On a totally and completely different subject, Tesla

[Suff]

Reported Q3 earnings tonight.

For those who are not aware, Tesla is the largest manufacturer of plug in electric vehicles in the world. It is a start up company which was boosted to where it is today by CEO (no longer chairman), Elon Musk of SpaceX fame.

As I inhabit climate forums and one of the constant threads on the climate forums is the need to transition to electric from fossil fuelled vehicles, I am intensely interested in Tesla.

The major problem with Tesla is that it is a start up in a world where the incumbents (mainly established before WW1 or just after WW2), are struggling to compete and make money. In the US there has been no new volume vehicle manufacturer in over 100 years. Niche, yes, racing, certainly, mass market vehicles? Not a chance.

This has led short sellers to try and break Tesla by selling its stock short. It didn't help that Musk championed a buy out of SolarCity (of which he was a major shareholder and it was founded by another family member), which pushed Tesla back into debt for at least another 2 years.

Not helped by Musk's Pedo tweet about the UK diver and then followed by him tweeting about Tesla going private. Which is actually SEC fraud. Musk and Tesla were fined £40m and Musk was forced to resign as chairman.

So there has been this raging argument going on about whether Tesla is going to go bust or not. Most of us think not but a few vociferous others have been insisting that Tesla is on the way to Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

You can imagine that I have been waiting rather patiently for these results. Q3 was a watershed moment when Tesla manufactured 80,000 vehicles in a quarter, something it has never done before, mostly Model 3 their (cheaper), mass market vehicle. But what was the profit/loss on that.

Well we got the results today. Tesla, including all one time costs, made an operating profit of $312 million. Shares are rising, short sellers are getting burned and it looks like Tesla will do it again in Q4 with an even larger number of cars manufactured. The difference in profit loss between a year ago is nearly $1bn, on the plus side.

The end of an interesting day.

[TheOstrich]

And on the same day that our local BBC News reported ……

No take up for on street electric car charging point grants

Reuters
The BBC has learned that not one local authority in the West is taking advantage of government grants to install on-street electric car charging points.
More than £4m is being made available to councils, but very few across the country are coming forward to get the money.
At the same time the government is being encouraged to bring forward the phasing out of diesel and petrol cars.
A local charity set up to promote carbon reduction says authorities are ignoring the problem.

[Workingman]

EVs are not the answer for the majority and never will be, and to be quite honest their producers are taking the p1ss.

When the horseless carriage was invented the producers of the fuels needed to drive them saw an opportunity and set in place the infrastructure to service them. Petrol stations and cars grew hand-in-hand working to create what we have today - for good or bad.

EVs are different. They are riding on the back of an infrastructure already in place, but one that can barely take that strain as things are. It is never going to be able to cope as more EVs come on line without massive investment, and I do not see the producers of these monsters offering any help. No, it will be left to the rest of us to stump up the cash whether we have an emissions free, eco-friendly, carbon neutral, totally recyclable, purchase subsidised electric runabout or not.

[Suff]

I am 50:50 on the opinion on that one. I believe that development of the infrastructure has to happen in order to support EV. Something, I see, will not happen until the market provides unbearable pressure. It is clear that every time we have reduced consumption in line with the government strategy of forcing us to consume less, the generating capacity has shrunk with it. Pushing us to the limit at every peak event.

However a large influx of EV's would tip the balance. The government can't demand we "consume less" when were consuming to reduce emissions.

Also even if we drove our cars on electricity produced by coal fired stations, we would still pollute less as EV's are 50% more efficient with the energy they use than hydrocarbon burning vehicles are.

I have made all the arguments, nowhere to charge for people in flats (witness Ossie's remark on councils not taking up grants for charging points), issues with range, problems with the batteries with people who insist on filling with 30% and driving the car to empty.

But EV is coming and nothing it going to stop it. Why? Because countries will never reach their Paris Accord targets if they don't get rid of cars, trucks and busses burning fuel. Germany and Sweden are trialling powered motorways for trucks and busses, Tesla has an articulated truck with a (stated), 400 mile range and a 35 minute-70% charge time.

Things have moved on and Tesla is leading the charge. Give it 10 years and people are going to have to have a damned good reason not to buy EV. Also if you look at the countries banning the sale of fossil fuelled cars, it makes interesting reading. The UK is set for 2040, only 21 years away, Germany 11 years, Austria 14 months.

I know people can roll their eyes at 21 years, but in order for that to happen EV's will have to be viable from the 2030's at a minimum.

Having a world player like Tesla, selling all over the world with manufacturing in the US, China and the EU, is a very clear statement. EV is coming and the best thing to do is to push our government to ensure we have the infrastructure in place to support it.

[Workingman]

I am not buying it.

Just down the road from me is a '70s estate of about 1,200 homes built to be car and pedestrian friendly. It has no through roads and there are no garages, but each home has a parking space and there is some communal parking. Parking is not necessarily by the front door. On many an evening all the bays are full.

The only viable solution to charging is pay by card charge points, but how many and where? It certainly will not be one per bay, and they will not be free to install - someone has to pay = all of us.

The Tesla S has an 85kWh battery with an estimated range of about 250 miles. It would probably get by with charging once a week for most people. However, if all the cars were changed that would be 1,200 cars x 85 kWh x 52 charges or 5.3 GWh per annum. That's some power plant for one small estate on the edge of a city! Now scale up to the whole of the UK!

Everything is ever so cheap and simple on a spreadsheet, but spreadsheets are not the real world.

[Suff]

Hinckley point C will generate 28.3TW/h of electricity per year. Enough to power the vehicle charges for 5,300 of these estates or some 6.4 million homes.

