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Tesla's solar factory in Buffalo fizzles
- TylerE 4y agoHave, like, ANY of these state corporate boons actually worked out?
- berkle4455 4y agoYeah, Tesla's core lifeline for years was state-level ZEV credits, not to mention the various EV subsidy schemes.
- topkai22 4y agoSo far, the Nevada Tesla Gigafactory stuff is still considered an enormously successful endeavor. Probably the exception that proves the rule though.
- bertil 4y agoIt’s probably the same distribution of return as venture investment: even if one in 20 of 50 work, if they repay their cost a hundred-fold, it’s worth doing more of them, including riskier ones.
- blamazon 4y agoHow do you measure 'actually working out'? The generalized NY Excelsior tax-cuts-in-exchange-for-jobs program [1] is much larger than one factory and is regarded by some as having a net positive impact to the state. [1]: https://dos.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/04/excelsiorjobsprogramoverview.pdf https://dos.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2021/04/excelsiorj...
- purple_ferret 4y agoI don't know, but they'r pretty persistent regardless. Almost $9 billion in corporate incentives in 2021[0] https://info.siteselectiongroup.com/blog/largest-economic-incentive-deals-of-2021#:~:text=States%20with%20the%20largest%20awards,billion%20for%20142%20projects%2C%20respectively https://info.siteselectiongroup.com/blog/largest-economic-in....
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThe Great American Jobs Scam, which was written almost two decades ago, covers how these handouts never work out in favor of the state/taxpayers. https://goodjobsfirst.org/gajs/ https://goodjobsfirst.org/gajs/ The biggest receiver of welfare in the US, aside from possibly defense contractors, is Walmart. They pay their employees so little that most of them are dependent upon social programs, and Walmart had dedicated staff for helping employees apply for those programs.
- panick21_ 4y agoPretty much every major industrial facility receives lots of stuff. So yes, lots of them have worked out. A notable good example is the Gigafactory in Nevada, where not only is the Gigafactory doing as well in terms of jobs as expected, but also that in Nevada lots of other battery companies have been growing.
- irjustin 4y agoThe problem is pricing, which directly affects demand. Obviously, if there was demand, the factory would be humming. $55k for a solar roof which is 2-3x a panel setup? This system is not 3x better and doesn't represent a fundamental shift (like Starlink). There are lots of people who want solar, but my guess is very few are willing to pay even +25% to make it "look seamless", let alone 3x. That's the primary benefit, "looking seamless", and that's not a mass-market selling point. That's a luxury, so the market is tiny.
- senectus1 4y agobut how much does a normal tile roof cost? (no solar, no panels) because the solar roof cost should not be compared to the cost of panels. Its not replacing panels it replacing the entire roof.
- nonethewiser 4y agoOnly if you were already going to reroof your house.
- yreg 4y agoThis product has always been targeted on people who are building new houses or have to reroof a house.
- yreg 4y agoThe plan in 2016 was for it to cost less than a normal roof + panels[0]. Then in 2019 they said that the new version will cost the same[1]. I guess they haven't managed to meet that price target otherwise they would have no shortage of orders. [0] https://electrek.co/2016/11/17/tesla-solar-roof-cost-less-than-regular-roof-even-before-energy-production-elon-musk/ https://electrek.co/2016/11/17/tesla-solar-roof-cost-less-th... [1] https://electrek.co/2019/06/12/tesla-solar-roof-v3-shingle-price/ https://electrek.co/2019/06/12/tesla-solar-roof-v3-shingle-p...
