Report: Tesla lays off entire Supercharger team! [Update: Elon Musk says supercharger growth will continue]

[Crissa]

It's an opportunity to capitalize on their tech that Tesla has mostly squandered, and with the burning down of their planning team now probably never will.

Yeah, although sidelining VPP pools with the charging network would be a reason to fire the lead. Not reason to fire everyone else, tho.

-Crissa

 

[Tinker71]

I hate to see layoffs but Elon may be right. With faster charging speed people on trips will use convenience store chargers or converted gas stations. They are coming. And remember at build our EVs will only require 60% of the nozzles.

 

[JBee]

Forum mangled the link. I edited the post and fixed it.

Agreed that the way cost structures for grid connections (especially "demand charges") very much messes up the deal for CPOs. But Tesla has had the tech necessary to battery backup, and demand manage Superchargers for how long? With even a single Megapack on site, each Supercharger could be helping to stabilize the grid and getting paid for ancillary grid services to boot (plus or minus crappy outdated regulations of course).

So I don't agree with your assertion that there has to be raging urbanity in a place to make it worth putting in a Supercharger. It's an opportunity to capitalize on their tech that Tesla has mostly squandered, and with the burning down of their planning team now probably never will capitalize on.

No worries.

With Megapack, they are currently $1.8m, have 1.9MW output, so 7.7 250kW v 3 stalls at once, and then the 3.7MWh of battery storage can recharge 38 Model Ys with 75kWh each, or 29 CTs.

The return on that at $0.45kWh is $675hr so it would take 3000hours at full capacity to pay back the capex on the Megapack. But here's the crunch: That would be 3hours everyday at full load every day for 3 years, but each of those 8 stalls would only run at full power for 20 minutes or so before the EV battery ramps the charge rate down, which means you need 16 more stalls just to keep it at peak output, and then it would only last two hours before it needs to recharge and that takes even more time to do if you only have a small connection.

Then you still need to buy power from the network, and that reduces you income, meaning that instead of 3 your looking at 5 or 6 years, and you still haven't paid for the stall installs (24x $40k another $1m), or the huge network connection to recharge a Megapack another $1million, then the site itself etc etc. That's lots of $millions, and there's been plans for these before like this:



Point is Megapack is way to big for most installs, let alone they still need large network connection anyway, which remote locations don't have, and getting one there would cost millions more. As for buffering a network and selling on the balancing market, you still don't have a load when there is no people in the area, so who would you balance the network for?

That's why the largest Megapack project is being build down the road from here (well 300miles down the road), on a decommissioned coal mine and power site, where all the infrastructure for connecting it to population centers already exist.

You could use a smaller Powerpack version for smaller installs, but they are proportionality less viable because of their smaller scale. It's important to note here that the Megapack/Powerpack does not provide power by itself, and needs to be charged by something else, which is typically offsite. On average around here with good solar insolation, you'd need 1MW (another $1.5m) of solar panels to charge this just once per day, which would then allow it to charge EV's for just 2 hours per day.

Just for comparison though, here in Australia our local town runs a microgrid with 1500 people, with 1.4MW of wind, 600kW of household Solar and about 1.4MW of diesel baseload, in all though, our town wouldn't be able to operate even a single 250kW SC stall, even if you placed it on the main feedline. Likewise all of the town between here and the eastern states are smaller than our town, hence there will never be any SC going east for a 1000miles or more.

Simply, the point is that if you don't have a existing consumer base of people in an area, you also don't have a network to support a SC station to "fill the hole" in charging coverage. FYI I actually operate a RE powersation under licence with the WEM. You can check out our state network market here: https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-syste...lectricity-market-wem/data-wem/data-dashboard

 

[wtibbit]

Reuters is credible? HA

Pass along your list of credible news sources, please. I'm always looking for accurate, timely, and unbiased reporting. You can send privately if you wish.

 

[Cyber1qhorsey]

Brains and... swords. Courtesy of Electek... Their editorial was less than favorable, but claimed we need a strong Tesla to lead the pack..

 

[jerhenderson]

Pass along your list of credible news sources, please. I'm always looking for accurate, timely, and unbiased reporting. You can send privately if you wish.

Don't look at any American ones.

 

[wtibbit]

Don't look at any American ones.

Ah... I see, you were just being sarcastic! Of course, Reuters is Canadian and It is one of the most trustworthy news agencies in the world.

From Wikipedia:
Reuters (/ˈrɔɪtərz/ ⓘ, ROY-terz) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation.[1][2] It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages.[3] Reuters is one of the largest and most trusted news agencies in the world.[4][5][6]

The agency was established in London in 1851 by the German-born Paul Reuter. It was acquired by the Thomson Corporation of Canada in 2008 and now makes up the news media division of Thomson Reuters.

 

[jerhenderson]

Ah... I see, you were just being sarcastic! Of course, Reuters is Canadian and It is one of the most trustworthy news agencies in the world.

From Wikipedia:
Reuters (/ˈrɔɪtərz/ ⓘ, ROY-terz) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation.[1][2] It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages.[3] Reuters is one of the largest and most trusted news agencies in the world.[4][5][6]

The agency was established in London in 1851 by the German-born Paul Reuter. It was acquired by the Thomson Corporation of Canada in 2008 and now makes up the news media division of Thomson Reuters.

There's a big difference between owning and where the info is broadcast from. Canadian news broadcast standards are significantly more strict than US requirements, for example. I'd trust CTV news any day over any US network, for that reason.

 

[fhteagle]

With Megapack, they are currently $1.8m, have 1.9MW output, so 7.7 250kW v 3 stalls at once, and then the 3.7MWh of battery storage can recharge 38 Model Ys with 75kWh each, or 29 CTs.

