32 ms·

The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (2006)

363 points by mactitan 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago
August 2, 2006 The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me) From 2006. Nice to know they are still sticking with it :-)
- trhaynes 14y ago
  I would have appreciated seeing "(2006)" appended to the HN title.
NoPiece 14y ago
I am rooting for Tesla, but if they are counting on a "solar electric economy," that makes me worry. Let's target something practical, like a nuclear/natural gas/solar electric economy.
- dmcy22 14y ago
  Elon is the Chairman of SolarCity, "the leading residential solar provider in the U.S." http://www.solarcity.com/media-center/elon-musk.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/media-center/elon-musk.aspx
- ams6110 14y ago
  I don't see Tesla as counting on it directly. They would like to see it happen, but all they need to fuel their cars is a source of electricity. If for some reason utility-scale solar power is never practical, that doesn't really impede anything they are trying to do with their vehicles.
- mpyne 14y ago
  Read the whole thing, I'll bet you'll be satisfied with his answers regarding that. The way he's discussing it, EVs are an immediate win for efficiency with the option (not requirement) of being solar-sustainable.
- greghinch 14y ago
  I agree it presents quite a few challenges, and with the tech today it's hard to see solar as viable. However, from what I understand of Mr. Musk's plan, I agree with his idea that almost all energy on Earth came from the sun (and in the case of hydrocarbons all of it), and so the most efficient way to capture that energy should be directly. Nuclear and geothermal aside, nearly every other form of energy capture we do is indirect and represents a huge waste.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    The alternate, hand-wavy argument that comes to the opposite conclusion is this: The Earth gets 10^17 Watts from the sun. This power is at it's most diffuse when it initially strikes the Earth as sunlight. After initially striking the Earth, this power transferred into the air, ocean, and land in complicated ways that result in very strong concentrations in some areas (e.g. high winds). Intuitively, it should be easiest and cheapest to go to those places and harvest the energy where it is dense, rather than where it is diffuse. After all, we are not anywhere near tapping into the total energy flux from the sun. It's not a matter of efficiency (sun's ray/usable power) as much as cost. Much better to go and harvest at a place where the energy is 10 times denser than sunlight, even if there were all sorts of losses along the way.
    - greghinch 14y ago
      Sustainability has to come into it though. In some mediums this is less of a concern (wind perhaps), but it's paramount when it comes to hydrocarbons. The "cost" right now on sourcing energy from oil and coal does not reflect the true "price" when you take things like pollution into account. This needs to be quantified for all forms of energy collection and extraction in order to have a true representation of value/efficiency. Then solar starts to make a lot more sense.
      - jessriedel 14y ago
        Yes of course. From context, we are restricting our attention to renewables.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Tesla doesn't depend on the whole solar economy to be successful. It mostly depends on its own solar-based superchargers, and those have nothing to do with the health of the solar economy. Whether solar energy will be 50% of US energy production, or just stay at 5%, it will be irrelevant for Tesla cars, as they will still get free charging from its own solar superchargers.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    The charging may be free, but they definitely have a cost to Tesla. I wonder by what margin the electrical cost savings will offset the investment and expenses associated with the charging stations?
- jaggederest 14y ago
  Once you plug an 85kwh battery pack into your house, suddenly solar starts looking a lot more feasible. That's at least a day worth of storage.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Storage is only part of the problem, and not one of the most important parts either IMO if you are not cutting off from the grid.
    - jaggederest 14y ago
      On a society wide scale? We only need as much solar power as is taken up by rooftops if we have effective storage. Once you start reaching 25% penetration of electric cars hooked to the grid, it's compensation for base load.
- mburns 14y ago
  Nuclear regulation is a bear to work through. The lower third of the United States, particularly the southwest, could migrate toward a more solar-based economy today, economically, without the red tape or regulation around handling radioactive fuel. It isn't as ambitious or forward-thinking, but it is also vastly easier to get started.
- forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
  I find it very practical. The best solar panels are 40% efficient, they are very very expensive today but it is a real possibility that someone someway could get this level of efficiency in the future cheaply. You get over 1000W/m2 of sun radiation so you could get over 400W/m2. probably it does not look like much but given that plants are 1% efficient, and most radiation escapes earth it really is. You could absorb sun's energy and then use that energy to grow plants!! in a much more efficient way(inside buildings, under the surface).
jessriedel 14y ago
Can anyone point me toward Musk's reasoning about why solar will beat out wind power in the long term? I know he owns a solar company, but why did he choose that over wind? (I'm aware of the basic pros and cons of both. I'm really just looking for Musk's thinking.)
- MikeCapone 14y ago
  There's a recent talk here where Musk discusses what he thinks of the future of energy, though I don't think he goes into wind vs. solar specifically (he does explain in the Q&A at the end why he doesn't think biofuels make sense). http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-gives-hour-long-speech-university-oxford-video-and-audio-q-a.html http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/tesla-ceo-elon-m...
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Thanks much.
  - Someone 14y ago
