"... and raised doubts about whether the number of public chargers would grow fast enough to keep pace with sales of battery-powered cars.... As the owner of the largest charging network in the United States, Tesla has a powerful effect on people’s views of electric cars.... Tesla does not disclose the financial performance of its charging business, but analysts say it requires capital that Mr. Musk would rather invest in artificial intelligence and robotics.... 'My guess is that the electricity and infrastructure costs of running the network far exceed the fees provided by Tesla and other drivers thus far,' Ben Rose, president of Battle Road Research, said..."
From
"Tesla Pullback Puts Onus on Others to Build Electric Vehicle Chargers/The automaker led by Elon Musk is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles. It’s not clear how quickly other companies will fill the gap" (NYT).
It's a disaster, isn't it?
Posts
75 comments:
There is a free Tesla charging station near the White Left's favorite grocery store here in White Left-landia. Trader Joes.
The wait to charge a car is so sad.
I like Elon Musk - because he hasn't been devoured and subsumed by the corrupt left. He thinks for himself - something the corrupt left abhors. Thinking and acting outside of the Soviet Democrat Party's offical hivemind is illegal - and you will be destroyed.
The corrupt left have google, facebook, youtube etc... but they do not have Twitter - and for that - the corrupt left must destroy Musk.
That said- electric cars are lame. I do not want one. But soon - we will all be forced to buy them, by the same Soviet leftists who want to kill off the middle class.
The push for EVs is among the bigger scams of the last 30 years, certainly not the biggest, and definitely not as big as the climate scam. But they are definitely linked.
A company having resources shifted to more profitable endeavors may lead to failure of an another project, but hey, that is more a "self-destruction" than a "disaster." Unless the disaster is the failure overall of the electric car project, which was predicted as soon as someone did the math on electricity requirements for it to succeed.
The barbarians of the Democrat Party want to force us to buy Emission Elsewhere Vehicles, regardless of what the public wants. We have a term for that: fascism. "Shut the F Up and obey us!" The big sales boom has ended, those who want EEVs have bought. Now, sales are going to be just a trickle.
At the same time these barbarians are pushing EEVs, they're trying to shutdown baseload power plants in the name of CO2 "poisoning." They want to tear down the Snake River dams, to save the salmon! They tore down the Klamath River dams, resulting in massive silt pollution and the death of the fishies in the river. If that was a construction project, the EPA would have been all over all those involved because of storm water pollution.
The goals of the barbarians are to impoverish us, and tie us down so we cannot travel. These barbarians are just a different brand of Hamas Genocidors.
Elon had to do something to distract from the Twitter dumpster fire replatforming nazi Nick Fuentes this week.
"It's a disaster, isn't it?"
How so? It's a disaster only in so far as the government mandates regarding EV adoption numbers and if that actually comes to pass. If the market is allowed to develop organically, there would be no disaster.
Musk is gambling that since most electric vehicle owners are affluent or rich, the network of charging stations needed to service the industry will get built.
'My guess is that the electricity and infrastructure costs of running the network far exceed the fees provided by Tesla and other drivers thus far,'
Of course, EV owners have been subsidized every step of the way, otherwise EVs would not been adopted as widely and quickly as they have been. But this isn't the disaster many are portraying. It may energize competition in the remaining companies in this business instead of it being monopolized by Musk.
“It’s a disaster “ You’re referring to electric vehicles, yes?
Other car companies filling the gap? Dream on. They are broke also.
WH pledged $7.5B for electric vehicle charging stations, only 8 built so far
Maybe the Feds have crowded him out
It's a disaster, isn't it?
Yup. Sort of looking that way.
Gee, is that why Musk is so determined to get to Mars? He needs a hidey hole for when the EV bubble bursts.
I was considering having a shot for every We told you so post then I realized I probably be dead in an hour.
Tesla does not disclose the financial performance of its charging business
i would ASSUME that they Would NOT.. They let Tesla owners charge for free.. HOW do you account that?
Every (EVERY!) aspect of EV's loses money.. EVERY ASPECT..
The Only thing more fool hardy is tilting at windmills
you know how you can TELL an idea is REALLY GOOD?
