Why Batteries Are Too Valuable To Waste On Solar Power Integration And Electric Cars [View article]
Futurecartsia,
Of course, when you are talking about electricity, you have to factor in 8% line losses, ~70% generation losses, and another 40% energy lost in blowing up the mountain, blasting the coal free, and carting the coal to the power plant in a train.
So for every kWh that you put into the battery of an EV, the environment had to suffer for a total of ~6 kWh of energy being spent, much of which was from coal - which has between 2 and 10000 times as much harmful emissions as the petroleum industry on an emission/energy basis (twice the carbon, many times the sulfur and NOx, hundreds of times the heavy metals, halides, and salts, and ~10,000 times the radioactive waste).
Why Batteries Are Too Valuable To Waste On Solar Power Integration And Electric Cars [View article]
Benthicity,
You are essentially stating that more electricity need not be produced in order to satisfy more demand... Making your statement idiotic.
Please think about the issue before screaming about it.
As for "Tesla is better than a BMW M5", I did not dispute that within the comment's section of the linked article. That does not justify giving rich people a $7500 credit to go buy a Tesla. By that logic, a Lamborghini Diablo is better than a Bugatti Veyron, so anyone who wants a Lamborghini Diablo should be given 10% of the cost of the vehicle.. Randomly casting about for something WORSE doesn't make your pick something special, and it certainly doesn't make it worthy of subsidies.
I would suggest also that both the "like" and "boo" buttons allow you to see who has "liked" or "disliked" certain posts.
It would be fascinating, though in truth I think any post that accrues a high number of "boos" would probably be sought out and read to see what everyone found so distasteful about them...
Understanding Economies Of Scale In Battery And EV Manufacturing [View article]
Ron,
I compare vehicles to the Prius whenever someone brings up environmental factors. If the goal is to entice people to drive environmentally responsible cars, you compare the environmental responsible choice to whatever car is being discussed.
If the purpose is to use government funds to entice people to buy a fast-accelerating car, then I don't support that subsidy. In fact I find such a subsidy to be absurd. ;)
This is especially true when a clear majority of the non-SUV vehicles sold have smaller environmental footprints than the fast-accelerating car that you feel the government should subsidize.
You have to understand that the people at Tesla may very well know they are selling snake-oil. Most of the Tesla detractors - myself included - assume that the people at Tesla are fully aware of the lies and misleading half-truths that they tell.
As for the system being larger than 7.5 kW, in the solar world - size matters... a lot. Rick speculated on a ~70 m2 curtain. In sunny Southern California, that would get a maximum insolation of ~65 kW at noon on the summer solstice. If the panels were thin-film CdTe panels, they would have a maximum efficiency of ~11%, but the lower-cost panels usually ring in at ~8%.
If Rick's estimate of the curtain size is correct, then he was likely significantly exaggerating the power estimate for the panels. But whatever the actual curtain size IS, the power output would be proportional to ~ #W ~ 1/9 - 1/12 A (A=area of roof or curtain space).
We all agree that the Tesla engineers understand this. They seem to be happy enough that their supporters DON'T understand this, and believe their completely ludicrous assertions without question.
FWIW, most thin-film solar systems have an average install cost of ~$4/W, not including the cost of the batteries. Panel costs are a small portion of the total installed system cost.
It's interesting that you feel you have the right to belittle John with childish name calling while you berate him for calling people names...
You may wish to invest in a mirror.
As for the nature of your critique, I cannot speak for John Peterson, but for myself I would state that I am happy to extend respect to anyone who comes asking honest questions or presenting honest concerns. I will answer those concerns, or comments, or questions... respectfully.
If someone brazenly shouts nonsense at the top of their lungs, attempting to drown the debate in lies and BS statistics "that they heard somewhere"... then that person gets no respect... Likewise, if a person responds to a respectful answer that includes actual facts and linked statistics by resorting to ad hominum attacks or lunatic denials... that person likewise gets no respect.
John's derogatory phrases, such as "hopium addicts" or "EVangelicals", are cast at these latter groups - liars and BS artists that have proven themselves unworthy of respect. If you are not one of those people, then you are not being referred to.
If I stated "ignorant people love the SOUND of 'pre-emptive defense"... and you happen to be a conservative intellectual who has a complex probability model in which you've calculated that pre-emptive strikes result in a less severe economic cost for international intervention... then you are not necessarily an ignorant person just because you happen to be advocating the same thing as the people that I broadly painted as "ignorant people"...
