Tesla Master Plan Part 2 & 3

[Herbie65]

Goed verhaal, veel dingen op de agenda.
Elon (en Tesla) hoeft voorlopig niet stil te zitten. Veel dingen lagen in de lijn der verwachting.
Grappig hoe Elon Autopilot vergelijkt met vliegtuigen.
Had ik dat al niet gedaan in oct vorig jaar?
Elon gebruikt zelfs dezelfde term fail operational voor de volgende versies van Autopilot
Autopilot in vliegtuigen (achtergrond info)

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Think college kids with no car.

Think urban commuters with no car.

There are plenty of both right now. Tesla doesn't have to convince you to let others ride in your car. They just have to make enough cars to cover you and those other groups.

There will still be single owner, single car situations for decades to come. No one will force you to change in the next few years.

I am definitely curious to see how many here are willing to share, started a poll over in the Autonomous section to find out: Would You Be Willing To Share Your Car?

 

[postpast]

I'm not sure how you got your Model X range figure, as the current 90D is rated for 260 miles on 90kWh, so 180kWh should get you past 500. Agreed though that a big rig battery would be verrrry substantial. Maybe it would need to be integrated into the trailer chassis? I'm sure it could be just as quickly charged as a current Tesla car battery as long as there was enough power available at the charging station, which I'm picturing would be much more substantial than the current Superchargers.

Its not linear. adding an extra 90 kWh of batteries would add another 1300 lbs of battery and probably 1800 of total extra weight(stronger structure, more cooling, more size. It would also need to be bigger to hold the extra batteries. So you have to add even more batteries and weight to get to the range.

Putting the batteries on the trailer would be very limiting as trucks often change trailers and removing that ability would severely limit the use of the truck.

The biggest problem though, is that you would need to build the charging infrastructure before you sold any trucks. Building Truck stops every 300 miles(you would need to provide enough for truck to reach off route destinations) along trucking routes before selling any trucks would be a huge cash outlay. You would have to spends 100's of millions or even billions before you made any revenue.

 

[TaoJones]

Using existing truck stops would seem wise. Plenty of real estate. Good food often. Perfect places for more SCs.

For example between Tucson and San Antonio *impolite cough*.

 

[Ludus]

Totally agree with you that the "share my car with strangers for extra change" idea is stillborn. Also still think the Solar City bailout is a bad idea -- not that adding solar to the company is necessarily a bad idea. It's only a bad idea if the plan to add this particular solar company is mostly a favor to Solar City shareholders at the expense of Tesla investors.

I don't think Tesla owners sharing their cars in a Tesla Mobility Fleet is central to the plan, I think that's there to make owners feel better about their role and possibilities of ownership and to be flexible. It's a PR thing that might eventually be useful, it has no immediate use other than keeping car buyers from feeling left out.

When Mobility Fleets are rolled out and for a long time afterward, the whole thing will be about Tesla owned vehicles in the fleet. Owners of qualified vehicles who happen to live in the service area will be accommodated if they want to share their vehicle in the Fleet but it won't be important to Tesla that anyone wants the option. Mobility Fleets like Uber fleets have to saturate a service area from the first minute the App goes live. Tesla owners are scattered and few. A city will need a few thousand vehicles in service 24/7 from the start. Anything less doesn't work. This is a delicate balance Uber has pioneered. If users can't get a car quickly in the service area they'll stop using the app. If they stop using the app the service area won't support as many vehicles. So any future Mobility Fleet using mostly Tesla owners vehicles is a distant prospect at best.

In the meantime, in most markets, Tesla will just have to own and operate the fleets itself. As a consolation while it's waiting to build up enough owners in any given service area that they make even a small dent in the problem, Tesla will just have to make billions of dollars a year in profits itself.

This sort of Mobility App fleet could be enormously profitable owned and operated by the OEM vertically. I think this is the basis for thinking Tesla has a path to having a Trillion dollar market cap.

 

[Alketi]

I am definitely curious to see how many here are willing to share, started a poll over in the Autonomous section to find out: Would You Be Willing To Share Your Car?

I wouldn't anticipate that folks buying Model S/X cars are the demographic that will be sharing. As a future Model 3 owner, I likely won't be participating either.

However, what Elon is proposing is extremely forward thinking and lies in contrast to Uber's future model, which I presume will have Uber owning all their own cars. Elon's plan is to essentially crowd-source autonomous travel, in the same manner as how Uber crowd-sourced taxi's. If the economics are done right, you could have people buying or leasing a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Tesla solely for being autonomous taxis. Think about it. Tesla takes 30% for running the network, you get 70% (standard mobile-app arrangement for the sake of argument), and if you're in a hot market, you might break even in a year and then run a profit after that.

