Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Singuy]

Hmm, so even after tax incentives kicked in, Mustang Mach E sales seem to be grinding to a halt.

US sales: 998 in March
Production in March: 7,381

I just looked and there are 53 Mach Es on the lot within 50 miles of where I live, over 6300 in the nation in inventory.

 

[JRP3]

I don't believe most people will pay that much more to go from 300 to 400 mile range

The old Model 3 LR had 350 miles from 80kWh, would only take about another 12kWh to hit 400 miles, I think many people would pay the difference. Problem is it would cut into Model S market to some degree.

 

[insaneoctane]

That’s just the realisation in California that there’s no free lunch wrt excess solar production. All countries/regions will sooner or later go to a system that places a market value on injection prices rather the ”consumption price equals production price” in the early years of solar. Such a mechanism is not sustainable when you have so much solar that it’s above the instantaneous consumption. You either need to throw it away, or store it in a battery.
We ‘ve gone through this process in Flanders and it caused a lot of angry solar panel owners. But you can’t give 50 cents/kWh for excess production if there’s no party willing to pay for it. The solution is dynamic tariffs (demand shifting) or storage (whether at home or in the grid). And on a longer term, introducing processes that are totally uneconomic at current rates, but useful at near zero rates: making hydrogen, water desalination, carbon capture etc. That’s better than throwing the energy away.
I just checked our local tariffs (Flanders) and we get between 5 and 9 eurocents/kWh for injection, while buying from the grid is more like 30 to 35 eurocents. I don’t feel this made any difference in Tesla (or EV in general) sales, because the electricity cost is just a very small portion of the EV TCO.

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of a future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

EDIT: To help out the mods, I suggest further discussion on this topic should occur in an appropriate thread.

 

[adiggs]

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

Yeah - we're around $0.11/kWh in Oregon (PGE / Portland area). There's a fixed connection cost as well, but nothing like what you've been talking about.

 

[FireMedic]

Hmm, so even after tax incentives kicked in, Mustang Mach E sales seem to be grinding to a halt.

US sales: 998 in March
Production in March: 7,381

I just looked and there are 53 Mach Es on the lot within 50 miles of where I live, over 6300 in the nation in inventory.

It’s actually a pretty great car. I’m surprised it’s not selling better than that. Sadly it doesn’t really compare favorably to model Y. Especially at these prices. $65-82k es mucho.

It must really suck trying to compete with tesla.

 

[insaneoctane]

11.4.1 notes release. Apparently even .1 releases come with all new notes.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1656396186532839424

Those release notes are impressive. The % improvement numbers are significant.

 

[Southpasfan]

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

Down in the Energy forum we beat this to death.

You don't have to "believe" that 75% of the cost is infrastructure, because it is a fact not a question of opinion. Now "infrastructure" implies just wires, when its wires, all the people to fix the wires, all the billing structure, repair and installation, etc.

In California you can see, without much research, the CAISO spot price market (which is the cost of electricity at source) and compare that to the retail cost per kwh. If you want to go deeper, the three investor owned utilities publish annual financials, where it is all laid out.

The only reason that rooftop solar even existed economically is the spread between the cost of producing energy (which is what you pay for with your own system) and the cost of producing it and delivering it (which is what the utility charges you).

As for opinions, mine is that charging for the entire grid on a kwh-used basis should be revised. It does not logically follow that just by using more electricity you should pay for more maintenance when you are talking about electricity, but that is my opinion.

There is no groundswell for the State to take over the grid.

For Tesla Energy division, its why they are focusing on battery storage, and they still just buy someone else's panels. They know that the battery is the key.

 

[navguy12]

A friend with a Prius had to get a new battery after 125k miles and my Ford Fusion hybrid which had the same Nickel Metal Hydride tech was only good for 110k before needed a new battery (but traded it for Tesla MY).

I sold my ‘08 Prius to a friend of mine when I took delivery of my TM3 five years ago.

