Electric switch poses existential challenge to carmakers

When Tesla started production of the Model S saloon in 2012, the start-up had fewer than 3,000 employees. Chief executive Elon Musk had the luxury of beginning with a blank page, to hire just the specialists he needed and to even risk complete failure in his quest to launch the first successful electric-only car brand.

One former Tesla executive compares Mr Musk’s approach to risk with Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador. “When he came to Mexico and quite of few of his men said they should go back home, he destroyed his ships. There was no way back,” the former executive says. “There’s only one way, and it’s forward. Success or die . . . That’s the strength, but it’s also a risky strategy.”

Incumbent carmakers are hardly drawn to this “bet the company” approach. The risks are simply too high. In Germany alone some 800,000 people work in the automotive industry and the Ifo Institute last year estimated that up to 600,000 of these jobs would be at risk if the internal combustion engine died.

Read the story from the Financial Times by Patrick McGee - “Electric switch poses existential challenge to carmakers.”

Electric vehicles alone could cause peak oil demand within decade

When Tesla announced that it had built 7,000 cars in a week, I got excited. Even though electric vehicles (EVs) make up only a small percentage of new car sales in most countries, those sales are growing rapidly.

In an aggressive scenario, electrified transportation
 could displace 8 million barrels of oil per day.

But how long before they really start to take a bite out of oil demand?

Norway offers some clues, where years of generous—some would say unsustainable—incentives saw EVs and plug-in hybrid sales grow to 55% of the new car market in March. And the cumulative impact of those sales may have FINALLY translated into a drop in overall demand, with gasoline in particular seeing a 2.9% drop in sales.

Read the story by Sami Grover from Treehugger - “Electric vehicles alone could cause peak oil demand within decade.”

Elon Musk's giant battery is set for testing in South Australia

Billionaire Elon Musk's giant battery being built in South Australia will be energised in coming days and begin testing, indicating Tesla is on track to meet a 100-day self-imposed deadline to install the system.

The world’s biggest lithium iron battery farm takes
 shape near Jamestown, 200 kilometres north of Adelaide.

Tesla power packs have now been fully installed on a site near a wind farm north of Adelaide and will be tested to ensure the battery meets standards laid down by the energy market operator, the South Australia state government said in a statement on Thursday.

South Australia's Premier Jay Weatherill said in the statement he will join representatives from Tesla and others next week to officially launch the battery, which "has put South Australia and Jamestown on the map as a world leader in renewable energy with battery storage.”

"The world's largest lithium-ion battery will be an important part of our energy mix, and it sends the clearest message that South Australia will be a leader renewable energy with battery storage", he said.

Read the Sydney Morning Herald story by Perry Williams - “Elon Musk's giant battery is set for testing in South Australia.”

Elon Musk's Tesla to build world's biggest lithium ion battery to secure power for South Australia

South Australia will be home to the world's largest lithium ion battery thanks to a historic agreement between Tesla and the State Government.

The Hornsdale Wind Farm is still under construction.

And Tesla boss Elon Musk is promising to build it in 100 days, or it's free.

Tesla will build the 100-megawatt battery which will store energy from French renewable company Neoen's Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, which is still under construction.

The project will be in place before summer.

Mr Musk's '100 days or it's free' pledge starts once the grid interconnection agreement has been signed.

Read the ABC News story - “Elon Musk's Tesla to build world's biggest lithium ion battery to secure power for South Australia.”

Electric vehicle sales in Canada are up 68%, thanks to Nissan and Tesla going strong

Electric vehicle sales keep increasing at an impressive pace in Canada to a point that they are now representing a meaningful percentage of overall car sales.

During the first quarter 2017, electric vehicle deliveries reached a record high of 1,474 units (BEVs and PHEVs) – up 68% over the same period last year.

The arrival of the Chevy Bolt EV and the Hyundai Ioniq Electric in Canada helped boost EV sales in the country during the last quarter with 300 and 9 deliveries respectively, but Nissan and Tesla are still the market leaders.

