EV are mostly irrelevant and will be for a long time.

The average age of cars on the road is under 12 years. There are very few cars on the road 20 years old, or older. We can assume that the fleet turns over in about 20 years.

If we hit 50% of all new car sales as EV sales before 2030, the global car fleet will be almost completely electric by 2050.

Actually I think it will be earlier than that. Once the majority of cars sold are electric, economies of scale won't apply as much as they used to, and ICE cars will get more expensive. There will be a cost death spiral for ICE. ICE will still be available, just as horses are still available, but they will fall out of favor as a way to move people and stuff around.

Semi trucks are expensive to fuel and expensive to repair. Electric semi trucks win in both categories, and I predict that long before 2050 all the semis on the road will be electric.

With all the cars and all the semis electric, EVs would not in any way be "irrelevant". Heck, I predict that we are within a few years of some big car companies going out of business because they didn't adapt to EVs fast enough. Note: a company allowing itself to be acquired by a more solvent company counts as "going out of business" for this.

If we can do biofuel for airplanes, ships and military vehicles that is major chunk of transport... then we can do for cars.

Oh, it's possible. But for most people, most of the time, EVs are just better. A biofuel car still needs oil changes, still needs belts and hoses and seals, still has lots of little moving parts that are shaking around and getting baked in heat. An EV has fewer parts, less to go wrong.

The main objections people have to EVs are that they cost too much up front and that they might not find a charger when they need one. Tesla is working on both problems: Tesla is working on a new way to build cars that will cut their build costs by 50%, and Tesla is still building out the Supercharger network.

It won't just be one model of Tesla that will be affordable. EVs are a relatively new technology and Wright's Law has lots of room for the costs of EVs to reduce.

I doubt I convinced you, but this thread will hang around forever so we can come back later and compare our predictions and see which of us was closer to what actually happened. See you in a decade or two.

Posting this from the destination of my 450 mile annual road trip to see family in two cities, roughly 300 miles and then another 150 miles from where I live. Went in two steps. Going back tomorrow in one straight shot of 450 miles.

Okay. My longest road trip was Washington state to California. 600 miles on the first leg, then another 250 miles, and home was about 850 miles.

We did that in my Tesla Model S. It worked great; I would choose that car again to do that trip again.

If a car can't handle this 1% use case, I'm not getting it.

Well, what's your definition of "handle"? If it's "drive without stopping for more than five minutes" then an EV can't handle it. If it's "drive for three or four hours, stop for a meal while the car charges, then continue" then an EV can handle it.

I say an EV can handle it. But if you are one of those iron drivers who only stops just long enough for gasoline to pump, you might disagree.

We're not all zillionaires with a different car for every day of the week.

That's why I only drive my EV. A gasoline car would arguably be slightly better for really long trips, but I'd rather just drive my own car.

And where I live, the cost savings of an EV are considerable. We have the highest gasoline costs in the USA, but we have a lower electricity cost than average in the USA. As a result it's literally six times more expensive to drive a gasoline car than an EV. If you get an EV like a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y, you are getting a vehicle for around the average purchase price of a car in the USA, and then its TCO is way cheaper.

So if you are struggling financially and you need the car that's the best value, a good choice for a new car would be a Tesla Model 3. And then just plan your trip so you are getting a meal when the car needs to charge.

The longer your trip, the more money you save. An EV makes you stop more than an ICE vehicle, but it's money in your pocket when you do.

If you can get a good deal on a used ICE car, and you are good at keeping ICE cars going, that might be your lowest-cost deal. I read a blog post by a guy bragging about how he got a 20-year-old Mercedes, a particularly reliable model, and then did all the work on it himself. It was both inexpensive and pretty reliable. But I'm not that guy, and I like how reliable my Tesla has been for me.

A vehicle that's good on average but fails at an infrequent but regular and predictable requirement isn't a vehicle that is wise to spend one's hard-earned money on.

This is a strange statement. I thought you were a fan of ICE cars, but I agree with you: a car that constantly needs oil changes, belts and hoses replacement, and other possibly expensive services every 5000 miles is not a wise investment now that EVs are available.