When I sold it, it had ~160,000 km on it and it now has ~260,000 km on it, still going strong.

One technique I did employ during my ownership span (and briefed the new owner to do the same) was to drive the car such that when it was done for the day and tucked in at home plate for the night, the SOC was at 60% (I had a gizmo wired into the OBD2 that gave me this info).

Back in those days, the Prius chat rooms had information that indicated the software was always trying to get the battery back to 60% SOC (which it was doing, constantly) and it just made sense to have the car parked with the battery at 60%.

 

[FireMedic]

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

I’ve mentioned this here before, IMO we’re paying for PG&E’s failure to maintain infrastructure over the past 30 years.

We’re paying them for the blood on their hands from the “camp fire”.

“PG&E reaches $13.5-billion settlement with victims of devastating California wildfires. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in federal court.”

It’s an absolute outrage and nobody seems willing to do ANYTHING about it. In fact, PG&E seems to manage somehow to be strengthening its grip on the communities it “serves”.

 

[JRP3]

Articles out claiming Drew got the Cybertruck stuck in the mud. I won't link and give them clicks but it is possible since it wasn't running mud tires.

 

[navguy12]

But it doesn't really have anything to do with solar. (You pay the higher income based rate even if you don't have solar.)

They do say the per kWh cost would drop by 30-40% as a result, so it isn't quite as bad as it seems. (I guess that would make solar less attractive.)

Maybe (?) the start of the Tony Seba discussed future of the grid, where it’s like home internet.

One fixed price and no marginal cost for use (?).

 

[Singuy]

It’s actually a pretty great car. I’m surprised it’s not selling better than that. Sadly it doesn’t really compare favorably to model Y. Especially at these prices. $65-82k es mucho.

It must really suck trying to compete with tesla.

View attachment 936517

Seems to be around 47.5k for a RWD version in my area. 18 days on market so far. Doesn't seem like it's outrageous. Of course way worst than a Model Y

CarEdge - Buy, Sell, Insure, Save

CarEdge is the single best place to buy, sell, insure, and protect a new or used car. Save time & money with real advice from auto experts.

my.caredge.com

 

[Southpasfan]

I’ve mentioned this here before, IMO we’re paying for PG&E’s failure to maintain infrastructure over the past 30 years.

We’re paying them for the blood on their hands from the “camp fire”.

“PG&E reaches $13.5-billion settlement with victims of devastating California wildfires. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in federal court.”

It’s an absolute outrage and nobody seems willing to do ANYTHING about it. In fact, PG&E seems to manage somehow to be strengthening its grip on the communities it “serves”.

And unfortunately, and I say that for a reason, its not just PG&E failures, which are probably not subject to debate.

Its unfortunate because across all the utilities, and even in Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power land, where I live, the ratio of about 20% cost of electricity to 80% everything else holds true.

Its "unfortunate" because if it was just PG&E, large as they are, we could do something about them. But unfortunately (for purposes of energy reform) its not.
Battery storage by the way, is not only the way to go, its the way to help save the planet.

Again though, without grid reform if everyone started to get home systems with batteries its also ultimately not sustainable unless the State takes over the grid. By "not sustainable" I mean at some point if adoption got to something like 75% of customers with rooftop solar and batteries, the other 25% could not pay for the grid.

Its also not really feasible for everyone to go off grid. That's more difficult than it would seem, and you can see by the system I have why I would have some experience here.

 

[bkp_duke]

And unfortunately, and I say that for a reason, its not just PG&E failures, which are probably not subject to debate.

Its unfortunate because across all the utilities, and even in Los Angeles Dept of Water and Power land, where I live, the ratio of about 20% cost of electricity to 80% everything else holds true.

Its "unfortunate" because if it was just PG&E, large as they are, we could do something about them. But unfortunately (for purposes of energy reform) its not.
Battery storage by the way, is not only the way to go, its the way to help save the planet.