    I could not find him comapring solar and wind, either. On the risk that you already considered all of these, here are some reasons I can think of: http://www.withouthotair.com/c4/page_32.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c4/page_32.shtml gives 2W/m^2 for wind and http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_39.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_39.shtml gives 22W/m^2 for photovoltaic. Yes, there are places where you can get much more energy from wind per m^2, but you can get that photovoltaic output almost everywhere. It also is easier to start a solar business than one based on wind power. With solar, you can start small and scale up. With wind, you almost have to start with huge structures, as they have better ROI (higher = faster wind = way more energy). Building such larger structures means that you no longer operate in the B2C market. He may not like that. Also, he may not like having to spend effort and time getting building permission for those structures. He may also think photovoltaics will get cheaper faster than wind. Finally, it might be just a personal preference. To me, wind has more of a blue collar feel than photovoltaics (someone will get his hands greasy operating a wind farm). That does not make me dislike it, but might have swung the choice for him.
jasonshen 14y ago
Nothing builds credibility like doing what you said you would. =)
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Especially on this scale.
codex 14y ago
"Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster." A Model S for $45K? Where do I sign? The average selling price of a Model S is probably more like $90K.
- mtgx 14y ago
  You can already get a Model S for $50k something, but with fewer options and about half the range.
  - codex 14y ago
    The cheapest 2013 Model S is $60K. The price was raised last year. This works out to be 5% inflation per year since 2006--however, at this point I suspect the fatter margin on the pricier models are subsidizing this $60K version. The price of a Roadster was $109K when introduced in 2008.
    - tadfisher 14y ago
      And after the $7,500 federal tax credit, you arrive at $52,400, which is the figure listed on the Tesla Motors site. Whether you want to count "out the door" price or the total price after your tax refund is up for debate.
  - bhauer 14y ago
    Also, the 40 KWh ("160 mile") version--that is, the ~$50k version--was not actually available within the first batch of manufactured cars. It may be available now; I'm not sure. During the first few months, reservation holders who planned to purchase a 40 KWh car were told they would need to wait longer. That situation would drive the average selling price upward. Once the manufacture of the 40 KWh cars starts (and perhaps it has already started), and once the relatively wealthy early adopters have purchased their well-equipped models, the average selling price should trend downward. On day one of iPhone 6 availability, are more 64 GB or 32 GB models going to be sold? 64 GB obviously. Microsoft was correctly criticized for not understanding that most Surface Pro early adopters wanted the 128 GB model. Similarly, if you see a Model S on the road today (and I've seen about 15 so far here in Los Angeles) odds are very good it will be a Performance-spec car. Around 10 of the 15 I've seen have been Performance. And when the Mercedes W212 E-Class hit the streets, if I recall correctly the very first one I saw in the wild was an E63. Early adopters buy top-of-the-line.
spullara 14y ago
When I ordered my Tesla S I also needed to get a 240V charger installed in my garage. Tesla sends you over to SolarCity for that and they can install it for you. This also gives them the perfect opportunity to offer you solar panels as well since they can show you, based on your electricity bill and the number of miles you are going to drive, how much it is going to save you. Long story short, bought a Tesla S from Tesla, a outlet installation from SolarCity and now have also signed up for 8.8Kw solar panel system for my house. The vertical integration of his investments is awesome. I just hope he somehow integrates in SpaceX ... maybe solar microwave power from orbit?
- dave1619 14y ago
  A Tesla Model S and solar power is a great combo. Congrats! How do you like your Model S so far? Does it meet your expectations?
  - spullara 14y ago
    It is like driving around the original iPhone. Most of the awesome features of the car could be in any car, Tesla was just the first ones to really do it. As for driving performance it has been amazing. Much faster and more comfortable than my old 911. My biggest commute though is just from Los Altos to SF. One day I forgot to plug it in and it was no big deal but decided I didn't want that to happen again so I wrote an app for it using their undocumented API for the car that notifies me if I forget. https://github.com/spullara/teslalogger https://github.com/spullara/teslalogger
    - CamperBob2 14y ago
      That's kind of scary. The original iPhone was a pretty awful phone by any objective measure (speaking as someone who has owned one of every model and seen them improve steadily over the years.)
      - hyperbovine 14y ago
        Hindsight is 20/20. My first impression, upon beholding an iPhone in summer 2007, was that it had been dropped to us from the heavens by some benevolent, spacefaring race.
btipling 14y ago
(2006) on the title please.
zaidrahman 14y ago
A CEO who sticks by the grand plan. This is refreshing.
surrealize 14y ago
> the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable Tesla cars so far have definitely been luxury cars. If they keep going downmarket into the mainstream, I wonder if they'll want to create a separate brand for their mainstream stuff, a la acura/honda, toyota/lexus, and infiniti/nissan. If they do, the low-end brand should be "Edison".
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Not sure why they would. They don't have a luxury brand identity to protect, like Mercedes or BMW, and they aren't trying to move upmarket, like Toyota or Honda. As best I can tell, the game plan has always been widespread appeal. "Luxury" was just a segment that made sense to pass through, as they tried to work costs down.
- lysol 14y ago
  I don't see a reason why they should implement the brand dilution that has caused so much pain for the other car manufacturers.
  - notdrunkatall 14y ago
    Musk is an idealist; he sees himself spearheading an EV revolution of sorts, and you can't have a revolution without appealing to the masses.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti were attempts by perceived-downscale brands to brand "up". It doesn't make sense for a brand like Tesla to brand "down".
  - ericd 14y ago
    Don't you think it would help in protecting the perceived exclusivity of the Tesla brand? I don't think it'd be a good move overall, but I could see some justifications based on potential brand dilution.
chenster 14y ago
