Starship has charged $90m so far. That’s including a healthy profit I’m sure.
SpaceX has a contract with Voyager Technologies for a 2029 launch at $90m. I would read that in the opposite direction as you, where you assume that it’s costing SpaceX less than what they’re charging. That’s far enough away that I’m not sure they’re going to be able to keep that price or be certain that they can actually launch on time or make a profit at that price.
Especially since the US is a rich country.
There’s basically no correlation between a country’s wealth and its EV uptake. High EV adoption countries include rich countries like Norway and poor countries like Nepal. Low adoption countries include rich countries like Japan and poor countries like Albania.
For context, this sounds like they’re pausing production for the “body on battery” BT1 platform for their largest electric trucks (the Hummer and Silverado).
Their much more popular “skateboard” BEV3 platform is still selling at pretty good numbers with the Chevy Blazer and Equinox EVs, the Cadillac Lyriq/Optiq/Vistiq EVs, and the Honda Prologue EV and the last of the now-discontinued Acura ZDX badged with those brands (but ultimately running the same GM platform underneath). Plus the BEVII platform should be selling well again with the relaunch of the Chevy Bolt this year (after a 2 year hiatus).
Customer rejection of the largest electric pickup trucks shouldn’t be seen as a long term failure of EVs in the American market, and shouldn’t even be understood as a failure of GM’s ability to compete in the EV market. They’re selling over 150,000 EVs per year, and have a continued pipeline of new EVs coming, which is a lot more than most manufacturers can say (even including the traditional manufacturers that embraced EVs early, like VW and Hyundai and Nissan).
I think they’re allowed to, but just can’t hook it up to the grid. The Alabama Power fee looks to me like it applies only to generation capacity that is actually connected to the grid, under an interconnection agreement with the utility.
I can imagine a completely separate circuit, not at all connected to the rest of the electrical system, that only powers things that don’t need grid backup: EV chargers, HVAC equipment, other heating or cooling equipment, etc. You’d probably want a decent amount of battery backup, though, to make the best use of that equipment.
I’m not sure if you’re making this point, but the reason why leasing e-trons was so popular was because leasing an EV provided a loophole between 2022 and 2025 where the dealer would get a $7500 credit regardless of the lessee’s income or the place where the EV or its battery was manufactured (buyers had income limits and required certain manufacturing thresholds). So expensive/luxury imported EVs tended to be a better deal when leased rather than purchased.
And a lot of those leased vehicles will likely be hitting the used market over the next few years.
Also, because of the tax credits, the actual price paid tends to be lower than the MSRP, so that the apparent depreciation looks faster than the actual difference in amount paid for new/used.
If you’re buying a $120,000 sports car I think you’re doing it for reasons other than maximizing your financial return.
The oldest (2022 model year) e-tron GTs are showing up in the used market in a few places, for about $35k-$45k. Still not cheap, but if you’re already an Audi driver you probably have a bit more of a car budget than a lot of Americans.
A lot of these legacy automakers have to deal with a supplier network, too. EVs will also need those relationships, but it will likely be with different companies, and cause some friction in broken relationships. The company manufacturing fuel pumps might not have the same future as the company manufacturing wiring harnesses.
At the same time, the sentiment common in this thread way overstates things. Toyota is continuing to make profits at this very moment, and has the cash on hand (and future profits) to be able to afford to pivot slowly.
If the future is all battery based EVs, there’s no reason to believe that this particular company won’t survive the transition. They have the supply chain already in place for batteries and electric motors, and have been public about batteries being supply constrained so that they believe that building hybrids with smaller capacity batteries is a better use of that existing supply. It’s a self-serving position that one should be somewhat skeptical about, but they’re such a huge company they have to think about scale in a way that smaller manufacturers don’t have to worry about.
They’ve been talking a big game about not wanting to make the switch until battery tech and volume gets up to its standards, but they can actually afford to wait. They talk a big game about waiting for solid state battery tech, and while other companies can’t afford to wait another 3-5 years for mass production to catch up, Toyota actually can.
And, even before then, Toyota is slowly pivoting to EVs anyway. Their plug in hybrid lineup targets some of their most popular models (Prius, Rav4). On the all-electric front, the bz is available today, and the EV Highlander and the EV Lexus ES are going to be competing side by side with the hybrid counterparts (with the ES selling at a lower MSRP than its hybrid counterparts and the Highlander expected to do similar). They can afford to actually test the market to see whether sales volume data informs how they allocate production resources to EVs versus hybrids.
I expect they’ll survive. They probably won’t find their way back to #1, but there’s plenty of reason to believe they’ll still be selling lots of cars profitably in 10 years.
I do wonder how much it would cost to build a code-compliant, UL-certified/listed system for home battery backup at 50 kwh, with a system that knows to balance things between cells over many charge/discharge cycles.
I gotta imagine a lot of the value add of the established names is that they actually operate in the U.S. (even though all 3 companies I named are Chinese owned). That’s not just about marketing (even if it is true that having U.S. operations helps significantly with marketing), but the cost of certifying for different third party safety standards, and having assets/operations that bring them within reach of U.S. courts and regulators.
