It's an interesting study in economics (from my layman's perspective), because on the one hand they're multiplying production of batteries several times (and their competitors are also trying to keep up), while at the same time massively increasing the demand for them with both a system like this, Powerwall and the Model 3 for consumers (they plan to produce hundreds of thousands a year). It's mad to think about how they scaled that up in... pretty much the past five years (Gigafactory 1 started to produce powerwalls / packs in 2016 and battery cells themselves in 2017).

They've acquired a company called Maxwell Technologies which has some new dry electrode battery technology that should allow them to expand cell production with dramatically less Capex per unit of capacity

I hadn't heard about that acquisition. I hope it they don't stop Maxwell's offerings in supercapacitors.

They haven’t commented publicly but I’m guessing they’ll play a key role in regenerative braking for semi and pickup and also help higher powered super charging

On the last Tesla earnings call, they talked about an investor day early next year [1] where they'll talk in detail about their plans for terawatt-hour per year level production, directly as a result of their Maxwell acquisition.

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/07/25/tesla-plans-massive-productio...

Regarding cell production, at the Q2 earnings meeting Tesla talked about increasing it to 1-2 terawatt hours per year, about a hundred times the current rate. No, I'm not kidding.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/24/liveblog-tesla-q2-2019-...

They also used to talk a big game about how much power generation capacity they were going to install at SolarCity. Now that business unit is a shell of its former self.

Musk said (about an hour before you posted your comment) that SolarCity is hoping to manufacture 1000 solar roofs per week by the end of this year. [1]

Most of Musk's company goals are aspirational, and the means to the end often change. For example, Falcon 9 first stage was supposed to be reusable by landing it in the ocean with a parachute, but they found it didn't work. Instead, they lengthened the first stage booster dramatically so it would have the propellant margin to land propulsively.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1156005185656782848?s=20

"Musk said" ....

Dan Telvock, a local reporter in Buffalo who covers the solar gigafactory which taxpayers bought for Tesla, is already calling out Musk on his "aspirational" BS. https://mobile.twitter.com/DanTelvock/status/115621452719479...

Uh huh. A former employee claims that the goal as of February was 200/wk by end of year, but a tweet by the CEO in July states publicly the goal is 1000/wk by end of year. I have no reason to trust a former employee over the CEO.

Regardless of which one is correct, the fact remains that they are scaling up a new technology. Both 200 and 1000 are ambitious goals, and both contradict your implication that the solar department is "a shell of its former self". It has dramatically shifted directions (from market standard solar panels on roof, to integrated solar roof tiles).

It's just one among many tweets from Telvock questioning the veracity of Musk's tweet. A rampup of the kind Musk is promising doesn't happen in a vacuum -- there should be new hiring happening at the Buffalo Gigafactory already (they laid off 50 employees in January, has that headcount even been restored?), raw materials procurement should be underway, and there should be a healthy roster of orders for the $50,000 roofs. Where are they?

Of course normal companies, with a level of corporate governance ranking somewhere above "drunken frat house," publish these sorts of production forecasts in official channels after careful vetting and consideration. It is neither admirable nor acceptable for a public company CEO like Musk to simply pop off on Twitter with "ambitious goals" on which investors might rely for trading decisions if they have no basis in fact. Which is why questions are already being asked about whether Musk's tweet violated the terms of his amended SEC settlement agreement, which requires legal pre-approval for any public statements he makes about matters relevant to Tesla, including production forecasts. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-30/musk-twee...

AndrewBissell, I have a question for you.

First let me say Musk has a habit of doing big, new things that the experts and the fossil-fuels-forever gang said were absolutely impossible.

That being the case, what are your views on global climate change? Do you think it is a huge danger and it is urgent we get off fossil fuels as soon as possible? Or do you think it is the greatest hoax in the history of the human race? Or what?

The question about views on climate change is a common red herring tossed into these discussions, but let me answer it this way: If Tesla turns out to be the second and much bigger coming of Solyndra, as I think it will, it cause a huge wave of public skepticism toward investment in clean energy technology. As far as personal premium/luxury BEVs themselves are concerned, they're a piss-poor, horrendously expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, mostly sold to people of means who want to believe we can consume our way out of the carbon crisis with flashy greenwashing gestures like buying a new car every couple of years and slapping an HOV lane sticker on it. There's a reason Musk reacts with such vitriol every time someone suggests that mass transit infrastructure (or any one of a number of other public initiatives) would be a better use of the money that has gone to EV subsidies.