> However, let’s assume for the moment that the electricity is generated from a hydrocarbon source like natural gas, the most popular fuel for new US power plants in recent years. Above statement is mostly true in state of California where natural gas generates one third of its total power (source: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.h...) Not so true national wide. According to US Energy Administration, the energy sources and percent share of total for electricity generation in 2011. Note the the combined renewable energy sources is below 10% still in 2011. • Coal 42% • Natural Gas 25% • Nuclear 19% • Hydropower 8% • Other Renewable 5% • Biomass 1.38% • Geothermal 0.41% • Solar 0.04% • Wind 2.92% • Petroleum 1% • Other Gases < 1% (source: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3) Coal is still the king.
- revelation 14y ago
  Given that the next contender, the Prius, has three times the CO2 emissions of the Roadster, I think theres plenty wiggle room for the energy source here.
- cpressey 14y ago
  I understand there has been a sharp rise in natural gas (and a corresponding drop in coal and nuclear) in the past two years, since fracking took off. (I wouldn't be surprised if coal is still at the top though.)
  - johncarpinelli 14y ago
    Yes natural gas overtook coal as the leading source of electricity in the USA. The transition was in 2012.
  - chenster 14y ago
    If we could effectively get the oil out of ground in CA (total four hundred billion barrels, that's half of oil in all of Saudi Arabia), it may completely change the game. http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/california-oil-boom/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/california-oil-...
angstrom 14y ago
They've followed the plan well. I'd also like to point out a lesser known article from 7 years ago: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/09/01/8384349/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2... The New Power Play The Investor: Elon Musk, co-founder, PayPal What he's backed: SpaceX, Tesla Motors What he wants now: As Musk's two most recent investments - in a space rocket and an all-electric sports car - suggest, the 35-year-old entrepreneur likes to think big. So he's intrigued by the promise of a next-generation battery called an ultracapacitor, capable of powering everything from cars to tractors. Unlike chemical batteries, ultracapacitors store energy as an electrical field between a pair of conducting plates. Theoretically, they can be charged in less than a second rather than hours, be recharged repeatedly without sacrificing performance, and far outlast anything now on the market. "I am convinced that the long-term solution to our energy needs lies with capacitors," Musk says. "You can't beat them for power, and they kick ass on any chemical battery." Musk would know: He was doing Ph.D. work at Stanford on high-energy capacitors before he helped get PayPal off the ground. At least one startup, EEStor in Texas, and a larger company, Maxwell Technologies in California, are working on ultracapacitors. Yet Musk believes a university-based research group has an equal shot at a commercial breakthrough, since universities are where the most promising research is bubbling up. "The challenge is one of materials science, not money," Musk says. The team to pull this off, he says, would need expertise in materials science, applied physics, and manufacturing. Musk wants to see a prototype that can power something small, like a boom box. "Make one and show me that it works," Musk says. "Then tell me what's wrong with it and how it can be fixed." What he'll invest: $4 million over two years for a working prototype Send your pitch to: mbb@spacex.com. -- M.V.C.
uptown 14y ago
Not that he's presumably anywhere near the end of his life - but does Tesla or SpaceX have a contingency plan should something happen to Elon Musk? Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love everything they're doing. It just scares the crap out of me that such a grand movement opposing very powerful forces is led by a single individual. Please tell me there's more brilliant leaders with the same mindset involved in his mission, ready to take the reins should the need ever arise.
chenster 14y ago
Richard A. Muller, Nobel Prize in Physics, posted an short article on energy efficiency and pollution in gasoline, hybrid, and pure battery powered cars. Gasoline vs best battery powered car is a factor of 40.The only car has zero pollution is the hydrogen powered. http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/physics%2010%20notes/Electric%20cars%20.html http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/...
- markdown 14y ago
  > Gasoline FTFY
- revelation 14y ago
  He might be a nobel prize physicist, but that article is strongly on the fringe side. You can't dismiss electric cars because the power plants produce CO2 and then go on to claim hydrogen is a "clean" technology because burning it does not produce carbon-dioxide.
  - rustynails77 14y ago
    I like the idea of electric cars, but their dirty secret is not the CO2 from power plants - it's the batteries. They're full of deadly toxins and they don't last very long. What happens to these batteries when they're no longer useful??? I'm still banking on battery technology improving to the point that this disadvantage is far less hazardous to the environment.
    - revelation 14y ago
      They last very long, the only thing you lose with time is capacity. When the battery reaches a capacity that is no longer useful for use in a car, the battery is sold to utilities. One use case would be to buffer the energy from renewable sources like solar or wind and release it when theres higher demand. Its a low-scale solution to the biggest problem of the energy spot market: charge is highly perishable. Use it or lose it.
    - jws 14y ago
slevcom 14y ago
Total man crush on Elon here. He's like a science fiction author except he makes the spaceships for reals instead of writing about them. Meanwhile a large chunk of the entrepreneurs continue to optimize ad delivery and photo sharing (myself included), just sayin.
zacharycohn 14y ago
I am a huge fan of Elon and have a lot of faith in anything he's involve in. I am interested, however, in how this reconciles with the Innovator's Dilemma. He's starting at the top of the market and working his way down. My possible explanation (assuming he will be successful) is: There isn't enough of an existing market to be disrupted for the Innovator's Dilemma to apply. What I would be worried about here is the other electric cars that ARE on the market are on the lower end (comparatively. The Leaf is $23,000 vs Tesla @ $52,000). Nissan is working on using cheaper tech, and then will find ways to improve that cheaper tech versus Tesla using expensive tech and finding ways to make it cheaper. Opinions?