If in 10 or 20 years, the magic EV battery materializes that takes a large sedan or medium sizes SUV 350 miles on a single charge and fills back up in under 10 minutes and doesn't cost twice and weight three times as much as the gasoline equivalent and for the cherry on top doesn't spontaneously combust into a four alarm fire

Oh, you're back to hating EVs. Well, a Model Y long range is rated for 330 miles but in practice you probably won't get more than 300 miles out of it; it can add about 100 miles of range in 10 minutes of charging, or charge more completely in the time it takes to eat a meal; weight and cost are similar to other compact SUVs; and is less likely to catch on fire than a combustion car.

It's not exactly what you demand, but those of us who like to save money are willing to put up with its foibles.

But until it does, telling people that an expensive golf cart with recessed door handles and a square steering wheel is an adequate replacement for a known quantity Because The Government Says So is unlikely to win converts or to win elections in all but the bluest leftystans in this country.

Dude. My wife and I both love Tesla cars. They are a pleasure to drive, they cost less to operate, cost less to maintain, cost less to repair (for most things), and are safe. "Because the Government Says So"? Hah.

I'm a fan of freedom. If you really, really, really want to drive a combustion car, I think you should do it. Have fun with it. But don't try to claim that I don't actually love the best car I have ever owned.

Wow. I disagree with every single assertion in this post.

EV sales are growing exponentially. In Norway, where government pushed it the hardest, it's already around 80%; in the USA it's already around 5%. EV sales will grow a lot faster from 5% than they did from the tiny sales a decade ago.

Exponential growth always surprises people. It will happen faster than you think.

Twitter user @jpr007 has predicted that 2026 will be the year that global car sales are over 50% EVs and less than 50% ICE. By 2030 ICE sales go to nearly nothing.

https://twitter.com/jpr007/status/1469772478184853504?lang=en

The world has plenty of lithium. The world needs more lithium refining capacity, which is why it's not shocking at all that Tesla is building their own lithium refining facility. And companies are working on sulfur-based batteries, so even if you were correct, there is another possible tech.

Biofuel for cars? We already have EVs, they already work really well... biofuel is a dead end. I do think that long-haul airplanes will eventually fly on synthetic fuels. Maybe large ships, definitely military vehicles of all sorts.

what scheme are our politicians going to cook up to cover the sharp decline in gasoline tax-derived maintenance revenue

32 of the 50 states have already taken action. All of them added an EV fee on top of other licensing fees. Most of the states have a flat fee, but a few base the fee on vehicle weight.

Washington state, which has the most expensive gasoline, also has the highest EV fee, at $225 per year.

https://www.ncsl.org/energy/special-fees-on-plug-in-hybrid-and-electric-vehicles

It sounds like you are lying awake at night, filled with dread, wondering what terrible thing is coming your way. "An extra fee" is a rather boring answer, but that's what it really boils down to.

do something about cargo ships

It's true that ships pollute a lot. Your statistic about ten ships polluting more than all cars is fantasy, but your basic point is sound that ships pollute a lot.

It turns out that 40% of ships carry fossil fuels (mostly oil or coal but also natural gas).

https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-consists-of-fossil-fuels

So a widescale transition to BEVs would also, as a side effect, reduce ship pollution. Oil is useful for making plastics, making asphalt, etc. so I think oil would still be shipped, but not in nearly as large quantities.

Funny how the left's environmental demands all revolve around screwing over normal people

I am not in favor of screwing over normal people. But Tony Seba's videos convinced me that solar/wind/battery power is the future. The power companies will switch to solar/wind/battery because it will make them the most money. No need for government to force anything and no need to screw over normal people.

Tony Seba also wants regulations that make sure that normal people can put solar power on their homes, and buy and sell energy.

P.S. I have an electric car, and I have enough solar panels on my home's roof that I can charge my car. (Most months of the year. I live near Seattle, and some days in December I don't get much power.)

It's much more difficult to get oil and refine it to gasoline than it is to get electricity and charge an electric car.

The only people I know who had a Tesla S experienced $35K warranty work in the first couple years.

Congratulations! Now you know me, on Slashdot. Your data set of Tesla owners has doubled!

I bought a used 2012 Model S. It needed a couple of door handles and a windshield washer pump. One of the door handles was out of warranty and cost me $300, the other handle and the washer pump were in warranty. All three repairs were done at my house by a mobile repair tech... very convenient.

I sold that car to a friend. It was one of the 2012 cars that had an issue with the battery... and Tesla swapped the battery pack at no cost to him. He's still driving the car and happy with it.

