$50M worth of Tesla equipment sits unused in a Wheatfield warehouse • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by manfredo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #130

pbreit wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But inheriting a deal is very, very different from originating a deal.

No, it's not. In an acquisition, you acquire the liabilities as well as the assets.

Right. But the point is, depicting this as though Tesla bought $50M in solar equipment and just left it to sit in a warehouse is misleading. In reality, Tesla bought a company which bought another company which had $50M in solar manufacturing equipment. The fact that they aren't using assets which were brought into Tesla's possession with three layers of indirection is a lot less surprising.

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

#162

Post by Jonanin » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

rjdagost wrote: post #154

Robotbeat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just not accurate. The Buffalo plant economic stimulus package had a clawback provision if Tesla doesn't meet employment milestones. They have been meeting those milestones and so will not have to pay the fee: https://buffalonews.com/2020/02/13/tesla-looks-like-a-good-b... I know people want to make this into some corruption scandal (blaming it either on the state or on Tesla or both), but the state did their…

You're trying to act like everything is A-OK with this project, when it has in reality been a huge waste of public money. First, there has already been a large corruption scandal centered on this project, with people in prison because of associated corruption (search Alain Kaloyeros). Second, those Tesla employment requirement milestones have been repeatedly reduced to require fewer jobs, and the types of required jo…

None of what you've said above justifies your completely misrepresenting the deal as having economic output goals that were watered down, and the parent corrected you on it. It's fine to not like the project, but let's not pretend that spreading misinformation about it is helping anyone.

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

#163

Post by manquer » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #60

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #21

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…

you are not wrong.. However we have lost a lot of such knowledge from the vagaries of the Space programs, civilian nuclear reactors, Tech in many ways far more important. It seems wrong tanks and nuclear subs should get better treatment than space.

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

#164

Post by fujgygvlj » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #125

walrus01 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow the PV panel manufacturing industry this is actually not super uncommon, there's a number of companies that have gone belly up in the past ten years. In some cases due to business models that relied on weird economic incentives for the panel manufacturing location, where 156mm cells purchased on the commodity market from a third party would be encapsulated and built up into 60 or 72-cell panels. Google…

Indeed they are. And manufacturer plants are expensive, so competition is kind of cut-throat to get high volume orders. Also capacities used to be largely under utilized in the last years. This forced prices further down, eroding more margin. No wonder all big manufacturers, with the exception thin film, are in China where it is easy for them to get financing.

I think most businesses could crush their competitors if one of the worlds largest economies decided to be their bottomless patron. Framing it as "getting financing" makes it sound like some kind of venture capitalist affair when the reality is that China decided to kill foreign competitors with heavy state subsidies and all the California hippies cheered for it because they cheer for anything with the word solar attached.

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

#165

Post by 205guy » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

virtue3 wrote: post #140

qubex wrote: 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 “…

If you look at Electric Boat Company (they make our subs), and Newport News Shipyards(carriers), there is a big reason they get refit work etc. Because they would collapse as an industry and it would be impossible to build that kind of staffing/expertise up in short order again. This fact is supposedly a part of the reason the f35 went to lockheed vs boeing.

It's also half the reason behind the Jones Act. Shipping between US ports must be done with US-made ships with US crews. If it weren't for this, US shipyards wouldn't have enough orders or expertise to stay open, and thus wouldn't be available for military orders in case of war.

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

#166

Post by Smoosh » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #79

nradov wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem isn't that the skills and supply chains are fundamentally different but that supply chains for non-military equipment become globalized if not outright off-shored (often to geopolitical rivals) and therefore cannot be counted on in case of a major geopolitical conflict. Pre-massive-globalization, we had no problem gearing up for WW2. Our industrial capacity was largely in-house. There were some things lik…

One of the benefits of globalization (and the EU) is that it's to everyone's economic advantage to not have a war between trading nations. This maintains supply, reduces costs, and crazily enough - reduces conflict.

You may lose the ability to make widgets because it's easier/cheaper to buy them from another country, but in theory, you make it up by selling them sprockets, and through the overall economic gains.

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

#167

Post by pinkfoot » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #87

rurp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't imagine a plausible scenario where a war between nuclear powers comes down to which side has more tanks. Does the US military actually think that it could invade China or Russia with a conventional army without the other side quickly threatening to use nukes? At that point it would become a two true outcome scenario: either the conventional fighting stops or we are all in big trouble.

Russia would threaten nukes to protect its homeland, but would it start a nuclear war over, say, Poland?

Yes. Fear of this is why neither the USA or France ventured to protect Ukraine even after signing the Budapest Declaration.

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

#168

Post by denni9th » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #144

csours wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (That means that Rive and Musk are genetically half-siblings.) Apropos of nothing, I'm now imagining a world with forms of address based on the natural logarithm of shared genetic material.

There is an app that will tell you and another person with the same app how closely related you are and will show the ancestry chain between the two of you. It turns out the my wife and I are 10th cousins (common great-whatever grandparents in the 1600s). I started calling her my cousin-wife, but she didn't think it was funny, so I had to stop ;-)

What is the app called?

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

#169

Post by zwily » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:21 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #144

csours wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (That means that Rive and Musk are genetically half-siblings.) Apropos of nothing, I'm now imagining a world with forms of address based on the natural logarithm of shared genetic material.

There is an app that will tell you and another person with the same app how closely related you are and will show the ancestry chain between the two of you. It turns out the my wife and I are 10th cousins (common great-whatever grandparents in the 1600s). I started calling her my cousin-wife, but she didn't think it was funny, so I had to stop ;-)

10th cousin is basically “not related”. That same app (Relative Finder) says that Obama is my 10th cousin.

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

#170

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

fujgygvlj wrote: post #164

hef19898 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed they are. And manufacturer plants are expensive, so competition is kind of cut-throat to get high volume orders. Also capacities used to be largely under utilized in the last years. This forced prices further down, eroding more margin. No wonder all big manufacturers, with the exception thin film, are in China where it is easy for them to get financing.

I think most businesses could crush their competitors if one of the worlds largest economies decided to be their bottomless patron. Framing it as "getting financing" makes it sound like some kind of venture capitalist affair when the reality is that China decided to kill foreign competitors with heavy state subsidies and all the California hippies cheered for it because they cheer for anything with the word solar att…

Yeah, that's true. But the China is communicating this fact in their five year plans. So the competition can hardly be surprised.

IMHO, it is still close to the VC model. Just in a very strategic and state backed way. e.g. Yingli Solar was for a very long period the biggest manufacturer of solar modules worldwide. Until they screwed up financially, now they aren't top ten anymore.