- amluto 4y agoHaving seriously contemplated getting one of these roofs, the real problem was working with Tesla. Fine, Tesla sells cars with essentially no customer service. It’s a thing you order off a menu, and they make it and deliver it. But a roof is fundamentally a custom installation. You need flashings. You need it to integrate with gutters. You need to make sure the thing is compatible with the roof slope. You may need penetrations. You need to have drawings and specs for the contractor and the structural engineer. You probably need a (correct!) permit drawing. Someone needs to answer the phone when the GC calls. And you need the thing installed, on time, competently, so the building can have a roof when it needs it. Tesla is terrible at this. Any of a large number of roofers who sell products from various large and small roofing vendors can pull it off — it’s not hard, it’s not rocket science, but it requires an actual human who has volition. Maybe AI or really amazing construction software will do this some day, but not yet.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThis reminds me of a similar scandal around Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts, though in that case, it was "only" tens of millions of dollars. Rhode Island pissed $75M into the wind with Kurt Shilling to move his supposed "game studio" from Massachusetts. NY getting fleeced out of a billion dollars (enough to buy an electric bicycle for one eighth of NYC's entire population) is truly spectacular. Just for the sake of comparison, that's half the entire state budget for health services. But hey, what's another billion on top of tens of billions in handouts and zero-interest loans and subsidies and tax credits Musk has been given by US governments? https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su... https://www.grid.news/story/technology/2022/04/30/elon-musk-hates-the-government-his-companies-love-it/ https://www.grid.news/story/technology/2022/04/30/elon-musk-... Funny enough, he's pissed he isn't getting more. https://futurism.com/elon-musk-starlink-grant-rejection-subsidies https://futurism.com/elon-musk-starlink-grant-rejection-subs...
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- photochemsyn 4y agoSilevo's hybrid solar cell manufacturing facility was in Hangzhou, which is in Zhejiang province, on the east coast of China, nowhere near the supposed 'slave labor camps' in the far northwestern Xinjiang province. Solar City acquired Silevo on the premise they'd be able to import from Hangzhou and assemble in Buffalo, basically: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/solarcity-moves-into-manufacturing-with-silevo-takeover-analyst-blog-2014-06-18 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/solarcity-moves-into-manufac... However, the US government - which certainly doesn't worry about labor abuse in places like Saudi Arabia wrt oil production, or really anywhere wrt oil production, slapped tariffs on this, under both the administration of Obama (a coal-state Senator backed by coal and nuclear interests originally) as well as Trump (Republicans also being in the power of the investor-owned electricity sector). The tariffs are a joke - a blatantly transparent effort to slow the growth of the solar industry in the USA, to protect the profits of the investor-owned utility crowd and their invested partners in the fossil energy sector: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/06/20/solarcitysilevo-must-pay-duties-on-chinese-made-pv-cells/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/06/20/solarcitysilevo-must-... > "Last Friday, the International Trade Association gave its final ruling on whether or not Silevo’s “Triex” heterojunction PV cells are subject to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy import duties on cells and modules imported from China. The result was the same as the preliminary ruling in April, and verified that SolarCity must pay duties on Triex cells made in China." So that's what the whole issue is about - but there's a more blatantly obvious issue, which is that no company or research center in the USA has mastered high-volume monocrystalline silicon ingot production, while Chinese companies have. Why? The US doesn't provide R&D funding for this kind of technological development, hence China is well ahead. In contrast in China this has been under steady development for at least a decade: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/29/new-manufacturing-process-for-high-quality-mono-cast-ingots/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/29/new-manufacturing-pro...
- bsder 4y ago> So that's what the whole issue is about - but there's a more blatantly obvious issue, which is that no company or research center in the USA has mastered high-volume monocrystalline silicon ingot production, while Chinese companies have. Why? The US doesn't provide R&D funding for this kind of technological development, hence China is well ahead. In contrast in China this has been under steady development for at least a decade: Sorry, but that's HIGHLY revisionist. China dumped cheap, crappy solar cells into the US and wiped out all the domestic manufacturers. I knew of lots of solar installers who got out of the business because they knew they were going to be on the hook when the Chinese solar cells all died early. And in 5 years that was exactly what happened. These tariffs didn't come fast enough, unfortunately. Another part of the reason why solar installations have slowed down considerably is directly attributable to the fact that homeowners now know that the Chinese cells won't actually last the 15-20 years that they are supposed to. So, unless you can amortize over 5 years, nobody is going to risk installing them. Electricity is neither expensive enough nor sunlight plentiful enough to pull that off in 90+% of the US.
- josefresco 4y ago"About 500 jobs — nearly one-third of the current workforce of 1,636 — are those entry-level desk positions, in which workers label images from the company’s self-driving vehicle software — merge signs, turning lanes, pedestrians — in an attempt to train the autonomous driving algorithms." Glorified captcha farm, what a joke.