Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, report says

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by toomuchtodo on Thursday December 06, 2018 @01:39PM (#18620765)

Manufacturing is rapidly scaling up. There is so much lithium available in the world (even commercially reasonable to extract from the ocean), that there is much room for per unit costs to decrease before you encounter lower COGS bounds (evaporation + transportation costs).

More importantly, a ton of lithium mined will be used for decades; when all of the Model S/X/3 battery packs are end of life (10-15 years from now), those modules are going to be remanufactured into stationary storage (or recycled entirely through a destructive extraction process, depending on degradation and next use case). This is similar to how your recycled pop can might end up in the aluminum used in a new light truck or an aircraft fuselage (edit: poor example; a better example would be automotive parts that are remanufactured and put back into service).

The smartest thing Tesla ever did was finance battery manufacturing using luxury vehicle margins (stoking demand with a sexy, desirable brand), and have those customers (including myself) finance the depreciation and capital carrying costs of those battery sleds they'll use again in the future. I am not a Model S owner; I am the temporary user of 100kw of energy storage, which will eventually make it's way into stationary storage where mobile energy density (ie pack degradation) isn't as much of a concern.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by amerine on Thursday December 06, 2018 @01:51PM (#18620886)

This is the first time someone has so clearly made TSLA’s value so clear to me. I get it. Damn.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by blevin on Thursday December 06, 2018 @03:07PM (#18621620)

JB Straubel's Redwood Materials is another interesting piece of that picture.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by gamblor956 on Thursday December 06, 2018 @04:28PM (#18622428)

Panasonic and Samsung make Tesla's battery cells; Tesla simply assembles them together. For now they're the big kahuna because they've locked up output through contracts but when they don't control the primary input to their "biggest product" they're at the mercy of their suppliers and the market.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by toomuchtodo on Thursday December 06, 2018 @06:18PM (#18623485)

You continue to be bearish for a company that successfully executes over and over (from Roadster 1.0 to hundreds of millions of dollars in free cash flow). Strange.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by gamblor956 on Friday December 07, 2018 @02:38AM (#18625801)

Having worked in the accounting industry, what Tesla has cannot properly be called free cash flow and were musk to make such a statement he would face SEC investigation and shareholder lawsuits.

I think we also disagree on Tesla's execution. Tesla has just barely managed to avoid death many times. That's not successful execution unless you define success as not failing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by jryle70 on Friday December 07, 2018 @07:04AM (#18626959)

Well, they are not just another new kid in the block. When their goals are to mass produce electric vehicles; to make it a viable option in the market; to move the entire industry in a new direction; to create advanced battery production capability, in my mind they have been nothing but a resounding success.

[ Parent | on HN ]