Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[phigment]

Good premise. But, let us change the numbers a little bit. Effective surface area of glass roof on M3, that gets exposed to sunlight is about 3 m^2. Cell efficiency of solar cells that Tesla uses is 22%. That is about 4kwh. At about 4 miles/kwh, you get about 16 miles of range, good enough for most daily commutes.

I wouldn't value the solar roof for it's range extending capabilities, but for range reduction mitigation.

If I park at a hotel, airport, or any other long term parking spot, I'd be happy to have energy trickling in instead of coming back a few weeks later to have it not able to make the return journey.

But.. I guess that's all a moot point if the car can just go to the nearest supercharger and top up.

 

[woof]

Ford did the solar shield thing two years ago. Where is it now?
Ford plug-in hybrid solar car uses fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight for charging

 

[TMSE]

Whoa, not quite. At 3 m^2 you have 6 kWh total energy being delivered to the surface during a Southern California day, * 22% efficiency = 1.32 kWh into the battery assuming perfect charging efficiency.

Nope. The math is:
3 * 6 * 0.22 = 3.96 kwh

 

[windgrins]

If Tesla has secretly added transparent/glass Solar Panels on the Model 3, as Elon just hinted, Tesla basically just guaranteed the Model 3 is at least 5-10 years ahead of every other company.

Wouldn't this mean the Model 3 is capable of receiving a partial - full change without needing to be plugged in?

This would be amazing for many reasons.

1) Superchargers would be for 300-500 + mile trips, any vehicle included in the Tesla Fleet, or any vehicle that is regularly parked in a garage. They would also be for the 100,000-200,000 vehicles that won't have this feature.

a) This would be the answer to the question of Tesla plans to have enough Superchargers for millions of Tesla vehicles.

2) The Model 3, and future Tesla vehicles would basically have 300-500 + miles of range, without Tesla having to increase the size of the battery, since the vehicles can be charged while in use. Right?

The total solar flux that could fall on a car in a 5 hour trip is pretty small. So don't count on this for a reasonable range extender. At best, it's probably more like a "vampire loss eliminator".

 

[Yggdrasill]

Tesla really shouldn't touch a Karma-esque solar roof. Though embedding a few solar cells between the glass and the A-pillar beam on the Model 3 should be fine for running a fan and trickle charging 12V battery.

Here:

 

[tander]

Deployable solar shield, just like Dragon's solar panel array. I like Elon's sense of humor.

Either way, I'm sure Elon isn't claiming it would be useful for anything other than running cabin overheat protection (a fan) or trickle charging the 12v. There simply isn't enough area on a car roof to generate useful (for charging purposes) amounts of electricity.

25 sq ft (top of small car cabin) x 100 watts per hour x 8 hours x 20% efficiency = about 4 kWh a day. So that'd be like 10 mi in a models s? A lot of people don't drive that much a day and it seems the variables have a lot of room for tweak-age. Think of the person who drives to work and parks at an outdoor lot all day. If they did a retractable type thing that could help a lot.

I don't know what's going on in his head. Maybe he's joking around or trolling or something. He did once tweet that he stays awake by doing "lots of crack". I do think he was lying about that!

"Pencils Down" on Model 3 design was supposed to be back in July. Do you think he was lying then, or is he really toying with the idea of adding exotic new features to the Model 3 with 1 year left to the beginning of production?

Just do the math. What kind of surface area would such a contraption need in order to supply useful range? How would you park it if the "canopy" extends well beyond your car's footprint?

 

[Johan]

So is E-dawg just taking an early Friday afternoon, and decides to shoot the breeze on Twitter, or is for example his tweet about a possible easter egg to unluck P100D full performance the start of a new press offensive? You know dropping one thing after another to regain the media's focus, perhaps with their eyes on a cash raise before the year is over?

 

[FredTMC]

I suppose you think Elon is lying? His Tweet is very straight forward.

View attachment 201219

View attachment 201220

I'm not in favor of any "feature creep" for tesla getting to the launch of Model 3.
Remember, Elon, model 3 design has been pencils down for a long time now...

That said, I'm fine with future new features AFTER tesla is at full production on Model 3 and 500k units have been delivered.

 

[MikeC]

Tesla-SolarCity deal 'veiled bail-out,' Glass Lewis says

Here's the Glass-Lewis opinion. Interesting that they chose to release on the exact same day that ISS released theirs. It's just the typical bear "SCTY bailout" FUD.

