Master Plan Part 3
tesla.com
tesla.com
Due to the tax incentives, I have been expanding my solar array by investing about 10k every year, and I added a powerwall to distribute the energy better. The result is that last month my electricity bill was $38, despite being an all-EV household that grows 36 food plants hydroponically. I also coincidentally cancelled my gas bill the same month as I replaced the final gas appliance in my house with a really efficient Japanese electric oven.
I'm not fully net zero, but considering I wasn't even considering net zero, let alone trying for it, I have to say it's startling how easy it was compared to the impression I get from talking heads and Twitter warriors.
Considering people spend 10-20k per year on hobbies and I've only been at it for 3 years, i would highly recommend the hobby of self sufficiency.
I think the HN demographic of heavy six figure annual earnings has, uhm, lost sight of being an outlier and what’s ‘normal’ for the _vast_ majority of the population.
(Yes I consider unhealthy consumption to be a hobby)
And also consider that Starbucks and doordash don't pay for themselves over 20-30 years like solar panels do and you don't get a 26% refund for them at the end of the year.
Google average American annual coffee expense. it is like 1800 for males and 2300 for females.
Say you get the average $5.13 hotdog and $6.87 beer and pay the average $35 for parking.
For 81 home games that's another $3,807.
If you want to share the experience with, say one family member that's $13,652
The average baseball fan is not buying season tickets. The average baseball fan cannot afford season tickets.
The average income in the US is $31,000. There is no way the average person is spending a third of their budget on "hobbies," especially when they're likely spending close to half of that on housing.
or even "the average person"
You are inventing your own goalposts here.
The fact is that there are an estimated 3.5 million MLB season ticket holders. These are people who are spending 10k on their hobbies. So it is reasonable for me to say "people spend 10k on hobbies"
There are people who spend 10K on hobbies seems much more reasonable.
But that is just my opinion.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...).
The average baseball fan is not buying a season ticket, partially because the cost is prohibitive to the average person. In fact, by definition, an extremely small proportion of baseball fans buy season tickets.
We ordered a hybrid heat pump in March '22 and it was finally installed last week. It's 6 degrees C out here out and this thing is chugging along steadily. It's quiet too. Also adding more insulation as we speak (guys stomping over my WFH office roof now), so as these things happened to get installed in the same months, it's been an expensive month, with about €20k invested, before subsidies.
But already thinking about what to do next. Expand the current set of 12 solar panels (has to happen eventually. Our home is about 200 square meter with mostly flat roof, so ideal for adding lots of solar myself), get a heat pump boiler for hot water for showers etc, better windows in some places, etc. Also got a dynamic energy tariff, busy setting up Home Assistant. I have a huge spreadsheet with potential measures, their potentials savings and estimated cost, iPython notebooks with temperature and energy usage graphs, comparison of a dozen heat pumps.
Yep, addictive.
No car (bike only or occasional electric car share), small apartment, city with good transportation, good insulation.
I'm not actually arguing for or against the plan detailed here. I'm interested in any further reading materials to help my understanding of the choice between plug-in hybrids and full electrics and why the current (largely political) choices have been made.
In practice, what seems to happen is that surprisingly few people in hybrid cars bother charging the battery. This has been studied since buying hybrid can be a tax evasion scheme in some European countries. And when people actually do have a choice between hybrid and BEV, they don't want the hybrid because driving around with explosion-based engines is simply worse. So while hybrids had some time in the spot light, it looks like maturing markets go to full BEVs.
You could argue that still in the ideal world we should do X. But in the real world, developments take decades to play out. You can't expect everything to be perfect in the mean time. In the future, batteries will be much lighter and cheaper, and mining and manufacturing will be done with fossil-free energy.
That's just because of incentives. Once gasoline is 5x as expensive per mile than electric, people will charge every night. For the twice-a-year long trip, that extra gasolinr cost won't matter much, and give them the freedom they want. Without driving an extra half a ton of battery around the rest of the year.
For your other points, I used to be on the capex team at Tesla, so maybe I can shed some light.
> We probably could instead use 25Kwh batteries while still massively reducing carbon emissions.
Margins are everything in the automotive industry. Tesla has the highest margins in the industry by a considerable margin. If they release a car now with a 25Kwh hour battery, they will cannibalize their sales. Tesla knows that they can consistently beat the other players at cost, so they can transition easily once the other players catch up... which I'm not sure it's entirely possible at this point.
Secondly, the Capital expenditure costs drive, although amortized, much of the cost per car. The battery pack is only a small portion of the entire cost of the line and other material inputs, so dropping the kwH from 150 to 25 doesn't help the price of the vehicle from Tesla's side, but the end user will expect to pay a lot less.
Tesla worked directly with Idra to create one of the biggest presses in the world. The dies underwent hundreds of revisions, with a die CNC onsite. Those presses will revolutionize the way cars are made, and Tesla has Idra occupied for years with multiple press orders.
>Tesla chronically understates the carbon intensiveness of building lithium-ion batteries.
Tesla has been working on brine mining for years. They recently purchased some land in Nevada and have started working on the project. They have an exciting plan of directing an array of mirrors at brine lakes, and using a series of pumps, filters, and solar panels can get close to net zero.
Success is built on selling people what they want.
You can fill up on gas at any street corner in minutes
In ~100k miles of US cross country traveling over the last five years, the only place I could not charge fast was middle of nowhere southeast Missouri, and there is a Supercharger there now [2] [3]. The city did let me plug into a dryer outlet to charge for free at the time, thank you Cape Girardeau! My gym has a free destination charger, as does my local brewery and airport parking. I no longer carry a 100ft 120V extension cord in my frunk, which I had to do in 2018.
Yes, we still have much to do to expand EV charging infra, but it’s not an unknown, it’s just more work. Street parking? Street charging [4]. Renters? Mandated EV charging spot quotas with funding for the infra. Workplace charging is important as well. You can even install EV chargers directly on electric poles and tap into the above power lines [5]. Where there is power, there is EV fuel, and what chargers you install where will be the intersection of dwell time and current needed.
[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/5144/single-family-homes-in-...
[2] https://supercharge.info/map
[3] https://www.plugshare.com/
[4] https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/la-adds-hundreds-of-ev-charge...
[5] https://www.nationalgridus.com/News/National-Grid-Deploys-In...
A large battery EV can be charged once or twice a week in many cases and cover the commuting needs of someone who lives in a place without home charging.
Also the problem with extend range hybrids is that people often just don't plug them in. This has been shown in many usage studies in Europe. And then these are just inefficient gas cars.
The general idea is, suppose you want a vehicle with a 400 mile range. Once you have that 75 miles of range (battery pack of around 10-20 kWh), is it then better to add on another 40-100 kWh of battery as a "range extender", or to add a combustion engine and fuel tank as the "range extender" to get you to the 400 mile range?