The biggest problem though, is that you would need to build the charging infrastructure before you sold any trucks. Building Truck stops every 300 miles(you would need to provide enough for truck to reach off route destinations) along trucking routes before selling any trucks would be a huge cash outlay. You would have to spends 100's of millions or even billions before you made any revenue.

But the truck stops already exist. The Tesla chargers, by and large, already exist. And, all of this is going to happen eventually anyway. In fact, the trucks will eventually be fully autonomous AND self-charging. So, who's in a better position to create that future other than Tesla?

The real issue, as you pointed out, is the battery density/weight problem, which will see continuous improvement as batteries improve.

 

[postpast]

Using existing truck stops would seem wise. Plenty of real estate. Good food often. Perfect places for more SCs.

For example between Tucson and San Antonio *impolite cough*.

But truck stops are mostly (at least Flying J and the other big chains I did a quick search on) owned by oil companies.

 

[Ludus]

Its not linear. adding an extra 90 kWh of batteries would add another 1300 lbs of battery and probably 1800 of total extra weight(stronger structure, more cooling, more size. It would also need to be bigger to hold the extra batteries. So you have to add even more batteries and weight to get to the range.

Putting the batteries on the trailer would be very limiting as trucks often change trailers and removing that ability would severely limit the use of the truck.

The biggest problem though, is that you would need to build the charging infrastructure before you sold any trucks. Building Truck stops every 300 miles(you would need to provide enough for truck to reach off route destinations) along trucking routes before selling any trucks would be a huge cash outlay. You would have to spends 100's of millions or even billions before you made any revenue.

Yep. This is the one I'm interested in seeing the "first principles" thinking on. Buses and City Mobility Fleets are surprisingly easy. A 24/7 Mobility fleet just needs some snake chargers scattered around the service area. Vehicles would stay in service continuously except when charging. There might be an automated battery swap station if you really wanted to push up-time. Buses have a lot of good solutions.

Over the road tractor trailers are tough. The supercharger car network is fine for symbolism so owners can feel like they have the same freedom as ICE cars but it depends on the fact that only a small percentage take road trips and use it at any given time. A supercharger network for trucks as you point out would be something entirely different. It would cost many orders of magnitude more and wouldn't be sufficient to trigger many sales until it was nearly complete.

He must have something interesting in mind. The cool thing to me about Elon's plans is that when I don't understand some aspect I'm pretty confident it's worthwhile to continue to try to figure it out.

 

[nexsuperne101]

I'm looking forward to a Tesla pick up truck, and do something like this with it. Park up in the middle of nowhere, deploy the additional solar panels (the whole roof would be covered anyway), and just chill out off grid.

 

[gelden]

Grappig hoe Elon Autopilot vergelijkt met vliegtuigen.

Komt de term daar ook niet vandaan?

 

[theboom1]

Well, the Model 3 wouldn't be capable of such...and wouldn't have been bought with that in mind. Again, the issue is an inability to look outside of the ownership box that exists today.

It doesn't really matter what the ownership box is, I don't let random people come in and stay at my house. why do i want other people using my car and trashing it?

I'm looking forward to a Tesla pick up truck, and do something like this with it. Park up in the middle of nowhere, deploy the additional solar panels (the whole roof would be covered anyway), and just chill out off grid.

This brings me back to my previous point for needing to be able to drive trucks and performance cars at least. (an option on other types of vehicles) Because how are you going to get to the middle of nowhere? Autopilot is going to navigate off road? I don't think so.

 

[nexsuperne101]

I wouldn't want to let some random stranger use and trash my hard earned car either. BUT, if I bought it as a business plan, and they paid by a non-refundable method, so no credit card "chargebacks", which could be charged for damage, and the car had cctv both inside and out to prove and damage caused was by them, then I would consider it. Its all about protecting assets.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

It doesn't really matter what the ownership box is, I don't let random people come in and stay at my house. why do i want other people using my car and trashing it?

This brings me back to my previous point for needing to be able to drive trucks and performance cars at least. (an option on other types of vehicles) Because how are you going to get to the middle of nowhere? Autopilot is going to navigate off road? I don't think so.

I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing. Whether or not to participate in this program will be up to the individual owner, you don't have to share your vehicle if you don't want to.

The existence of Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, etc...seems to point that many don't hold your view, and would be more than willing to participate.

 

[CitizenKane]

I don't think Tesla owners sharing their cars in a Tesla Mobility Fleet is central to the plan, I think that's there to make owners feel better about their role and possibilities of ownership and to be flexible. It's a PR thing that might eventually be useful, it has no immediate use other than keeping car buyers from feeling left out.