With the essential help of enormous government subsidies, Musk succeeded in creating a cult brand around EVs and little else. It's an achievement of celebrity and branding, not engineering or manufacturing. Which is not to take away from it necessarily, he has proved the EV concept, but he has yet to show that EVs can be financially sustainable over the long run without constant public money injections.

Meanwhile, his application of Silicon Valley management techniques to industrial manufacturing is a total disaster of scrapped alien dreadnought plans and cars being taped and zip-tied together in a tent. The machine-learning-on-wheels he calls "Autopilot" is dangerous and undercooked, and could be easily rolled out by any of Tesla's competitors if not for the fact that they have at least some scruples about beta testing their software on public roads. His impact on home solar generation has probably been net negative as Solar City was a debacle which had to be bailed out by Tesla shareholders and has been in a tailspin ever since, despite massive subsidies forked over to build the Buffalo Gigafactory by the state of New York.

If the whole point is to build a green energy future, why has Musk used Tesla as a piggy-bank to prop up his celebrity billionaire lifestyle by borrowing enormous sums against the value of his Tesla stock? It has created perverse incentives harmful to the long run health of Tesla itself. A restructuring to shed debts and shore up its balance sheet would be the best possible move they could make if the goal is to remain a viable entity replacing ICE vehicles with EVs into the indefinite future. But Musk will never do this voluntarily, because his goal is to keep the stock price propped up.

The reason I brought up the matter of global climate change is that once it was discovered it was a danger, it was also clear that the human race needed to get off ICE's and on to EV's, and do so as quickly as possible.

The problem was the EV's at the time were not remotely up to the job. Where Musk comes in is that, thanks to his brilliant efforts, we are getting there many years earlier than we would have otherwise.

The people who nonetheless are screamingly angry at Musk and Tesla seem to fall mostly into three classes. One is global climate change deniers who think we should stay on fossil fuels forever. The second is shorters who don't care if the world goes to hell, and only want to make money. The third is haters, by which I mean people who are not happy unless they have someone to spend their life hating.

My impression from your comment is that you are in the third class.

I'm tired of a sociopathic CEO who treats his employees and customers like shit, puts the driving public at risk with untested software, flogs unsustainable greenwashing scams, and gets away with blatantly defrauding the investing & taxpaying public time after time (fake solar roof tiles to push through the SCTY buyout, "$420 funding secured," 1 million self-driving robotaxis by 2020, etc) because prosecuting him would cause the price of a particular stock ticker to go down.

I want to live in your world, where benevolent megacorps don’t cheat on emissions tests, or self-validate relaxed stability planes that require additional features to avoid crashing, or turn a blind eye to overseas suicide factories.

And where the only bad person is Elon Musk.

Ah yes, the old "if you don't call out every single corporate bad actor then you also cannot call out Tesla" argument. Maybe your comment would make more sense if there were HN threads full of commenters repeating talking points from Boeing or VW execs.

No, I am not engaging in whataboutism, it is just that alleging that Elon Musk is the single worst person in the world is ludicrous. Please reread this sentence of yours:

>could be easily rolled out by any of Tesla's competitors if not for the fact that they have at least some scruples about beta testing their software on public roads.

At least they realize that they have to plan big if they want to decrease CO2 emission of the world significantly.

Their plan can fail, but I don't see any better plan.

I hope that other companies will start producing similar solutions instead. We can't rely on just one company to provide essential infrastructure worldwide. Those cells will need replacing in a few years and if there's still monopoly we may have series issues. It makes for a great history book material, but I like my utilities predictable and boring.

Here's one: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/the-smarter-grid...

It's based on a novel battery. One of the interesting claims about XNRGI's battery is that it can be manufactured at scale for a much lower capital cost because you can use existing semiconductor wafer manufacturing infrastructure:

https://xnrgi.com/technology/

So let's see if Cross Border Power's grid battery works. It'll be good if it does.

Someone on HN had a wonderful writeup previously about ALL the companies Musk is building are directly applicable to colonizing mars...

He is piloting and testing them all as colonization building blocks here first.

However - I wish that he would start by building a moon base first...

Waitbutwhy has some interesting posts about what they see as the role of each company. The Neural link one summarises them at one point (though is an enormous article, and a great one).

https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

As an aside, they have some really wonderful long form content. I love the 1 to Graham's number posts (a two parter) https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/from-1-to-1000000.html

That's good news for earth. You often need a closed loop product lifecycle in space, since you can't throw away and source new parts and materials without great cost. Any spinoffs should help us close open loop systems down here on earth.

I believe the standard working hypothesis is that Elon Musk is a lonely alien trying to get home, and started a car company because it seemed nicely inconspicuous.

s/started/joined/

Okay, but no quibble re. the lonely alien part?

I'm agnostic on that :)