If you want to differentiate yourselves from the idiots that share your political worldview, do so. Prove that you can debate rationally, and you should be no more insulted by JP insulting the hopium addicts than I am.
My answer would be "overconfident". A major in physics isn't really all that special. There are quite a few physics majors that I wouldn't allow near our engineering software, and I personally out-scored ~50% of the applicants for Doty Scientific that had physics majors when I took our mathematics application tests in 7th grade (I was taking them as a "control" for my father, who thought he had made a pretty basic test and kept seeing applicants fail).
Musk clearly knew enough to get himself into trouble when he jumped onto the EV bandwagon... But he didn't understand enough to see the wheels were certain to come off the bandwagon long before the journey ended.
Every single thing he has written or said from the moment he started Tesla should be seen as a CEO hyping his own company's potential. It's his job to spin things in as pro-EV a light as possible, and remain as confident as possible - up until the point when the company goes under.
That's neither a sign of evil or idiocy, that's just a man doing his job.
You might like to spend a lot of time on http://www.eia.gov, That would make you look less foolish - when you encounter complete nonsense and lies, you can identify them rather than repeat them.
In 2011 we saw 30 GWh of electrical generation from petroleum liquids and petroleum coke, and http://1.usa.gov/TUQ872 In 2010 (the last year which the eia provides this data), ~6 Tcf of our nation's natural gas supply was extracted from oil wells (there's no easy link on the eia which can point this out, but more than half of that natural gas from oil wells is separated from the oil at the oil refineries).
So John was correct, and you were uninformed.
Seriously... spend some time looking through the data provided by the EIA. It's well organised, and will make you look less foolish.
I consider myself a great fan of your work, but in this I feel you have not successfully argued your case.
You present a possibility, and then argue as though it is truth. While the numbers might indeed reflect new reservation level of 3320 and JP Morgan et al made a dumb error (I'm NOT going to argue that the people at two separate institutions cannot make the same dumb mistake - groupthink seems to be a crippling epidemic in this world); it's fair to acknowledge that there may not have been a mistake, and the 13,820 new reservations are possible.
While Tesla has been heavily advertising for three years, the third quarter was the first time that they'd actually delivered a Model S, and it wasn't until the fourth quarter that deliveries seemed to be ramping up and quasi-stable. Many fence-sitters might have been watching for months or years and decided to go ahead and book since they would no longer be offering a multi-year 0-interest loan and they seemingly wouldn't be purchasing vaporware. That alternative is quite plausible - at least as possible as two major investment groups making really dumb errors (this in no way hints at whether the buyer pool is shallow or deep).
I strongly dislike the nation's fascination with EV's, and suspect that Tesla will not easily maintain a sales rate of 20,000/year... but it's easy to imagine that the first few months during which they are actually shipping cars will see a large glut of buyers that have been watching for a while and waiting until there's actually a product to reserve one.
I remain a great fan, and I will be very interested whenever the quarterly reports come out to see whether your suspicion is right... But I don't see sufficient evidence to pass judgement as of yet.
Pro Farmer estimates following this week's crop tour have corn yield at 120.25 bu/acre vs. the USDA estimate of 123.4. Beans 34.8 bu/acre vs. USDA at 36.1 ("The crop from Ohio to Nebraska needs a drink right now to realize these yield estimates"). Iowa (nation's largest producer): "Early start to the growing season turned into a mid-season nightmare for corn trying to pollinate." Market reaction will have to wait until Sunday night. [View news story]
If you calculate the percentage from last year to this year in the crop tour for each state, and multiply that by the state's percentage of the total corn crop from last year, you get a 16.9% reduction in the corn crop. If you then multiply the earlier estimate of ~145 bu/acre by 83.1%... you get a little over 120 bu/acre.
Here's the problem. The states that they cover in the crop tour account for ~73% of the nation's corn crop. In order for the 120 bu/acre estimate to be correct, there would have had to be no loss from the other corn producing regions. That is unlikely, as the most drought-ravaged states in the U.S. were not on the tour and constitute some portion of the remaining 27% of the corn crop.
Waiving The Biofuels Mandate, Part I: Impact On Corn Prices [View article]
The EPA mandate was passed by the last sitting president, not this one. The only thing this sitting president has overseen with respect to ethanol is a repeal of the blending subsidy.
