Tesla Planning Aggressive California Expansion

October 17, 2016 By James Poulos 3 Comments

teslaHigh-flying clean-energy industrialist Elon Musk has doubled down on his production plans in California. Tesla, his auto company, “took a major step toward its ambitious goal of one day building 1 million cars a year by seeking to double the size of its Fremont, Calif., assembly plant,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Under a long-term zoning proposal submitted to Fremont’s Planning Commission, the electric car maker wants to eventually add 4.6 million square feet of space to its factory’s existing 4.5 million square feet.”

Musk “told analysts this spring that the Palo Alto-based automaker hopes to ramp up annual production to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and build 1 million vehicles by the end of 2020,” the paper added. “The 2018 goal alone is nearly a tenfold increase from the 50,580 vehicles that Tesla produced last year in Fremont. The automaker has forecast this year’s deliveries at 80,000 to 90,000. Quality problems and production delays plagued the plant early this year and threatened sales plans. But the company said last week that those problems are behind it and that it expects to come close to its forecast for 2016.”

Broad deals

Musk has not hesitated to link up with government resources and opportunities in order to advance his business interests. This month, he aligned SpaceX closely to take advantage of President Obama’s call to use private industry to help bring Americans to Mars. “Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama announced. “One of those private companies tasked with ferrying astronauts to the ISS and who will essentially return human spaceflight to American soil in late 2018 is SpaceX,” the Observer noted.

And last month, Musk inked a deal to change the way California backstops its energy needs. “Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries,” Bloomberg reported. “Tesla’s contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed,” the site added — “months not years.”

Outracing critics

As Musk has accelerated his increasingly ambitious plans, however, he has attracted a greater share of criticism toward the mechanics of his business operations. “The pressure is now on Tesla for a smooth launch of the relatively affordable Model 3. A quality product pumped out at low cost and high volume is essential to meeting the ambitious goals of the company and its investors, auto analysts say, whereas long delays could threaten the company’s reputation — and survival,” according to the Times.

Meanwhile, wariness has centered separately around SolarCity, a startup run by family members. “The Tesla-SolarCity deal looks so bad on paper that many investors worry it’s simply a bailout of SolarCity, which Musk co-founded and continues to chair,” the MIT Technology Review noted. “While SolarCity dominates the market for leasing, installing, and maintaining solar panels for residences and businesses, it’s racked up more than $2 billion in losses over the past five years. “

“Its business model requires it to raise huge amounts of capital to cover the up-front costs of providing panels for no money down to consumers on multiyear contracts. Since its inception, the company has accumulated more than $3 billion in debt against just $1.5 billion in revenue. Now it is having a harder time convincing people to lend it money.”

What’s more, Musk has had to contend with a rebellion among his own shareholders. “As of earlier this week, seven Tesla stockholders have filed lawsuits against Elon Musk over the proposed acquisition of SolarCity and alleged Musk was in breach of his fiduciary duties for not disclosing the proposed merger properly. Some of these stockholders are asking the judge for an injunction to prevent the merger from going through,” Recode reported. But the two companies have announced the merger is going ahead anyway. “The companies have set the date for their respective shareholders to vote on the $2.6 billion all-stock transaction for Nov. 17.”

This piece was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

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Hyperloop vs. High-Speed Rail

May 16, 2016 By Joel Fox Leave a Comment

HyperloopWhen Elon Musk first proposed the hyperloop as a transportation alternative, he projected sealed tubes would hurl a pod between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 35 minutes. At the time, Musk’s vision was compared to the newly minted high-speed rail project that was projected to cover the same ground in 2.5 hours and be outmoded before it was finished.

Yesterday, in the Nevada desert the hyperloop had its first test. A sled rocketed from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.1 seconds propelled along a track by magnets for 300-plus yards. The company behind the test, Hyperloop One, was satisfied with the results. The Los Angeles based company is aiming to run a full-scale, full-speed hyperloop prototype through what is often described like a vacuum tube by the end of the year.

While the hyperloop system was projected by some as an alternative to high-speed rail, former California secretary of business, transportation and housing, Dale Bonner, told a Milken Institute Global Conference forum at the beginning of the month that both forms of transportation would be necessary for a burgeoning population. Saying that he heard that in 10-20 years an entire population the size of Chicago would be dropped on Los Angeles, Bonner argued all innovate transportation systems would be needed, from hyperloop to high speed rail to the sharing economy transportation systems.

Brogan BamBrogan, co-founder and chief technical officer of Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies), which is running with Musk’s idea, told the conference that while most people have been talking about hyperloop pods as people movers, one great advantage of hyperloop would be carrying freight.

BamBrogan noted that California had two of the busiest ports in the country. He envisions the system as energy efficient, weather proof, and non-polluting. Anyone stuck behind the slow-moving line of trucks coming from the San Pedro ports up the Long Beach Freeway spewing exhaust will appreciate BamBrogan’s vision.

But the people mover aspect also could have profound impact on other social issues, if the predictions made at the conference play out.