If the government has to:
a) subsidize manufacture
b) subsidize purchase
c) subsidize use
d) MANDATE manufacture
e) MANDATE purchase
f) MANDATE use
currently, we're at step "d"? looking REALLY GOOD!
Why won't Musk Obey the corrupt Soviet Left?
Well - the corrupt Soviet Left can destroy all of everything...
stand back and watch.
Blogger Mark said..."Elon had to do something to distract from the Twitter dumpster fire replatforming nazi Nick Fuentes this week."
You can't honestly think such a large business decision at Tesla was underpinned by some no-name on Twitter? I mean that seriously; I don't believe you believe what you wrote.
Your obsession with Twitter is comical.
Unlike many, Musk has the perspicacity and the courage to know a dead end when he sees it and to at accordingly. No time soon will EV's be anything but a prestige second car for the elite - and at great expense to the public for subsidies, infrastructure, etc.
Tesla backing away from expansion of their charging network speaks volumes as to where Tesla thinks EV numbers are headed. And they are closer to this market than anybody else.
In Québec there's an earthy-but-accurate expression which translates "You can't shit higher than your arsehole."
The entire full-electric vehicle bubble is crashing down, because outside of high-density urban/suburban reasons it never made any sense, on account of range and charging issues, thoroughly exacerbated by cold weather effects, as well as grid load issues in both hot and cold weather. Add in so-far insurmountable issues with Lithium batteries themselves -- fires, weight, lifespan, environmental, an labor -- and price problem. EVs were always a "positional good" for virtue signalling, despite how heavily government has attempted to subsidize and mandate them into the market.
Ford is losing $130,000 on every EV they build. Hertz is attempting to dup 100,000 EVs it was stampeded into buying, because customers are consistently refusing them. And customers refuse to buy used EVs much over 45,000 miles due to the upcoming battery replacement expense.
Meanwhile, I have my 2019 Camry Hybrid which I bought at 50,000 miles for $24,000. It gives me 53 mpg around town and 44 mpg highballing it down the highway all day at 80-85 mph, even in winter. I've made four trips of 3500-4000 mi each in the last nine months, and not once did have the slightest concern about range or "fuel". No problem running 450 or even 500 miles, then a five-minute fillup any place I chose.
Gee, I guess I’ll just keep pumping gas into my classic car.
"He needs a hidey hole for when the EV bubble bursts."
The government inflated that bubble. In a world with thinking adults, it would be the politicians who blew it up who would be feeling the need to hide.
Have to be hard nosed on everything except my 56b pay check!!
The super charger network is one of Tesla's core IP and differentiator from the competition. Either Elon doesn't have a clue or it suggests their financial position is much more tenuous than their reported figures imply.
The New Green Deal produces unreliable, expensive power, a green blight, and misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation of signals to curry production and purchase of limited use, expensive vehicles.
Blogger Rich said..."The super charger network is one of Tesla's core IP and differentiator from the competition. Either Elon doesn't have a clue or it suggests their financial position is much more tenuous than their reported figures imply."
So it's your thesis that Tesla's financial position is so tenuous that they're abandoning their cash cow. That's a stunning piece of analysis, Rich.
He's pulling back right now because every other car company jumped into a very niche market that he already owned. There is a future for electric and hybrid electric cars. Just not in this economy. He's a smart guy. He'll figure it out.
"It's a disaster, isn't it?"
For whom?
Also getting rid a team that has been so successful is bizarre. You could redistribute them into the business, keep the legacy knowledge, and keep a successful group of people, but instead they're cut presumably while less successful teams stay.
The fact that Musk didn’t think of his multibillion dollar pay check as an opportunity to be absolutely hardcore about cost reduction makes one wonder if he’d pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test.
I see it as a sign that he thinks the market is mature. The people who are likely to buy Teslas have done so, and their charging needs are adequately served. New customers will be harder to come by, and the existing customer base is accustomed to using the Tesla only for relatively local trips. There's no use case for building out the network nationwide.
Hard to bet against the man.
Most likely that he will send the first rocket to Mars.
***
"They let Tesla owners charge for free."
Very few Tesla owners charge for free. Some have that incentive when they purchased the car, but not many.
Most charge at home when the rates are lowest.
First I am not educated in this infrastructure.