- frabcus 14y ago
  The Innovator's Dilemma doesn't say you have to start at a "low end" and work up. That's just how it was for the computer storage industry (the example in the book) in the second half of the twentieth century. It says that you have to start with a new market - i.e a set of people who want to buy your product who are different fundamentally from the existing market. Plenty of innovations are rolled out starting at the high end. An obvious example is the iPhone (which changed the smartphone market from business/hobbiest to consumer, and which began doing that with rich consumers). Another way of looking at it... New things can be relatively expensive within their new market - the first PCs were very expensive, they just happened to be cheap compared to Minicomputers. From a product side, they looked like cheap, crap computers. From the market side, they had a totally different market (e.g. individual finance professionals, rather than large corporations). It's natural as a geek to look just at products. You have to look at both products and markets - they are not just both important, they are the same thing (http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=371 http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=371). Tesla's product is electric cars. It's market is people who want: a) To not have to recharge every day on their commute. b) To have more accessible storage space. c) To have cheap power when gas finally gets more expensive than electricity/batteries Short term they have been bootstrapping that using a market of people who have longer term motivations (concern about climate change or an energy crisis) which will later go mainstream in the form of c). It's very very smart.
TechNewb 14y ago
Secret: One of the reasons I want to get a good job is so I can afford a Tesla... Don't tell anyone.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 14y ago
How rare is lithium for lithium ion batteries? And how recyclable is it? Should I be buying lithium now to sell it later?
- Lagged2Death 14y ago
  The total lithium content of seawater is very large and is estimated as 230 billion tonnes ... At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust, lithium is the 25th most abundant element. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial
  - notdrunkatall 14y ago
    How costly is extracting lithium from seawater?
HyprMusic 14y ago
I find it incredible how one many seems to be driving such a change in the future of our planet. Considering people have apparently been putting time and money in to this for decades, why are we not seeing more attempts like this? Is it because it's not considered lucrative enough for the capitalist market? Or is Elon just a very good at convincing us (me) he's breaking new ground?
mynameishere 14y ago
Yeah, right. He just wants pollution moved from rich areas, where traffic density is located, to poor areas, where power generating stations are located.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  I'm not sure if he "wants" it that way, but that will be an unintended consequence. It's hard to say anything negative about Elon or Tesla here without getting down-voted.
wamatt 14y ago
Musk's plan in a way serves as a reminder for those of us that tend to overestimate the role luck plays in the personal journey towards entrepreneurial success. While generally HN users are open minded, no small number have derided the notion that others (perhaps far less capable than Musk), are capable of having a meaningful vision. Of course having a justified belief and plan is a different approach to the lean startup philosophy. Lean effectively aligns more with the randomness worldview and iteration with an impartiality (or even celebration in some cases) of failure. Whereas OTOH, the visionary approach usually has more confidence in a self-directed path. Those with this visionary quality (in varying levels of ability), can arrogantly dismiss others too, with behavior that is equally cringe worthy. Moreover, it would be hard to objectively and meaningfully argue either approach is universally "better". However, perhaps the most significant indiscretion, is not in picking a side that works for you, but rather failing to see that two sides exist at all.
- mhartl 14y ago
  Musk's plan in a way serves as a reminder for those of us that tend to overestimate the role luck plays in the personal journey towards entrepreneurial success. I agree that Elon's results with Tesla and Space X are not principally (or even much) based on luck, but this is (at least in part) because he has the resources to finance his visions directly and can use his tech-celebrity status to help bring them to fruition. How did he get into this enviable position? It's largely due to the sale PayPal to eBay, of course—and, as those in the know will tell you, luck was a big factor in PayPal's success.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  His lucky play was PayPal's acquisition by eBay (and Zip2's by AltaVista prior to that). Getting that cash infusion enabled his subsequent ventures. There were many ventures competing with both. That's not to say that Musk wasn't directed and didn't capitalize exceptionally well on his successes. But luck most definitely played a role.
mactitan 14y ago
Hybrid vs EV: .56 vs 1.14 km/mj. Xprise 100 mpg winner seriously considered EV but won with Gas engine. Where's the discrepancy? At least Germany is a good case study in the feasibility Of a solar electric infrastructure. I thought diesel/ hybrid is best bet but it's good musk is here pushing the envelope.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Experimental cars have surpassed the 100km/l (235mpg) barrier a long time ago. That doesn't mean they are anywhere near feasible as a product - no interior finish, exotic body materials, no air-conditioning, electric/hydraulic assistance, electric windows, abs, and all kinds of power-hungry electronics. Audi is said to be working on a production vehicle, an hybrid, with 260mpg efficiency, but we'll have to wait a little bit to see if it becomes real: http://www.roadandtrack.com/future-cars/spy-shots/caught-testing-2014-volkswagen-xl1 http://www.roadandtrack.com/future-cars/spy-shots/caught-tes...
AlexeiSadeski 14y ago
Assuming all observed warming is anthropogenic, the amount of global warming caused by the cumulatie emissions of all of America's cars ever: 1/40th of 1 degree Centigrade.
vignesh_vs_in 14y ago
Here is a video documentary by Nat Geo on Tesla, Model S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvPosSzUGVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvPosSzUGVI Elon explains the master plan himself.
jc-denton 14y ago
Soo old why does anyone post this!

