9 ms·
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
by 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 agoA 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 agoIt 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 agoThat'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 agoHindsight 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.
- CamperBob2 14y agoThat was my first impression, too. My second impression was wow, this thing isn't a very good phone.
- enraged_camel 14y agoNote that Model S is not a first-generation car. It came after the Roadster. So it's more like an iPhone 3GS, which was a very solid phone.
- geuis 14y agoNeither was the 286, the 486, or the Nvidia GTX 280 if you are always going to look at tech like that. It was amazing and a huge advancement when it was produced. You can't look back and say "oh that sucks" 5-6 years later.
- CamperBob2 14y agoI don't know about the Nvidia example, but both the 286 and 486 were damn nice boxes in their day, if you could afford them. The 286 was much better than the XTs, especially once the clock speeds ramped up. And the 486DX was a big win over having to pair a 386DX with a slow, expensive Weitek or 80387 chip.
- gregpilling 14y agoI paid $4000 for a 486 system in January 1990. It had a massive 40MB hard drive, and awesome Hercules card graphics.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
- jacquesm 14y agoYou did not actually expect a 911 to be comfortable, did you? Also, I'll happily take it :)
- spullara 14y agoOh, the 911 is comfortable enough to be your commuting car but it is 13 years old so it doesn't have all the niceties. I guess I would compare the Tesla to the current Panamera.
- jacquesm 14y agoThe Panamera and the 911 are entirely different beasts. Plenty of people do not consider the Panamera and the Cayenne to be true to Porsches legacy. I know which I'd rather have. If it weren't for the maintenance costs and the fuel consumption I'd happily trade my golf for a 911. I'm pretty sure we'd also have the first Porsche with a towing hook for the trailer full of stuff we normally carry along ;)
- ams6110 14y agoCan you share some info about the solar panel system? I assume it must be about 60m^2 of panels? Are you paying for it outright or on a plan where you pay based on electricity generated?
- spullara 14y agoI'm prepaying the 20 year lease. Looks like that is pretty close to the best option if you can afford the upfront cost. About around 60m^2 — 35 TRINA SOLAR # TSM-245PC05 panels. Basically they guarantee a certain output and pay you if they miss.
- dasmoth 14y agoElon pretty emphatically isn't a believer in orbital solar generation as a way to power planetary infrastructure. More here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/elon-musk-on-spacex-tesla-and-why-space-solar-power-must-die-13386162 http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/elon-musk-on-spa...
- stephengillie 14y agoWe're not naming the Dyson Sphere after him, then. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
- jacquesm 14y agoI don't think he needs to worry about that, he's concerned with nuts, bolts and engineering not with science fiction.
- stephengillie 14y agoYou believe humans won't build one around this star?
- sneak 14y agoNo, we won't. The machines that make us extinct will, however.
- jacquesm 14y agoYes, I believe we will not. Materials science is a bitch, you can fantasize all you want but in the end if you can't build it it doesn't matter much.
- n3rdy 14y agoWe will come up with a solution that's little more elegant long before we have the means to build one of those.
- 14y ago
- chenster 14y ago> signed up for 8.8Kw solar panel system for my house How much power does it generate in a day? Will be enough to fully charge a Telsa?
- revelation 14y agoYou wouldn't charge the car directly from the panels. Sell the solar electricity to utility during the day and get a plan for off-peak power (which are often 1/2 or 2/3 of normal rates) to charge your car while you sleep. (Thats not saying you couldn't charge the car through your solar panels in a pressing case of zombie apocalypse. Inverters for home solar installations output the same AC power as a normal power outlet)
- gsiener 14y agoHowever, without a grid feed to synchronize to, your grid-tied inverters will be useless. You'd need battery backup and a second set of DC inverters to accomplish the off-grid scenario you're referring to.
- jacquesm 14y agoThat depends on the inverters. Plenty of inverters can operate in 'island mode' for off-grid applications. You will have to have a lock-out installed that needs to be engaged before island mode will work if you are normally grid-tied. To avoid you hurting people or trying to power the nation in case of a black-out.
- Devilboy 14y agoOn a good clear mid-summer day that solar panel can probably generate approximately the right amount of electricity to fully charge your Tesla (assuming you got the 40kWh battery pack for it.)