In other words we've completely made transportation green, and without ever having to use humongous batteries. This is an obvious conclusion that anyone can make, but unfortunately too many people have been caught up in the "mission" to not realize the existence of intelligent compromises.
- Corolla Regular LE: 316 g-CO2/mi (35 MPG) - Corolla Hybrid LE: 210 g-CO2/mi (50 MPG) - Tesla Model 3 RWD: 110 g-CO2/mi (134 MPGe w/ avg. US electrical mix)
So as I see it: - First 1.3 kWh: 33% reduction - Next 58.7 kWh: 32% additional (total 65% reduction from original 316 g-CO2/mi)
So why haven't we made every vehicle a hybrid first before pushing full EVs? Why aren't there incentives for regular hybrid vehicles. Seems like a terrible waste of resources when everything is so supply constrained.
Plus that CO2 generation with an EV happens at a power plant and can be contained much easier (or sidelined when enough wind/solar replaces it). Hybrids also still emit other toxic things like NO2, and require maintenance.
Finally, an EV is simply a better product than any ICE (hybrids included). They are faster, quieter, less stinky and require no trips to the gas station or mechanic. I simply can't go back.
My friends bought exactly that - an old leaf with an aging battery that would get max 100km to a charge (60mi). That was more than enough for their daily commute, trips to the local ski resort, kids to school etc. They drove it for 5 years, it's range is now about 50km to a charge, and they just sold it to his sister who drives it to work everyday in Vancouver.
They said it was easily the best car they've ever owned, and they have a Model 3 now, Rivian on order.
They must be fast charging it or taking it on highways for the range estimate to decay like that. My 2012 leaf still gives me 115km range.
And likewise, I strangely still prefer to drive it for in-town trips over my 2021 model Y. Not worrying about accidents or vandals probably a big part of it, but also it's just chill to drive.
When I am road tripping I usually try to charge such that I make it to the next charger at 3-5%. It ends up being a faster overall trip because you get faster charging speeds.
It's not like a gas tank where unexpected traffic can run you to zero. Bad traffic improves your range. If you bite off more than you intended, just drop 10kph and let the estimate adjust.
The "lack of high speed charging" makes me think the incident you describe was not one of the "usually Tesla" trips.. and I agree the EA/CP/etc. charging network never gives you a reliable picture of where you can charge, which chargers are broken or blocked, and how fast and leaves you to do your own homework.
And like I said, the "almost ran out of battery" events are the ideal, not a problem. It is in your mind that these were bad times.
Could an alternative of making reliable nuclear power sources (either fission or fusion) work better? Or maybe focus on making AGI/ASI work and jump to some next levels of technology?
Storage of 4-8 hours of generating capacity is found to lower the ratios so that nuclear is only -8x more expensive to install and remains -9x more to maintain.
As in, Solar may be 12x cheaper per kW but requires 20x more spaces so the argument isn't quite so easy to make? I had always heard that the problem with Electricity in general is shipping it from empty spaces where you could build vast solar arrays to populated regions, but I'm not sure if that's just a lie OPEC sold me.
Combustion heaters for occupied spaces use heat exchangers to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Occasionally one cracks or fails and people die from the carbon monoxide poisoning.
ICE cars pipe exhaust away from the passenger compartments. Occasionally someone kills themselves by running their car in their garage.
Cooking, folks need to use fume hoods anyway, as smoke, oil fumes, etc. make massive amounts of air pollution and are unavoidable even with electric with most styles of cooking. Natural gas or propane stovetops if functioning properly only add a moderate amount of pollution, and little/no carbon monoxide.
That said, most of the exhaust fans/fume hoods hoods in most houses or apartments do nearly nothing except make noise. So yeah. Open windows.
"This is really the main message of today. And I really wanted today to be not just about Tesla investors who own stock, but really anyone who is an investor in Earth.
"What we're trying to convey is a message of hope and optimism. And optimism that is based on actual physics and real calculations, not wishful thinking. Earth can and will move to a sustainable energy economy, and will do so in your lifetime."
And in the show they rag on it, because people take it to mean "be hopeless". While I would never want people to be hopeless, I think that it is irresponsible to be hopeful without much more concrete plans to actually get things moving.
Climate Change is a tragedy of the commons, and nothing that Elon is working on fixes that. It still needs action as a tragedy of the commons, and Elon (and Tesla) can't fix that. We need other actions, and it's not enough for people to sit by and do nothing. It's not even enough to buy an electric car. We need people to change the ways in which they consume, and more than that we need them to vote to force companies to change the ways in which companies consume.
Is there a specific criticism of the numbers given in the paper?
Also, why do they use MPG instead of ton-miles per gallon for freight shipping costs in the doc. Nobody cares about how fuel efficient an unladen class 8 truck is.
1. It's 10% of one year's GDP, i.e. e.g. 1% of GDP for 10 years.
2. NATO standards for defense spending are 2% of GDP.
Assuming it really is that cheap, cost is not a blocker.
I'm not sure what the latter number is, as I've heard claims that fossil fuels are subsided by anywhere from $1 to $5.9 trillion per year.
I just wish the guy in charge could apply the same systematic thinking to his approach to politics. I fear that the major short term risk to humanity is not the environment, but toxic politics.
If renewables are the solution to our energy problems, I like to think kindness and tolerance might be the solution to our political problems. Perhaps he could publish a master plan for that, too.
So much this, my god... And politics aside, everything Elon says about public health seems to be pretty dumb too. It's a good reminder that you can be extremely brilliant in your field but still no better than an average schmuck on other topics.
This is why we don't have a choice but to specialize and why we defer to expertise. In the 1600s you could be on top of all science-- that's simply not even remotely possible any longer for any individual.
Elon is right about one thing: the value of reasoning by first principles! :)
To add more to this, I would argue that our tendency to oversimplify subjects is a large part of many of the issues we face today. Important to remember that first principle reasoning is not the same as first order thinking. Most of the problems we face today are deceptively complex (appear simple on the surface but aren't) and first order approximations aren't good enough and can actually lead you away from a solution rather than towards. First principle thinking does require you to reevaluate your assumptions as well as constantly having serious doubt (challenging your own ideas).
Humans are quite bad at evaluating low risks, comparing low risks, and balancing individual freedoms vs group good. The default position of most people was that authorities should use force to make everyone conform to one position.
Truthfulness, knowledge of statistics, and the ability to change positions based on new incoming information were severely lacking. Most people picked a team and fought for it relentlessly.
However, that would have required very decisive/heavy-handed and coordinated action across the world. This did not happen, and so there was no stopping the thing.
He promotes GOP candidates and favors right wing journalists. He engages in QAanon conspiracies on his network. He’s one of many right wing operators who started or bought social media sites.
Donating the personal maximum to both parties is nothing compared to what is essentially $44B in-kind campaign contribution.