363 points by mactitan 14y ago

August 2, 2006 The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me) From 2006. Nice to know they are still sticking with it :-)

trhaynes 14y ago
I would have appreciated seeing "(2006)" appended to the HN title.

NoPiece 14y ago

I am rooting for Tesla, but if they are counting on a "solar electric economy," that makes me worry. Let's target something practical, like a nuclear/natural gas/solar electric economy.

dmcy22 14y ago
Elon is the Chairman of SolarCity, "the leading residential solar provider in the U.S." http://www.solarcity.com/media-center/elon-musk.aspx http://www.solarcity.com/media-center/elon-musk.aspx
ams6110 14y ago
I don't see Tesla as counting on it directly. They would like to see it happen, but all they need to fuel their cars is a source of electricity. If for some reason utility-scale solar power is never practical, that doesn't really impede anything they are trying to do with their vehicles.
mpyne 14y ago
Read the whole thing, I'll bet you'll be satisfied with his answers regarding that. The way he's discussing it, EVs are an immediate win for efficiency with the option (not requirement) of being solar-sustainable.
greghinch 14y ago
I agree it presents quite a few challenges, and with the tech today it's hard to see solar as viable. However, from what I understand of Mr. Musk's plan, I agree with his idea that almost all energy on Earth came from the sun (and in the case of hydrocarbons all of it), and so the most efficient way to capture that energy should be directly. Nuclear and geothermal aside, nearly every other form of energy capture we do is indirect and represents a huge waste.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  The alternate, hand-wavy argument that comes to the opposite conclusion is this: The Earth gets 10^17 Watts from the sun. This power is at it's most diffuse when it initially strikes the Earth as sunlight. After initially striking the Earth, this power transferred into the air, ocean, and land in complicated ways that result in very strong concentrations in some areas (e.g. high winds). Intuitively, it should be easiest and cheapest to go to those places and harvest the energy where it is dense, rather than where it is diffuse. After all, we are not anywhere near tapping into the total energy flux from the sun. It's not a matter of efficiency (sun's ray/usable power) as much as cost. Much better to go and harvest at a place where the energy is 10 times denser than sunlight, even if there were all sorts of losses along the way.
  - greghinch 14y ago
    Sustainability has to come into it though. In some mediums this is less of a concern (wind perhaps), but it's paramount when it comes to hydrocarbons. The "cost" right now on sourcing energy from oil and coal does not reflect the true "price" when you take things like pollution into account. This needs to be quantified for all forms of energy collection and extraction in order to have a true representation of value/efficiency. Then solar starts to make a lot more sense.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Yes of course. From context, we are restricting our attention to renewables.
mtgx 14y ago
Tesla doesn't depend on the whole solar economy to be successful. It mostly depends on its own solar-based superchargers, and those have nothing to do with the health of the solar economy. Whether solar energy will be 50% of US energy production, or just stay at 5%, it will be irrelevant for Tesla cars, as they will still get free charging from its own solar superchargers.
- ams6110 14y ago
  The charging may be free, but they definitely have a cost to Tesla. I wonder by what margin the electrical cost savings will offset the investment and expenses associated with the charging stations?
jaggederest 14y ago
Once you plug an 85kwh battery pack into your house, suddenly solar starts looking a lot more feasible. That's at least a day worth of storage.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Storage is only part of the problem, and not one of the most important parts either IMO if you are not cutting off from the grid.
  - jaggederest 14y ago
    On a society wide scale? We only need as much solar power as is taken up by rooftops if we have effective storage. Once you start reaching 25% penetration of electric cars hooked to the grid, it's compensation for base load.
mburns 14y ago
Nuclear regulation is a bear to work through. The lower third of the United States, particularly the southwest, could migrate toward a more solar-based economy today, economically, without the red tape or regulation around handling radioactive fuel. It isn't as ambitious or forward-thinking, but it is also vastly easier to get started.
forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
I find it very practical. The best solar panels are 40% efficient, they are very very expensive today but it is a real possibility that someone someway could get this level of efficiency in the future cheaply. You get over 1000W/m2 of sun radiation so you could get over 400W/m2. probably it does not look like much but given that plants are 1% efficient, and most radiation escapes earth it really is. You could absorb sun's energy and then use that energy to grow plants!! in a much more efficient way(inside buildings, under the surface).

jessriedel 14y ago

Can anyone point me toward Musk's reasoning about why solar will beat out wind power in the long term? I know he owns a solar company, but why did he choose that over wind? (I'm aware of the basic pros and cons of both. I'm really just looking for Musk's thinking.)

MikeCapone 14y ago
There's a recent talk here where Musk discusses what he thinks of the future of energy, though I don't think he goes into wind vs. solar specifically (he does explain in the Q&A at the end why he doesn't think biofuels make sense). http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-gives-hour-long-speech-university-oxford-video-and-audio-q-a.html http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/tesla-ceo-elon-m...
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Thanks much.
- Someone 14y ago
  I could not find him comapring solar and wind, either. On the risk that you already considered all of these, here are some reasons I can think of: http://www.withouthotair.com/c4/page_32.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c4/page_32.shtml gives 2W/m^2 for wind and http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_39.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_39.shtml gives 22W/m^2 for photovoltaic. Yes, there are places where you can get much more energy from wind per m^2, but you can get that photovoltaic output almost everywhere. It also is easier to start a solar business than one based on wind power. With solar, you can start small and scale up. With wind, you almost have to start with huge structures, as they have better ROI (higher = faster wind = way more energy). Building such larger structures means that you no longer operate in the B2C market. He may not like that. Also, he may not like having to spend effort and time getting building permission for those structures. He may also think photovoltaics will get cheaper faster than wind. Finally, it might be just a personal preference. To me, wind has more of a blue collar feel than photovoltaics (someone will get his hands greasy operating a wind farm). That does not make me dislike it, but might have swung the choice for him.

