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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 76 declined, 13 accepted (89 total, 14.61% accepted)

Submission + - WaPo talks about EV tipping point. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Talks about adoption rate.

About 7 percent of the state’s new car sales were electric vehicles in 2019, and in the first half of this year it’s about 25 percent.

The usual 4 hours to charge FUD.

“Consumers want the same experience as driving an ICE vehicle,” Valdez Streaty said, referring to an internal combustion engine, or gas-powered, vehicle. “When I go to charge, I don’t want to have to wait four hours to charge.”

Lots of consumer perception survey results. Some balance and de-FUD

One of the largest benefits of driving an electric vehicle — the low cost of recharging — is less well known. Just over 4 in 10, 42 percent of Americans think that electric cars are cheaper to recharge than gas-powered cars. An analysis by the progressive think tank Energy Innovation found that when charging at home, “filling up” an EV is cheaper than gas in all 50 states; fast charging can occasionally be more expensive than gas in certain areas.

My personal view: Gas is not as expensive in USA compared to Europe. Europe D segment cars are provided by companies for the managers. The deemed income is based on TOC, not just the initial price. US Oil industry fights harder through lobbying. Dealerships are also throwing stumbling blocks. This the adoption rate in USA is likely to be more drawn out and less rapid compared to Europe.

Submission + - EV Price parity at last? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: New York Times Reports: Electric Vehicles Could Match Gasoline Cars on Price This Year

Summary: Competition, government incentives and falling raw material prices are making battery-powered cars more affordable sooner than expected.

More quickly than seemed possible a few months ago, sticker prices for electric vehicles are falling closer to the point where they could soon be on a par with gasoline cars. Increased competition, government incentives and falling prices for lithium and other battery materials are making electric vehicles noticeably more affordable. The tipping point when electric vehicles become as cheap as or cheaper than cars with internal combustion engines could arrive this year for some mass market models and is already the case for some luxury vehicles.

Submission + - Tesla joins 4 digit club, share price cracks 1000$ (electrek.co)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Tesla is in a tear lately, after better than expected sales report from China. Elon Musk himself tweeted, during the trading session that too, that it was over valued at 760$. The speculation seems to be centered on the idea that Tesla is going to join S&P500, by eking out a token profit this quarter.

Most people think it is due to some sort of short squeeze or something. But Tesla has sold convertible bonds maturing in 2021, 2022 and 2025 at an average price of 330$. 15 million shares. Experienced folks like Ihor of S3 partners or Reflex Research estimate about 12 million of these shares have been shorted to "book profits". The idea is to borrow shares and sell them at 800, 900$ now, and keep paying the borrow fee for a couple of years. When the bond matures, you get the shares for 330$, or cash for the difference between market price at that time and 330$. At that point the short can cover the position with cash or stock. If the stock is below 330 at that time, they are guaranteed to get 330!. So it is a no loss strategy, this accounts for 12 million shares most likely.

Total short position in Tesla is just 16 million, just 4 million shares, or 4 billion by todays prices. It is big, but not big enough to squeeze, and there is plenty of shares available to borrow. So it is not short squeeze causing this.

Many engineers and tear down experts are saying Tesla has phenomenal lead in battery technology and design. Seems to be falling short on manufacturing, paint and assembly. But over all product is so superior it is overcoming the short falls in these areas. Traditional auto makers saw battery as the fuel tank. Nothing much can be done to improve the fuel tank, so nothing much can be done to improve the battery they seem to have thought. But assembling 8000 cells and maintaining charge balance and voltages and currents on them is a very tricky thing and people who outsourced this part of EV wrote themselves out of the script in the EV play.

Submission + - Gigs New York is making ventilators (cnet.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Elon Musk announced that the Giga factory in Baffalo, New York, making solar roof tiles and battery packs for home energy storage is switching to making ventilators in collaboration with Medtronics.



Days after offering 1,255 free ventilators to help deal with the coronavirus outbreak, Tesla boss Elon Musk said the company's New York factory will restart to make more.

"Giga New York will reopen for ventilator production as soon as humanly possible. We will do anything in our power to help the citizens of New York," he tweeted on Wednesday.

New York governor said the state needs 30,000 ventilators at the peak and they have 400 at hand.

Submission + - Tesla positive surprise: First "profitable" year (electrek.co)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Tesla announced its 2019 Fourth Quarter results.

Expectations were high this quarter after Tesla destroyed earnings expectations with surprisingly high profits last quarter. Today, Tesla announced that it made $7.384 billion in revenue and it reported surprising profits of $2.14 per share (Non-GAAP) in Q4 2019 – over expectations for both revenue and earnings. The automaker continues to improve its financial position with strong results and increased its cash position by almost $1 billion to now $6.3 billion.

Stock zoomed in after hours trading and continued to rally today.

The short interest tracker S3 Partners reported that shorts lost another 1.5 billion dollars today, as the stock zoomed very quickly on open giving them very little time to cover at anything close to yesterday's prices. According to this report they had 5.6 billion YTD profit last June. They have raked up losses of almost 13 billion dollars since.

The investor conference call revealed nuggets like improved range for dual motor cars, Y production starting sooner than expected, the solar side has started growing again etc. Despite all the headlines about first "profitable" year technically the company lost money on GAPP basis.

Submission + - Tesla Stock touches the magic figure of 420 (shortsight.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Elon Musk tweeted he had secured funding to take Tesla private at 420$ a share right in the middle of a trading day in Aug 2018, without any prior approval from the board of directors. The plan fell through, SEC fined him and the company 20 million dollars each, forced him to give up the presidency of Tesla.