Having said that. This is not about putting in 8 charging units, and moving down the road.
This units draw a lot of amps/watt of electricity. The grid is balenced. You cant just pop this in anywhere.
Supply lines are a real thing and today, the National grid cannot support a doubling of electric vehicles.
This is a good place to mention. If climate change were real and an immediate danger, as has been preached for the last 3 decades, 70% of the nations electricity would be nuclear generated by now.
Since that's not case, there is no fossil fuel problem.
If you think this is a disaster, wait until billions of solar panels need to be recycled or buried, and thousands of wind turbines need to be dismantled, transported and disposed of. What will the “carbon footprint” of those activities be?
I bet they will dwarf the cost of disposing of spent nuclear fuel on a $/gigawatt hour produced basis.
I always thought EVs larger than golf carts or motorbikes were a crock.
Not to brag, or anything.
In 6 years the Eco Commies have mandated 50% of all new car sales will be battery powered versions. Roughly 7 million. Just under 1.2 million were sold nationally in 2023. There are now 14 million in total nationwide. How many have access to "home charging"? Is this the classic case of putting the cart before the horse?
Superchargers not only don't make any sense economically, they don't even make sense from an engineering standpoint if you had infinite dollars.
In the 70s and 80s I was manager facility operations for Alcon's Humacao PR plant (You can see it here widest.monks.building We had 3 manufacturing plants, admin bldg, cafeteria and other stuff on one campus. We developed a cogeneration plant based on a 1MW F-M Diesel. With heat recovery, about 1.5MW equivalent. To run the entire plant, full time and normally with some extra capacity to spare.
I mention this to give you an idea of what a megawatt looks like.
This morning, I stopped at the gas station. It has 8 pumps plus a C-Store bigger than a many supermarkets of our childhoods. It has a 25KW generator to run the whole megillah indefinitely.
The V3 and V4 Tesla superchargers, typically installed in clumps of 4, need 250KW each or 1000KW (1MW) per clump.
At Alcon, we had a 38KV line coming into the plant. We had a big substation, perhaps 1/8 acre, to drop it to 13KV and send it to the various buildings. Additional substations in each building dropped the 13KV to 480V and then smaller transformers dropped that to 110/220.
I suspect the infrastructure to supply 1MW to that gas station for chargers might cost more than the building the entire station and C-store from scratch. perhaps $2-3million?
And that assumes that there is a 38KV distribution line nearby with an extra MW of capacity.
For every 10 supercharger clumps (10MW/1GW) an entire nuclear power plant will be needed.
In what world is this feasible?
Who pays for it? Ideally, the battery car owners will. But how? Some rough back of the envelope calculations in the next comment.
John Henry
Or, it’s cheaper to subcontract out the work?
1,000 KW for 8760 hours is 8,760,000KWH/yr If the superchargers are occupied 50% of the time, that means they sell 5,000,000KWH/yr (rounded up) If the install cost is $2mm and the life is 4 years, that is $500,000/yr to be amortized. or 10 cents/kwh.
Just for the capital cost. Not counting interest. Not counting maintenance and repair. Not counting the demand charges the utility charges all commercial customers.
And not counting the cost of the electricity itself. IF it is even available.
Buhbuhbuh Solar!
Here's a 40MW (nominal) solar field in Humacao. Garage.Deciding.Swaps It occupies @40 acres. It generates, on average, about 4MW. Each gas station, with 1 (count'em one!) supercharger clump, would need 5 acres of solar panels. Plus batteries.
John Henry
my 2019 Camry Hybrid which I bought at 50,000 miles for $24,000. It gives me 53 mpg around town and 44 mpg highballing it
That's nice. My 2021 Hyundai Elantra, pure gas, gets 50+ highway, 35-40mpg around town. It averaged a tad more than 40mpg overall for the first 10,000 miles.
I like the idea of hybrids so I am not being snarky. But until they get cheaper to buy than ICE, I don't see the payback.
John Henry
It makes sense for Tesla to outsource it if it isn't that profitable for them to do it personally.
"Biden's $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years. President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030.Mar 28, 2024"
Your obsession with Twitter is comical.
