer. Many voters don’t care one bit about waste because those voters aren’t paying very much in the taxes that are getting wasted. They want “someone else” to pay. Many voters vote for the “stuff” they can get for themselves.

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#62
post #37

As usual, Tesla's involvement in the original deal is reported incorrectly. Tesla had no involvement in the original deal. Nor did Solar City. In fact, Silevo did the deal, was then acquired by Solar City which was then acquired by Tesla.

Well, let's be clear about the timeline. Silevo was planning a factory in upstate New York, and the State of New York was planning to invest $225 million in that project.

In June 2014, SolarCity agreed to acquire Silevo.

Three months later, with Elon Musk's personal involvement, the Cuomo Administration agreed to increase their investment to $750 million, in a much-expanded deal.

Construction of the factory began under SolarCity ownership in September 2014.

Tesla acquired SolarCity in November 2016. One month later, Tesla announced that Panasonic would assemble the solar modules at Gigafactory 2/New York.

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me how the US continually produces tanks despite the armies recommendations, to the point where we have enough tanks to essentially fight WW3 with purely tanks and still have some left over, just so some congressmen can keep jobs in their constituency. At least that was the situation in the 2000s, no idea if that wackiness is still continuing

The production of armaments is a bit of an economic anomaly, to be honest. All businesses, including arms manufacturers, require a constant flow of business in order to cover their fixed costs and remunerate their investors (debt holders and shareholders). If governments only order weapons when they need them to fight a war, then the arms manufacturers would shut form at the end of a conflict and would take ages to “…

When I was growing up my father had an ashtray from his days in the navy, which was made from the bottom of a three inch shell. On the bottom stamped in the metal was '1944', which as a child confused me because I knew my dad was in the navy from 1959-1965, so I asked him. "Let's just say they made A LOT of those in 1944."

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The production of armaments is a bit of an economic anomaly, to be honest. All businesses, including arms manufacturers, require a constant flow of business in order to cover their fixed costs and remunerate their investors (debt holders and shareholders). If governments only order weapons when they need them to fight a war, then the arms manufacturers would shut form at the end of a conflict and would take ages to “…

It seems like it would be a better use of resources to just build up enough of a stockpile that the industry would be able to safely retool into a similar civilian industry, such as railroad locomotives, and then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability. You'd just have to keep a small industry around for upgrades and maintenance.

Basically what happened in WW2

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#65
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime example: the NRO donated two unused spy satellites to NASA, each more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...

I read an interview with an NRO scientist, who described his group as following carefully the progress of the Hubble team who were independently solving many of the same problems their teams had solved earlier. From a national security perspective, they had to sit on their hands and not offer any help, but from an engineering perspective, they valued having another team do it to see if they would validate their desig…

Sounds super interesting, do you have a link?

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They count on a few things: * you don't hear about all the millions of times this happens * You will still hear about thousands of times that it happens, and it happens so often you feel that can't possibly fight it all * you don't have alternative options to vote for * any alternative option is crushed with voter suppression and/or the massive campaign chests of the incumbents

> any alternative option is crushed with voter suppression With early voting, free or very cheap ID for poor people, mail in ballots, and literally a year or more to confirm one’s voter registration, voter suppression is a ridiculous excuse. If people cared about voting, they would do it. I honestly don’t want people voting that can’t be bothered to take the responsibility seriously enough that they allow themselves…

People waited in line for 3, 4, even 7 hours in black/Latino neighborhoods and on college campuses in Texas and California last night.

They close voting sites in these places, sometimes the day of the election:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-pollin...

They come up with convoluted ID requirements that only apply to college students, requiring types of ID their colleges don't even issue for them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/voting-college-suppres...

That doesn't happen in rich white neighborhoods. It's nothing if not voter suppression.

That's not even to bring up gerrymandering. I mean look at these voting districts that have been drawn:

* https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteBlue/comments/bd77pf/dan_crensh...

* https://www.ranker.com/list/most-gerrymandered-districts-in-...

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me how the US continually produces tanks despite the armies recommendations, to the point where we have enough tanks to essentially fight WW3 with purely tanks and still have some left over, just so some congressmen can keep jobs in their constituency. At least that was the situation in the 2000s, no idea if that wackiness is still continuing

One of the problems with entirely ceasing production of a category of incredibly complex military system is that the engineering knowledge to build it retires, goes elsewhere or becomes unavailable. The UK faced a number of problems with their domestic construction of the Astute class nuclear attack submarines, as they had not built a nuclear sub in more than 15 years. The institutional knowledge of how to build such…

Why not instead build them slowly enough so that the last submarine of class n-1 would be finished just before/after beginning of the build of the first submarine of class n?

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#68
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prime example: the NRO donated two unused spy satellites to NASA, each more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...

I read an interview with an NRO scientist, who described his group as following carefully the progress of the Hubble team who were independently solving many of the same problems their teams had solved earlier. From a national security perspective, they had to sit on their hands and not offer any help, but from an engineering perspective, they valued having another team do it to see if they would validate their desig…

Is there an overview of the differences in design choices made?

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#69
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The production of armaments is a bit of an economic anomaly, to be honest. All businesses, including arms manufacturers, require a constant flow of business in order to cover their fixed costs and remunerate their investors (debt holders and shareholders). If governments only order weapons when they need them to fight a war, then the arms manufacturers would shut form at the end of a conflict and would take ages to “…

It seems like it would be a better use of resources to just build up enough of a stockpile that the industry would be able to safely retool into a similar civilian industry, such as railroad locomotives, and then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability. You'd just have to keep a small industry around for upgrades and maintenance.

> then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability

It's not that easy. You loose knowledge and vendors and people. Going from 0 unit production per year to 10 per year is more difficult than going going from 10 per year to 10000 per year.

Re: $50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse

#70
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The production of armaments is a bit of an economic anomaly, to be honest. All businesses, including arms manufacturers, require a constant flow of business in order to cover their fixed costs and remunerate their investors (debt holders and shareholders). If governments only order weapons when they need them to fight a war, then the arms manufacturers would shut form at the end of a conflict and would take ages to “…

It seems like it would be a better use of resources to just build up enough of a stockpile that the industry would be able to safely retool into a similar civilian industry, such as railroad locomotives, and then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability. You'd just have to keep a small industry around for upgrades and maintenance.

That is unfortunately no longer realistic. The skills and supply chains needed to produce high-end military equipment are too different. The production lines have to be kept continuously running or else they would take so long to reestablish that in any serious conflict it would be too late.
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