By local conditions, I meant the price of electricity, the presence or absence of net metering and/or time of day metering. These are the local conditions that make or break the argument for behind the meter battery storage.
I can’t say I totally disagree with you here if you need to go out and buy a car today. The promise of the base model 3 at $35k (only $5k higher than the leaf, $2.5k less than the bolt) with far more range than either is really worth thinking about. Of course this trim is not yet for sale and may not be for some time yet while the others are.
I’d also add grid reliability as another local condition that would come into play whether or not metering is a factor. Nice to have battery backup during blackouts or brownouts.
Fulfilling that promise, especially at the large manufacturing scale demanded by shareholders (private or public), is the big problem Tesla is facing right now. It’s one place where their marketing and hype has outstripped their tech (specifically the factory line and process). Meanwhile, the less expensive non-luxury competitors like Nissan and Chevy seem to be cranking 'em out with no drama.
These are world changing innovations? Completely unnecessary wing doors that have been problematic both in production and for owners? Completely unnecessary pop-out door handles that have a habit of freezing into place or breaking entirely making it impossible to enter the vehicle?
I thought Musk was supposed to be changing the world here. Where’s the world changing innovations in these?
No, I don’t think so really. They sure seem to damn the entire company from your perspective though. I mentioned them to make sure I understood what you kept referring very obliquely to. I don’t think they are much more than gimmicks and are much more practical in some climates than where I live.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? I do enjoy talking about Tesla and SpaceX but I didn’t really think I would be shouting into the void here. I get that I’m pretty unusually enthusiastic about but I try to maintain a nuanced perspective on the world. I’m getting a really hostile vibe from you on this and it seems like you are working super hard to maintain a very high-contrast world view.
Tesla violated U.S. labor laws when CEO Elon Musk tweeted in May that his employees would lose their stock options if they organized a union, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
I just feel strongly that Musk is a charlatan who has been lucky enough to amass a huge fortune that he can use to throw money at any crazy idea he has - or borrows from someone smarter than him. He also clearly seems to have a very fragile ego – I mean, how could anybody refuse his help? Oh, it must be because they are a pedophile. Yeah, that’s it.
Maybe he could actually change the world if he really wanted to – but instead he throws money at things that may be seem cool or interesting but aren’t really advancing the human cause in any meaningful way.
He’s like some sort of cross between The Onion, Donald Trump, and Steve Jobs.
All I know is the harder someone fanboys for anyone with a ‘cult of personality,’ the more skeptical I tend to become of their hero - putting fallible people ‘up on pedestals’ almost always ends badly for the ardent admirers…
Ive never seen a tesla in the wiid, I see a Leaf every time I go on the motorway.
High status prestige cars are a tiny part of the problem. If Musk was concerned about the problem he would be working on getting all the diesel off the road: delivery vans, fleet cars and company cars. Plus getting all the really old stock which pollutes more.
But he isn’t, he’s doing self publicity. It’s a bit like the thinking that led him to fuck up and shit the bed so publicly over Thailand: he thinks the problem is a lack of appropriate attention from wealthy white men. It isn’t. It never is. If wealthy white men could fix the world’s problems they’d be fixed already. The only thing that WWM could do in Thailand is butt out or offer quiet support to people with local expertise. But Musk the billionaire can’t do that. He has to make it about him rather than the people in trouble and the people working to rescue them.
It’s the stupidity that bei g a billionaire seems to invariably Foster expressing itself.
We all have to have heroes and all heroes will disappoint us. In my mind you can let your admiration turn to ash and bitterness, you can continue blindly on in chosen ignorance or you recognize that people are imperfect and can still be worthy of admiration in many ways.
I think you’ve got two basic options in the face of Musk’s hedonically sub-optimal behavior. You can Schopenhauer it into a deeply pessimistic general thesis(below); or you can observe that “cocaine is a hell of a drug” with the shrug of a bemused bystander.
“Just as a brook forms no eddy so long as it meets with no obstructions, so human nature, as well as animal, is such that we do not really notice and perceive all that goes on in accordance with our will. If we were to notice it, then the reason for this would inevitably be that it did not go according to our will, but must have met with some obstacle. On the other hand, everything that obstructs, crosses, or opposes our will, and thus everything unpleasant and painful, is felt by us immediately, at once, and very plainly. Just as we do not feel the health of our whole body, but only the small spot where the shoe pinches, so we do not think of all our affairs that are going on perfectly well, but only of some insignificant trifle that annoys us.”
I do actually see a few, but only because there is a tesla dealership and a growing tech sector where I live - they really are status symbols to some. They are far outnumbered by Leaves and those are outnumber by hybrids like the prius.
Oh, this. Yes. Locally, there has been talk about replacing our bus fleet with electric alternatives. Given how many people depend on buses for transportation, they would be great. Same with delivery companies switching to electric.
Yeah, good question, why hasn’t some random guy with a modest income tried to sue a billionaire with an office full of lawyers on call? It boggles the mind.