 

[Johan]

I'm not in favor of any "feature creep" for tesla getting to the launch of Model 3.
Remember, Elon, model 3 design has been pencils down for a long time now...

That said, I'm fine with future new features AFTER tesla is at full production on Model 3 and 500k units have been delivered.

Don't you guys get that he's trolling those guys on Twitter? "A deployable solar shield, like a retractable hard-top". On a car entering mass production in less than a year. Sure.

 

[tander]

So is E-dawg just taking an early Friday afternoon, and decides to shoot the breeze on Twitter, or is for example his tweet about a possible easter egg to unluck P100D full performance the start of a new press offensive? You know dropping one thing after another to regain the media's focus, perhaps with their eyes on a cash raise before the year is over?

View attachment 201221

Didn't the offensive start last week?

 

[Ulmo]

Karma was a car designed to kabosh the EV field. Tesla blew right through it. Doing everything different from Karma would be mandatory.

I saw a Karma behind the Palo Alto SC. Besides looking awful, extremely poorly built, and disgusting, it also had a solar panel. The panel was about 2 square FEET, and looked like it was an off-the-shelf housing panel that was about 4" tall, shoe-horned into the body of an ICE or something. It was completely hokey and dumb. No innovation at all. No imagination at all. Everything ever written about the Karma said that it was meant to be a joke from the start. Karma is an example of nothing except a pile of crap at the sewer treatment facility, at BEST, and that's too much of a compliment, I think.

 

[tander]

Is autopilot 2.0 still supposed to come out this year or was it only the hardware and then software next year?

 

[Johan]

Didn't the offensive start last week?

Well, yes, only that the markets don't understand financials and future prospects as well as they should, but have to be fed and entertained in other ways in order to really come to like Tesla and TSLA.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Ronnie is over his head. He thinks the grid is akin to a fluid (liquid) system rather than an electrical circuit.

Analogies between mechanical and electrical systems are absolutely legitimate and used by professionals. Ronnie is not over his head.

 

[3Victoria]

You guys are expending a lot of energy over Elon's tweets. He has not put any timeline on his comments re solar cells, and he has opined before that future developments would come with version 2. He is just shooting the breeze, throwing out ideas. However, given that they are developing roof tiles out of glass with embedded solar, and also that clear solar cels exist (~20% efficient), one could imagine (in the future) covering the whole car with solar, including all the glass. Better than nothing, even if it didn't fulfil all energy requirements. Also, consider if your house was completely covered by solar?

 

[larmor]

Analogies between mechanical and electrical systems are absolutely legitimate and used by professionals. Ronnie is not over his head.

Maybe its fluid, since if enough houses generate and store electricity in can be basically function as a unit, flowing to areas of need-- this was mentioned earlier in the thread. Baron analysis was very good, and didn't need market to explain to him what the opportunity is and will be....

 

[drinkerofkoolaid]

I'm not in favor of any "feature creep" for tesla getting to the launch of Model 3.
Remember, Elon, model 3 design has been pencils down for a long time now...

That said, I'm fine with future new features AFTER tesla is at full production on Model 3 and 500k units have been delivered.

Tesla hasn't said anything about what options will be available with the Model 3. Therefore, this cant conflict with the "pencils down date" since Elon never said this wasn't an option.

 

[Johan]

Tesla hasn't said anything about what additions would be available for the Model 3.

As best as I can tell, this doesn't conflict with the "pencils down date", since Tesla hasn't said what options will be available.

"Solar deployable shield". Gimme a break.

 

[Turing]

I don't know what's going on in his head. Maybe he's joking around or trolling or something. He did once tweet that he stays awake by doing "large amounts of crack". I do think he was lying about that!

"Pencils Down" on Model 3 design was supposed to be back in July. Do you think he was lying then, or is he really toying with the idea of adding exotic new features to the Model 3 with 1 year left to the beginning of production?

Just do the math. What kind of surface area would such a contraption need in order to supply useful range? How would you park it if the "canopy" extends well beyond your car's footprint?

What matters is the additional cost and whether it adds complexity relative to regular glass roof. If a quarter of buyers want to add the option mostly as a novelty thing or because in their situations their cars spend all day baking in sun or as zombie apocalypse insurance, it doesn't really matter how practical it is.