Short of Democrats passing one of those economy-destroying net wealth taxes, or a truly-absurd unrealized capital gains tax; the damage is done for Musk. Granted, taxes of this nature being what they are, he will likely be able to recover some of that amount in future years.
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[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/20/elon-musk-says-he-will-pay-o...
In my mind, if you take a loan against your equity, you are realizing the current market value. This would be difficult to implement (especially with private companies and options), but it would close a big gap in the tax system that is primarily used for tax avoidance. [2]
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[1] I completely agree that taxing unrealized gains in the current system would be a terrible idea.
[2] The main non-tax reasons I can think of are retaining voting power and cashing out on pre-ipo stock.
I think the only way to honestly hold this opinion is to have no idea how mind-bogglingly immense current scientific knowledge is (nevermind the scope of everything we don't know and the magnitude of the task of figuring out where the boundary between the two is).
Looks like you were living under a rock over the past 3 years. COVID showed how useless or harmful experts actually are.
On another note, here's an interview with a crazy narcissist who bought twitter on a lark discussing the vision for reducing political toxicity on social media at a Morgan Stanley conference. Have you ever listened to an actual primary interview on the plan for twitter rather than a clickbait article on the topic? https://www.youtube.com/live/zpcgHK_fXRo?feature=share
We had geopolitics before oil. Just ask the Athenians and Spartans or Romans and Carthaginians. The Mongols didn't go running around Eurasia for oil, and neither did Napoleon around Europe.
Oil may be less thing, but there are others. Per Thucydides, three fundamental motives are: fear, honour, interest.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_W...
Energy is the most valuable resource today. If it is no longer concentrated regionally then the driving force for war is greatly reduced.
I can't help thinking that oil and combustion engines are here for a long time. The energy density is unbeatable. As renewables succeed, oil's utility doesn't disappear. So it seems like we would find some new equilibrium.
EVs benefit from cost scaling too. In Norway >80% of new cars sold are EVs 5 years ago it was -10%. Last year 20% of the Chinese market was EVs. As costs scale (Tesla has a 25k$ car in development) the same process will happen faster than you think across most markets.
Equilibrium will be established when renewable costs stop declining, this is likely to be after battery costs decline another -70% and solar declines -75%. At that equilibrium price oil will be relegated to use in plastics, lubricants, and other industrial/durable goods applications. If those cost declines are realized oil will not compete on costs with renewables and you literally will not be able to give away an old ICE car.
Although I could totally see this being the case for CO2 + ... -> CH4 + ...
This plans makes the case that we can get off fossil fuels with batteries, solar, and wind alone. Nuclear, hydro, geothermal, etc, are simply out of scope.
This plan also carefully omits any mention of climate change or time lines. Smart.
FWIW, Saul Griffith and others anticipate future fission and maybe even fusion, but they won't arrive in time to save us. They'll still be needed. To help with the cool down. For capacity as our current solar and wind build out is retired. Etc.
But we haven’t bothered with gas turbine cars and trucks because internal combustion has good enough power density and other relevant advantages (better energy efficiency chief amongst them).
Batteries aren’t good enough for long-haul aircraft, long-haul shipping, small boats and a few other sundry applications, but they’re good enough for road transport.
I will argue that the finite nature of battery related materials, plus their weight, is a major impediment against all-battery powered cars in road transport. They are not "good enough" except as a stopgap until the next idea comes around. Which ironically could just be synthetic fuels, but more likely something like a hydrogen fuel cell car.
[1] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Supply-Chain/China-weighs-...
What's your basis for thinking that? If anything I'd say the weaponisation of "kindness and tolerance" to the point that it drowns out speaking the truth and calling out bad behaviour is the biggest problem with our politics.
(And as far as I can see Musk has removed the single most toxic influence on our politics by buying Twitter; even if the discourse on there is now worse than it was before, the benefit from real politicians no longer taking it seriously vastly outweighs any possible costs)
The redefinition of tolerance to mean deference to other people's absurd views is a travesty IMO, but that battle has already been lost.
In any case this "easy answer" is useless in practice; arguing that these policies are unkind or intolerant at best gets you debating semantics, and is usually even less effective than that.
- Refraining from ever saying anything against a person's political views is not kindness. It's possible to disagree kindly, which is indeed the point at issue here
- "The redefinition of tolerance" that you mention is not tolerance, but a convenient misdirection for politicians and other talking heads to use when justifying their demonisation of whichever outgroup is currently the target. The choice is presented as either maintaining the status quo at the expense of the minority, or this twisted phantom version of tolerance that is worse for everyone, thereby shutting down honest respectful discussion.
I'm not sure anything has been redefined.
Tolerance is the ability to live in a world alongside people whose views you don't share.
Kindness is the ability to treat those people with respect, despite disagreeing with them.
It would be nice to see influential people expressing these views, instead of making things worse.
It's basically impossible to provide examples without the conversation devolving, so I'll leave it there.
This is just putting a set of numbers to it and summarising why the experts believe it's possible.
Entire countries have adopted national economic strategies based on this stuff. It's not coming out of leftfield as a big surprise to anyone paying attention.
https://energia.gob.cl/sites/default/files/national_green_hy...
nobody wants to live in a carbon free world if every company is as abusive as Tesla to its employees. and that culture came from Musk himself. the way he treats people does not make for sustainable relationships.
It’s about maintaining everything in tension sustainably. No excuses, there are no heroes.
(early Tesla investor because climate change is existential, no current exposure, none planned)
You cannot know that for sure. Maybe we find the holy grail, or maybe the company doesn't survive idiocy of its fake founder.
Such a tired trope. For all intents and purposes Musk is absolutely a founder of Tesla.
> It is basically a terrible car maker know for its poor quality
And someone should tell all of the satisfied Tesla customers how terrible quality their cars are https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/tesla-tops-list-most-satisfie...
I don't see that at all. I mean, by any reasonable standard Tesla is... just another employer. It's true that the tenor of the discussion around them is quite frankly batshit. But... they're just a company. Every big corporation has a laundry list of terrible accusations, that's just the way capitalism works.
I mean, take Musk and all his nonsense off the board and tell me if you really believe Tesla is a worse place to work at than Walmart or FedEx or UnitedHealth or wherever. I just don't see it.
So... yeah. Bring on the carbon-free world of occasionally abusive capitalist overlords, please.
Even the notable labor relations board case that Tesla lost was about employees attacking other employees with racial slurs (usually Hispanics on blacks which is common in California) and low level management not doing anything about it. Yes it’s bad but it’s not “Tesla is abusing it’s employees” and Tesla long ago took corrective action as the lawsuit has been going on many years.
So I’m still struggling if the perception I’ve seen on the internet about Tesla is just people misinformed of the US or if it’s something else.