If you're going to throw around invective, please be informed enough to know who you are screaming about.
As for cannibalism... well... You can choose to sound as relevant and/or plausible as you like, and I'll leave it at that... but I'm pretty comfortable stating that you won't see reports claiming "increased cannibalism linked to ethanol" within my lifetime.
Knight Capital Group: An Object Lesson In Emergency Financing [View article]
Dave_M,
I'm curious: If it's a small amount of effort, why didn't you go through that small amount of effort and post the actual number of Model S vehicles that are being made today... and post links to that information.
I couldn't find it this weekend, and I looked. So I would be grateful for the info and the link. What little I did find this weekend indicated that John and Rick are correct, and it's an incredibly small number of cars being produced right now.
Winter Is Coming - Natural Gas Prices Must Rise [View article]
scottorado,
I don't know whether you are a petroleum engineer or not... but I do know exactly how oil production compares over the last 3 years.
Federal lands might be down, but that doesn't matter under any pretext. The only thing that matters to the oil and gas industry is the overall production, and that has increased over 2 Mbbl/d in the last 3 years and is likely to increase another Mbbl/d this year.
We've had a more rapid expansion of the oil and gas industry in the last 3 and a half years than has been seen since the early 70's. During the previous 8 years we had a large net contraction in the industry, while the past 3 years saw net growth.
It seems that you've been getting information from Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck, but the U.S. oil and gas industry is doing quite well... Politics doesn't matter in this discussion.
You aren't putting the production levels in the proper context. Yes, last week we saw 2% higher productivity than the same week last year... but in January we were seeing >8% higher productivity than the same period of 2011. 2% shows how far we've fallen - comparitively - since the first month of the year.
Any company that doesn't behave rationally will not survive, and will eventually go become acquired by a company that does behave rationally. These people are not fools.
Natural Gas Storage Glut Could Become A Deficit By October [View article]
Good article.
I agree with many of the points. My only quibble is that it's hard to call it a "deficit" when we're merely discussing whether we will or will not set a new record for storage.
Production is still higher than last year, so if we get to September with roughly the same level of storage, it's likely that we'll see a similar build through October.
The bigger question is what will happen once winter demand ramps up, and production begins to FALL from the precipitous drop in the NG rig count.
Why Batteries Are Too Valuable To Waste On Solar Power Integration And Electric Cars [View article]
Of course, when you are talking about electricity, you have to factor in 8% line losses, ~70% generation losses, and another 40% energy lost in blowing up the mountain, blasting the coal free, and carting the coal to the power plant in a train.
So for every kWh that you put into the battery of an EV, the environment had to suffer for a total of ~6 kWh of energy being spent, much of which was from coal - which has between 2 and 10000 times as much harmful emissions as the petroleum industry on an emission/energy basis (twice the carbon, many times the sulfur and NOx, hundreds of times the heavy metals, halides, and salts, and ~10,000 times the radioactive waste).
Why Batteries Are Too Valuable To Waste On Solar Power Integration And Electric Cars [View article]
You are essentially stating that more electricity need not be produced in order to satisfy more demand... Making your statement idiotic.
Please think about the issue before screaming about it.
As for "Tesla is better than a BMW M5", I did not dispute that within the comment's section of the linked article. That does not justify giving rich people a $7500 credit to go buy a Tesla. By that logic, a Lamborghini Diablo is better than a Bugatti Veyron, so anyone who wants a Lamborghini Diablo should be given 10% of the cost of the vehicle.. Randomly casting about for something WORSE doesn't make your pick something special, and it certainly doesn't make it worthy of subsidies.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
I would suggest also that both the "like" and "boo" buttons allow you to see who has "liked" or "disliked" certain posts.
It would be fascinating, though in truth I think any post that accrues a high number of "boos" would probably be sought out and read to see what everyone found so distasteful about them...
It's a weird human tendency.
Understanding Economies Of Scale In Battery And EV Manufacturing [View article]
I compare vehicles to the Prius whenever someone brings up environmental factors. If the goal is to entice people to drive environmentally responsible cars, you compare the environmental responsible choice to whatever car is being discussed.
If the purpose is to use government funds to entice people to buy a fast-accelerating car, then I don't support that subsidy. In fact I find such a subsidy to be absurd.