Folks like Mark, and he is pretty mild compared to those on BlueSky and Journo.host are almost comical about Twitter. They are still obsessed even though it no longer even exists.
They remind me of the ex-wife dishing to her girlfriends about the ex-husband's new wife/girlfriend.
"Did you see how much eye makeup she uses? And those shoes, PUHLLEEZE!!!"
Get over it Mark. X allows pretty much any legal speech, as it should. I fail to understand would be censors like you. Would you ban "Mein Kampf"? Or Triumph of the Will? Are they so dangerous that you worry they might convert you to National Socialism? Is your mind that week that you need protection?
Let them publish. Expose them to the sunlight and mockery. Let us talk about how silly and deadly their ideas are. Some people (like you?) might fall for it and we will mock them mercilessly.
John Henry
Bart mentions Quebec. I should point out that we have Quebec Hydro and their James Bay project to thank for the consequences of the acid rain hoax of the 70s.
They drowned tens of thousands of square miles of Indian land (they're indians. Who give a shit) for their massive hydropower project. Since it was, and still is, way bigger than Canada needs, they counted on selling the power to the US. But they could not compete with US coal.
So acid rain to the rescue. Hobble the coal plants with regulations, raise electricity costs and Voila! Sell hydro juice to the southerners.
They still export 20% or so of their hydropower to the US. And continue building more.
John Henry
I wonder what the consumer uptake might have been, had all of the subsidy & promotion gone toward hybrids rather than E-only V's?
FWIW, had I the desire to replace my well-maintained 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe (52k miles) with a newer vehicle, I'd likely be motivated to check out hybrids alongside ICE vehicles. But never an EV. Just one opinion.
I've talked here about my suspicion that Musk is going to give us space based solar power. Lots of advantages to that. One of the biggest is that it eliminates the need for much of the transmission grid. Possibly, eventually, much of the distribution grid as well.
But he needs to geet off his ass before the South Koreans beat him. They are proposing a 120GW (120 nuclear plant equivalent) project.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/05/south-korea-plan-for-space-based-solar-for-more-than-all-us-nuclear-power.html
Of course, SpaceX will probably sell them the launch capacity so he will still be involved.
John Henry
Turns out, it is rocket science.
Your obsession with Twitter is comical.
One of the Left's biggest goals is to regain Twitter/X back from Musk.
They need to control the narrative, as always.
Musk makes that more difficult for them and must be destroyed.
and raised doubts about whether the number of public chargers would grow fast enough to keep pace with sales of battery-powered cars
I think what's clear here is that Musk does not expect the pace of "sales of battery-powered cars" to justify building those stations
"For every 10 supercharger clumps (10MW/1GW) an entire nuclear power plant will be needed.
In what world is this feasible?"
Yeah…
What amazes me is that the Engineers haven't explained this to the politicians. This transition is not happening, because it's impossible. Musk knows this, has made his money on the front end, and is now scaling back his investments in this area.
The writing is on the wall.
Tesla will phase out eventually as SpaceX grows. Musk has used Tesla income to fund SpaceX. He doesn't care whether EVs succeed. When he doesn't need the income that will be the end of Tesla. He'll sell it off at some point so the end doesn't happen under his name.
Musk really is an enigma. One day he pulls off a terrific deal, the next day he sacks a whole load of people for reasons that don't really make sense.
Tesla is facing an uphill struggle across the globe, while other EV makers have been churning out newer and better models nearly every year, Tesla's newest car model (the model Y) is now 5 years old and the Company has not announced any new car models announced ( and the monstrosity that is the Tesla cyber truck does not count).
Additionally Tesla's line-up is incomplete by comparison, sure you have your sedans and SUVs, but the commercial offering is virtually non-existent. No Semi-trucks (Tesla Semi took 6 years to push out and its already very dated), cargo vans, buses. There appears to be little incentive for Tesla to move into the commercial space which is much more lucrative as those contracts are usually long lasting.
Even traditional ICE car makers have pushed out more EV models in the last 4 years. This has led Tesla to act erratically by cutting prices in the hopes it will outprice the competition. Even with those cut down Tesla prices, you can get a brand new Dacia Spring (2024 edition) for starting from 23K up to 28K (without subsidies) compared to tesla's cheapest car which starts from 39K to 55K (without subsidies).