What? I would gladly live in such a world, and I imagine most people on the planet would as well.
I love the mission. I would never work there. They expect grueling hours and a level of commitment that I don't want to give.
It is not abusive to voluntarily work somewhere. It is not abusive to have a culture of work that is way more intense than the average workplace.
The level of Urban's golem-think [1] that exists around Musk because he himself sometimes says stupid things is seriously unbelievable.
[1] https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/tim-urbans-whats-our-proble...
Is it just the freedom of speech thing? What’s wrong with being pro first amendment? That right, and absolutists who support it, are the biggest reason why the left has been able to gain so much power and make so much progress.
(I've also heard people call him transphobic, but the evidence they link to is a dog whistle that I'm — continuing the metaphor — unable to hear).
Tesla's recent investor day presentation details their anticipated role in Master Plan 3.
TLDR: 20m cars/year, new $25k model, charger network, battery storage, etc.
You really can’t stomach someone you disagree with politically creating an amazing vision and product that actually improves the world? Is politics that important?
What if his political tweets is the result of systematic thinking? If someone holds a viewpoint that differs from ours, does it necessarily imply that their perspective is outrageous and incorrect?
Maybe, like most of us, he sometimes fails to meet his personal standards, and regrets some of the things he does, but I've personally lost confidence that this is the case.
You don't call someone "pedo guy" without evidence if you are trying to avoid toxic politics.
I'm not sure insulting back someone who insults you, one time in several years, makes you an irredeemably toxic person.
You think that was a fair exchange? That these insults were equivalent?
That guy’s life was put in jeopardy. Calling him pedo guy was exactly the kind of behaviour I’m calling out.
Ironically, in the context of GP's comment, this is a large cause of toxic politics. The demonization of people with different viewpoints and refusal to engage in genuine discourse brews the toxicity.
I actually think he is smarter than people give him credit for, politically.
One of the major problems right now is conservatives, who are about half the country, aren't into supporting renewable energy anything (but liberals will continue to buy Tesla products even if you piss them off a little). A lot of what's he's been upto lately is attempting to socially engineer renewable energy into the conservative world, which is a tough problem to crack to begin with.
There are many ways to increase adoption of renewable energy that don't involve putting down minorities, being racist, sexist and all around offensive and acting with the maturity of a spoilt teenager.
Two of them being through government regulation and incentives which are major contributors to Tesla's success.
(Edit: if you're going to downvote me, please briefly explain what I missed, I can be reasoned with... lol)
Already the world is moving away from the US dollar hegemony, a move that will impact our children, and children’s children if we as a country don’t participate in these evolving times. There’s numerous other examples of the world making decades-long plans that the US is not positioning ourselves appropriately for. We’re distracted by such tribalism on both sides.
The United States won’t be taken over by an outside power, no, we’re doing well enough eating ourselves from the inside.
More likely is that he doesn't sleep enough and/or is getting older and/or is under a lot of stress and/or is in a crazy trump-news-cycle-like feedback loop, and that he's just developed some pretty big blind spots, like any other mere mortal.
I think ford rolling out the electric F-150 will do way way more to move the conservative world toward electric vehicles than Elon posting memes on Twitter. Eventually someone they know will be talking about the low maintenance and good features, and no one likes high gas prices.
As a Tesla owner, I’m not buying a second one, but it has nothing to do with politics. The promised features of the car haven’t materialized and other manufacturers are much closer to the type of self driving that matters to me, hands off the wheel, I can do something else when I’m in traffic jams. That said, none of my friends who are proud conservatives would ever buy a Tesla, they revile the brand. Someone (liberal) in my family pointed to Elon’s antics as the reason they chose a mustang e. If he’s a genius at social engineering Tesla into the conservative brain, I haven’t seen any results in my little slice of the world. Not sure what’s happening in the rest.
(I 100% agree that he should be criticized for a lot of things, but nuance is not trending apparently.)
The irony of posting this while the black bar commemorates Bob Lees murder tastes very bitter.
Elon Musk is not (and never has been) a politician. What exactly do you think he should do differently?
Then they came across electric cars and fracking.
Nobody has a clue about the energy landscape in 20 years. They are just painting the canvas the way they want to sell it to their investors.
https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycl...
This master plan has a section dedicated to the estimated curve of material demand based upon recycling. It shows a large initial increase followed by a leveling off and then eventual dramatic decrease, as a result of battery retirement and recycling.
If you have a growth of 50% per year (Tesla) it mean that the 20 years recycling is 1.5*20 = 3325X less.
I hear that most of the recycling is from scrap production, if you have a 1% defect rate you have 30X more recycling from new production than from 20 year old batteries.
I hope it will help the industry/government to push things faster.
It seem to me there is a huge problem of incentives at the moment: the price of electricity is mostly constant (in most place) but the production is not.
In particular EV could help a lot to stabilize the grid and use excess renewable energy.
Maybe this is the formal groundwork for another such informal blog post, and it just happens to share the same title. Or maybe “informal blog post” was the effective medium for Tesla’s previous target audience (consumers) and “formal whitepaper” is the effective medium for a different target audience (government policy-makers?) and this indicates a change or expansion in Tesla’s target audience. I know that the US is putting out a “total electrification via renewable power” vision, perhaps this is Tesla positioning itself to be a critical supplier of that vision.
Close - this is the detailed background behind the plan as presented a month ago. From the executive summary (page 2):
> On March 1, 2023, Tesla presented Master Plan Part 3 – a proposed path to reach a sustainable global energy economy through end-use electrification and sustainable electricity generation and storage. This paper outlines the assumptions, sources and calculations behind that proposal. Input and conversation are welcome.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf
700m is Model 3 successor.
Most people don't realize that a minivan is better than a truck, SUV, or crossover for the blend of efficiency, people-moving, luxuries, and cargo capacity for anyone with more than a kid or two!
Personal vehicles: sports cars, small sedans, large sedans, and SUVs. Tesla has 5 offerings in this category (S, 3, X, Y, Roadster).
Utility vehicles: pickups, utes, trucks. Tesla has one forthcoming offering in this category (Cybertruck).
Heavy transport: Semitrailers, 18 wheelers, freight haulers, road trains. Tesla has one forthcoming offering in this category (Semi).
Light transport: Minivans, peoplemovers, cargo vans, “Maxi Taxis”, mailtrucks/delivery vans. Tesla has no forthcoming offering in this category as of yet. All of their previous offerings synergize well with development of this category, and the advantages of Tesla-style electric vehicles have a lot of comparative advantage in this category.
What was the cost of light and heat in 1850 relative to human output? Whaling and chopping wood and digging up coal, etc. 20%? 30% I'm sure it's been estimated. None of those 1850's assets survived electrification.