Yup. A huge part of the cost is the batteries, the electric motors, the sensors and controllers that manage charging and discharging.
Looking around at home battery backup solutions, for example, simply having the same storage capacity as an EV (50-75 kwh) can cost almost as much as an EV itself.
Jackery has add on batteries for about $1000 for 5 kwh, Ecoflow and Anker Solix cost $2000 for 6 kwh.
At those prices, a 60kwh battery pack in an EV basically represents $12,000 to $20,000 in battery cost alone, plus a whole system around charging it and using it for an electric motor, and then a whole car around that.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but it does show that the actual material cost of what goes into an EV is primarily the electric drivetrain and battery.
Being prepared for emergencies is a good thing. But not everything we do has to actively prepare for an emergency.
This article is about people installing equipment that alleviates their energy costs and reduces the amount of energy they draw from the grid, especially during high demand times. That is worth doing, entirely separately from being prepared for emergencies.
So the fact that this equipment does not prepare for emergencies is relevant to know, but doesn’t change whether it’s a good idea to install the equipment.
It’s possible, but needs to be engineered for safety, and that design/testing/certification will increase the cost and complexity.
You can have solar panels and a battery totally off grid, where the big battery just acts as a generator, with its own inverter creating AC power for anything you plug in. That’s really simple and cheap, but isn’t safe for connecting to and powering a grid-connected house circuit. So anything you want to power with one of these systems needs to be plugged into outlets that only get their power from these batteries.
You can add a grid-following inverter that safely matches the grid frequency AC, so that you can use the solar power you collect in your own normal home circuit, to power your own household appliances. But the simplest design here is a grid following inverter that doesn’t work when the grid isn’t connected. It can only add to something that already exists and can’t do things on its own.
If you want to do both, where it can work without grid power and it follows the grid when the grid power is on, you’ll have to design a system that can switch between the two modes without delivering power where it’s not expected or generating power that conflicts with the grid’s AC waveform. Making it automated, like an UPS system, is even more complicated.
It’s not impossible, or even that difficult, it just does add complexity and the engineering tradeoff is always the question of “what problem does this solve, and is solving that problem important enough to devote these resources to it?” For anyone on a reliable electric grid where power outages are rare, the answer is usually no.
It’s mainly an adjustment to how you handle pit stops. I’ve learned to embrace the leisurely pit stop where you pull up to the charger and plug in, and then walk and wander around a shopping area or restaurants and maybe even sit down to eat slowly.
I also have a long road trip planned next month, where I’ll be leaving in the afternoon/evening so I might have to sleep overnight on the way there. If that happens, I’m going to prefer a hotel with overnight charging options, rather than have to try to find a separate charger from where I’ll be sleeping. But I haven’t fully planned that out, and it’ll be my first EV road trip over 600 miles/1000 km.
I read the article’s main point as being that waste heat is all around us, and in places that get cold (like the Great Lakes region), that heat can be moved to where it is useful.
I’m thinking of the brain meme where each level represents something better:
The main point in the article is that if we’re using electricity to cool a place while also using electricity to heat a place, can we just use less electricity to move the heat from the place where it’s not wanted to the place where it is wanted?
So seen in that light, it’s not so much about how much thermal efficiency a power plant achieves, but rather a question about whether there is something better that can be done with that heat that doesn’t become electricity.
It might be cheaper in some settings.
For certain food styles, I buy bulk spices sometimes because I don’t like to pay for an entire jar I won’t use, knowing that most of it will go stale by the time I’m through the jar. Being able to buy tiny quantities is sometimes way cheaper.
I’m also mismatched in my conditioner and shampoo remaining where I can buy the matching set and let the difference persist, or I can try to buy a single catch-up bottle of whatever I have excess of, to hope that they even out by the time I get to the bottom of a bottle.
Basically, I can imagine where it might be preferable (for both cost and convenience) to buy an arbitrary amount of something rather than buy a fixed factory container of that thing. I know I already do it for certain things.
Doesn’t look like anything to me.
Grid scale storage is actively being worked on.
Chemical batteries, like rechargeable lithium ion batteries, are a big part of it. Sodium ion batteries and iron air batteries are coming up, as well.
Somewhat related are rechargeable fuel cells and flow batteries, that similarly store chemical energy that can support two-way charge/discharge cycles.
Gravity storage, like pumping water up into a reservoir and then using it to drive turbines on the way down, or elaborate elevator shaft type systems, can store some energy but require lots of land and material, or require very specific geographic features not commonly found.
Kinetic energy storage, turning lots of heavy flywheels and then recapturing that momentum to produce electricity when needed, is also on the grid (and kinda mimics the rotational inertia of the turbines traditionally synced across the grid).
Some other storage technologies include capacitors, pressurized gas containers, and thermal heat storage with molten salt that can be used to make steam to drive turbines on demand.
But all of these solutions are difficult to scale up to the point where they make a significant difference in addressing the mismatch between supply and demand at different times of day. We gotta do all of it, and right now the most cost effective solution is chemical batteries, so that’s been growing at an exponential rate.
It’s like a dumpster filling up, where you have to pay a waste management company to come haul that stuff away, at least if people can’t find a way to take it off your hands for free.
Kinda depends on the rock, right?