jasonshen 14y ago

Nothing builds credibility like doing what you said you would. =)

stcredzero 14y ago
Especially on this scale.

codex 14y ago

"Without giving away too much, I can say that the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster." A Model S for $45K? Where do I sign? The average selling price of a Model S is probably more like $90K.

mtgx 14y ago
You can already get a Model S for $50k something, but with fewer options and about half the range.
- codex 14y ago
  The cheapest 2013 Model S is $60K. The price was raised last year. This works out to be 5% inflation per year since 2006--however, at this point I suspect the fatter margin on the pricier models are subsidizing this $60K version. The price of a Roadster was $109K when introduced in 2008.
  - tadfisher 14y ago
    And after the $7,500 federal tax credit, you arrive at $52,400, which is the figure listed on the Tesla Motors site. Whether you want to count "out the door" price or the total price after your tax refund is up for debate.
- bhauer 14y ago
  Also, the 40 KWh ("160 mile") version--that is, the ~$50k version--was not actually available within the first batch of manufactured cars. It may be available now; I'm not sure. During the first few months, reservation holders who planned to purchase a 40 KWh car were told they would need to wait longer. That situation would drive the average selling price upward. Once the manufacture of the 40 KWh cars starts (and perhaps it has already started), and once the relatively wealthy early adopters have purchased their well-equipped models, the average selling price should trend downward. On day one of iPhone 6 availability, are more 64 GB or 32 GB models going to be sold? 64 GB obviously. Microsoft was correctly criticized for not understanding that most Surface Pro early adopters wanted the 128 GB model. Similarly, if you see a Model S on the road today (and I've seen about 15 so far here in Los Angeles) odds are very good it will be a Performance-spec car. Around 10 of the 15 I've seen have been Performance. And when the Mercedes W212 E-Class hit the streets, if I recall correctly the very first one I saw in the wild was an E63. Early adopters buy top-of-the-line.

spullara 14y ago

When I ordered my Tesla S I also needed to get a 240V charger installed in my garage. Tesla sends you over to SolarCity for that and they can install it for you. This also gives them the perfect opportunity to offer you solar panels as well since they can show you, based on your electricity bill and the number of miles you are going to drive, how much it is going to save you. Long story short, bought a Tesla S from Tesla, a outlet installation from SolarCity and now have also signed up for 8.8Kw solar panel system for my house. The vertical integration of his investments is awesome. I just hope he somehow integrates in SpaceX ... maybe solar microwave power from orbit?

dave1619 14y ago
A Tesla Model S and solar power is a great combo. Congrats! How do you like your Model S so far? Does it meet your expectations?
- spullara 14y ago
  It is like driving around the original iPhone. Most of the awesome features of the car could be in any car, Tesla was just the first ones to really do it. As for driving performance it has been amazing. Much faster and more comfortable than my old 911. My biggest commute though is just from Los Altos to SF. One day I forgot to plug it in and it was no big deal but decided I didn't want that to happen again so I wrote an app for it using their undocumented API for the car that notifies me if I forget. https://github.com/spullara/teslalogger https://github.com/spullara/teslalogger
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    That's kind of scary. The original iPhone was a pretty awful phone by any objective measure (speaking as someone who has owned one of every model and seen them improve steadily over the years.)
    - hyperbovine 14y ago
      Hindsight is 20/20. My first impression, upon beholding an iPhone in summer 2007, was that it had been dropped to us from the heavens by some benevolent, spacefaring race.

btipling 14y ago

(2006) on the title please.

zaidrahman 14y ago

A CEO who sticks by the grand plan. This is refreshing.

surrealize 14y ago

> the second model will be a sporty four door family car at roughly half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable Tesla cars so far have definitely been luxury cars. If they keep going downmarket into the mainstream, I wonder if they'll want to create a separate brand for their mainstream stuff, a la acura/honda, toyota/lexus, and infiniti/nissan. If they do, the low-end brand should be "Edison".

sliverstorm 14y ago
Not sure why they would. They don't have a luxury brand identity to protect, like Mercedes or BMW, and they aren't trying to move upmarket, like Toyota or Honda. As best I can tell, the game plan has always been widespread appeal. "Luxury" was just a segment that made sense to pass through, as they tried to work costs down.
lysol 14y ago
I don't see a reason why they should implement the brand dilution that has caused so much pain for the other car manufacturers.
- notdrunkatall 14y ago
  Musk is an idealist; he sees himself spearheading an EV revolution of sorts, and you can't have a revolution without appealing to the masses.
philwelch 14y ago
Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti were attempts by perceived-downscale brands to brand "up". It doesn't make sense for a brand like Tesla to brand "down".
- ericd 14y ago
  Don't you think it would help in protecting the perceived exclusivity of the Tesla brand? I don't think it'd be a good move overall, but I could see some justifications based on potential brand dilution.

