Elon Musk offers to help get the grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner back in the air
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
Lori Gunter 787 Program Communications Manager 425-266-6256 loretta.m.gunter@boeing.com
Larry Loftis 787 General Manager (I don't have his confirmed information)
Also, most of the time the use of consultants isn't publicized - taking help from Elon Musk would no doubt be broadcast heavily by the media, and most likely not in a positive light.
Tesla has revenue of 200m/yr. At this rate, it'll be 160 years before Tesla pulls in revenue equal to the R&D on this plane.
Tesla doesn't even manufacturer their own batteries.
Boeing doesn't need to go ask Tesla for help, they can buy the company with the change in their pocket if they thought there was anything there of value to them.
This is nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Did I already mention that Tesla does not manufacturer their own batteries.
Tesla hasn't released any numbers for 2012 yet.. so unless you work there, you have no idea if they will break 400m for 2012. And even if you do work there, 1b for 2013 is pure speculation on your part.
2012 Tesla revenue
Q1 30m
Q2 27m
Q3 50m
http://news.investors.com/business/050912-610645-tesla-motor...
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/tesla-motors-q2-revenue-mod...
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1072761-the-true-genius-of-t...
In fact, even the articles you link all point to a plan that involves $400M revenue for the year, and each article indicates that they're on-plan. Of course, the plan COULD be wrong, and it could be deceitfully wrong, but it seems utterly plausible, and apparently all analysts agree (within say 10%).
And also you're being needlessly rude.
Agree and also cocky hubris as well. As if to imply that Boeing doesn't have capable people coming from someone who while certainly has had his achievements doesn't have that long of a history. 787 was a huge "bet the company" type undertaking. It's a black eye but they will fix it. Nobody can accuse Boeing as a company of just being lucky either with their history.
Would there be anything unreasonable about Boeing also giving their customers a choice of Thales/Yuasa or Tesla/Panasonic?
If a Boeing customer has been informally talking with both Tesla, and their Boeing sales rep, and the Boeing sales rep thinks it's unlikely Tesla would be willing to help out, is it possible that a tweet like this would help the Boeing customer to get useful conversations going within Boeing?
Right now lithium is under heavy fire (no pun intended) both because its expensive and explosive (besides this, many Fisker Karma cars burned).
Since Tesla is still losing money and has to raise money by selling stock, Musk has to keep up appearances by showing Tesla has the know-how to make lithium safe.
Or else, Tesla will run out of money soon, and game over.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1072761-the-true-genius-of-t...
"We will NOT hold your Reservation Payment separately or in an escrow or trust fund or pay any interest on Reservation Payments, except to the extent required by law."
I think GP's point is that if in the next period they don't get more reservations than they would be in the red, so the current black is to be considered with a pinch of salt.
There are roughly two ways to do accounting. One: you count when cash enters your bank account and when cash leaves your bank account. This is cash accounting and it measures cashflow. This is important to track because if you run out of cash, you're pretty boned.
The other way is more sophisticated. I think this is called accrual accounting. With accrual accounting, if I sell you a widget, I count the expense of the widget and the revenue from selling the widget at the same time and trust that the cash flow will work out in the long run. So it doesn't matter if you pay me first and then next year I ship you the widget, or if I ship you the widget today and then you pay me, or if I buy the parts for the widget on credit and pay my supplier after I sell the widget, because as soon as I account for the revenue from the widget, I simultaneously have to account for the expenses as well. This is more honest than cash accounting in the sense that it's harder to game, but it's less honest in the sense that I have to keep track of more accounting fictions. Amortization is one of these accounting fictions.
You need to do both types of accounting at the same time. They just solve different problems. Accrual accounting makes sure things will work out profitably in the long run and cash accounting makes sure you won't run out of money before then. What you don't do is mix and match approaches. If you take in a bunch of cash now and then spend it on a manufacturing plant, you can't say, "well, we're amortizing that" because amortization or not, you don't have the cash anymore.