The stock touched it low of 178 $ in Jun 2019 and it has been rising steadily and it has been on a tear in the last few trading days of the year. It briefly went above 420$ today, touching a maximum of 422$ and it closed quite close to 420.

Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners (A company that tracks short trades of hundreds of securities) is reporting the the the people who sold the stock are finally being squeezed. They were 5.20 billion in YTD profit in the first week of Jun 2019 and have lost 7.3 billion in the last six months.

Tesla supporters are euphoric and are lighting up twitterverse with lots of taunting messages directed at the shorts.

Submission + - Battery Bank saves the grid! (teslarati.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: During the height of Enron Scandal, the power traders would collude with powerplant operators, and deliberately trip/withhold power to the grid to create crisis and trigger wild surge pricing. There are steps to mitigate such collusion and illegal acts. But still, power plants can trip due to genuine reasons. That happened in South Australia in October 2019. A coal power plant failed and it threatened to take the grid down with it.

But that is the region where there is an interesting project going on, thousands of residential rooftop solar panels, coupled with storage batteries, all linked up to central control, to form what they are calling a "Virtual Power Plant". Nothing virtual about it, distributed powerplant would have been a better name. That project, designed to link 50,000 homes and their solar panels, is just 2% complete. About 1000 homes. That 2% complete project had enough juice and control to step in, detect the frequency drop, increase power from the batteries and save the day.

Just yesterday we had a thread about falling battery prices changing the EV market drastically. My response that it is going to impact the grid even more, garnered lots of discussions and follow ups.

This is unprecedented. The electric utilities have been government sanctioned monopolies for over a century, protected from competition. A century to develop deep political ties with local governments, utility commissions and work essentially on a cost + basis, guaranteed profits. The battery bank will stabilize the grid so well, there will be no surge pricing for peaker power plants. There will be enough time, minutes initially, hours eventually, to call for bids and close contracts in a very orderly disciplined manner.

At present the Return on Investment comparison between solar/wind, storage vs gas turbine power plants include the surge pricing benefit in favor of the gas powerplants. It will be gone.

I seriously doubt any new gas turbine powerplant will be proposed. And the existing ones will not be replaced. Distributed battery packs will take wring the neck of the duck curve to death.

Submission + - Ford introduces all electric cross over (electrek.co)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: BEV fans are all excited about the introduction of an all electric CUV by Ford. Spec and pricing very similar to Tesla. Interior also is very similar with large touch screen.

Elon congratulates Ford CEO, Ford returns the compliments.

Die hard Tesla fans and saying Tesla is still better. Other BEV fans are nice welcoming Ford.

I, for one, welcome the more affordable all electric non compliance BEV (Ford's words, not mine).

Submission + - Tesla model 3 modded to run ubuntu in parallel ! (cleantechnica.com)

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Clean technica is reporting that someone hacked the infotainment system and got root access and installed ubuntu as a process.

He is able to show ubuntu command shell running alongside Tesla OS.

Not sure I am happy about it. Since Tesla supports a browser that allows you to visit any site, could this be leveraged into remote hacks?

It could also mean if Tesla sells a full range hardware as software limited short range version, people might try to remove the block using these hacks. Also one might get a 15 day trial of FSD for free and extend that 15 day window for ever.

At least he had some guts messing with a 50K hardware that phones home all the time. Can Tesla brick his car and claim some sort of difficult to disprove security issue?

Submission + - Power of Pharma lobby. Behold! (nbcnews.com) 1

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: I went to bed with BMI of 25.3 and I woke up with same BMI of 25.3. But overnight BMI for fatness changed from 26 to 25, and now I am fat. The same way the Pharma lobby got AMA to reset the hypertension guidelines.

Earlier systolic pressure of 140 mm of mercury was considered acceptable. Now the new guideline lowers it to 130. 50 million more Americans will be considered to be having Stage 1 hypertension and all will be prescribed blood pressure medications.



“Rather than one in three U.S. adults having high blood pressure (32 percent) with the previous definition, the new guidelines will result in nearly half of the U.S. adult population (46 percent) having high blood pressure, or hypertension,” the groups said in a joint statement.

They are not pushing medications, yet. Just diet and exercise for now. But, make no mistake, a few years down the line, we all will be taking blood pressure medications.

Submission + - Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explains his Christmas Tweet. (mediaite.com) 1

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted on christmas day what appeared to begin as a tribute to Infant Jesus, but ended up celebrating Isaac Newton who shares his birthday with Jesus, (with sufficient allowances for the estimate of Jesus' and the confusion between Gregorian and Julian calenders for Newton). Apparently this was retweeted some 77000 times, far above his average of 3.5K retweets. He doubled down on it by tweeting about people being offended by objective truths. Then wrote a fuller explanation.
Education

Submission + - Internet curfew in the IITs

Submitted by 140Mandak262Jamuna
140Mandak262Jamuna writes: IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting the internet access to its students, according to the BBC reports. It also reports that access restrictions has been in place in IIT Madras for more than a year now.

The restriction is simply cut off ALL internet access at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 internet access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities. Though these are the "official" reasons, it appears there are other reasons too. Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, "one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good." The definition of good and bad are left as an exercise to the reader.

IIT-Delhi is watching Bombay. Kanpur and Karaghpur say that they will leave it to the students to practice prudent self restraint.

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