I too work with a lot of Indians. It all depends on the person. There are a number of people I work with who are extremely talented and others who are not who usually don't last all that long. It depends on the company. For example, if I see a resume for someone coming from certain well-known Silicon Valley companies my expectations immediately drop significantly.

One problem they have in Indian universities is that they typically do not have the hands-on experience one can get at a good US university. While I was in labs with oscilloscopes, programming FPGAs and wire-wrapping CPUs such things are not available in universities in much of the world (they stopped wirewrapping soon after I finished the class).

Now if I could only find a highly qualified person to help me work on U-Boot on multi-core MIPS64 chips (48 cores * 2 NUMA)) and new boards I'd be happy, regardless of if they're Indian or anything else.

At my job we have openings that we find extremely difficult to fill with local talent just because the demand is so great and the number of people with the skills is small. Sadly there are far fewer Americans graduating with computer engineering degrees than there are job openings to fill. They'd rather get degrees as English majors or MBAs or other easier degrees then complain when they can't get work after graduating.

Tesla isn't doing it because they decided to go after a different market with a car with a reasonable range. They also have economies of scale. Their batteries should also scale nicely downward since most of the cost is in the 18650 cells.

Part of Fiat's cost is that they are trying to shoehorn an EV drivetrain into a gasoline powered car. There are a lot of changes possible with an EV as Tesla has shown that can reduce the cost of manufacturing. Designing an EV from the ground up reduces cost. After all, Nissan's Leaf is profitable, though Nissan really needs to address a few major problems (like their lack of active cooling for the batteries).

After having bought a Tesla Model S I find it difficult to go back to an internal combustion engine. The responsiveness and smoothness are unparalleled with throw you back in the seat instant acceleration.

I see no problem making EVs for well under 50K and making a profit on them.

If Tesla can sell their cars with an 85KWh battery that gets 265 miles for $73,570 and average over 25% margins then there is no reason why a car that is quite a bit smaller with significantly less range shouldn't be able to be made for under $40K and be profitable. It all comes down to how much is invested in the technology. Tesla spent years perfecting their technology. They spent a lot of R&D optimizing their batteries, both for performance, reliability, capacity and cost. While everyone else is screwing around with expensive LiFePO prismatic batteries, Tesla was able to work with 18650 cells using a different chemistry. They did a lot of things to cut the cost of the 18650 cells and focused on how to get safety and long life out of the cells while getting much higher energy density. Now they're focusing on their gigafactory to further reduce the battery cost.

Tesla also went with an induction motor which is cheaper to manufacture than the standard synchronous motor everyone else uses since there are no rare-earth magnets in it nor strong magnetic fields to deal with during manufacturing.

A Fiat 500e needs only a fraction of Tesla's battery capacity and a smaller inverter and electric motor so it should be cheaper. Maybe they should do what Toyota did and either license Tesla's technology or have Tesla build the drive train and battery like they did for the Toyota electric Rav 4.

I see tons of EV cars in California. Leafs are everywhere.

If Tesla can make a full-sized sedan with a 265 mile range (85KWh battery) for $73,570 while averaging a 25% profit margin there's no reason why Fiat shouldn't be able to make a profit selling a much smaller car with a much smaller battery and a much smaller range. Perhaps they should invest in Tesla's gigafactory to bring down cost and/or license Tesla's batteries like Toyota did. If they're like Nissan then they only need around 1/4 the capacity of Tesla's 85KWh battery pack, a smaller electric motor and a smaller inverter. If it cost Fiat $46,650 per-car then they're doing something wrong. They're probably using those more expensive, lower energy dense LiFePo prismatic batteries that everyone except Tesla is using.

It's not that it's 0.43mm per year, but one needs to look at the rate of change. It may be 0.43mm/year now, but in 10 years it may be 4.3mm/year or higher. The problem is that all of these things we are seeing are increasing in a non-linear mode.

I alreay use a product called Stick'n'Find. It's like Tile except it has a user-replacable battery and is available now. It also supports Android. It also provides a SDK and will sense temperature.

They are not standard lithium-ion batteries. For example, the cell design is different in order to cut cost. They do not have the normal dimple on top nor do they contain the protection circuit. The protection is provided by a low melting point wire that is bonded to the battery that doubles as a fuse. They are also not exclusive to Panasonic since they also work with Sanyo.

The chemistry is also a bit different. The batteries are automotive grade. They are designed to handle more temperature extremes and for rapid charging as well as for longer life than a laptop cell. As for Tesla owning the chemistry I heard that during one of the quarterly earnings conference calls. They did a lot of research and testing for their batteries. Arguably most of their technology lies in their battery management and pack designs but they also have a number of key patents in the actual cell design.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com...
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com...

  I had a good talk with a friend of mine who works there in R&D. He was describing it all a compromise between three things: reliability, performance and capacity. Choose two of the three.

They have some interesting patents as well, such as a metal air battery design.

Actually they don't make much on carbon credits any more and haven't for a while. Their margins are already over 25% on their cars so they are making money on their cars.

You don't need to exceed gasoline in terms of energy density since the efficiency of an electric motor is much higher.

Tesla has stated that they don't make all that much any more from ZEV credits. They're doing fairly well. They had a bit of a loss this last quarter due to their rapid expansion (which is what they should be doing). The GAAP accounting penalizes them quite a bit for the way it deals with leases which is totally unrealistic. It prevents them from recording any income from the leases for quite some time which is why the big investors look at the non-GAAP numbers.

It all depends on the battery. Tesla claims that rapid charging has no impact on the life of their battery and they are rated for at least 3000 full charge/discharge cycles, which for an 85KWh battery pack is over 600,000 miles. Also, typically on the Tesla owners don't need to charge to 100% or drain it close to 0% since it has a decent range.

The Leaf, by comparison, is another story. The Leaf lacks active battery cooling and in hot climates the batteries have been dying. In Arizona people are reporting 40% range loss in two years and rapid charging does impact the life of the batteries.

Here's one where a Tesla was rear-ended by a semi. The Tesla was able to drive away, despite being knocked forward around 100'. The semi wasn't going anywhere.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com...

They use a custom 18650. The cells are not normal 18650 cells. They use that format for cost reasons. Elon has said that ideally they would prefer a slightly larger format.

The reason they use so many small cells has to do with safety. The battery packs are designed so that a few cells dying won't have a noticeable impact on the pack. It also adds to the safety.

As it is, their energy density is much higher than their competitors who use LiFo prismatic cells.