;)
This is especially true when a clear majority of the non-SUV vehicles sold have smaller environmental footprints than the fast-accelerating car that you feel the government should subsidize.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
You have to understand that the people at Tesla may very well know they are selling snake-oil. Most of the Tesla detractors - myself included - assume that the people at Tesla are fully aware of the lies and misleading half-truths that they tell.
As for the system being larger than 7.5 kW, in the solar world - size matters... a lot. Rick speculated on a ~70 m2 curtain. In sunny Southern California, that would get a maximum insolation of ~65 kW at noon on the summer solstice. If the panels were thin-film CdTe panels, they would have a maximum efficiency of ~11%, but the lower-cost panels usually ring in at ~8%.
If Rick's estimate of the curtain size is correct, then he was likely significantly exaggerating the power estimate for the panels. But whatever the actual curtain size IS, the power output would be proportional to ~ #W ~ 1/9 - 1/12 A (A=area of roof or curtain space).
We all agree that the Tesla engineers understand this. They seem to be happy enough that their supporters DON'T understand this, and believe their completely ludicrous assertions without question.
FWIW, most thin-film solar systems have an average install cost of ~$4/W, not including the cost of the batteries. Panel costs are a small portion of the total installed system cost.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
It's interesting that you feel you have the right to belittle John with childish name calling while you berate him for calling people names...
You may wish to invest in a mirror.
As for the nature of your critique, I cannot speak for John Peterson, but for myself I would state that I am happy to extend respect to anyone who comes asking honest questions or presenting honest concerns. I will answer those concerns, or comments, or questions... respectfully.
If someone brazenly shouts nonsense at the top of their lungs, attempting to drown the debate in lies and BS statistics "that they heard somewhere"... then that person gets no respect... Likewise, if a person responds to a respectful answer that includes actual facts and linked statistics by resorting to ad hominum attacks or lunatic denials... that person likewise gets no respect.
John's derogatory phrases, such as "hopium addicts" or "EVangelicals", are cast at these latter groups - liars and BS artists that have proven themselves unworthy of respect. If you are not one of those people, then you are not being referred to.
If I stated "ignorant people love the SOUND of 'pre-emptive defense"... and you happen to be a conservative intellectual who has a complex probability model in which you've calculated that pre-emptive strikes result in a less severe economic cost for international intervention... then you are not necessarily an ignorant person just because you happen to be advocating the same thing as the people that I broadly painted as "ignorant people"...
If you want to differentiate yourselves from the idiots that share your political worldview, do so. Prove that you can debate rationally, and you should be no more insulted by JP insulting the hopium addicts than I am.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
My answer would be "overconfident". A major in physics isn't really all that special. There are quite a few physics majors that I wouldn't allow near our engineering software, and I personally out-scored ~50% of the applicants for Doty Scientific that had physics majors when I took our mathematics application tests in 7th grade (I was taking them as a "control" for my father, who thought he had made a pretty basic test and kept seeing applicants fail).
Musk clearly knew enough to get himself into trouble when he jumped onto the EV bandwagon... But he didn't understand enough to see the wheels were certain to come off the bandwagon long before the journey ended.
Every single thing he has written or said from the moment he started Tesla should be seen as a CEO hyping his own company's potential. It's his job to spin things in as pro-EV a light as possible, and remain as confident as possible - up until the point when the company goes under.
That's neither a sign of evil or idiocy, that's just a man doing his job.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
You might like to spend a lot of time on http://www.eia.gov, That would make you look less foolish - when you encounter complete nonsense and lies, you can identify them rather than repeat them.
For instance:
http://1.usa.gov/xuv4bq
In 2011 we saw 30 GWh of electrical generation from petroleum liquids and petroleum coke, and
http://1.usa.gov/TUQ872
In 2010 (the last year which the eia provides this data), ~6 Tcf of our nation's natural gas supply was extracted from oil wells (there's no easy link on the eia which can point this out, but more than half of that natural gas from oil wells is separated from the oil at the oil refineries).
So John was correct, and you were uninformed.
Seriously... spend some time looking through the data provided by the EIA. It's well organised, and will make you look less foolish.
The True Genius Of Tesla [View article]
I consider myself a great fan of your work, but in this I feel you have not successfully argued your case.
