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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

Whether Tesla survives or not, these billions are some of the best spent money on the planet in the last 50 years.

What are the accumulated losses so far? $5-10B? Even if Tesla were to spend another $50B and go bankrupt, I would still maintain it's great.

What Tesla has achieved is so important in the long run for the environment, for ending the strategic dependence on oil dictatorships, and for renewing the belief in technology. And the cars are really nice too.

Speculating, as some do, that the EV revolution would end with a Tesla bankruptcy is silly, not just because Google and Apple (and probably other companies) would be more than happy to take over before or after a bankruptcy, but also because consumers and the the auto industry have now been shown where to go. None of us can unlearn what Tesla has taught us. There is no way back now. Tesla has already won.

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I agree with my whole heart. I think we have a moral imperative to develop electronic transportation, sooner rather than later. We think about the future much too little.

Ever since we decide to concentrate farming and transport most food to mouths, we've relied on oil as a life-support system for 7.5+ billion people. There is no going back to pre-oil without a lot of those people dying, and oil will eventually be too pricey to extract. We should think harder about post-oil.

I've written about this before if you're interested: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/the-moral-technology-6413ca...

> "It’s as if there’s a worldwide commitment to helping this company succeed"

This statement makes me so happy, (a) because I feel I've noticed the same thing, (b) because it gives me faith that people actually care about putting money in good/important places, and (c) it implies that the economy understands that sustainable transport is actually an important cause, to the tune of $50B. This is what investment should be about: People cooperating to improve the way things are.

The Wait Buy Why blog did an article on Neuralink and went into Elon's motivation and strategy for making a business that makes the world a better place. It's a really great model.

Model --> https://28oa9i1t08037ue3m1l0i861-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...

Full Article --> https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

Isn’t the mining of materials and making of electric cars more carbon producing than the ICE vehicles they replace?

No. Batteries can be recycled, as can the aluminium that makes up Tesla car bodies. You don't get anything back from 30 years of ICE emissions.

Oil dictatorship will just move to renewables dictatorship. I was listening to the Bloomberg radio and some oil guy all on hype explaining how they are moving into the market and that 20% of their biz is now renewables and how they are the biggest solar electricity plant operator, etc. So, no, dictatorship as you say is kind of here to stay.

Also Tesla. BMW announced usable fully electric Mini and other manufactureres such as MB and Volvo are full on. I am sorry to say but Tesla will go down very soon....it's cool and everything but 'normal' businesses would already be down in similar position. You can't also really compare it to Amazon who actually formed the market. Tesla is competing with 100 years old manufacturers who nailed production down to the millionth of a cent.

Renewables can be used in almost any location over the entire world. It is incredibly hard to monopolise renewables in the same way you can monopolise oil.

Same could be said about feudalism and agriculture. And they did exist.

There will always be these monopolistic business practices and there is nothing much we could do about it.

BMW already have a fully electric car out, the i3. It costs ~$50k and has a range of, what, 120mi?

We'll have to wait and see if the fully electric Mini is going to be any better.

But we can look at the hybrid Mini Countryman S E, cleverly getting AWD from putting the electric motor on one set of wheels and ICE on the other set. Great idea. Except... it gets 27mpg. Terrible. The only excuse I can see is that it's a "performance hybrid", i.e. they weren't trying to be particularly fuel efficient.

Volvo currently sells only big cars that get bad gas mileage even in the hybrid versions.

I'm not holding my breath for any of these companies to save the planet.

putting 250mi range on a european car just feels like premature optimization.

my thinking is that bmw is going to sell electric cars with a diff spec in the US, same way bmw doesn't sell 1.5L 3 series there.

that said, given China's penchant for American sized cars, I feel like they're missing out on the two biggest economies in the world focusing on europe/asia exC.

> There is no way back now. Tesla has already won.

Elon has already won. His goal was to get the whole EV thing really going. Looks like the snowball is already rolling downhill now.

With some products it takes a while for the penny to drop, you mention Google, think of Street View and how there was that moment when this nice idea led to something bigger - Google owning maps with all their own cartography not copied from any other agencies. They got copyright on maps by doing them better. The task they undertook was something that most companies would petition their government to do, not do it themselves. There was a cash burn on driving those cars around too, plus privacy battles.

I know that 'anyone can make an electric car' (they did on Top Gear), however Tesla have worked with the toolmakers and component suppliers to build a factory to make cars, this is the main creation, the factory not the car.

Whilst older petrol hears have been sneering about range anxiety, something wonderful has happened to what is going to happen with the energy market and these electric cars. Soon you will be able to get a plug in the lamppost by your door fitted by your electricity company, this will be a bit like getting a satellite dish installed, except the lamppost will work for three cars. Then you get the option to buy cheap electricity from the windfarms when it is windy and sell it back to the grid at peak demand time, earning someone a profit. You won't need to go to garages and those extra long journeys would work out fine too - superchargers are there for that.

This fit - domestic energy demand, variable supply renewables and cars that have large batteries for range reasons - is all coming together nicely.

