Ecocab

[Wild Cobra]

Featuring...

The Tesla!

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/ecocab-bringing-tesla-model-s-taxis-to-portland/

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/sbo/2014/11/want-to-take-a-ride-in-a-tesla-this-new.html?page=all

I heard about this in the news a few weeks back. Next time I need a ride, I'll try them out.

[CosmicCowboy]

comments are pretty funny.

[boutons_deux]

self-driving cabs are in the not-distant-future.

[Nbadan]

self-driving cabs are in the not-distant-future.

cabs are small change....can you imagine self driving transport trucks?

[Nbadan]

Speaking of Tesla...

Tesla Motors Inc.'s Powerwall will be available in just a few months!

This changes everything -----

Tesla Motors Inc.'s $3,000 Powerwall Is Available This Summer


On Thursday, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk took the stage in Hawthorne, California, and boldly claimed the electric-car maker is ready to provide the missing piece in the solution to fast-rising CO2 emissions. The solution comes in two forms: a wall-mounted, solar-charged battery for home power use and an infinitely scalable battery system for business clients with large power needs. Already delivering more lithium-ion batteries than any other company in the world through the sales of its fully electric Model S, Tesla hopes it will drive more demand for its batteries by launching into the nascent energy storage business.
[/B]

Tesla's energy storage

This new suite of batteries for homes, businesses, and utilities will help "wean the world off fossil fuels," Tesla asserts on its website. The batteries are meant to help manage power demand, provide backup power, increase grid resilience, and, perhaps most important, easily harness and use solar power.

Tesla describes its Powerwall, the company's energy storage solution for homes, on its site.

Powerwall consists of Tesla's lithium-ion battery pack, liquid thermal control system and software that receives dispatch commands from a solar inverter. The unit mounts seamlessly on a wall and is integrated with the local grid to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve.

The Powerwall comes in two configurations: a battery with a 10-kilowatt-hour capacity designed for weekly cycles and a 7 kWh version designed for daily cycles, priced at $3,500 and $3,000, respectively. Up to nine of either battery can be installed together, providing up to 90 kWh capacity with linked 10 kWh batteries or 63 kWh capacity with linked 7 kWh batteries. Key to the Powerwall's value proposition, it comes with a 10-year warranty. Dividing the price across the 10-year warranty, a Powerwall costs just $25 to $29 a month.

Tesla's Powerpack, aimed to support power needs for businesses with larger demand than 90 kWh of capacity for weekly cycles or 63 kWh of capacity for daily cycles, offers far more energy storage. Designed to scale infinitely, the Powerpack is a 100 kWh tower available in a minimum of 500 kWh capacity groupings. Musk even referenced the possibility of gigawatt-hour class installations or larger, noting that Tesla could power a whole city the size of Boulder, Colorado, with a GWh installation. Tesla already has one utility that wants to do a 250 megawatt-hour installation with the Powerpack, Musk said.

While Tesla's battery storage can play a crucial role for utilities by helping them manage power and increase grid resilience, the technology, when paired with solar panels, can also enable grid independence.

"You can actually go, if you want, completely off grid. You can take your solar panels, charge the battery packs, and that's all you use," Musk said during the keynote address.

While this possibility might be irrelevant for developed nations with established power lines, it opens up key opportunities in markets where communities are underserved or have no access to electricity yet.

"What we'll see is something similar to what happened with cell phones versus landlines, where the cell phones actually leapfrog the landlines and there wasn't a need to put landlines in a lot of countries or in remote locations," Musk predicted during the event. "So, people in a remote village or an island somewhere can take solar panels, combine it with the Tesla Powerwall, and never have to worry about having electricity lines."

Bringing the energy storage to market

Tesla will begin shipping the Powerwall in approximately three or four months. It is already available for reservation on its website.

With cells initially produced in Tesla's Fremont. California, factory, where the Model S is manufactured, the initial ramp-up in production for Powerwalls and Powerpacks will be slow. But Musk said the ramp-up will be "much, much higher" next year as Tesla transitions to the under-construction Gigafactory in Nevada, which is scheduled to begin first cell production in 2015.

If Tesla's energy storage business builds momentum, the additional business will lower risk for investors. Currently, Tesla's business is virtually completely dependent on sales of fully electric vehicles. Investors, therefore, will undoubtedly keep a close eye on this segment as it develops.

In the near term, Musk said in a press conference before the Thursday event that he believes Tesla's energy storage business will have low profit margins by the fourth quarter of this year and be materially profitable by next year.