You present a possibility, and then argue as though it is truth. While the numbers might indeed reflect new reservation level of 3320 and JP Morgan et al made a dumb error (I'm NOT going to argue that the people at two separate institutions cannot make the same dumb mistake - groupthink seems to be a crippling epidemic in this world); it's fair to acknowledge that there may not have been a mistake, and the 13,820 new reservations are possible.
While Tesla has been heavily advertising for three years, the third quarter was the first time that they'd actually delivered a Model S, and it wasn't until the fourth quarter that deliveries seemed to be ramping up and quasi-stable. Many fence-sitters might have been watching for months or years and decided to go ahead and book since they would no longer be offering a multi-year 0-interest loan and they seemingly wouldn't be purchasing vaporware.
That alternative is quite plausible - at least as possible as two major investment groups making really dumb errors (this in no way hints at whether the buyer pool is shallow or deep).
I strongly dislike the nation's fascination with EV's, and suspect that Tesla will not easily maintain a sales rate of 20,000/year... but it's easy to imagine that the first few months during which they are actually shipping cars will see a large glut of buyers that have been watching for a while and waiting until there's actually a product to reserve one.
I remain a great fan, and I will be very interested whenever the quarterly reports come out to see whether your suspicion is right... But I don't see sufficient evidence to pass judgement as of yet.
Pro Farmer estimates following this week's crop tour have corn yield at 120.25 bu/acre vs. the USDA estimate of 123.4. Beans 34.8 bu/acre vs. USDA at 36.1 ("The crop from Ohio to Nebraska needs a drink right now to realize these yield estimates"). Iowa (nation's largest producer): "Early start to the growing season turned into a mid-season nightmare for corn trying to pollinate." Market reaction will have to wait until Sunday night. [View news story]
Here's the problem. The states that they cover in the crop tour account for ~73% of the nation's corn crop. In order for the 120 bu/acre estimate to be correct, there would have had to be no loss from the other corn producing regions. That is unlikely, as the most drought-ravaged states in the U.S. were not on the tour and constitute some portion of the remaining 27% of the corn crop.
Waiving The Biofuels Mandate, Part I: Impact On Corn Prices [View article]
If you're going to throw around invective, please be informed enough to know who you are screaming about.
As for cannibalism... well... You can choose to sound as relevant and/or plausible as you like, and I'll leave it at that... but I'm pretty comfortable stating that you won't see reports claiming "increased cannibalism linked to ethanol" within my lifetime.
Knight Capital Group: An Object Lesson In Emergency Financing [View article]
I'm curious: If it's a small amount of effort, why didn't you go through that small amount of effort and post the actual number of Model S vehicles that are being made today... and post links to that information.
I couldn't find it this weekend, and I looked. So I would be grateful for the info and the link. What little I did find this weekend indicated that John and Rick are correct, and it's an incredibly small number of cars being produced right now.
Winter Is Coming - Natural Gas Prices Must Rise [View article]
I don't know whether you are a petroleum engineer or not... but I do know exactly how oil production compares over the last 3 years.
Federal lands might be down, but that doesn't matter under any pretext. The only thing that matters to the oil and gas industry is the overall production, and that has increased over 2 Mbbl/d in the last 3 years and is likely to increase another Mbbl/d this year.
We've had a more rapid expansion of the oil and gas industry in the last 3 and a half years than has been seen since the early 70's. During the previous 8 years we had a large net contraction in the industry, while the past 3 years saw net growth.
It seems that you've been getting information from Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck, but the U.S. oil and gas industry is doing quite well... Politics doesn't matter in this discussion.
Natural Gas: Look Out Below [View article]
You aren't putting the production levels in the proper context. Yes, last week we saw 2% higher productivity than the same week last year... but in January we were seeing >8% higher productivity than the same period of 2011. 2% shows how far we've fallen - comparitively - since the first month of the year.
Any company that doesn't behave rationally will not survive, and will eventually go become acquired by a company that does behave rationally. These people are not fools.
Natural Gas Storage Glut Could Become A Deficit By October [View article]
I agree with many of the points. My only quibble is that it's hard to call it a "deficit" when we're merely discussing whether we will or will not set a new record for storage.
Production is still higher than last year, so if we get to September with roughly the same level of storage, it's likely that we'll see a similar build through October.
The bigger question is what will happen once winter demand ramps up, and production begins to FALL from the precipitous drop in the NG rig count.
http://seekingalpha.co...