And that is only counting western makes, Chinese makes are even cheaper see BYD's seagull which starts from 12K (Chinese market only).
The outlook does not seem to bode well for Tesla.
We can have charging stations every ten feet. But it will still take half an hour to fill up. 30 minutes. Not close to acceptable.
In Tesla's highly-developed markets, owners simply charge them overnight in the garage, drive them to local restaurants and shops, then use the Range Rover for the ski cabin or the 911 for the beach house.
I'm getting a kick out of Rich giving business advice to the wealthiest man on the planet.
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1786729930706895216
He doesn’t have an obligation to subsidize infrastructure. Besides the Biden government authorized billions to build out charging stations. Plenty…
For every 10 supercharger clumps (10MW/1GW) an entire nuclear power plant
Wow!
I really blew that. No idea what I was thinking
10mw doe not equal 1gw
1000mw = 1gw
John Henry
"I'm getting a kick out of Rich giving business advice to the wealthiest man on the planet."
Well, he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Blogger Michael said..."We can have charging stations every ten feet. But it will still take half an hour to fill up. 30 minutes. Not close to acceptable."
Ditto solar; you can build an infinite number and get nary a Watt at night. And windmills; you can build an infinite number and get nary a Watt when it's calm.
Too bad people insist on electricity at night.
So, 4,000 chargers/nuclear plant, John Henry?
Why try to compete with Uncle Sucker:
"President Biden, DOE and DOT Announce $5 Billion over Five Years for National EV Charging Network
FEBRUARY 10, 2022"
Aside from Tesla's initial need to give their buyers a way to charge their cars, it makes little sense to provide that service indefinitely. Toyota and GM didn't build gas stations for their ICE vehicles...Exxon and BP did that part.
I think that GM, Ford, and the Government thought that Musk would pay for chargers for the whole US ev fleet, including over the road freight trucks. Due to the above mentioned cost of capital, especially at 5% rates, charging your car is going to be at least twice the going $/ckw commercial electric cost, negating the savings compared to ICE.
The Utility makes it's money at the connection to the charging station, not at the connection to your car. Beidens $5 bil won't make any impact, even if we had enough windmills. Politicians listen to fantasy, not engineering, as their horizon is only the next election.
Musk can sell cars to rich people who have overnite chargers in their garages and can pay $60K to $110K for a car to drive 15 miles per day to the office. My condo management won't allow chargers in the garage building, fires and insurance and stuff, and no power main of sufficient capacity.
So, in fact, we can only shit as high as our asshole, TABERNAC!!
Charging stations aren't just a matter of plugging a fast-charger into a nearby power-point.
These things ideally draw 300kW each if a fast-charging EV is attached. They're usually at sites with a limited mains feeder, and exceeding that will black-out the site. So, you have to bank the power into local batteries for the moments a fast-charging car is up. That battery implies an inverter, safety relays, active air-conditioning, fire-suppression, and even sound-proofing beyond the custom cabinetry.
It all adds up, and if your policy is to give away the power to customers then you're bleeding money.
Non-Tesla networks have been hoisting charges like crazy to the point where gasoline is not much more expensive, and they're still going bust.
Short story: unless you're charging your EV at home off solar panels during the middle of the day, don't bother.
EVs have their place in the transportation industry. It is just a much smaller slice than has been pushed lately. I suspect that for the next few years that slice is maybe 20 to 25 percent of the market total. And the growth will be slow.
5/4/24, 2:33 PM
Blogger Original Mike said...
"For every 10 supercharger clumps (10MW/1GW) an entire nuclear power plant will be needed.
In what world is this feasible?"
Yeah…
What amazes me is that the Engineers haven't explained this to the politicians. This transition is not happening, because it's impossible. Musk knows this, has made his money on the front end, and is now scaling back his investments in this area.
The writing is on the wall.
5/4/24, 2:41 PM
Democrat politicians, being barbarians, can't understand the basic laws of economics, supply and demand, the causes of inflation, and the cost of manufacturing and distrubiting products. Engineers can explain the facts of life to them. It goes in one ear and out the other.