I bought a used 2017 Model S. I had a service call for it once... the door handle was acting up. Fixed under warranty. (Mobile repair tech again.)

My wife's car is a Model Y. We have had absolutely no issues with it.

There you go: your data set of cars bought has quadrupled!

My wife and I are quite happy with the cars.

They got rid of it before the warranty was up and bought an ICE.

Well, I hope they don't live in my state.

https://mynorthwest.com/3901421/washington-most-expensive-state-to-buy-gas-for-first-time-in-history/

When weather is extreme, these fledgling technologies [wind and solar power] step in to save the day.

Tony Seba and others have predicted that solar, wind, battery power systems (SWB power) are going to disrupt everything else, because they are the least-cost solution to the problem.

I believe this to be true. Solar and wind have issues, but adding grid-scale batteries fixes those issues. Grid-scale batteries are expensive and there aren't enough being built, but that's changing rapidly. It may seem slow now but the progress is on an exponential curve.

I've read through this thread and I see that you were being sarcastic when you wrote the above, but I don't get your sarcasm. Solar in particular: if it's a heat wave, the sun is always shining. Can a house have enough solar on it to run air conditioning? Sure. So houses with solar are removing themselves from the problem. Maybe the grid gets stressed by heavy use when it's hot... but solar-equipped houses don't add to the grid load, and in fact should have excess power they can push to the grid to help the grid.

Also, I saw on Twitter, a person who lives in Texas and has Tesla Powerwall said he is a member of the "Virtual Power Plant" (VPP) there and is currently getting paid over $5 per kWh when his system pushes power into the grid during the current heat wave. A VPP is another way that people can earn back some of the cost of a solar+battery system on their house.

(Note that the more people who join a VPP, the less lucrative it will get. Once there is plenty of power to go around, the power company won't have to offer as much money per kWh. It won't be over $5 per kWh forever. It's still a good deal for everyone, even at lower rates.)

So IMHO solar power, in particular, can "step in to save the day" (a bit over-dramatic, but essentially correct).

Another "fledgling technology" is ground-source heat pumps (GSHP). Just like solar panels, it's not a new technology, but it's not really common yet. A GSHP can cool a house very efficiently even in a heat wave.

A GHSP has pipes buried in the ground near the house, under the frost line. In the winter, it can collect heat from the ground; in summer, it can dump heat into the ground.

My wife and I bought a tract house built (with hundreds of similar houses) in the 70's. We remodeled it, and one of the upgrades was a GHSP. According to the diagnostics on my system, the temperature of the water from the ground loop never drops below 40 degrees F (about 4.4 C) in the winter and never rises above 60 degrees F (about 15.6 C) in the summer. Even when it's blazing hot outside, the ground loop is cool, so our GSHP doesn't have to work very hard to cool the house. Last summer, during a heat wave, my system recorded that it used less than 4 kWh to cool the house per day.

At the same time that our GSHP uses 4 kWh per day, our solar power system on our roof is able to make around 90 kWh of power every day.

(In the winter, to heat the house, our GSHP takes 20 kWh per day. Even when it was well below freezing outside, which isn't super common where I live but does happen, our GSHP takes less electricity than a space heater to keep our whole house warm. In the winter, where we live, the solar makes very little power, so we still need to be part of the grid.)

Now, before anyone accuses me of anything: I'm aware that many people are hurting financially and don't feel like they could afford to do what I did.

I have a close relative who lives in Silicon Valley, who recently got solar power. She got a 20-year term on the solar loan, and the monthly payment is low. Her electricity bill dropped so much that she's actually paying less now (solar loan payments per month plus current energy bill is lower than former energy bill). She also had some modern, efficient "mini-split" heat pumps installed; she's using these both for heating and cooling, and when she heats, now she's using less natural gas, and saving even more money that way.

Some people are in such dire financial straits that they wouldn't be able to get a solar loan, but I think the majority of people could get one. I think it will be increasingly common over time.

IMHO, new houses should be built in the first place with a GSHP and solar roof or solar panels. The costs will be lowest if it's designed in and built that way (and especially if a bunch of similar houses are all built one after another in the same place). Then the costs of these technologies will be rolled into the mortgage, and the cost savings from these technologies will be spread over the whole lifetime of the house.