- spullara 14y agoI've got the 85 Kwh battery pack. The car uses about 300-400 Wh per mile.
- DEinspanjer 14y agoI'm picking up my S tomorrow morning. When I reserved, I submitted the information for SolarCity to contact me, but they never did, even after I sent an e-mail to their sales address. I went ahead and got my local electrician to do the install for me. I didn't know about the home Solar leases, that makes it more of a shame about the disconnect in customer service because I would have liked to investigate that option. EDIT: Just tried to fill out their form for solar consultation and got an e-mail that they don't have service in my area. Maybe that was why they didn't get back to me.
- jacquesm 14y agoHaving tied sales is pretty bad. Having tied sales that drops the ball for an essential component ('B') of service 'A' because they can't sell you component 'C' is terrible. At a minimum Tesla should know where SolarCity has installers or SolarCity should pass you on to a competitor that does serve your area.
- dhughes 14y agoThis is like what some people say about investing, you need money to make money. To be green and to save money you need money to buy an electric car, charger and solar panels to save money and be green.
- noahth 14y agoExcept for a practically limitless number of other ways to save money while being more environmentally friendly. For example, buying flour in bulk and making your own bread regularly, or repairing holes in clothes rather than buying new, or, y'know, not living 40 miles from your place of work while commuting by car.
- dhughes 14y ago> or, y'know, not living 40 miles from your place of work while commuting by car. That's pretty funny since recently here in south eastern Canada we're being reamed up the ass by our current federal government for lack of jobs. The government is demanding people find work even if it is an hour away which would be roughly 100km (62 miles).
- robbiep 14y agoMinor point but there's a reason that lots more people don't make their own. Read and a lot of it comes down to time. If 15 mins to 3 hours to make bread is worth less to you than the 2-3$ for a loaf of bread then good for you; otherwise it doesn't make much sense. And it you get a breadmaking machine then I would argue that it's likely to be less environmentally friendly: a small oven is less efficient than a large one; plus the resources to make an electronic item vs centralised distribution. I really don't see how making your own bread can be argued to be both environmentally friendly and cheaper, but am happy to be enlightened
- noahth 14y agoWhen I was coming up with quick examples earlier, I was thinking more of packaging than energy costs, and most store-bought bread is wrapped in non-recyclable plastic. I do wish we had the tools and information to make better calculations of these kinds of trade-offs. I could also contend that the quality of fresh homemade bread beats the crap out of what $2 gets you at Safeway. But the point I'm most interested in discussing is the idea of maximizing the economic value of your time. In some cases this can be a useful heuristic, but the trick is knowing where and where not to apply it. If you were to apply that line of reasoning to every moment of your life, I doubt that the results would be satisfactory. Personally I'm more of a Gross National Happiness type. Of course, you're welcome to prove me wrong too :)
- api 14y agoSpaceX could throw in kinetic bombardment to clear traffic ahead of you during jams.
- javajosh 14y ago"Kinetic bombardment" == throw shit from space. </jargon police>
- jlgreco 14y agoI never quite understood how orbital kinetic bombardment was supposed to make sense. I mean, say you have a satellite in orbit with a ton of nice depleted uranium or tungsten rods to skewer things with. Standard "spears from heaven" setup or whatever. It can't just "drop" them, if it lets go they will just stay in orbit. No, it has to fire them 'backwards' fast enough for the rod to deorbit itself and then the satellite has to apply some orbit correcting thrust. In order to keep it accurate you basically need to construct a full reentry vehicle around the thing, both to guide it through the atmosphere and to just rocket it away from the satellite fast enough and accurate enough. Before you know it your DU spear becomes so complex that you may as well just make a proper MIRV system with real warheads out of it and be done with it. Get the most bang for your buck that way.
- WildUtah 14y agoYou're supposed to use the satelite to aim them and then shoot them from the ground and let them ballistically smash your target. It takes about twice as long but it's really sufficient to smash anything the size of a warship. Seems like half the cars on the road are SUVs, so that should be big enough.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoYou don't use spears. You use rocks. And you drop them in so that they impact on the spot you want in the first place, rather than adjusting their route multiple times.
- gregpilling 14y agoYou may find the book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein to be interesting. The main weapon in the battle between the Earth and Moon was shipping containers full of rock. These were launched by catapult to specific targets. Throwing rocks in a high tech fashion.