When Mobility Fleets are rolled out and for a long time afterward, the whole thing will be about Tesla owned vehicles in the fleet. Owners of qualified vehicles who happen to live in the service area will be accommodated if they want to share their vehicle in the Fleet but it won't be important to Tesla that anyone wants the option. Mobility Fleets like Uber fleets have to saturate a service area from the first minute the App goes live. Tesla owners are scattered and few. A city will need a few thousand vehicles in service 24/7 from the start. Anything less doesn't work. This is a delicate balance Uber has pioneered. If users can't get a car quickly in the service area they'll stop using the app. If they stop using the app the service area won't support as many vehicles. So any future Mobility Fleet using mostly Tesla owners vehicles is a distant prospect at best.

In the meantime, in most markets, Tesla will just have to own and operate the fleets itself. As a consolation while it's waiting to build up enough owners in any given service area that they make even a small dent in the problem, Tesla will just have to make billions of dollars a year in profits itself.

This sort of Mobility App fleet could be enormously profitable owned and operated by the OEM vertically. I think this is the basis for thinking Tesla has a path to having a Trillion dollar market cap.

Since the vision guiding the plan is to make transports more sustainable and since cars on average only have a 10% utilisation, I DO think car sharing is central. Over and over it seems investors and others make the mistake of trying to rationalise the vision with shareholder value while Tesla clearly treats shareholders as just one stakeholder among the others. Overall benefit for society comes first and Tesla has already delivered amazingly on that by fast forwarding electric transportation. Shareholders have done very well too and I think they will continue to (I am one of them) but Wall Street will never be Tesla's main focus.

 

[theboom1]

I'm not sure exactly what you're arguing. Whether or not to participate in this program will be up to the individual owner, you don't have to share your vehicle if you don't want to.

The existence of Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, etc...seems to point that many don't hold your view, and would be more than willing to participate.

I understand that some will buy one for the sole purpose to rent it out and a business plan but im saying not a lot of people that have one tesla are going to want to hand their car out.

Again every on demand ride we have now has the owner in the car. They are FAR less likely to vandalize your property when your literally sitting right there. When your not? Different story.

 

[CitizenKane]

It doesn't really matter what the ownership box is, I don't let random people come in and stay at my house. why do i want other people using my car and trashing it?

This brings me back to my previous point for needing to be able to drive trucks and performance cars at least. (an option on other types of vehicles) Because how are you going to get to the middle of nowhere? Autopilot is going to navigate off road? I don't think so.

The success of airbnb points toward viability of car sharing. Generally speaking I think people care more for their homes than for their cars.

 

[Johan]

I understand that some will buy one for the sole purpose to rent it out and a business plan but im saying not a lot of people that have one tesla are going to want to hand their car out.

Again every on demand ride we have now has the owner in the car. They are FAR less likely to vandalize your property when your literally sitting right there. When your not? Different story.

Then get another one for personal use after a year. And have the first one ride share 24/7. Then get a new one in 6 months. Keep the newest car for you and let the rest of your "fleet" work for you (and Tesla) 'til the wheels fall off.

 

[TaoJones]

But truck stops are mostly (at least Flying J and the other big chains I did a quick search on) owned by oil companies.

Sure, and they are for-profit entities. Every Tesla that stops at an SC is worth $10-$12 to the host property.

One of the last ChaDeMo I used in Oregon was at a Chevron with a very pro-EV owner. The Needles SC is at a gas station/convenience store, and it's not the only one.

The truck stop chains and mom and pops that act first will benefit from first mover advantage.

In other words, if ya snooze, ya lose. Works for early birds just as well as it works for moneygrubbing corporate fossil fuel-purveying ho(e)s.

I could sugarcoat that...

 

[TaoJones]

Then get another one for personal use after a year. And have the first one ride share 24/7. Then get a new one in 6 months. Keep the newest car for you and let the rest of your "fleet" work for you (and Tesla) 'til the wheels fall off.

Yanno, on the surface that's an interesting idea. Logistics aside, why should the cab companies have all the fun...

But those logistics could be problematic.

Parking
Insurance
Upkeep
Competition (pricing pressure)

 

[Alketi]

Again every on demand ride we have now has the owner in the car. They are FAR less likely to vandalize your property when your literally sitting right there. When your not? Different story.

You or I may not do this, but let's remember that people buy vacation homes, fill them with furniture, use the home in the off-season, and then rent the house in-season to total strangers WHO SLEEP IN THEIR BEDS!