How many 50 year old infrastructure assets of the coal and natural gas ages are still working fine? Lots of them, I'd wager. $10 Trillion seems like a lot (and oh boy, it is a lot), but that's how the soil gets turned over for the next season's crop. We don't harvest whale oil for lights anymore, though it was the primary source of high quality light in the 1840s. We shouldn't burn oil from the ground to boil water to spin a thing to make electricity 800 miles away from the light today.
Amen! :)
World GDP * 25 = 2,400 trillion
Spending 10 trillion is less than 1% of world GDP over that time.
I look at papers like this and predictions with great interest. Several years ago I wrote a simulation model to try to understand energy requirements for a full transition to electric ground transportation in the US.
I learned a few things through this exercise. The first was that speaking of energy was wrong. Charging vehicles is a power problem. Second, predicted a need for an additional 900 GW to 1400 GW. Again, just cars, nothing else electrified.
Over the years I've had confirmation of this range being within what I would call a reasonable prediction. It is interesting to see Master Plan Part 3 (MPP3) continue to confirm I wasn't too far off.
I have also modified my stance over time about what this meant. In simple terms, this prediction would be equivalent to having to build over a thousand new 1 GW nuclear power plants. This is never going to happen. I doubt we can (or want to) even build a hundred of them. MPP3 assumes we build zero additional nuclear. Not sure I agree with this idea. However, it isn't a deal-breaker.
After reading this paper a while back I developed the thought that wind might just be a far more intelligent source of clean power than nuclear (definitely) and likely solar.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
Table 6 (page 20) is interesting to me. We have to build a 5,338 GW (again, power) generation capacity in order to reliably produce the energy we will need.
Our current capacity is 1,200 GW. This highlights the enormity of the project. We have to replace the current generation systems with clean systems and build an additional 4,138 GW on top of that. That is over three times current capacity on top of what we have. Again, just highlighting the enormity of the task so it doesn't get lost in the numbers.
When looking at table 6 I immediately focused on what I will call the "specific energy generation factor" for each technology. I'll define this as Annual Generation / Installed Capacity.
In other words: How much energy do we get per year for each GW of installed capacity for each technology.
Here are the numbers (based on table 6):
Onshore Wind: 3.07 TWh/GW
Offshore Wind: 3.31 TWh/GW
Solar PV: 1.33 TWh/GW
Nuclear: 7.06 TWh/GW
Hydro: 4.07 TWh/GW
My point is that, to me, wind seems like a far better idea that solar on many fronts. It is far more reliable on its own. Without going too far, solar is off approximately 50% of the time and requires 100% reliable backup even if a nice fluffy white cloud flies over a panel.
Wind requires far less overbuild and somewhere in the order of a factor of four less storage to be over 95% reliable.
Jumping to table 14, we discover how much land is required for each technology:
Solar: 3.9 acres/MW or 3900 acres/GW
Wind: 0.75 acres/MW or 750 acres/GW
Going back to table 6, solar and onshore wind combined contribute 10,106 TWh.
How many GW of installed capacity would be required to supply that much energy if all of it came from a single technology?
Solar: 7,598 GW
Wind: 3,292 GW
Solar: 29,632,200 acres = 12 times the area of Hawaii (all islands)
Wind: 2,469,000 acres = 1 time the area of Hawaii
Solar: 30% of California
Wind: 2.5% of California
NOTE: Sad that I have to make this request. Another sign of the times.
It's OK to disagree with with me.
If you do, please use numbers, not insults. There's just too much of that crap going around these days. I actively want to know where I might be wrong. That only happens in the context of a conversation, not by throwing fecal matter at each other.
Oh, yes, and it is also OK to ask questions. For example "How did you calculate...?" or "Why do you think ... is more important than ...?", etc.
Again, sad that I feel it is important to explain how to disagree and have a conversation these days.
PS.: Hope I didn't make any dumb errors in the math. Please let me know.
- Why not build wind where there are natural strong winds and solar where there is naturally a lot of sun?
- Solar is more modular - you can have one panel on a residential house, and you can have thousands of panels in a farm. But you can't have wind turbines in residential areas.
- Costs.
- We don't need a single 100% reliable source (none is), we need a clever combination of sources to achieve 100% together with the lowest total cost per energy unit.
The simple answer is: Because you don't need to do that.
You can build wind wherever it works best and will not be detrimental (from NIMBY to environmental factors) and deliver the power where needed.
How far can you go?
The UK are doing a project that will deliver power from approximately 4000 km away. In other words, if we limit ourselves to thinking about the US continental region, you could build a wind farm in California and deliver the power across the country to Maine.
Thankfully we don't have to go that far. We could build a bunch of wind farms in optimal areas and move power anywhere from there. My guess --and I have not done the research on this at all-- is that, at most, we would need to move power a few hundred miles from most sites.
> Solar is more modular - you can have one panel on a residential house, and you can have thousands of panels in a farm. But you can't have wind turbines in residential areas.
Absolutely correct. I happen to think that solar at homes and commercial buildings is a good path. This study, unless I am mistaken, is only about grid-scale technologies. My thinking at the moment is that, at grid scales, wind might be superior to solar by a serious margin and across a wide range of parameters.
Here's one: Nearly the entire supply chain for solar maintenance requirements is or will be in China. A heavy reliance on solar might be really bad strategic decision. It would create a never-ending dependency to China for the entire world. I don't think this is a good idea.
> Costs
I talk about this in one of my other answers. I don't think solar has an advantage here.
> We don't need a single 100% reliable source (none is), we need a clever combination of sources to achieve 100% together with the lowest total cost per energy unit.
Absolutely correct. Agreed. My argument is almost precisely in line with what you are suggesting here. Solar is 1.33 times more expensive for the same energy delivery. It requires over 5 times more land area. The factories required to build solar cost twenty times what wind factories will cost. Solar requires more than four times the battery storage systems when compared to wind (and can't deliver the same reliability at 4x). Etc.
I am thinking that we don't need a menu consisting of every single possible energy technology to make the transition to clean energy. Solar on homes and buildings is fine and very useful. Even some batteries at home might be a great idea. At grid scale? I don't know. Looking at the data I am starting to doubt that solar makes sense.
As I mentioned in another post, if we were to eliminate solar and make-up the difference with wind, you would need an area the size of Hawaii. Eliminate wind and make it up with solar, you need an area the size of 12 Hawaii's. That's should make anyone take a moment and ask: Wait, what?
Yes, other technologies are still required to get as close to 100% power availability as possible. My argument is that it might not be smart to use grid scale solar to do this.
- Ongoing maintenance costs (the numbers are in table 5, but essentially wind requires 2x the maintence cost of solar on shore, and the ratio is worse off shore).
- Material used in construction (table 15), the amount of concrete used is 6x greater for wind than solar. This implies a far higher CO2 cost during manufacturing. The steel used is far less for wind, I didn't see a complete breakdown of CO2 emissions for manufacturing, say per/GW of capacity.