chenster 14y ago

> However, let’s assume for the moment that the electricity is generated from a hydrocarbon source like natural gas, the most popular fuel for new US power plants in recent years. Above statement is mostly true in state of California where natural gas generates one third of its total power (source: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.h...) Not so true national wide. According to US Energy Administration, the energy sources and percent share of total for electricity generation in 2011. Note the the combined renewable energy sources is below 10% still in 2011. • Coal 42% • Natural Gas 25% • Nuclear 19% • Hydropower 8% • Other Renewable 5% • Biomass 1.38% • Geothermal 0.41% • Solar 0.04% • Wind 2.92% • Petroleum 1% • Other Gases < 1% (source: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3) Coal is still the king.

revelation 14y ago
Given that the next contender, the Prius, has three times the CO2 emissions of the Roadster, I think theres plenty wiggle room for the energy source here.
cpressey 14y ago
I understand there has been a sharp rise in natural gas (and a corresponding drop in coal and nuclear) in the past two years, since fracking took off. (I wouldn't be surprised if coal is still at the top though.)
- johncarpinelli 14y ago
  Yes natural gas overtook coal as the leading source of electricity in the USA. The transition was in 2012.
- chenster 14y ago
  If we could effectively get the oil out of ground in CA (total four hundred billion barrels, that's half of oil in all of Saudi Arabia), it may completely change the game. http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/california-oil-boom/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/california-oil-...

angstrom 14y ago

They've followed the plan well. I'd also like to point out a lesser known article from 7 years ago: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/09/01/8384349/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2... The New Power Play The Investor: Elon Musk, co-founder, PayPal What he's backed: SpaceX, Tesla Motors What he wants now: As Musk's two most recent investments - in a space rocket and an all-electric sports car - suggest, the 35-year-old entrepreneur likes to think big. So he's intrigued by the promise of a next-generation battery called an ultracapacitor, capable of powering everything from cars to tractors. Unlike chemical batteries, ultracapacitors store energy as an electrical field between a pair of conducting plates. Theoretically, they can be charged in less than a second rather than hours, be recharged repeatedly without sacrificing performance, and far outlast anything now on the market. "I am convinced that the long-term solution to our energy needs lies with capacitors," Musk says. "You can't beat them for power, and they kick ass on any chemical battery." Musk would know: He was doing Ph.D. work at Stanford on high-energy capacitors before he helped get PayPal off the ground. At least one startup, EEStor in Texas, and a larger company, Maxwell Technologies in California, are working on ultracapacitors. Yet Musk believes a university-based research group has an equal shot at a commercial breakthrough, since universities are where the most promising research is bubbling up. "The challenge is one of materials science, not money," Musk says. The team to pull this off, he says, would need expertise in materials science, applied physics, and manufacturing. Musk wants to see a prototype that can power something small, like a boom box. "Make one and show me that it works," Musk says. "Then tell me what's wrong with it and how it can be fixed." What he'll invest: $4 million over two years for a working prototype Send your pitch to: mbb@spacex.com. -- M.V.C.

uptown 14y ago

Not that he's presumably anywhere near the end of his life - but does Tesla or SpaceX have a contingency plan should something happen to Elon Musk? Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love everything they're doing. It just scares the crap out of me that such a grand movement opposing very powerful forces is led by a single individual. Please tell me there's more brilliant leaders with the same mindset involved in his mission, ready to take the reins should the need ever arise.

chenster 14y ago

Richard A. Muller, Nobel Prize in Physics, posted an short article on energy efficiency and pollution in gasoline, hybrid, and pure battery powered cars. Gasoline vs best battery powered car is a factor of 40.The only car has zero pollution is the hydrogen powered. http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/physics%2010%20notes/Electric%20cars%20.html http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/...

markdown 14y ago
> Gasoline FTFY
revelation 14y ago
He might be a nobel prize physicist, but that article is strongly on the fringe side. You can't dismiss electric cars because the power plants produce CO2 and then go on to claim hydrogen is a "clean" technology because burning it does not produce carbon-dioxide.
- rustynails77 14y ago
  I like the idea of electric cars, but their dirty secret is not the CO2 from power plants - it's the batteries. They're full of deadly toxins and they don't last very long. What happens to these batteries when they're no longer useful??? I'm still banking on battery technology improving to the point that this disadvantage is far less hazardous to the environment.
  - revelation 14y ago
    They last very long, the only thing you lose with time is capacity. When the battery reaches a capacity that is no longer useful for use in a car, the battery is sold to utilities. One use case would be to buffer the energy from renewable sources like solar or wind and release it when theres higher demand. Its a low-scale solution to the biggest problem of the energy spot market: charge is highly perishable. Use it or lose it.
  - jws 14y ago

slevcom 14y ago

Total man crush on Elon here. He's like a science fiction author except he makes the spaceships for reals instead of writing about them. Meanwhile a large chunk of the entrepreneurs continue to optimize ad delivery and photo sharing (myself included), just sayin.

zacharycohn 14y ago

I am a huge fan of Elon and have a lot of faith in anything he's involve in. I am interested, however, in how this reconciles with the Innovator's Dilemma. He's starting at the top of the market and working his way down. My possible explanation (assuming he will be successful) is: There isn't enough of an existing market to be disrupted for the Innovator's Dilemma to apply. What I would be worried about here is the other electric cars that ARE on the market are on the lower end (comparatively. The Leaf is $23,000 vs Tesla @ $52,000). Nissan is working on using cheaper tech, and then will find ways to improve that cheaper tech versus Tesla using expensive tech and finding ways to make it cheaper. Opinions?