Because of the above I have little patience for the people who say "we should not have air conditioning in houses; everyone should just suck it up and endure hot temperatures, to Save The Planet." My house is a net exporter of power during heat waves, while being cool and comfortable inside.

Tony Seba is a futurist who has correctly predicted a lot of stuff. He and his think tank ("RethinkX") are predicting huge disruptions coming in the next ten years or so.

Wind and solar power (paired with batteries) will disrupt everything else. Electric vehicles will disrupt combustion vehicles. Self-driving vehicles will disrupt individually-owned vehicles. And: factory production of food products will disrupt traditional agriculture.

Using "precision fermentation" (PF) it is already possible to mass-produce milk proteins that were never inside a cow. Using more PF, companies make products like the "Impossible Burger". And the end-stage will be factory production of actual meat products as in this story.

PF was first developed in the 80's and was staggeringly expensive at the time. It was used to make insulin; before that, insulin was harvested from animal organs. Now PF insulin is the standard. Over time the costs of PF have come down, becoming cheap enough for medicine, then for cosmetics, and finally now are becoming cheap enough for food.

The first disruption will be to dairy farmers. They already aren't doing great, and PF milk proteins will wipe out about 30% of their business. (According to Tony Seba, about 30% of dairy business is protein powder for protein bars and shakes and such. It's a business-to-business disruption and the consumer isn't even in the loop.)

Here's a playlist of Tony Seba short videos where he makes his various predictions. If you are pressed for time, the fourth one is the one about agriculture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vhMcKvHo8&list=PL-ayGUHybK71RJyX0lbF2qYT_J3RtQFHl

P.S. I was surprised when I realized that the grocery store near me already had, for sale, ice cream containing PF-produced milk proteins. I bought a couple of pints and we tried them. The brand name is: Brave Robot

They didn't taste right, because they weren't made with dairy fat; they were made with coconut oil, and they had a coconut flavor that normal ice cream doesn't have. But I've definitely had worse ice cream.

Tony Seba said that PF can produce any desired protein. I wonder if it can also be tweaked to produce dairy fats? My wife is lactose-intolerant and it would be nice to be able to buy ice cream she actually likes that is lactose-free. (Brave Robot is lactose-free but she doesn't like anything that tastes of coconut.)

We live in the Seattle area and we buy Frankie & Jo's vegan ice cream. They make vegan ice cream using both coconut and cashews in their ice cream base, and it doesn't taste like coconut so my wife likes it. It's super-expensive though, at least double the cost of Brave Robot. In fairness, cashews are more expensive than cream.

I'm curious what kind of warranty/guarantee she (or you) got on your solar panels?

Her solar panels have a 25-year guarantee that they will not degrade more than a little each year. I think it's something like "panels will degrade by no more than 0.5% per year."

Her batteries are lithium iron phosphate, and I configured her system for "full backup" so it lets the batteries rest most of the time. The batteries will be good for even longer than 25 years.

I live in Washington state and got my panels installed by a company near me. My company installed very similar stuff with also a 25 year warranty.

Both my relative and I got Enphase equipment for everything including batteries. Enphase doesn't make the solar panels themselves... my relative got Panasonic solar panels (I believe) and I got Silfab (actually made in Washington state!).

I got 30 kWh of battery, three Enphase battery modules. She only got 20 kWh, two modules. I got three modules so my whole house would be backed up, so my wife and I can run the clothes dryer during a blackout if we like. (If the sun is shining it wouldn't even use up any of the battery power.)

I wasn't offered a 20-year loan term, just 10 years. Still pretty good.

I am hoping that some kind of "virtual power plant" (VPP) will be set up in Washington state and I will be able to join. I saw on Twitter that right now in Texas, people who own Tesla Powerwalls and joined the Tesla VPP in Texas are making really good money by having their Powerwalls support the grid during the heavy load times. Over $5 per kWh.

https://twitter.com/SolarInMASS/status/1671489747825442818

The more people do that, the lower the price per kWh would go, but it's still a win/win. People who already have home backup batteries get money just for putting a tiny bit of wear-and-tear on them, and the energy providing companies get grid support much cheaper than paying peaker plants.

the only time California has had any blackouts associated with a heat wave, in 2019, it only occurred on one day

during the worst heat wave on record in 2022 there were no blackouts at all

This is incorrect, or at least glosses over some important details.