Your overaching point seems to be that solar is not an entirely better approach than wind. But the suggestion in the plan is a mixed approach using both solar and wind. One point for comparison (made in a sibling comment) is that solar allows a more distributed approach, and a more incremental roll-out. So let me flip your point around somewhat and ask the converse: why concentrate more on wind instead of trying to optimize a balanced approach over all of the variables?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCyKqSmS33A
I intend to make a better video after I write some code to use the data from my system and analyze/visualize. One of the questions I want to answer is about how much storage is needed to deal with weeks of bad weather.
> Ongoing maintenance costs (the numbers are in table 5, but essentially wind requires 2x the maintence cost of solar on shore, and the ratio is worse off shore).
I actually did look at this, including reviewing the source of the numbers (link is on table 5). The way I read it is the maintenance cost is about the same.
Why?
Wind (onshore, not even considering offshore) delivers 3.07 TWh/GW, while solar only gets you 1.33. That's a ratio of 2.3.
In other words, you install 2.3 times less wind (in power rating) than solar for the same energy output.
The operating and maintenance costs are given in terms of kW per year. Therefore, when we include the fact that wind requires 2.3 times smaller installation (again, in terms of power), the total O&M cost is actually lower for wind.
Quick calculation, using 1 MW wind for simple numbers, the equivalent solar would require 2.3 MW. The annual O&M cost for each would be:
Solar: 2.3 MW $36,731
Wind: 1.0 MW $27,570
> Material used in construction (table 15), the amount of concrete used is 6x greater for wind than solar.
I did follow this link as well (sorry, my comment would have been a book if I included every step). Here's the source document:
https://eitrawmaterials.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/rms_fo...
Table 2 (page 21), in the above document, shows that wind can be constructed with as little as 243,000 t/GW.
Table 4 (page 39), calls for 60,700 t/GW of concrete for solar. Yes, there are other numbers. They are based on the LDS/MDS/HDS scenarios as described on page 8. Frankly, some of this feels hand-wavy to me. That's just my opinion, I can't put numbers to it.
The numbers, again, are related to installed capacity in GW. Using the ratio I used above, we can then compare concrete requirements for installations that deliver the same amount of energy:
Solar: 2.3 GW * 60,700 t/GW = 139,610 t
Wind: 1.0 GW * 243,000 t/GW = 243,000 t
I am not sure that's a negative.
We have to go back to the idea that wind requires 5.2 times less land. Without diving too deep, preparation of the terrain and all of the activities related to construction, operations and maintenance cannot be ignored. My sense --and I have not done any calculations on this at all-- is that the actual comparison might have solar dwarf wind in terms of costs and consequences.
Going back to my prior post, full solar (no wind) in the US would require an area the size of 12 Hawaii's. The full wind scenario (no solar) only one Hawaii. Imagine trucks and heavy machinery delivering materials, transporting components, plowing, leveling, creating access roads, etc. I don't think this is a trivial difference.
However, there's another difference that I found to be shocking. I had never considered this, I guess. This goes back to the Master Plan document, table 12.
The initial investment in factories to build solar and wind are:
Solar: $212 billion
Wind: $ 11 billion
> why concentrate more on wind instead of trying to optimize a balanced approach over all of the variables?
I don't think there's anything (physics, engineering) that requires a balanced approach, other than the obvious, which is that solar and wind need 100% backup for some portion of the energy cycle. This can be achieved through overbuilding, batteries and a few additional technologies. I am suggesting we don't need a menu of absolutely every technology in order to meet demand.
The advantages of wind, as I see them:
- Far greater reliability
- 4x less batteries delivers significantly higher reliability
- 5.2 times less land area
- 20x less manufacturing (factory build) investment
- 3/4 the Operating and Maintenance cost of solar per delivered GWh (energy)
- Potentially far lower reliance on Chinese supply chain
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
Figure 2 shows that wind, overbuilt to 1.5x and with just 3 hours of storage, in the US, achieves a reliability of approximately 95%. Solar, under the same conditions, only gets you about 70% availability. In other words, you go dark 5% of the time vs. 30% of the time. That's when other technologies would have to be brought in to supplement.
Oddly enough, the same table shows what happens if you go up to 12 hours of storage. It doesn't really buy you much at all.
Neither does combining solar and wind. You gain a few percent against the case of wind only. Yet, you have to build fully two redundant systems, with solar requiring over five times more land.
That doesn't make much sense to me. When wind alone can easily get to 95% reliability with 4 times less batteries, that's got to make people take pause and possibly rethink what we are saying about solar.
"For wind and solar PV, in particular, the cost favorability of the lowest-cost regions compound the underlying variability in regional cost and create a significant differential between the unadjusted costs and the capacity-weighted average national costs as observed from recent market experience. To reflect this difference, we report a weighted average cost for both wind and solar PV, based on the regional cost factors assumed for these technologies in AEO2022 and the actual regional distribution of the builds that occurred in 2020 (Table 1)."
I am not sure I have a clue what that means. And here we are, two reasonably intelligent people, trying to make some sense out of what's being presented. I don't even want to imagine how politicians or people without technical/scientific training and little interest driving them think about this stuff.
My guess: It's indistinguishable from magic. And, of course, because Elon says it, it must be correct. I don't have a problem with him. He is a smart guy, very focused and dedicated (I worked for him for a couple of years). That said, he is selling solar panels and batteries. So, yeah, I would want to really look closely and demand justification for the claims.
One can easily lie (strong word, not accusing Tesla of this) by omission, which can happen without intention. What I mean by this is that, as an example, nowhere in that document do I see a study, a comparison, of only using solar for grid-scale power vs. only using wind at grid scale. In other words, limit solar to residential/commercial buildings. I am arguing that wind at grid scale might have massive advantages when compared to solar. Tesla omitted this comparison, likely because it didn't occur to them to ask the question. At the extreme you have the "well, we sell solar panels and batteries" realization. I don't know.
The other problem I have with a lot of these papers and articles is that they use averages. The average (mean) is a fine central tendency indicator. And it is absolutely horrible for anything else. A more accurate approach divides the data into bands and studies those bands to reach a set of conclusions rather than applying a single average to the entire population.
One key point is that solar is very predictable and pairs well with lithium ion batteries that cycle daily to meet demand for most of the globe that doesnt have dark winters.
Understood and agreed. I am simply suggesting we might want to pump the brakes before jumping in head-first. Unless I am missing something very fundamental, wind, to me, is looking like a far better decision than solar. I am talking grid scale here, homes and buildings do benefit from solar and it's easy to deploy.
Take a look at some of my other comments for additional perspective.
One of the things that isn't in the Master Plan report is an analysis of current and future dependency on the Chinese supply chain for all of these technologies. Tesla has to tread lightly here, so, I understand.