Longer term, Musk has said he expects energy storage to eventually account for one-third of the Gigafactory's cell production. The Gigafactory is purposed to produce 35 GWh of capacity annually by 2020. Looking even further into the future, Musk said be believes demand for energy storage will be a key catalyst for "many" more Gigafactories as the world transitions away from fossil fuels to a sustainable-energy future.

Investors, of course, should keep in mind the speculative nature of Tesla's new business. The market for energy storage is new and mostly unproven. While the goal of energy storage -- to help transition the world to sustainable power and save customers money -- is compelling, such bold aspirations are easier in theory than in practice.

The article Tesla Motors Inc.'s $3,000 Powerwall Is Available This Summer originally appeared on Fool.com.

Daniel Sparks owns shares of Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends and owns shares of Tesla Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 - 2015 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Link --
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technologyinvesting/tesla-motors-incs-dollar3000-powerwall-is-available-this-summer/ar-BBjakXC?ocid=DELLDHP

Yeah, if Tesla is not part of your portfolio fire your broker....

[boutons_deux]

Powerall doesn't make much sense for the average residence connected to a reliable grid with very few to no outages per year, and very short outages. Size your solar system to supply 100% of your peak month electricity bill so your electricity bill is very near zero. Where does residential storage make any sense in that case?

[Nbadan]

Powerall doesn't make much sense for the average residence connected to a reliable grid with very few to no outages per year, and very short outages. Size your solar system to supply 100% of your peak month electricity bill so your electricity bill is very near zero. Where does residential storage make any sense in that case?

Storage could make sense if your solar panels aren't large enough to supply your daily energy needs....either way, its a way to get large swabs of people of the grid, which in Texas is a good thing in the summer...roving black out and all....

[Nbadan]

..and with a solar panel system it could be cost effective for high energy users...especially if CPS is willing to rebate some of the costs to convert over...

[boutons_deux]

Storage could make sense if your solar panels aren't large enough to supply your daily energy needs....either way, its a way to get large swabs of people of the grid, which in Texas is a good thing in the summer...roving black out and all....

no. if your solar panels aren't sufficient to supply 100% of your consumpton, they can't possibly be enough to charge batteries for no-sun hours.

[Nbadan]

no. if your solar panels aren't sufficient to supply 100% of your consumpton, they can't possibly be enough to charge batteries for no-sun hours.

This is Texas....energy consumption (and storage) is not static..during hot weather your energy needs will be greater at peak hours....depending on the size of your house, during these hours your solar panels may not be sufficient enough to supply your demand making you grid dependent.....storage makes sense for complete grid independence.....

[boutons_deux]

solar panels may not be sufficient enough to supply your demand

I repeat: if the panels are insufficient for your consumption, then they can't possibly have enough power to ALSO charge batteries. So you need invest in a lot more panels AND batteries so the panels in hot, sunny days can both supply 100% of your juice AND then more juice to charge batteries for no-sun hours.

[Wild Cobra]

..and with a solar panel system it could be cost effective for high energy users...especially if CPS is willing to rebate some of the costs to convert over...
Why should they subsidize users who can afford to do this in the first place?

For that matter, why should anyone be entitled to such a subsidy? It's still not going to create a liberal utopia.

[boutons_deux]

Why should they subsidize users who can afford to do this in the first place?

For that matter, why should anyone be entitled to such a subsidy? It's still not going to create a liberal utopia.

Why should taxpayers subsidize BigCarbon, esp BigOil, just about the biggest, most profitable industry on the planet?

Taxpayers are also not getting full royalty payments from BigCarbon, esp BigCoal, but that appears to change.

Why should taxpayers subsidize BigAg's crop insurance?

Why should taxpayers subsidize the insurance and bear losses of coastal storm insurance when for-profit insurers won't touch it?

Why should taxpayers be liable for private nuke plant catastrophes?

CA electricity customers are getting stuck with $10Bs of decommissioning costs (NOT getting any electricity) because of mgmt FUCKUPS that killed the San Onofre nuke plants.

Whine about ALL THAT and then just maybe your blindly ideological whining about renewable subsidies, tax breaks could have the tiniest bit of credibility.

[Wild Cobra]

Why should taxpayers subsidize BigCarbon, esp BigOil, just about the biggest, most profitable industry on the planet?


They don't you Moore-on.

Tax breaks are not subsidies!

Words have meaning, but them a stupid idiot like you thinks they can replace words at will.

