By "that quickly" I was thinking orders of magnitude per year. This would have been competitive at 4 times the price. Depending on the details it might have been competitive at 10 times the (battery) price.

Was the decision taken years ago? This is the 100 days or free battery. But yes I accept the power companies may have been slow. But still it isn't just Australia that was slow, its the US, Germany, Denmark, the world.

>This would have been competitive at 4 times the price.

Not exactly.

Australia's high prices were not due to a technology failure, but a regulatory one. The power generators were manipulating the market causing extremely high peak prices, and essentially being allowed to get away with it. Most other countries don't allow the market to wildly fluctuate so much, so the payback is far longer. Think decades and not years.

4 * $66m = $264m / $40m = 6.5 ish years payback.

Not many investments offer that rate of return.

You may be right to suggest it may not be competitive in other locations though. I don't know.

He's right. Unless this was a media stunt for Elon's benefit (and it really doesn't look that way), the decision was made in a few days and the turnaround was 100 days: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/840032197637685249?s=20

And (B) is an issue. It's essentially deflationary economics. Why spend money now when it will be cheaper/more profitable next year? Once pricing on batteries stabilizes, you'll probably see more people willing to commit to big battery projects.

First off you don't know its going to fall next year. 2nd someone may sign a contract first.

The old sunk cost fallacy strikes again. You invest today because by not investing you forego the savings in the mean time. That something would be cheaper next year is not a factor, only the current expected ROI.

The sunk cost fallacy is most often stated as, it isn't worth getting rid of something because you've already spent the money on it. Its unclear to me if this is an example of that. I agree with your general thrust though.

Yeah, this is more of a reverse sunk-cost. If there is a term for that I don't know it.

(a) didn't take that long

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tesla-fulfills-...