I have a sense that the world can easily do wind with minimal, if any, input from China. This, I think, is good.
However, the real issue, in my opinion, is the operations and maintenance column. Deploying unimaginably large amounts of solar means that nearly 100% of that business will go to China. I am in manufacturing, have been all my life. One way or the other, we end-up in China. This also means that the entire world will forever be dependent on China for the ongoing maintenance of these systems.
I can't even imagine what this means in dollars per year. I think I can say it could represent the single largest transfer of wealth into one nation in the history of civilization.
I don't hate China at all. They've been very smart, worked very hard and, in about fifty years, achieved a transition from an agrarian economy to a technology superpower. This is remarkable.
My comment about dependence on China is more about balance than anything else. We need to live in a world where, well, to put it concisely, no single society has the entire planet by the balls. That's where we are headed with China. I don't think that's a good thing at all. We need to develop other areas of the world so that other societies and cultures can benefit from international trade and elevate their standards of living.
I have a feeling that mass world-wide reliance on solar will effectively shift an equally massive range of economic opportunity to China in more ways than we can imagine today.
Wind, on the other hand, I think, can be made to be far more equitable.
> One key point is that solar is very predictable and pairs well with lithium ion batteries that cycle daily to meet demand for most of the globe that doesnt have dark winters
Yes and no.
On the pairing with batteries. This is a study of 39 years of data from 42 different countries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
Table 2 is very interesting (it take some effort to get comfortable with it).
One of the interesting findings is that, after overbuilding both technologies by 1.5x, wind + 3 hours of storage gets you to 95% reliability (you only go dark 5% of the time). Solar, with the same three hours of batteries, only gets you to about 70%. Even if you bring solar to 12 hours of storage, you only get up to about 85% reliability.
It is easy to understand why at a basic level: Solar is shut down half the time, when the sun isn't up. That's the baseline from which we have to start and make something that is as close to 100% reliable as possible. In other words, it's a losing proposition from the start.
My argument is only about grid scale. Local power on top of a roof is a different story. You can't have wind turbines there, solar is the only option as a supplement for the grid.
On that topic, I have noted elsewhere that I am not anti-solar at all. I am simply trying to understand if what I am observing in the data for grid scale systems is correct. I designed and built a 13 kW array on my property. Before installing this system I, as many do, saw solar in some idealized form. I guess I never gave it a second thought. Now, after many years of operating this system and viewing the data, I have a very different opinion.
This speaks to your comment about solar being very predictable. My opinion matched yours before I had solar. Today, I would say, sure, only under perfect laboratory conditions.
A friend of mine is considering an off-grid system (self sufficiency). He asked me for guidance on this based on my experience. Here's a quick explainer video I recorded for him. I didn't record this with the intent of making it a refined public presentation, keep that in mind as you watch it. The reality of solar, in this context, is likely to horrify most people who still hold an idealized view of the technology.
Again, I am not saying it is a bad technology, I am simply suggesting we are not necessarily exposing the realities that a town or city might have to content with if solar is the predominant source of energy.
I can't quickly see it in their methodology, but this feels like it's just because of the capacity factor, based on equal capacity.
You'd want to adjust for a fixed sum to spend, in which case I think solar would (these days and in sunnier places) go further. And continue to extend its lead in future.
Have a look at Figure 12 of the Master Plan.
The zoomed-in portion of the capacity factor very much tells a story that aligns with my observation.
If you eliminated the solar curve completely and added a bit more wind, you'd have all the energy you need. And, relatively speaking, it would be very consistent, which is one of the reasons for which I think wind could be a superior choice. Remember, we can move power thousands of miles. Wind does not have to exist near to where the power will be consumed.
I actually took the time to measure the areas under those two curves. The units don't matter (it was square cm, measured using Solidworks):
Solar: 3212
Wind: 6570
Total: 9782
If we completely eliminate solar and decide to produce the same amount of energy using wind, we would have to overbuild wind by 50%. That, I think, is a fantastic finding.
Why?
Because wind can deliver far greater availability with just 3 hours of storage. Solar requires well over 12 hours of storage (and overbuild) to deliver anything approximating what wind can do with less land, less batteries. Solar requires over 5x more land, 30% more in operating and maintenance cost (per installed MW) and 20x greater investment in factories.
Put a different way: Even if you overbuilt solar by 10x, you would still, at best, have about 50% darkness (at night). Solar requires 100% backup at least half the time. Wind does not work that way, particularly if located in areas optimized for it.
That's why I am asking myself this question. Solar at home, schools and businesses, sure, no problem. I have it. So should everyone else for whom it makes sense. Grid scale? I am not so sure. I am getting the sense wind is a far, far better option for grid scale.
Once again, we should not discount the global supply chain realities. I would prefer if the energy supply chain of the future did not create a dependency on China for all maintenance from here to eternity. I think that's what we all walk into if we go solar for grid-scale energy. I have a feeling (not confirmed other than superficially) that wind provides the opportunity to globalize the supply chain and create a far more diverse distribution of wealth around the world as it pertains to building, supporting and maintaining wind power installations. That, to me, is very important. I don't think anyone is talking about this reality. I don't understand why.
Top comment criticising Elon and using the word "toxic" says it all. It's the twitter drama bouncing back a bit.
I remember in Europe a taxi company wanted to switch to 100% Tesla, but service times were too bad, because Tesla is focusing more on selling cars than servicing them in guaranteed timelines, even though both can make profit for Tesla.
The drivers are consistently upset they hadn't switched sooner. What they tell me:
- They love the charging breaks at malls, etc where they can also take a deserved 20 min break.
- They love the entertainment between rides.
- They love the heat/cold remains on even when not driving - without "running the engine".
- They love not needing to use their brakes. Saving them money.
- They love that there are no fanbelts that can break, no oil needing to be changed, etc. Saving them money.
- One of them told me it is paying itself off 3 times faster than he had calculated because of the additional savings from maintenance.
In general what matters for humanity is using electric cars instead of selling it, that’s why there should be the focus. Though I guess me repeating it doesn’t help, as it’s a huge initial investment for taxi drivers :(
According to a Uber driver I asked about this, it's not a major problem for them either: The battery comfortably lasts half a day, and after that, it's lunch time anyways.
Or, using your numbers, you'd need to recharge after 5 hours of 6-8 trips per hour.
Looking at EV ranges, ranges inside cities are higher (unlike with ICE cars). Combine with lower speeds (i.e. more hours per mile) and more frequent stops, and it means a lot of "range" in terms of hours between recharges.
In NYC, the average taxi driver drives 180 miles per day. This is the total distance covered, whether they have a passenger or not, and including the distance to and from their home.
Tesla Model 3s have a range of 272 miles. Also it doesn't take an hour to recharge a Model 3. You can charge from 10% to 80% in 25 minutes at a Supercharger.