Between the Roadster, Model S, and Model X, there are now 6,900 Tesla vehicles in Canada or 42% of the total PEV market share in the country.

Tesla delivered 400 Model X SUVs in Canada during the first 3 months of the year alone.

Read the Electrek story “Electric vehicle sales in Canada are up 68%, thanks to Nissan and Tesla going strong.”

Tesla is powering the Hawaiian island of Kauai with more than 54,000 solar panels

Tesla is powering the Hawaiian island of Kauai with solar panels.

Tesla takes its power to Kauai.

Tesla officially unveiled the project Wednesday morning in Kauai following opening remarks by CTO JB Straubel and David Ige, governor of Hawaii. Tesla partnered with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) to launch the project.

The solar farm is composed of 54,978 solar panels with 13 megawatts of solar generation capacity. Tesla has also installed 272 of its large commercial battery, Powerpack 2, to store the solar energy to use at night.

The project is expected to reduce fossil fuel use by approximately 1.6 million gallons per year, Tesla estimates. Tesla will begin turning on the massive solar system in phases beginning Wednesday.

Read the Business Insider story - “Tesla is powering the Hawaiian island of Kauai with more than 54,000 solar panels.”

Tesla turns its attention of Australian farmers

Global tech giant, Tesla has pitched its products to Australian farmers for the first time.

At an Agribusiness Australia event in Melbourne, Tesla told farmers that its battery storage technology could move them beyond food and fibre and into food, fibre and energy production.

The company's Nick Carter said solar power and storage was competing against diesel as an energy source but it did provide more options for farmers.

"The history of innovation in Australia is really impressive," he said.

Read the ABC Rural story - “Next generation farming power: Tesla speaks to farmers at Melbourne event.”

Reality check from Tesla's Elon Musk

Elon Musk launches the new Model 3 Tesla.

Tesla has just provided the world with a reality check.

Just hours after founder Elon Musk revealed that pre-orders for Tesla's cheaper Model 3 vehicle, which was unveiled to acclaim last week, had surpassed the most optimistic expectations, the company outlined ongoing problems over the delivery of existing vehicles. 

The deliveries of vehicles on the market were lower than expected in the first quarter, it said in a blunt statement.

Read The Sydney Morning Herald story - “Tesla blames its own 'hubris' as it fails to deliver.”

(Back to my mantra – privately owned cars, electric or otherwise, will not be, cannot be a part of our future. Even if the world’s population only just exceeds 10 billion by 2100, the world will not have sufficient resources for an equivalent growth in privately owned cars. Beyond the anarchic use of the private car, the infrastructure they require is simply too consuming – Robert McLean.)

Hyperloop for those who can't afford a Model S Tesla

Elon Musk's Hyperloop -
this artist's impression gives
a War of the Worlds feel.

Last night Elon Musk announced his latest version of the Hyperloop, the high speed mass transit system for the rest of us who can't afford a Model S.

Covered earlier in TreeHugger, Musk told Mike that he was too busy to actually do it himself, saying “I wish I had not mentioned it, I still have to run SpaceX and Tesla, and it’s f*cking hard.”

However his German design office found patents and plans that already existed, so instead of starting from scratch they are going to be using the design that is really not that different from model one, with electromagnets pulling the train through glass tubes.

Read the Treehugger story – “Elon Musk announces Hyperloop Model 2 will arrive in 2017.”

(Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is apparently for the “rest of us” who can’t afford a Tesla Model S.

I suggest that the world can’t afford a Model S, of for that matter even the cheaper Model 3 as without the massive space and energy consuming road infrastructure, they are completely ineffective.

We need Elon tear himself away from SpaceX and Tesla and devote himself to the Hyperloop – Robert McLean.)

Tesla eyes off the mass car market

Elon Musk with the new Tesla Model X.