I have a close relative who lives in Silicon Valley, which last I checked is in California. During a heat wave in 2020, her home lost power for days. During that heat wave in 2022, her home lost power for days again.

(It's a big deal if her house loses power in a heat wave. She has to evacuate to someplace that has air conditioning and she has mobility issues that make it difficult for her to leave her house.)

In 2020, a forest fire took out a main transmission line. I believe it was this one. In 2022, transformers in her neighborhood exploded on a hot day when there was a lot of load on the grid.

If you meant "California had to engage in voluntary power cuts in 2019 and hasn't had to do that again" I would have to agree. If you meant "California power is reliable even in heat waves" I would have to disagree.

California fixes its problems

My relative feels otherwise. "It seems like PG&E doesn't care whether my power works or not."

P.S. After the power outage in 2020 I told my relative "You live in sunny California. You should get solar panels and a battery system." She didn't want to spend the money.

When I got my own solar and battery I told her "I still think you should get it." She declined.

After the power failure in 2022, the next time I talked to her she said "I'm ready to get solar power and a battery. I never want to go through this again."

She now has a solar power system that makes more power than her house uses, enough battery to go for over a full day, and some modern ultra-efficient "mini-split" heat pumps. If it's hot, she can run the mini-splits off the solar, and the battery power can run the mini-splits overnight... bottom line, she could go all summer on the solar and battery. Heck, maybe she could go year-round on solar and battery.

And, by the way, she wanted the lowest monthly payment and picked a 20-year term on her solar loan. As a result, her solar loan payment is less money than the solar is saving her... she's net saving money every month.

P.P.S. Here's my favorite story related to the above. Not too long after she got her system, she had guests over and someone was running clothes through the washer and dryer. The dryer suddenly stopped working. They called a friend who is a bit of a handyman and asked him if he could figure out why the drier stopped. He came over and investigated, and told them "The problem is that your whole neighborhood lost power and you didn't notice." Her system does not back up her heavy-load 240 Volt stuff: her stove/oven, her 30 year old whole-house air conditioner, or her clothes dryer. Everything else kept working: the lights, the TV, the Internet, the blowers for her natural-gas furnace, etc.

At this point she is really glad she got the solar and battery system.

Bash is great because programmers hate it and users can get shit done with it. Rather than sitting around arguing over some computer science bullshit, Bash just lets a power user string together external programs with some basic logic and useful functionality.

I agree, this is the best part of Bash.

However, in my experience, if a Bash program grows large enough, it can become a maintenance hassle. If you are doing a lot of processing to figure out what work to do, Bash isn't the best.

And IMHO the worst thing about Bash is that even after you store something in a variable you need to quote the variable in every use, or else your program has a bug in it that you might not notice until a filename happens to include a space.

So, above some size threshold, I will rewrite a Bash script in Python. Trivial Bash scripts are smaller and terser than their equivalent Python scripts, but once you are doing nontrivial processing, IMHO the Python scripts start to win.

If somebody could take Bash, merge it with BusyBox and Curl, and add some missing features, I would use that for virtually all programs I write.

As someone else commented, maybe you should take a look at Perl.

Not freezing to death in a midwestern winter is the hard part.

I now have experience with a ground-source heat pump (GSHP), and it works. It would work in the midwest as well.

During nice weather you dig up your yard and install plastic pipes under the frost line. The system pumps a mixture of water and anti-freeze through the pipes, and the heat pump collects and concentrates the heat from the yard.

Because it's buried, it's trouble-free. And when the air is really freaking cold in the winter, the ground is still relatively warm under the frost line.

The only disadvantage is that it costs more to set up, but once you have it it's astonishing how little energy it takes to keep your house warm.

I live near Seattle so my winters are milder, but my system can keep my house warm with less than 20 kWh per day. We had 14 degree F temperatures (-10 Celsius) some days last winter, and our heat pump still only pulled 1600 Watts or less while heating the whole house. Less energy than a "space heater" uses to heat one room!

As a bonus, any GSHP that can heat your house will be able to cool your house with little effort. When we had record temperatures in 2021 (the highest temperature ever recorded in Seattle since the start of record-keeping: 106 degrees F or 41 Celsius) our GSHP was easily able to cool the house, while my neighbor's AC overheated and shut down.