frabcus 14y ago
The Innovator's Dilemma doesn't say you have to start at a "low end" and work up. That's just how it was for the computer storage industry (the example in the book) in the second half of the twentieth century. It says that you have to start with a new market - i.e a set of people who want to buy your product who are different fundamentally from the existing market. Plenty of innovations are rolled out starting at the high end. An obvious example is the iPhone (which changed the smartphone market from business/hobbiest to consumer, and which began doing that with rich consumers). Another way of looking at it... New things can be relatively expensive within their new market - the first PCs were very expensive, they just happened to be cheap compared to Minicomputers. From a product side, they looked like cheap, crap computers. From the market side, they had a totally different market (e.g. individual finance professionals, rather than large corporations). It's natural as a geek to look just at products. You have to look at both products and markets - they are not just both important, they are the same thing (http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=371 http://www.flourish.org/blog/?p=371). Tesla's product is electric cars. It's market is people who want: a) To not have to recharge every day on their commute. b) To have more accessible storage space. c) To have cheap power when gas finally gets more expensive than electricity/batteries Short term they have been bootstrapping that using a market of people who have longer term motivations (concern about climate change or an energy crisis) which will later go mainstream in the form of c). It's very very smart.

TechNewb 14y ago

Secret: One of the reasons I want to get a good job is so I can afford a Tesla... Don't tell anyone.

deleted 14y ago

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DanBC 14y ago

How rare is lithium for lithium ion batteries? And how recyclable is it? Should I be buying lithium now to sell it later?

Lagged2Death 14y ago
The total lithium content of seawater is very large and is estimated as 230 billion tonnes ... At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust, lithium is the 25th most abundant element. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial
- notdrunkatall 14y ago
  How costly is extracting lithium from seawater?

HyprMusic 14y ago

I find it incredible how one many seems to be driving such a change in the future of our planet. Considering people have apparently been putting time and money in to this for decades, why are we not seeing more attempts like this? Is it because it's not considered lucrative enough for the capitalist market? Or is Elon just a very good at convincing us (me) he's breaking new ground?

mynameishere 14y ago

Yeah, right. He just wants pollution moved from rich areas, where traffic density is located, to poor areas, where power generating stations are located.

tatsuke95 14y ago
I'm not sure if he "wants" it that way, but that will be an unintended consequence. It's hard to say anything negative about Elon or Tesla here without getting down-voted.

wamatt 14y ago

Musk's plan in a way serves as a reminder for those of us that tend to overestimate the role luck plays in the personal journey towards entrepreneurial success. While generally HN users are open minded, no small number have derided the notion that others (perhaps far less capable than Musk), are capable of having a meaningful vision. Of course having a justified belief and plan is a different approach to the lean startup philosophy. Lean effectively aligns more with the randomness worldview and iteration with an impartiality (or even celebration in some cases) of failure. Whereas OTOH, the visionary approach usually has more confidence in a self-directed path. Those with this visionary quality (in varying levels of ability), can arrogantly dismiss others too, with behavior that is equally cringe worthy. Moreover, it would be hard to objectively and meaningfully argue either approach is universally "better". However, perhaps the most significant indiscretion, is not in picking a side that works for you, but rather failing to see that two sides exist at all.

mhartl 14y ago
Musk's plan in a way serves as a reminder for those of us that tend to overestimate the role luck plays in the personal journey towards entrepreneurial success. I agree that Elon's results with Tesla and Space X are not principally (or even much) based on luck, but this is (at least in part) because he has the resources to finance his visions directly and can use his tech-celebrity status to help bring them to fruition. How did he get into this enviable position? It's largely due to the sale PayPal to eBay, of course—and, as those in the know will tell you, luck was a big factor in PayPal's success.
dredmorbius 14y ago
His lucky play was PayPal's acquisition by eBay (and Zip2's by AltaVista prior to that). Getting that cash infusion enabled his subsequent ventures. There were many ventures competing with both. That's not to say that Musk wasn't directed and didn't capitalize exceptionally well on his successes. But luck most definitely played a role.

mactitan 14y ago

Hybrid vs EV: .56 vs 1.14 km/mj. Xprise 100 mpg winner seriously considered EV but won with Gas engine. Where's the discrepancy? At least Germany is a good case study in the feasibility Of a solar electric infrastructure. I thought diesel/ hybrid is best bet but it's good musk is here pushing the envelope.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Experimental cars have surpassed the 100km/l (235mpg) barrier a long time ago. That doesn't mean they are anywhere near feasible as a product - no interior finish, exotic body materials, no air-conditioning, electric/hydraulic assistance, electric windows, abs, and all kinds of power-hungry electronics. Audi is said to be working on a production vehicle, an hybrid, with 260mpg efficiency, but we'll have to wait a little bit to see if it becomes real: http://www.roadandtrack.com/future-cars/spy-shots/caught-testing-2014-volkswagen-xl1 http://www.roadandtrack.com/future-cars/spy-shots/caught-tes...

AlexeiSadeski 14y ago

Assuming all observed warming is anthropogenic, the amount of global warming caused by the cumulatie emissions of all of America's cars ever: 1/40th of 1 degree Centigrade.

vignesh_vs_in 14y ago

Here is a video documentary by Nat Geo on Tesla, Model S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvPosSzUGVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvPosSzUGVI Elon explains the master plan himself.

jc-denton 14y ago

Soo old why does anyone post this!