The eye-catching falcon-wing doors that adorn Tesla's Model X set it apart from other big and expensive SUVs. But like the firm's Model S, a stylish and speedy saloon, the biggest difference lies under the bodywork: it is powered by a battery.

Tesla has accelerated into the automotive fast-lane by making electric cars that appeal to rich folk keen to burnish their credentials as environmentally aware techies. But at the end of March, it is launching the Model 3, a cheaper vehicle aimed at the upper end of the mass market. It will be a far harder sell.

Tesla has hitherto thrived in a niche. Other carmakers crammed bulky and expensive batteries into petite "city" cars. Tesla put a bigger power-pack into large and expensive ones (prices start at $70,000), more readily absorbing the cost of the battery. This also gives the cars a decent range of more than 250 miles (400km) between charges, and lightning acceleration.

Read the Australian Financial Review story in its Weekend section - “Backed by low costs Tesla aims for the mass car market.”

(Most everything about the concept that has driven Elon Musk is to be admired except that the firm is created in and aimed, without apology, at the private market.

Privately owned cars and privatization of what is now public are contrary to the direction the world needs to take if it is to mitigate and avoid the worst implications of climate change.

The innovative thinking and human energy behind the Tesla concept urgently need to be applied to understanding how the best attributes of modernity can be preserved, while humanity, even if it grows to nine or ten billion in number can continue to live in a contented manner.

Privately owned transport and the privatization of the public realm (both in space and  infrastructure) is contrary to what we need – Robert McLean.)

Yes! 2015 has been 'The year of the battery'

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2015 - "The Year of the Battery".

n many ways, 2015 has been “the year of the battery.”

Consider the excitement around Tesla’s Powerwall or battery energy storage’s 600 percent Q2 growth over Q1 or one of the world’s largest utilities recently proclaiming that batteries will obviate the need for any new gas peaker plants in the U.S. post-2020. But the most important and exciting news around batteries still lies ahead.

Read the EcoWatch story - “2015: ‘The Year of the Battery’”.

Powerwall present 'biggest challenge' to Australia's power industry

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Tesla's "Powerwall".

he arrival of the Powerwall Tesla battery storage unit in Australia will herald the biggest challenge to Australia’s electricity industry for decades.

Tesla announced on Thursday that it is fast-tracking the roll-out of its battery storage product. Australia will be its first market for the 7kWh household units. The first deliveries had not been expected until well into 2017.

The Tesla Powerwall is not the first or even the cheapest battery storage maker to enter the Australian market but it is the most ubiquitous brand.

Read the Guardian story - “Tesla's Powerwall will give its first taste of disruption to Australia's energy market”.

Tesla Model S charges its way to a new consumer high

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ts price tag aside, the Tesla Model S P85D is nearly perfect.

A year after Consumer Reports published a harsh critique of the electric sedan it once ranked above all other cars, Tesla's new speedy, all-wheel-drive version of the vehicle scored so high it shattered the rating system.

"The Tesla initially scored 103 in the Consumer Reports Ratings system, which by definition doesn't go past 100," Mark Rechtin, an editor at Consumer Reports, wrote in a review published Thursday. "The car set a new benchmark, so we had to make changes to our scoring to account for it."

In 80 years of testing, no car has ever earned that high a score.

Read the Huffington Post story - “Tesla's Model S Is So Great It Broke Consumer Reports' Scoring System.”

Shoulders droop as Victorian decision makers, again, misunderstand the future

by Robert McLean

C

ontradictory values abound and the emphasis on one ahead of the other makes my shoulders droop.

Two pages in today’s Melbourne Age don’t directly discuss the contradiction, but adjoining stories certainly highlight our confused thinking and illustrate that Victoria’s decision makers have little or no understanding what we should be doing to prepare ourselves for a decidedly different future.

One story is about the creation of just over 120km of highway from Ballarat to Stawell at the stated cost of $662.3 million and which an accompanying picture shows is carving its way through rural Victoria, forever scaring the countryside.