Tesla could make a 2CV grade electric car if they get the manufacturing sussed. In this situation the ICE dinosaurs just can't change quick enough and it becomes Nokia/iPhone again. This probably summarises it for me, what Tesla are doing is that revolutionary a change, much like what Apple did.

> Soon you will be able to get a plug in the lamppost by your door fitted by your electricity company, this will be a bit like getting a satellite dish installed, except the lamppost will work for three cars.

... and except that you need to have a bunch of guys with heavy machinery come dig up and re-lay the road, so that the electricians can come and lay the new 60 A cables for the lamppost, while another bunch of guys is upgrading the neighborhood distribution transformer which has reached max capacity, apart from those minor details, it's exactly like one guy screwing a parabolic piece of aluminium to your house wall.

> What Tesla has achieved is so important in the long run for the environment

Yeah, one thing the environment definitely needs is our continued reliance on personal transport vehicles, more roads, and more mining.

How anyone can frame this as being good for the environment is a joke. Yes, it is better than a gas car. That is a long way for actually being green.

Don't just kill an idea because it only helps x% and wait for something that helps 100%. You'll be waiting a long time.

Anyone buying a new Tesla to replace their current car is bad for the environment.

Lets just not lie about what it is. Time to start having a real conversation about what we need, rather than slightly diverting course by a few degrees, hoping the iceberg is really thin.

So what has been the net reduction of CO2 usage because of tesla to date?

A tiny reduction in the rate of increase of CO2 emissions. Every bit helps, but it's not saving the planet.

I'm going to venture that it's not even a rounding error.

In fact, in places it will likely have increased the CO2 emissions, again rounding error figures, due to the electricity generation mix and associated losses with generating that electricity (30-60% efficiency), plus transport losses (0.5 - 10%), plus charging loses, plus the efficiency of the motor itself.

The internal combustion engine in a car is around 20% efficiency while a coal power plant is around 55%. Gasoline powered drivetrains are also fairly inefficient leading to around 16% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. An electric car is making more efficient use of the energy. It's also centralizing the source of the pollution rather than having to try to deal with it in every car on the road.

A coal power plant can reach up to ~60% if coupled with steam turbines, otherwise it's ~30%.

Petrol cars can do a lot better than 20%

There is a study, link below, showing what the subsidy should be for electric cars and in a lot of places in the US the subsidy should be negative.

Granted things might've changed since then, but probably not to overturn the gist of it, which is the point I'm making. In places, EV cars are not the solution.

Quite happy to be proven wrong, at the of the day I've only got a passing interest on the topic so I'm not exactly 100% up to speed with any new studies, etc ...

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-electric-v...

City Lab has debunked that notion twice [1, 2].

"[I]t’s important to realize that the situation reflected in this data represents the past, not the present. States across the country are rapidly cleaning up their grids, thanks to cap-and-trade programs, investments in renewable energy, tightened air quality standards, and more coal plants put to sleep." [2]

"Here’s the cool thing about electric vehicles in the U.S. right now: In many areas, the longer you own one, the cleaner it gets." [1]

[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/electric-vehicles-are-c...

[2] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/12/the-surprisin...

The idea that electric vehicles are "dirty" because of electricity produced from coal is now widely viewed as a myth [1]. The electric grid in the US (and worldwide [3]) is consistently and rapidly moving away from coal, which increases the "clean" factor of EVs over time [2].

[1] https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/evs-n...

[2] https://electrek.co/2017/06/05/electric-cars-cleaner-than-ga...

[3] https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/16/coal-use-china-india-li...

If Tesla was actively working to prop up our fossil fuel based electricity grid, than I think this would be a fair argument. But they are not. Instead they are actively engaged in the solar+storage market, and they have stated multiple times that they believe the grid can be 100% renewable.

In the short term, yes, folks will need to rely on existing fossil fuel technologies to build factories, transport materials, and power the grid. That is because there is no other economically viable option. To expect the entire clean energy industry to bootstrap itself only using clean energy is a fallacy. In 20-30 years when the grid is more green and clean transportation is widely available, then arguments like these would be valid.

I'm just pointing out that both effects are, at this point in time, just rounding errors

That is a poorly phrased question to consider the value of the investment. Specifically, 'to date' is not appropriate for an investment. It is like looking at a half built widget factory and asking what is the net reduction in human labour for all widgets because of the factory, to date?

What is the net change in CO2 usage that results from the investments Tesla has made?

Tesla has made fewer than 190000 cars total, to date. Over 77 million cars were sold worldwide last year. And that's just cars.

Not eating meat is much more efective to saving the planet than buying a Tesla.

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-eating-meat-bad-environmen...

Well of course, doing almost anything is much more effective than buying a Tesla. More cars are not planet saving at all, and it is delusional to think so.

With more EVs, we won't breathe so much car exhaust in cities. This is important.

> what has been the net reduction of CO2 usage

I think it is too late and too optimistic to hope for CO2 reduction.

The world only aims for a moderate decrease in CO2 rate of increase.

This is literally the point of the Model 3. They need 500,000+ cars on the road in order to move the dial on petroleum dependence. Other car makers need to copy Tesla because electric cars are better and cheaper to own, etc. We're not at that tipping point yet. A lot hinges on the Model 3 being a success.

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