(Disclaimer: I am not an accountant. In college, I took two classes in accounting, in the summer of 2004. I got a B and an A. The one I got a B in was a 7 AM class and I usually slept in instead of bothering to go when there wasn't a test. I did have the textbook for the class, so I was able to read it at my leisure, though I focused a lot more on my infinitely more interesting class on "Science Fiction and Philosophy". It was a summer class, and there were six tests, one per week, and my grade was based on those six tests. Before test #6, I calculated that I would get a B if I scored anywhere between 50% and 95%, so I didn't study very hard. Fortunately, the tests mostly covered various extremely tedious details, not the general principles outlined above. I believe I got an A in "Science Fiction and Philosophy".)
Presumably production is still being scaled up, since Tesla is still planning and opening up stores all over the US and doing this without scaling production would just create unmet demand. The level of vitrol from some commenters in this thread is unwarranted.
Musk has previously stated that he has conceptual designs for an electric jet, so his interest in FAA certification of Tesla battery technology is most likely not something borne out of Boeing's current troubles.
Elon has been trading jabs in the press with United Launch Alliance (Boeing + Lockheed Martin) over US military satellite launch, with Elon claiming he can provide better pricing because SpaceX has more advanced technology; perhaps there are multiple places Elon has more advanced technology than Boeing.
The other possibility is that Boeing may revert to using a non-lithium ion battery technology. I haven't found any description of how much work they'd need to do to make that happen.
Do you like random people offering help when you are doing something?
Looks like someone is building Stark Industries more and more.
If they are domain experts and they are actually likely to be helpful, then absolutely I do. If they are just being polite and can't really help, then not so much but I'll usually still appreciate the offer unless they are being persistently annoying about it.
When I was younger and more insecure about my own abilities, I did not accept help so graciously, but luckily I grew out of that phase.
Boeing fly F-16s and Lockheed sometimes fly F/A-18s. I've heard stories about the engineers/test pilots exchanging safety of flight related information to a competitor. This is done with full permission of both companies.
He's also said he would ultimately like to make electric airplanes, so this is probably not the first day he's thought about it.
No doubt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing engineers know a thing or two or three or four about putting large things in the air and electric batteries, but this is a specific and unfortunate problem. Inviting a few twitting strangers (competitors too) out of the blue, unless they have a specific tip, maybe isn't the way to go. If Elon knew the problem, he'd get 100 times better press by telling them.
Yuasa stated today it would "take months" to fully investigate the battery fire.
http://www.gsyuasa-lp.com/content/thales-selects-gs-yuasa-li...
Elon said that the problem with NASA was that they had sub-contractors, that had sub-contractors ad. infinitum. So each one of these sub-contractors had to make a profit. SpaceX try to make everything in the building process.
If some rule said Congress couldn't pick projects based on what districts got the work (good luck with that), then Boeing would change its model.
The business model Boeing is operating under is different. You can disparage it, but it is a fact of live for any defense contractor or airplane manufacture in the last 50 years of the 1900's. Boeing wants to build stuff too, and its engineers are very good.
SpaceX didn't grow up under these conditions. It will be interesting if they have to change after a few trips to DC.
And this is unsurprising. In aviation, you don't just push a fix and deploy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/07/tesla_roadster_recal...
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/tesla-recalling-4...
http://blog.timesunion.com/hottopics/100k-electric-vehicle-b...
http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/fisker-karma-evs-caug...
http://www.leftlanenews.com/16-fisker-karmas-catch-fire-at-p...
http://priuschat.com/threads/more-than-a-dozen-fisker-karma-...
What were you saying?
Yes, there was a recall, and Tesla recalled all their roadsters because there might have been a fire in a cable (not in the battery mind you), but none of the articles you pointed to showed that there was, ever, one Tesla battery system that caught fire.
I am ready to be disproved, but I'd need actual proof.
Ever build anything with a lot of parts? Things do go wrong.
As far as proving me wrong, perhaps it's because I did my research on Tesla too. And in the interest of disclosure, I own Tesla stock as well as Boeing stock.