Worsening the physical damage is the fact that the builders, VicRoads will cut down nearly 1000 large old-growth trees, four times more than it originally predicted.

And so while Victorians are prepared to pay nearly $700 million on providing a facility that regardless of how you “cut and dice” the project, it is about public money being spent on a project that is inherently about servicing private enterprise.

The adjoining story tells readers that a State Government plan to give Melburnians a 12-month trial on all night public transport will cost $30 million more than the originally estimated $50 million.

That is for public transport and appears a piddling amount compared to the massive sums being spent on what is effectively a bonus for private enterprise.

Sustainability, however you interpret and apply this frequently misused term, doesn’t appear to get a look in.

More than a decade of listening and reading illustrates that the building of a major roadway clearly contradicts what it is we need to do to prepare Victoria for what will be a energy-poor future, certainly in terms of machines powered by fossil fuels.

Many would argue, and unquestionably with intellectual authority, commitment and force, that we will need the roads for the coming electric cars and they would point, for example to such vehicles as the Tesla.

The enthusiasm for such vehicles if misplaced for they are still “individual”, resource intensive and although powered by renewable energy, they do nought about resolving the present “space” difficulties faced by towns and cities throughout the world.

Beyond that these electric cars and still about individualism and status, the two human traits, encouraged by the present market-driven economy, and which are playing a key role in the worsening of global warming.

Read the story discussing the highway duplication – “Nine hundred giant native trees felled in VicRoads planning blunder” and the adjoining story about public transport costs – “$30m cost blowout in 24-hour weekend public transport trial to begin in January”.

Sleek and understated Tesla S is king of the road, and a sign of change

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 rather sleek and yet understated Tesla Model S was among the many cars on show at the recent Rotary Motor Show in Shepparton.

The sleek and seemingly restrained Tesla was surrounded by cars, many which had been extensively modified by their owners and yet it was confidently predicted, although not tested, that the pedestrian appearing Tesla would out accelerate and exceed the top speed of all.

The Tesla is an exciting car and according to a story by EcoWatch, the electric car’s arrival signals the end of vehicles dependent upon oil.  

Read the EcoWatch story - “Does Elon Musk’s Tesla Model S ‘Signal the Beginning of the End for Oil?’”

Tesla fans always on the lookout for innovations

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here's a community of Tesla fans that are always on the lookout for new innovations by the Californian electric car maker.

Their latest find is a new model of Supercharger that is liquid-cooled (including the charging cable itself), rather than air-cooled, allowing it to both be smaller and run cooler.

This has many benefits, from small things, like making the charging cable lighter, to big things, like the potential to make charging even faster, since keeping things cool is one of the big challenges when dealing with this much power.

Read the Treehugger story - “Tesla has started rolling out next-generation liquid-cooled Superchargers (video)”.

'Open for business' - an ideologically conditional stance

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exas, like Australia, is open business.

That is, of course, only if the incoming business has ideological approval.

Tesla, the maker of the world’s most advanced electric cars, brings to Texas a transport idea that contradicts the fossil fuel energy-based traditional car industry that has infiltrated every segment of Texas society.

Treehugger reports, in its story - “Texas to Tesla: Get off my lawn...”  - that “Tesla might have won a battle in the relatively small state of Maryland, but it was just served a defeat on the larger battleground of Texas.”

Sunday Age letter-writers give their opinions on Tesla

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etters in the Sunday Age of May 17 give us some views, correct or otherwise, on Tesla developments.

 

Renewable energy: Local manufacturers are being left high and dry

US company Tesla has just released a battery pack system for domestic use ("Why Tesla's battery is a big deal", 10/5). What is now becoming increasingly apparent is that with the government's championing of coal at the expense of renewable technologies, we are backing an inefficient, outdated and dirty energy source. As industrialised countries the world over embrace clean energy technologies (in Germany, 30 per cent of power comes from renewable sources), Australia will be left behind, potentially with stranded assets. We'll also have missed out on opportunities in the expanding new industry, with manufacturers placed at risk due to a lack of willingness by government to resolve the furore over the renewable energy target and look to a clean energy future.