This incomprehension also applies to managers at Boeing, particularly Defense and Space company. The 767-tanker and Presidential Airplane are two examples of this. They are so focused on not spending an unnecessary penny, that they won't spend dollars for necessary aerodynamic testing and analysis. It's much cheaper to do risk assessment early in the program and testing/analysis to satisfy those risks than to do it late in the program. Problems uncovered during flight test cost 100x more than fixing them with wind tunnel testing.
It's a disaster, isn't it?
Another possibility: There's a been major battery breakthrough and everything they've been building out is about to become obsolete.
"There's a been major battery breakthrough and everything they've been building out is about to become obsolete."
That would be a fine thing, but I'm guessing it's not the case.
I'll preface this with I like Musk. But at the root of all his businesses is financial engineering to get the government to pay for it.
That's it. He knows it. SpaceX is brilliant, amazing, the best thing done for space and humanity in 50 years. But he built it on government subsidies, and will continue to do so.
Since he's become bête noire for the part of the government that doesn't actually do anything, he knows politically he's vulnerable and he isn't going to get the funds he needs to build out the supercharger network so it had to go.
Obviously the part of the government that still does things, even if poorly, the military, needs SpaceX.
I suspect Musk is doing it to satisfy short term thinkers like bankers, analysts and quarterly stock speculators. I’m sure his stock options or grants are calculated after the short term bankers covenants are calculated.
Blogger Bob Boyd said...
Another possibility: There's a been major battery breakthrough and everything they've been building out is about to become obsolete.
Scott Adams was talking a week or two ago about a breakthrough with some new sodium(I think) battery technology.
I'm not seeing how that would make superchargers obsolete, though it might mean we don't need as many. It still takes a certain amount of KWH to push 1 ton of car down the road at 60mph. The car might be lighter but still needs to be charged.
John Henry
I looked into the potential power and capital requirements for the equivalent of a gas station that could throughput 500 cars/day about a year ago and the numbers were so bad that I had been wondering how Tesla made it financially feasible with their charging network and the fees they were charging customers. I guess we now have the answer- they were using them as a loss leader the entire time, and once they were pressured to open this up to their direct competitors' vehicles, the loss leader usage no longer makes financial sense.
You are talking about an enormous amount of electrical power for each of these gas station equivalent charging sites- having that kind of capacity at standby 24 hours a day and the equipment to make it even physically feasible isn't cheap and it won't get any cheaper either going forward- this kind of equipment is just expensive and high maintenance- there aren't technological developments that change these requirements or make them less expensive. I doubt it is possible to make a profit in such a business, and it will likely require any builders of such stations to use them as loss leaders with significant losses.
"For every 10 supercharger clumps (10MW/1GW) an entire nuclear power plant will be needed."
The requirements are bad, John Henry, but the math you write here is off 1000MV/GW unless you are using these units in some fashion I am unfamiliar with.
Ok, never mind, JH- I see you caught the mistake.
The people who would actually have to build, sell, and fuel the millions of EV’s mandated by Biden and several blue states are meekly raising their heads and telling us that no f-in way is it ever going to happen. It won’t happen for the simple reason that it can’t happen. End of story.
John henry said...
I've talked here about my suspicion that Musk is going to give us space based solar power. Lots of advantages to that. One of the biggest is that it eliminates the need for much of the transmission grid. Possibly, eventually, much of the distribution grid as well.
I've been a fan of space based solar power since the 70s. But I ran the numbers last year, using a LLNL "hey cool, this is the cost per KW for space based solar power", the current SpaceX launch costs, and the current cost / KW for ground based solar power, and the ground based was still cheaper.
And that wasn't factoring in how much cheaper it is to do ground based maintenance on the solar panels.
So I hope someone does get space based solar power working. But I don't think we're there yet
Interesting video:
https://nextbigfuture.substack.com/p/did-elon-cut-tesla-supercharging-as-a-power-move
Musk has been creating a nationwide charging network right along. His superchargers are far faster than others. Newcomer manufacturers to evs made a "deal" to use his instead of investing in their own. Since no creation, installation, maintenance needed by them, just an adapter provided by Musk, they are able to sell their ev versions cheaper. Tesla sales dropped. Where is the incentive for Musk to continue doing all the work and carrying the cost of nationwide ev installations so others can reap the benefits?
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