Tesla has clearly had quite their share of battery related difficulties, including the infamous bricking problems. They have domain knowledge, but let's not pretend they are in the same zip code - let alone ballpark - as Boeing.
This is a publicity grab by Elon.
And, about the criteria being narrow: yes, of course it is.
I'm sure Musk's people have all sorts of checklists and criteria to be satisfied for large lithium ion batteries in vehicular use. The FAA can then apply those to Boeing's work.
about one, apparently :)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=capitalization+of+boein...
Now would you let Boeing make that choice? The customers American Airlines, Al Italia, Aeroflot, Air Timbuktu?
Remember the rules have to apply to all planes, manufacturers and airlines including the ones about to go bankrupt.
In my view the answer would be a definite YES although I would hope the approval could be expedited if there are clear issues with the existing solution and good reasons to believe the new solution will solve it without causing other issues.
http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/...
Look on page 2 for what's expected to be done and how it'll be approved.
Briefly, that means that a Risk Assessment of the proposed design change must be made, the design change will be controlled (i.e., Requirements, Design, Testing and Reviews of all phases will be performed and properly documented), then the Design Output must be reviewed for correctness and the results may be used to update the initial Risk Assessment if needed.
Similar processes will apply to an airliner, the question is will they be more or less rigorous.
So yeah, changing a critical component is a time consuming and expensive process.
Is it impossible to think a billionaire would offer to help another company because he's a nice person?
Because he loves tech and wants to see modern, efficient designs like the 787 succeed?
Why do you automatically assume there is something in it for him?
Next time you have the chance, do a favor for someone, just because.
(I'm not saying it is his motivation. But damn sure I'd love if things worked this way. They should.)
Imagine that he puts Tesla and SpaceX engineers to work on the problem and they aren't able to help. Well, that's pretty much just a waste of resources, but he still probably gets decent PR out of it and he gets to cement the idea of his companies being "good guys", which is useful even down to the level of employee retention.
Imagine that "his" engineers are able to help. Well, now he's done several things. Increased the prestige of his companies, increased the satisfaction of his employees, etc. Also, he's made the world a better place by making planes safer and keeping planes flying, which has significant positive (though often diffuse) trickle down effects on the future.
On the other hand, imagine that his offers are rebuffed, in which case he gets to take the high road and still gets a decent PR win.
The only way this could backfire would be if somehow he helped out and made things worse. Or, say, Tesla/SpaceX engineers fix the problem and then a month from now a 787 falls out of the sky for undetermined reasons, potentially leaving him with some of the blame. That sort of thing is rather unlikely though.
And the ones on the 787 are made in Japan so I am sure the quality is extremely high, there is just an engineering problem they didn't anticipate or maybe they outsourced a component that failed.
For Reference:
http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/ntsb-p...
“Space transport guys are not going to just walk in and figure this out."
Things happen even to the brightest so Elon and others should keep that in mind.
(RFC 1925)
Basically every new airliner design suffers delays and problems entering commercial service. That's not new, but the level of media saturation (aided by this "internet" thing) probably is.
The other thing that's new... is that the planes aren't crashing and killing people. New airliners of yore had a tendency to do that (as with the DC-10's cargo door, for example). The last two to enter service -- the A380 and the 787 -- have both had problems that resulted in voluntary or involuntary grounding, but the planes have stayed in the air, landed safely when in-flight problems occurred, and everybody's survived those problems.
Which, given how vastly more complex modern airliners are, is really a hell of an accomplishment.
It would be great if some of the aircraft industry's techniques could influence IT (although admittedly many of the things we do are less life-threatening than flying at 35,000 ft). It would be even better if they could influence medicine. Far too many people die because there is no systematic measurement and analysis of medical practice.
But battery overheating problem seems like someone underestimated the problem gravely - it is not something new or surprising.
When the engines are turning, there is no shortage of power for amenities.
They used LiIon batteries for the same reason your laptop and phone do: they're small and have good energy density. The older technologies are not. Weight is a big deal and when you want 10% better fuel economy than you had before, you need to cut every gram.