Dennis O'Connell, Ivanhoe.

 

Tesla battery hoopla falls flat

Unfortunately, the 10Kw Tesla battery is only warrantied for 50 cycles and so of little use beyond 50 days of solar charging, although handy if there is a blackout. The smaller "7Kw" has also been canned by executives of Tesla's associate company, the panel installer Solar City, who say it is "unsuitable" for solar storage. This is mildly astonishing as Tesla's chairman, Elon Musk, is also chairman of Solar City. The problem is that due to lithium's high energy density but poor staying power, Li batteries run down after a few hours. No good for the freezer or today's watt-hungry TVs. The household still must be on the grid and in the US grid power is half the price of here.

Meanwhile, an Australian flow battery about to be mass produced in Mexico has been cycling every day for three years without fail and produces steady, consistent current. It can be fully discharged and then fully recharged to supply current almost ad infinitum. So it remains disappointing that while Australia has long led in this field, with our technology lauded offshore, local inventors find it near impossible to get their product manufactured locally. The Vanadium Redox flow battery, for example, is now well established in China but, like current flat panel solar technology, had its origins at the University of NSW. In contrast to the Tesla hoopla, our zinc bromine flow battery looks a dull work-horse, but it works.

Richard Campbell, Toorak.

 

Sold short by feed-in tariffs

The Sunday Age (10/5) had three significant contributions about solar power; the first applauded Germany's renewable energy progress, the second highlighted power storage, while the editorial reminded us of how far behind environmentally are the Coalition and Labor. The Coalition's policy is to ignore global warming by supporting coal mining and coal-powered electricity generation. My partner and I, pensioners, have used solar power for 20years and were finally rewarded with a feed-in tariff of 66 cents per kw hour. However, when we downsized to a new house in the country the tariff was cut to 6.2 cents. Our smart meter informs us that we export three times more solar energy into the grid than we take from it. We are paid 6.2 cents and have to pay 30 cents. We, and Australians, are being ripped off. It seems that, like Germany, we need more green representatives in government. 

Brian Moynihan, Castlemaine.

'Powerwall' creates massive interest and sells-out

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nergy and where it comes from is top of mind for many people, as evidenced by the massive interest in Tesla’s “Powerwall”.

Treehugger reports that Tesla’s latest development in energy storage and use has created a hitherto unseen rush for the new device.

“It's barely been a week since Tesla unveiled its Powerwall energy system, which scales from residential houses to massive gigawatt-hour utility scale.

“Not enough time for much to happen, right? Well, apparently people have been waiting for something like this and there's a lot of pent up demand.

“On its earnings conference call, Elon Musk mentioned that they already received 38,000 reservations (the Powerwall will start shipping this summer) for the home system and 2,500 reservations for the much bigger, commercial-scale battery systems,” Treehugger reports.

Read the story here: “Barely a week after Tesla's Powerwall battery was announced, it's sold-out to mid-2016”.

Steketee wonders why Australia won't follow Tesla

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esla Motors is about to mass produce batteries that could change the global demand for power, and yet Australia is still pinning its short-term hopes on coal.

Where's our long-term plan? Mike Steketee writes on The Drum.

Elon Musk calls it "a fundamental transformation of how the world works".

The founder and chief executive of Tesla Motors, the pioneer of all-electric cars in the US, was announcing the company's move into the mass production of batteries that can store electricity for residential use, solving the problem of the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. He says that his system of "stored sunlight" can be scaled up to literally any size - like the whole world - ending reliance on fossil fuels.

Read Steketee’s story - “Where Tesla leads, Australia is reluctant to follow”.