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Comment by pazra | Hacker News Reader

Will be interesting to see what product categories they enter in the future. Currently they have cars and batteries, but there's got to be a good change they're planning on entering a new product category soon.

Any thoughts on what they might bring to market?

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I'm hoping homes.

There's lots of energy to be saved in better home construction, and factory-made homes can be made more cheaply than on-site built homes.

That's the one I've been hoping for ever since I saw the solar roof.

Also looking at the German standards for low or even positive energy homes I see a huge potential for energy efficient homes in the US (but also other markets).

The German Passivhaus standard just begs for factory prefab construction. I suspect a major factor is how one can reduce the cost of making the structure airtight.

Don't fully airtight structures need a lot of redundant safety systems to protect against just leaving a candle on killing everyone from carbon dioxide poisoning?

Airtight homes doesnt mean no ventilation but no cracks in walls and doors and window framing

In the context of avar's question the active ventilation is a safety system.

A little bit of research indicates that candles are not all that different in oxygen consumption and CO2 production than a human and that a single candle (or person) wouldn't use up the oxygen quickly if the ventilation ceased.

As long as a failure of the ventilation system is obvious (so a window can be opened or whatever), it doesn't seem like it would be a major concern.

Well, a candle isn't enough to be a concern. But state of the art air tight passive houses include ventilator units that exchange air while retaining (or rejecting) as much heat as possible.

There are several companies in the US producing prefab Passivhaus homes. Typically, a building membrane is used as the airtight layer. Joints get taped, both in the factory and on site. E.g. http://www.phoenixhaus.com E.g. https://www.ecocor.us/prefab

Im waiting for the day that a "positive energy" trumps energy efficiency in germany. With solar prices dropping we may get to the point that it is cheaper to not insulate or otherwise reduce energy use and instead achieve positive energy entirely by slapping on more solar panels. Zero-carbon is a net measurement. You dont actually need to be efficient in terms of total energy use.

But you need to build more solar panels. So the question is whether it'll be cheaper to insulate better, or to manufacture more solar panels.

I think the idea that energy would be cheap forever is what got us into the current mess of high utility bills for poorly insulated homes.

This has already started to a degree, as people trying to build net-zero homes find that at a certain point the cost (in money/effort/carbon/energy) to add further insulation exceeds the cost of adding heat to the home via adding solar PV. I believe retro-fits of older homes hit this point earlier, since it can be harder to insulate them beyond the low hanging fruit.

Obviously as PV price continues to drop, this point will be met earlier and earlier.

Ive observed this already in off-grid situation where the priorities are different (no net metering, power not used/stored is power abandoned) but when it hits the mainstream it could make a real dent in home construction/insulation biz.

I doubt that will ever happen. 1) Insulation is essentially passive for the lifespan of a building, PVs and other solar tech + associated heating & cooling systems need regular maintenance, cleaning, replacing etc. 2)highly energy efficient buildings provide better comfort and indoor environmental conditions than a poorly performing building with lots of active heating / cooling etc. 3) insulation works day and night, all year round, PV only produced electricity when the sun shines. There is a big gap between what PV can supply and day/night demand and summer/winter demand. Storage might get to the point where it can bridge the day/night supply/demand gap, but seems unlikely to bridge the summer/winter supply/demand gap.

That would be pretty exciting! Maybe they'll acquire Blu Homes [1], or Acre Designs [2].

[1] https://www.bluhomes.com/ [2] http://www.acredesigns.com/

A lot of the technologies in better home construction are usually out of reach for low income families and low income areas. Add in the number of trades that are included in building houses, and I would imagine a lot of push back on getting some of these technologies implemented at a low cost.

I do still believe there is a huge opportunity for companies to disrupt the building industry with modular housing and other economic choices for people who really can benefit from this.

Didn't they recently merge with SolarCity? Add solar-panel roof tiles to the list: https://www.tesla.com/solar

Elon has talked about building an electric jet. Maybe something similar to Joby Aviation or Zee Aero but he wants it to be supersonic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx3auTD85Fw

I don't think of tesla as a "car and battery" company but as a "portable battery (the supposed car) and a home battery" company.

They already partner with (or own) SolarCity so really their overarching business is as an energy company. They collect it, they store it, and they transport it.

All they need is a logistically easier way to transport it than traditional power lines which I'm guessing would step on some toes. So their next step might be something like WiTricity. That way, they can bypass physical infrastructure.

> I don't think of tesla as a "car and battery" company but as a "portable battery (the supposed car) and a home battery" company.