Again though, without grid reform if everyone started to get home systems with batteries its also ultimately not sustainable unless the State takes over the grid. By "not sustainable" I mean at some point if adoption got to something like 75% of customers with rooftop solar and batteries, the other 25% could not pay for the grid.

Its also not really feasible for everyone to go off grid. That's more difficult than it would seem, and you can see by the system I have why I would have some experience here.

I just don't accept that infrastructure in Cali costs 5X what it does in other parts of the country. That's just "creative accounting", beyond the point of the utilities trying to milk us for their previous failures.

What happens when 10s of thousands of people disconnect from the grid? It's happening if this "equity-based income connectivity charge" happens. I'll die before I share my financial info with 3rd party companies and accept that I should pay a higher rate because I make more. What's next? Income-based grocery charges?

 

[NicoV]

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of a future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

EDIT: To help out the mods, I suggest further discussion on this topic should occur in an appropriate thread.

Before the energy crisis in Europe, the energy part was less than 20% of the kWh price in Belgium. The remainder are infrastructure costs, taxes, and fees to pay for various things like green subsidies and street lighting.
The energy generation part has gone up tremendously over the last year, but is now trending down again to towards that 20%
Which is why today Tesla was able to dramatically reduce supercharging prices in Europe, practically to the level of before the crisis.

 

[GhostSkater]

Possible new 1000 km challenge record underway

 

[Southpasfan]

I just don't accept that infrastructure in Cali costs 5X what it does in other parts of the country. That's just "creative accounting", beyond the point of the utilities trying to milk us for their previous failures.

What happens when 10s of thousands of people disconnect from the grid? It's happening if this "equity-based income connectivity charge" happens. I'll die before I share my financial info with 3rd party companies and accept that I should pay a higher rate because I make more. What's next? Income-based grocery charges?

Charging for the grid based on income makes even less sense then the current bad system, so I am with you there.

I will have to go a bit further down this rabbit hole and look at the financials for some other state's utility to see what their ration is.

It may be as simple as the cost of the grid simply increases with population, more people, more cost, and not ratably, but I will look it up.

 

[nativewolf]

Articles out claiming Drew got the Cybertruck stuck in the mud. I won't link and give them clicks but it is possible since it wasn't running mud tires.

We get purpose built million dollar logging equipment with 8 tires and tracks ….. you can get anything stuck having fun

 

[InTheMiddle]

Your numbers (and California's) only make sense if you believe that, today, 75% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from infrastructure costs like transportation, grid maintenance, labor, etc. and only 25% of the cost of a kWh of electricity comes from generation. In my example, my utility wants to charge me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh for infrastructure costs alone. If this is real, then @Gigapress's vision of a future with super cheap electricity seems impossible, because "free" electricity still costs me $0.16/kWh to $0.54/kWh (which, ironically, is more than most people pay total, including generation in other states).

Down in the Energy forum we beat this to death.

You don't have to "believe" that 75% of the cost is infrastructure, because it is a fact not a question of opinion. Now "infrastructure" implies just wires, when its wires, all the people to fix the wires, all the billing structure, repair and installation, etc.

<...>

As for opinions, mine is that charging for the entire grid on a kwh-used basis should be revised. It does not logically follow that just by using more electricity you should pay for more maintenance when you are talking about electricity, but that is my opinion.

Anecdotally, my Tesla solar panel install (via SolarCity) was intentionally made as large as possible when it was installed back at the end of 2017, and at first it exceeded the electrical needs of both house and Model X. Since I was therefore grandfathered into net metering, I did not bother getting any PowerWalls. Even with 0kw net usage, there was still $30-$35 /mo in various fees. Rather than be upset, I realized that if Tesla offered PowerWalls-as-a-Service I would happily pay far more than that for someone to take my excess electricity when I don't need it and return it when I do need it.