Obviously the most expensive thing is to retrofit a house with a GSHP. To get the best savings, install it while building the house. Dig up the ground before there's a nice landscaped lawn there.

I hope this will become more common over time, because it's just better. It always takes less energy to move heat around than to use the energy directly for heat, and there's a lot of heat to collect in the ground under the frost line.

Here's a page from the company that made my GSHP. I had to pay more than they are estimating here, because my yard is small and they had to drill vertical wells. But these numbers might work for new construction or if you have a large yard.

https://www.waterfurnace.com/residential/about-geothermal/how-much-is-geo

Note that even in the midwest, an air-source heat pump might work. I wanted a GSHP and I was able to afford it.

https://www.mge.com/saving-energy/for-homes/heating-and-cooling/geothermal-heat-pumps

By the way, the diagram for the GSHP is kind of crazy! The one showing vertical wells shows 12 wells; my house is a four-bedroom house and only needed three wells. I can't even imagine a mansion that would need 12... maybe an office building. The company that did my install has also done systems for high schools and those needed 50 or more.

Just running on battery power for a few peaks and valleys over the day will be a problem, running all night on batteries is likely a fantasy.

Yeah, well, let's see where a few years of doubling the amount of batteries in the world takes us. I'll bet that 120 years ago, paving all the roads needed for automobiles looked like a fantasy too. That happened with surprising speed.

It's all a lot of work to avoid nuclear fission when there's nothing wrong with using nuclear fission.

Tony Seba is predicting that solar/wind/battery will take over everything because it's the least-cost solution. Fission works but will cost more. Then in Germany you have the whole political situation with the "Green" party on top of that.

Nuclear power will be hugely important in space travel though so I still expect to see a lot of it.

Germany is going to have to figure out lower cost energy solutions, continue to export wealth in exchange for energy, or turn to nuclear fission as that provides reliable and low CO2 energy. There's other options but they are not pleasant.

There's another option: grid-scale storage.

Historically, the only practical grid-scale storage was pumped hydro. But that has changed. The Tesla Megapack, and similar products from other countries, are truly practical grid-scale batteries. They are expensive... but they pay for themselves quickly.

Tesla was able to make about 4 GWh of Megapacks in 2022. They now have two new factories operating that, when fully ramped, are expected to produce 40 GWh per year each. And if they can get enough lithium iron phosphate battery cells, I'll bet they will scale out their Megapack production even further in the coming years.

Germany can start buying grid-scale batteries, and using those to run their grid at night.

Tony Seba has been predicting for years that wind power and solar power would become so cheap that everyone will switch to them nearly exclusively and back them up with batteries. His think tank ("RethinkX") calculated that the whole USA could switch to solar/wind/battery (SWB) power by overbuilding production by 4x and having enough battery backup for two to four days.

So, I expect that if Germany follows that plan (buy lots of solar cells, put them on roofs, build them onto parking lots, etc. plus get two to four days of battery storage) they could run on 100% renewable power. IMHO they shouldn't have turned off their nuclear power plants but in the long run they should be able to make things work without them.

New technologies are adopted on an S-curve. I think the S-curve on grid-scale storage is about to hit the exciting part and will do something crazy like doubling every year worldwide.

Note: there are other technologies that could be used for grid-scale storage. In particular I'm hoping that Ambri's liquid metal batteries will work out, and flow batteries seem like a good idea.

SpaceX probably could not run ten launches in one day, in this century.

This prediction will age exactly as well as if 100 years ago someone had said "Commercial airplane flights will not have ten flights in one day, in the 20th Century."

it would take over a week to prepare an emergency payload mission

I'm predicting that SpaceX will have their own space station, with a warehouse full of supplies, and a fuel depot. So launching supplies will be routine for them. And maybe it would just be "you don't need to launch your supplies, we'll loan you some we already have in orbit."

Finally, Elon Musk is not the patron saint of marooned spacemen. He still has to make up for the billions lost buying Twitter.

LOL. He doesn't have to "make up" anything; he's still the second-richest person in the world, and in a year or so he will reclaim the #1 spot as the richest person in the world. Twitter isn't losing money anymore, which was the only thing he really worried about; it wouldn't have hurt him but he might have had to sell Tesla stock and he wants to hold on to it.