At the same time offshore wind farms to a capacity of twice Hinckley Point C are in production but will deliver in 5-6 years. OK so offshore wind has an average power generation of 48% of nameplate power and Nuclear has 90%, but it means that when both the Nuclear and the wind go live, that is enough capacity for nearly 13 million homes for EV charging.

It is then time to remember that this Tory government also has plans for another two reactor sites like Hinckley Point C. Granted that these three sites will replace all the existing nuclear power, but, if delivered, it is a guarantee of power for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Then there is the fact that the UK is a leader in V2G (vehicle to grid), technology. Where we use the millions of EV's to balance the on/off nature of renewables. Vehicles charge when power is plentiful and give back to the grid when power is not.

One of the largest issues with renewable power is the on/off nature of it. 50 million, or more, vehicles in the UK running on electrical power becomes a pretty huge power sink for renewable overproduction. Plus the market for home "powerwall" systems where homes become semi autonomous using 50% depleted EV batteries. Because of the extreme drain nature of EV motors batteries become non viable around 50% of capacity.

The Tesla S 100D has a 100kw/h battery which, if you were trundling along at 45mph on a cool summers day with the aircon off, would give you a max range of 514 miles. Now, of course, reality shows that Americans (the majority of owners), over some 6 million miles of recordings, get around 3.5 miles per kw/h. Or, on average, some 350 miles per charge. The average journey for the UK is 21 miles per day. For the US that is 40 miles per day, reflecting a much larger and more spread out country. Or, perhaps, just that people who can afford Tesla's live in the suburbs and drive to work and not the train station.

So at 21 miles per day, your one charge is going to last 16 days. Let us say, for arguments sake, once per week to keep the battery over 30% which is the best for longevity. Tesla superchargers will charge an empty tesla to 90% in 45 minutes. So a single shopping trip will charge your car for the next week.

I have other serious issues. Everywhere will need chargers, car parks, shopping centres, workplaces, on street parking. It is a whole new infrastructure. Other issues. Currently we have HUGE taxes on fossil fuels but we only pay 5% VAT on electricity. Which means that EV charging is currently quite a bit cheaper than fuel unless your combined cycle car is doing 140mpg. Currently the cost per mile for a 50mpg combined cycle car is 12p per mile. For a Tesla at 3.5m per kw/h it is 4.5p per mile. My major issue with that is the fact that the government is _never_ just going to give up on all that tax money. So how are they going to penalise EV users so that they are paying the same per mile as the fossil fuel burners.

There is the cup half empty view and the cup half full view. My take is that the UK is, in no way, ready for EV's today. Then again, until we have sufficient EV demand, the UK will not invest in the power technology to support it.

Chicken and egg. Which came first? The egg, obviously, but nobody said it had to be laid by a chicken! That's evolution for you.

From what I see all the EU manufacturing companies are, belatedly, starting to ramp up EV production to meet the 2030/2040 EU cut off for fossil fuelled vehicle sales. Battery factories are in production, the German manufacturers are starting to build new factories (VAG €5.4bn investment), to meet the demand. The point about Tesla is that it has been there since 2003, slowly positioning itself for this transition and it right at the centre of it.

Tesla is right at the centre of this evolution and is making revolutionary changes. Tesla cars are not just a tired retread of existing vehicles with an electric motor and a big battery. They are entirely new, use totally different systems, are technology based rather than technology enhanced mechanics. The Tesla semi has a CD (coefficient of drag), equivalent to a sports car and Tesla has sports versions, SUV versions, now a family saloon and, in 2020, a crossover vehicle too. Plus trucks.

Had Tesla gone under, we'd have been left with whatever the existing car companies wanted to give us. Because they did not, the existing companies have to compete and they are not finding it easy. Tesla was the #4 manufacturer of saloon cars by volume in the US in Q3, only beaten by the Japanese suppliers. However in revenue, Tesla outsold the Japanese vehicles 2:1.

Tesla is a disruptive company and I wish them well. Musk is borderline nutcase, but, then again, who else could do what he has done?

In the next 10 - 15 years we will see a radical change to our vehicles on the road and the way we use power and fuel. We'll probably also see £2 per litre in fuel prices too and that will drive even more people to EV.

It is no use for me, the range is simply a non starter for the mileage I have to drive. But for 95% of the people, it will do. Look around, the technology is popping up like popcorn. 10 years ago it was a pipe dream. Today? We're at the cusp.

[cromwell]

Battery technology certainly has come on. There is still the problem of how to replace the tax the government currently rakes in from petrol and diesel though. which, if we went all out for hydrogen, there wouldn't be. And the need for massive investment in new power stations.

Things that do put me off are:-
Battery range, especially in cold weather (although next years Nissan Leaf is rumoured to have a 300 mile range).
The life of a battery, and the cost to replace it. Currently a bit of an unknown.
Time taken to recharge a battery; not as convenient as filling up with unleaded!
Depreciation. This is a big one. On auto trader you can get a low mileage two year old Renault Zoe for just over £6,000. Even if you get a bargain when buying new through carwow, you are still looking at losing a lot of money in those two years; the Zoe is currently priced new from £21,000, but there are good deals on them.

I would like a go driving an electric car though.

[AliasAggers]

I expect there will be a host of problems when this change-over for vehicles from petrol to electricity takes place,
and there will be many disappointed motorists. One of the likely consequences will be a perhaps drastic reduction
in the number of cars on the roads. but although this might upset a lot of people it may, perhaps, turn out to be a
blessing in disguise for mankind in general.