[boutons_deux]

Storage could make sense if your solar panels aren't large enough to supply your daily energy needs....either way, its a way to get large swabs of people of the grid, which in Texas is a good thing in the summer...roving black out and all....

Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar :lol

SolarCity, with Musk as its chairman, has decided not to install the 7kWh Powerwall that’s optimized for daily use. Bass said that battery "doesn't really make financial sense" because of regulations that allow most U.S. solar customers to sell extra electricity back to the grid.1 (http://www.bloomberg.com/#footnote-1430888329917)

For customers of SolarCity, the biggest U.S. rooftop installer, the lack of a 7kWh option means that installing a Tesla battery to extend solar power after sunset won't be possible. Want to use Tesla batteries to move completely off the grid? You'll just to have to wait. “Our residential offering is battery backup,” Bass said in an e-mail.

The Economic Case for Tesla's New Battery Gets Worse

SolarCity is only offering the bigger Powerwall to customers buying new rooftop solar systems. Customers can prepay $5,000 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-01/solarcity-taking-orders-for-tesla-batteries-starting-at-5-000), everything included, to add a nine-year battery lease to their system or buy the Tesla battery outright outright for $7,140. The 10 kilowatt-hour backup battery is priced competitively, as far as batteries go, selling at half the price of some competing products.

But if its sole purpose is to provide backup power to a home, the juice it offers is but a sip. The model puts out just 2 kilowatts of continuous power, which could be pretty much maxed out by a single vacuum cleaner, hair drier, microwave oven or a clothes iron. The battery isn’t powerful enough to operate a pair of space heaters; an entire home facing a winter power outage would need much more. In sunnier climes, meanwhile, it provides just enough energy to run one or two small window A/C units.

For more demanding applications, Tesla made its Powerwall batteries so they can be attractively stacked, side-by-side. It looks like this:

But SolarCity doesn’t offer a discount for multiple batteries. To provide the same 16 kilowatts of continuous power as this $3,700 (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Generac-16-000-Watt-Air-Cooled-Automatic-Standby-Generator-with-200-Amp-SE-Rated-Transfer-Switch-6462/205399650?N=5yc1vZbx9s) Generac generator from Home Depot, a homeowner would need eight stacked Tesla batteries at a cost of $45,000 for a nine-year lease. "It's a luxury good—really cool to have—but I don't see an economic argument," said Brian Warshay, an energy-smart-technologies analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/tesla-s-new-battery-doesn-t-work-that-well-with-solar

[Nbadan]

Why should they subsidize users who can afford to do this in the first place?

For that matter, why should anyone be entitled to such a subsidy? It's still not going to create a liberal utopia.

The same reason they subsidize nuclear power plants, wind and solar farms....they reduce the need for CPS to build more capacity for residential use...one reason companies move to SA is because our electricity is very competitively priced to other areas...

[Nbadan]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...ell-with-solar

It's still a work in progress, but I envision a time when most homes are off the grid...and storage is the key...

[Wild Cobra]

The same reason they subsidize nuclear power plants, wind and solar farms....they reduce the need for CPS to build more capacity for residential use...one reason companies move to SA is because our electricity is very competitively priced to other areas...

But I am not one who advocates the redistribution of wealth. If you are, move to another country please.

[Nbadan]

STFU with your redistribution of wealth bullshit...we won't need to redistribute anything if employers paid a living wage...

[boutons_deux]

They don't you Moore-on.

Tax breaks are not subsidies!

Words have meaning, but them a stupid idiot like you thinks they can replace words at will.

Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/05/02/62098/big-oil-profits-and-tax-breaks-remain-high-despite-sequestration-cuts/) into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. Once intended to jump-start struggling domestic drillers, these incentives have become a tidy bonus for some of the world's most profitable companies.


Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips—which get an average tax break of $3.34 on every barrel of domestic crude they produce. With Washington looking under the couch cushions for sources of new revenue, oil prices topping $100 a barrel, and the world feeling the heat from its dependence on fossil fuels, there's been a renewed push to close these decades-old loopholes. But history suggests that Big Oil won't let go of its perks without a brawl.

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/tax-breaks-630.png

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/oil-subsidies-renewable-energy-tax-breaks


========================

Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Overview

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

[Wild Cobra]

Notice how your graphic says "tax breaks?"

Again, tax breaks are not subsidies.

Words have meaning. Libtards love to use the wrong meanings to lie.

[Wild Cobra]

STFU with your redistribution of wealth bullshit...we won't need to redistribute anything if employers paid a living wage...
Why?

Aren't you getting a living wage?

Who's fault is that?