If they really want to be in the business of making batteries, they should get out of the business of making cars as quickly as possible. It's an expensive distraction.

It's extremely difficult, the R&D costs are enormous, scaling up is difficult, thousands of little things can sink you, and once you sell a product, you will be on the hook for it for the next decade.

To me, it seems that they are a car company with a battery side business - it makes a hell of lot more sense then being a battery company with a car side business - for the same reason that Exxon-Mobil isn't an oil company with a jumbo-jet-manufacturing side business.

I think they're a vertically integrated Energy company - Think if ExxonMobil merged with GM.

Which would be a terrible idea. since both energy, and energy storage is a commodity. GM may as well merge with United Fruit Company.

The only two gains I could see would be diversification (But then why not merge with Bank of America? Or Google?), and an integrated logistics system (Except that logistics for electricity and gasoline are long-solved non-problems - and have nothing to do with auto manufacturing.)

It's a brilliant idea if you consider that all of this knowledge work is reusable and necessary on Mars.

The IP for this tech will be only minimally encumbered through a relationship with a friendly entity.

It's worth noting that in practice, the management of GM and EM coordinate so closely that they might as well be a single entity.

>All they need is a logistically easier way to transport it than traditional power lines

what flaws of traditional power lines are holding Tesla back right now? It's not a subject i've ever really thought about, but i was under the impression that high-voltage cabling was a pretty efficient way to transport power.

Actually it's around 6% loss in lines and transformers: 2% in transmission and 4% in distribution.[1] This works out to be quite a lot. In some high-intensity areas, Ohm's law losses can use more energy than refrigerating a superconductor over the same length. I'm not sure that there exist ways of increasing efficiency here, but getting another percent or two of global energy production for "free" would be amazing.

But I'm not really sure that the distribution network is holding Tesla back right now. With some SolarCity and a PowerWall, you're going to be able to go off-grid. In theory. The idea is to be a total alternative to traditional energy companies and utilities.

[1]: http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-...

WiTricity is not for transportation. It's very inefficient even over close (~10 feet) distances, which is it's intended use

There's a concept called "grid parity", where solar PV can deliver energy for the same cost as your utility would charge you for it's provision. This is considered a tipping point, where the economics starts pushing things along harder rather than relying on idealism. It got talked about for years as a goal, but now we've passed it in various parts of the world (starting in those with the combination of lots of sun and high priced utilities).

There's another concept that builds on this called "god parity", which points out that simply distributing energy via a grid has a cost (sometimes more than half of the cost you pay), so if you imagine that you had a tame god that could generate infinite energy for free, but you still had to pay the distribution costs, then if current trends continue, then PV plus batteries would still be cheaper than paying for a grid to deliver "free" energy to your home. It's perhaps not a coincidence that Tesla provides both of the items needed to make this happen, PV and home energy storage.

http://tonyseba.com/how-to-lose-40-trillion/#attachment_1567

It's a fairly minor thing, but if I had to guess I'd say a Tesla branded inverter for PV systems. Their electric vehicles and the Powerwall 2 incorporate inverters already. It wouldn't be a stretch to start offering them for PV systems too, now that they've got SolarCity. (But there doesn't seem to be any really compelling reason not to continue using third party inverters for PV, so who knows.)

They will do this. Tesla branded panels, inverters, batteries, car chargers, apps. All seamlessly integrated from one company. I'm curious whether they'll get into DC optimizers.

> It's a fairly minor thing, but if I had to guess I'd say a Tesla branded inverter for PV systems.

Responding to a question from an analyst during the company’s quarterly results call, Musk said:

“…There's no question Tesla's going to do integrated inverter. It's the logical thing to do. I think we've got the most advanced inverter engineering team in the world, and so it makes sense to, just as we do the inverters on vehicles, to do it with solar as well and have it in a very tight package at a cents per Watt level that is, I think, probably twice as good as anyone else. I think maybe better than that.”

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/tesla-confirms-plan-to-use-own-i...

Thinking about the political situation, what kind of new industry can Tesla enter into, that will create plenty of jobs, and would be greatly helped from Musk's relationship with the President?

Inductively-charged border-monitoring autonomous drones.

UHV DC transmission lines [1]

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-c...

Boats. Was actually told this first day I started working there. Won't be going into production until after pickup truck is out in the market. Looking at early to mid 20's time frame.

For some reason seeing the "mid 20's" refer to 2020's felt really strange.

Any chance they're rolling SolarCity into Tesla?

Already happened.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/tesla-sea...

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