That taught me to quit thinking about my electric bill in terms of "paying per KW" and more in terms of "value for the service". What $ value is it worth to me to have APS providing me with that service just to time-shift my own electrical generation? When I went from 1 Tesla to 2 Teslas to 3 Teslas, I realized the auto-expansion to meet my varying needs was highly valuable. Being able to seamlessly add additional cars w/o needing to get more PowerWalls, more panels, etc was very nice, and made getting each additional car an easy thing vs a complex cascade of permitting, fixed-cost purchases, etc.

When I looked at upgrading the main panel and considered the costs to APS to upgrade the transformer in my neighbor's yard which serves our group of houses, and when I was tangentially involved in discussions of a new large-scale solar farm deployment being considered, it was very clear how very expensive fixed infrastructure can be to build and maintain as an ongoing service.

Utility ongoing maintenance / expansion costs should comprise the majority of each residential electric bill, vs per-kW charges, assuming the utility is providing a high-quality service a) w/o repeated service interruptions and b) with proper maintenance / expansion being performed. My understanding is that in California, PG&E was failing at both a) and b), with the increasing rates now having to pay for the backlog of maintenance / expansion which should have been done many years (decades) ago, as well as pay for the liabilities incurred by their failing to do proper maintenance / expansion. Electrical production may trend to very inexpensive with renewables, but grid maintenance / expansion will mean we should never consider "free electricity" to become a thing. (Remember old "nuclear power will make it too cheap to meter" false hype ... even if nuclear had made production nearly free, which it didn't, grid maintenance / expansion is a primary driver of total cost.)

 

[bkp_duke]

Anecdotally, my Tesla solar panel install (via SolarCity) was intentionally made as large as possible when it was installed back at the end of 2017, and at first it exceeded the electrical needs of both house and Model X. Since I was therefore grandfathered into net metering, I did not bother getting any PowerWalls. Even with 0kw net usage, there was still $30-$35 /mo in various fees. Rather than be upset, I realized that if Tesla offered PowerWalls-as-a-Service I would happily pay far more than that for someone to take my excess electricity when I don't need it and return it when I do need it.

That taught me to quit thinking about my electric bill in terms of "paying per KW" and more in terms of "value for the service". What $ value is it worth to me to have APS providing me with that service just to time-shift my own electrical generation? When I went from 1 Tesla to 2 Teslas to 3 Teslas, I realized the auto-expansion to meet my varying needs was highly valuable. Being able to seamlessly add additional cars w/o needing to get more PowerWalls, more panels, etc was very nice, and made getting each additional car an easy thing vs a complex cascade of permitting, fixed-cost purchases, etc.

When I looked at upgrading the main panel and considered the costs to APS to upgrade the transformer in my neighbor's yard which serves our group of houses, and when I was tangentially involved in discussions of a new large-scale solar farm deployment being considered, it was very clear how very expensive fixed infrastructure can be to build and maintain as an ongoing service.

Utility ongoing maintenance / expansion costs should comprise the majority of each residential electric bill, vs per-kW charges, assuming the utility is providing a high-quality service a) w/o repeated service interruptions and b) with proper maintenance / expansion being performed. My understanding is that in California, PG&E was failing at both a) and b), with the increasing rates now having to pay for the backlog of maintenance / expansion which should have been done many years (decades) ago, as well as pay for the liabilities incurred by their failing to do proper maintenance / expansion. Electrical production may trend to very inexpensive with renewables, but grid maintenance / expansion will mean we should never consider "free electricity" to become a thing. (Remember old "nuclear power will make it too cheap to meter" false hype ... even if nuclear had made production nearly free, which it didn't, grid maintenance / expansion is a primary driver of total cost.)

All of this reinforces the point that behind the meter battery storage is a better, more resilient setup, with fewer infrastructure costs before the meter because HVDC line capacity, substation deployment, transformer capacity is greatly reduced (you are not using the grid as a battery, you have your own).

The utilities know this, and that's why they push their own power sources, because they make $$$ not just reselling the energy, but the costs they can charge are so much higher when everyone is using the grid as a battery, vs. distributed behind-the-meter storage.