I appreciate you adding solid numbers to the conversation. However I am not sure you fully understood my point, so I'll back up and explain a bit more thoroughly and add additional numbers as well. Not sure if yours were USD or AUD, but I'll just assume USD as its the most pessimistic against my case, and blends with the other USD based numbers I know...

The idea is too put in the Megapack not just to support the charging, but as a peaker plant, peak shaving device, VPP, etc. Like a Freewire or Jule box, just bigger and smarter.

So let's say Tesla buys at $0.065 and can turn a kWh around with 85% efficiency. That's $0.076 cost of energy for a kWh in / out.

3700kWh storage, let's say I always wanted to have 10 cars worth of energy stored, or 800 kWh minimum reserve for the Supercharger supply (in reality this could be a dynamic number adjusted by machine learning). That leaves ~2800kWh that could be allocated to VPP operations. Assuming we were trying cover my co-op evening peak (~5 hours), that means the pack can push back ~500kW across those 5 hours without any trouble. 500kW of peak shaving is worth 500x$23 = $11500 in demand charge reduction per month to my electric co-op. They're talking about paying $1.00/kWh to account holders for DERMS operations, which is a far less than $23, but that's a different discussion for a different thread.

But the point is to be able to hook up the Supercharger site to a smaller grid connection, let's say 200kW. That's enough to replenish the Megapack across our 19 hour off peak period with some left over to charge a few cars.

A smaller solar array than you mentioned, say 50kW, produces enough new energy to actually be injecting back into the grid to offset the demand charges from Megapack ingesting energy at 200kW here, so I will just leave those out of if the calculation.

But let's say we can only push 200kW back through the transformer across the 5 hour peak, that's 1000kWh, or max $1000 a day in revenue in VPP operations here.

In other words, in this scenario, Tesla either gets to make either a maximum of 2800 x $0.25 = $700 if cars showed up to charge, or 1000 x $0.92 = $920 in VPP operations if they didn't, per day. $700 x 365 = ~$250k in gross margin, in the worst case. Even leaving the reduced costs for a lower grade grid connection out of the calculation, that's 8 years to pay back in a very pessimistic assumption set. 6 years if the pack is more VPP utilized than charging utilized. Are those sexy returns, no, but they're pretty solid for playing the energy game with an asset that lasts 15+ years.

And none of that is counting payments for fast frequency support, synthetic inertia, and other things a VPP could be paid for under the right regulatory system. But I don't have solid numbers for those here, so I'll leave them off the table.

Does it cost capex, and some opex to add a Megapack to a low utilization Supercharger site? Sure. Can it work out to make a site self-funding way faster than just selling charging only? I'm sure it does, and that's the point.

And that completely leaves off the table the marginal value increase for the cars themselves for a wider and more usable network. In other words, Tesla gets to sell more cars to more people in more places, possibly at a higher price, by having a more complete and more reliable network. Tesla is best positioned to accomplish this out of all the Western companies that I know about. So no, once again I assert that the Supercharger network is not "done". Is it the sexy high return thing that Musk wants to concentrate on? Nope, but it is the bread and butter for 3 of Tesla's core and possibly growth businesses, and should not be paused at this time.

 

[wtibbit]

There's a big difference between owning and where the info is broadcast from. Canadian news broadcast standards are significantly more strict than US requirements, for example. I'd trust CTV news any day over any US network, for that reason.

Certainly, broadcast news received from news organizations over regulated distribution methods - television, radio or internet channels - varies greatly by country. But, Reuters isn't a broadcast news organization, it's a news agency .

Reuters is one of the three major news agencies in the world, along with Associated Press and Agence France Presse.

Per Wikipedia: A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and television broadcasters. To be successful, they must deliver unbiased, accurate and objective news to those subscribers.

The subscribers then decide which of those delivered articles they use and edit them, or how they use the articles' content in their own reporting. The news broadcasters do this in whatever biased or unobjective way they choose (as allowed by their regulators). That's where trust issues arise.

I go directly to AP and Reuters when I want unbiased, objective, factual information. Of course, YECMV.....

 

[Gilbertus]

This is the headline from a very known german newspaper. Is this BS again or some truth ?

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de...Nbxy4DvyV1-icoFYRxRaYlXhwpyfmsxAUUPzFdKT8QU-U

 

[espresso-drumbeat]

This is the headline from a very known german newspaper. Is this BS again or some truth ?

https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de...Nbxy4DvyV1-icoFYRxRaYlXhwpyfmsxAUUPzFdKT8QU-U

Without giving any clicks based only on your title: NO
BS - YES

 

[L3it3R]

It’s true. No one but Elon knows what’s going on in that head of his. (And even that may be assuming much) The big shareholders need to hold him to account for these choices. Supercharging is literally one of the central pillars to Tesla overall.

 

[mark555055c]

Just mainstream media lies. Tesla laid a bunch of people off, but there is no way they are ending the suprcharging network as the news is trying to make it seem.

I'm concerned that humanity so easily believes nonsense and ignores all common sense, very troubling.

 

[L3it3R]

Just mainstream media lies. Tesla laid somke people off, but there is no way they are in any way ending the suprcharging network;

I'm concerned that humanity so easily believes nonsense and ignores common sense, very troubling.

Other than current contracts for installation ongoing, nothing new will happen, and maintenance will DEFINITELY suffer. This isn’t BS. It’s a very big problem when the petulance is the largest impact. He has great ideas, but does really stupid things here and there. This is one of them.
are they working on a new team? Who knows. All we have at this point is that the team has been disbanded.