But as others have said, plugging in the car in a mall while having a lunch break is not a big deal, all people deserve a lunch break, they are not robots.
That's funny. In London, all the new "black cab" taxis are a custom EV (1) and the vehicle of choice for "minicab" taxis has long been Toyota Prius Hybrids. Though newer models such as Hyundai EVs are also present now.
That wouldn't be the case if you were correct, would it?
Charging 0% to 100% is about 45 minutes but no one does that because it's more expensive and worse for the battery.
What I'm really afraid of is Elon torpedoing this because one of his new friends told him it'd 'own the libs' or some other fit of pique.
I hope it moves the needle in a positive direction.
https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/power/small-modular-rea...
I can’t seem to find anything that indicates otherwise.
And we could also just do normal nuclear until then as well.
Also 2030s isn't to late for anything.
With good electricity transmission you can.
Infact, in this plan they specifically model this, and it comes out that by overbuilding solar/wind 32% you are fine.
> here is an economic tradeoff between building excess renewable generation capacity, building grid storage, or expanding transmission capability. That tradeoff may evolve as grid storage technologies mature, but with the assumptions modeled, the optimal generation and storage portfolio resulted in 32% curtailment
and the footnote:
> Currently, the transmission capacity is <1% of the combined regional peak loads (with transmission to/from Texas the lowest). Higher transmission capacities generally reduce the total generation and storage buildout, but there is an economic tradeoff between building more transmission and building more generation plus storage.
And yes you can with a small amount of dispatchable energy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
Seems to me that SMR is far of commercially.
Quite a few references to his recent bizarre online behavior discussed (and occasionally defended) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35055839
> Class 8 Truck 5.3 MPG (diesel) 22 MPGe (1.7 kWh.mi) f 4.2X
But if I look at these numbers, they're missing the point. For one thing, how much can the theoretical tesla semi actually haul? Cause the gold standard in this space isn't a truck that gets 10 ton-miles per gallon. It's a train that gets 492 ton-miles per gallon (Note, everywhere I look for freight is using this other metric, which makes me think that this number is real bad for Tesla...)
Trains have the additional possibility of actually being pretty readily electrifiable in a way that doesn't require a battery (potentially a large weight-add for trucks).
Lastly Trains can cover a lot of middle/long distance trips that are currently being offloaded to planes. This solution would save on the total energy requirement for not-overseas-flights.
Your comment would be just fine without those first bits.
They aren't swipes, they were an observation at the time of reading that people were gushing about the paper. I have backed my claims in other parts of the venue. I maintain nothing about calling someone a "fanboy" is derogatory. (I have been an Elon "fanboy" in the past. I am a public transit "fanboy". If fanboy is like, some new 'f-word', then this site has fallen far.
I did my research to back that claim up, and I didn't want to get auto-downvoted because I was posting in a venue that seemed to be pretty positive on all of the things Elon is saying in that post.
I was pre-defending my comment about trains being a dirty word for Elon, which they are (please see the existence of the hyperloop), by asking people to step outside of their comfort zone and consider it on the merits which I provided.
If this is flamebait, why are all of the comments off of it civil discussion of the merits of trains and electric trucks?
> why are all of the comments off of it civil discussion of the merits of trains and electric trucks?
A fair bit got derailed into arguing about "fanboy". However, that's not really the metric—we have to evaluate these things by their general impact, not what specifically ends up happening in a given case, which is subject to a lot of randomness. I promise you that the general impact of posting like that is to inflame and provoke flamewars.
Just the first bits though. The rest of your comment was great! That's why the site guidelines ask you to edit out that sort of thing.
And I again believe that fanboy is not derogatory. But I've been downvoted to oblivion on hostile threads before, so I think it's reasonable to pre-defend some of my comments in order to change people's mindset going into the thread.
If this were flamebait, people would be flaming on it, and they're not.
What you're talking about would probably require a political campaign of some sort since it doesn't appear to be happening on its own? I'm not saying your idea is wrong - but it's not right to put down Tesla because they are not pursuing your idea.
However as someone who commonly agrees with Elon on many things, I do think trains are a good idea, but you can't look at them in a vacuum. The train network of the late 19th century is long gone in the US and many of those right-of-ways are long gone. There's no way to re-integrate a train network into the wider US without a lot of forcing people out of their houses. Using electric semis is the next best option. Trains definitely have a future in the US, but not as a massive fix-all.
Also there is a huge amount that could be done with existing rights off way. Train companies are making enough profit that forcing them to electricity is totally reasonable.
If we are not willing to move a few houses for climate change, then how are we ever gone solve anything? Somehow most nations of manage this without that many issues.
And again, remove money from highway, to trains and you remove less houses.
Why? It's not derogatory. What word would you have me use in place of it?
There are a bunch of people speaking very highly of Elon for what is not a very interesting/ground-breaking paper, if I'm being honest. An impromptu Google search turned up a .gov website with a lot of the stuff in here[1]... I suspect the rest of it is also googleable (Grid setup, and per-grid usage, cost per watt, MPG, Dollar per kW).
They made some cool infographics... But mostly this is a very thinly veiled sales pitch for Tesla products, wrapped in the beginnings of a case for more gov't funding.
re: rail network
You could readily cannibalize a lot of our highway system, as well as invest in fixing up the rail that we already have. Companies that have been making money off of rail should start paying for that infrastructure, in particular...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/data-and...
If you insist on using that kind of language, "fan" would be reasonable.
Also calling HN pro Musk and Tesla is just nonsense.
I made a specific comment about how people on this thread were gushing about a "plan" that I still don't understand the hype about. Nothing they're doing in this "plan" (that others have mentioned is not really a plan) is groundbreaking.
The US already uses trains quite a bit, and they could do more, but it will be hard to detruckify immediately.
It's the moving of trucks to trains, and then the electrification of trains. But it would depend on a lot of infrastructure investment in trains that I recognize we're not going to do.
Many people do NOT realize just how empty most trucks are - and major intercity trucking can be relatively easily "trained" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer-on-flatcar - but the vast majority of local deliveries are trucks that aren't even half full.
When shipping (trucking is just shipping) each "transfer" costs you money and time, so you want to reduce those as much as possible. To encourage trains, you just make the transfer cost "worth" it - interstate road-mile taxes, for example would do it.
Also, I know it's a tough sell because of the number of jobs created by trucking, but there are already L3+ autonomous vehicles, and they are trains...
Lastly, the fact that most trucks aren't even half full seems very much a fact of last-mile delivery. That would be a great place to apply a battery electric-vehicle. Seems like you would want a non-class 8 Truck for that space... (and that you would save a lot more mileage for that)
I am curious how we would deal with heavy machinery and airplanes in an electric world.
700 TWh of production per year from 100GW of capacity.