California’s steep cost of housing is driven, in part, by the lack of places to build. BamBrogan suggested the hyperloop could reset land values and grow suburbs 30 or more miles from the city when it only takes six minutes to commute to downtown Los Angeles’s Union Station.

Hyperloop is counting on investors to help fund the project, something that has been lacking with high-speed rail.

However, Bonner warned that re-thinking might be necessary with dramatic changes in transportation. If fewer people use cars in a shared economy, there will be fewer fees and taxes paid associated with car ownership. There would also be fewer citations issued with accompanying fines.

The Milken Global Conference panel was called Harnessing Technology for the Future of Cities. BamBrogan’s hyperloop discussion starts around minute 18.

This piece was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

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Is Hyperloop Technology the Future of CA Transportation?

June 8, 2015 By James Poulos 2 Comments

Hyperloop mockupElon Musk proposed it years ago. This January, he announced he’d enable teams to test it out on a track in Texas. But the first entrepreneur to ink a deal for a Hyperloop test track will bring the concept to life in California.

According to Navigant Research and CBS News, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies — an entity that picked up independently where Musk left off with the idea — “has inked a deal with landowners in central California to build the world’s first Hyperloop test track.” Beginning in 2016, HTT would oversee construction of five miles of track along I-5, where, once completed, test speeds will be kept to around 200 miles per hours — less than a third of the top rate of travel envisioned by Musk.

Outlays for the fully-completed Hyperloop would likely come in far under the budget for California’s high-speed rail project, even with cost overruns:

The 5-mile test track is estimated to cost about $100 million, which Hyperloop Transportation Technologies hopes to pay for with its initial public offering (IPO) later this year, according to Navigant’s blog. Assuming building costs remain the same, a 400-mile (644 km) track between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost about $8 billion (not including development costs), experts estimate. This price tag is still far less than that for California’s planned high-speed rail project, which could cost $67.6 billion, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Multiple teams

HTT emerged from a crowdsourcing platform, JumpStartFund, created in 2013 by Dirk Ahlborn. “He’s used it to attract experts with day jobs at universities and companies such as Boeing and SpaceX who moonlight on the project in exchange for future profits,” as National Geographic explained.

But HTT has developed a reputation as the scrappy upstart among contending Hyperloop initiatives. Hyperloop Technologies, based in Los Angeles, assembled an all-star team. NatGeo counted “Brogan BamBrogan, a key former SpaceX engineer; Jim Messina, the manager of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign; David Sacks, who worked under Musk at PayPal, and Shervin Pishevar, investor in ridesharing company Uber who prodded Musk to go public with his Hyperloop vision.”

Skepticism and savvy

As has long been the case with newfangled technologies, critics have not been shy about questioning the mechanics behind Hyperloop’s eye-popping goals. Beyond simple safety concerns — a leak in the vacuum created to make it move so fast would be disastrous — critics have claimed that “solar panels alone cannot generate the energy needed for 800mph travel. Even if successful, the issue of the enormous g-forces experienced by passengers when travelling at the Hyperloop’s top speed will also need to be addressed,” Alphr reported.

But for now, the intrinsic appeal and excitement of Hyperloop has brought enough momentum to carry the project forward. Looking to capitalize on the interest, Ahlborn has even teased the ultimate in futuristic transportation: a free ride. As Endgaget noted, he revealed “he’s considering a business model that apes what we see in free-to-play mobile games. The CEO is kicking around the idea that the travel itself would either be free or dirt cheap, with passengers charged for a series of as-yet undisclosed upgrades. Of course, since we’re still a decade or more away from a commercial version of the system, there’s plenty of time for him to change his mind.”

In the meantime, Hyperloop’s innovators have already encountered initial opposition from a potentially more formidable foe than armchair critics: California’s own government. “Transit authorities in California reportedly balked at the idea,” according to Fast Company, “concerned about earthquakes and the fact that such a system would have to span all kinds of terrain and privately owned land.” With his I-5 corridor test track, Ahlborn has begun to answer at least one of those objections.

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

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Elon Musk May Have Even More Cash To Roll In Thanks To Solar Subsidies

April 6, 2015 By Jonah Bennett 2 Comments

Elon Musk has made millions from government solar panel subsidies, and may have found a way to make even more if rumors Tesla will soon introduce a whole-home battery are true.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and chairman of solar panel manufacturer SolarCity, set off a wave of anxious speculation Monday when he tweeted that “[a] major new Tesla product line—not a car” would be unveiled on April 30.

Neither Musk nor Tesla have confirmed any details about the new product, but according to The Motley Fool, many observers believe the new product will be a home battery capable of storing electricity produced by solar panels.

Musk told investors during a February conference call Tesla would begin production of a home battery within about six months, and further reinforced expectations with a second tweet, in which he said, “With all that solar power being generated, it almost feels like something is needed to complete the picture …”

Many experts, however, claim much of the reason for all that solar power being generated is that state and federal subsidies make rooftop solar panels affordable in the first place. (RELATED: Solar Industry Demands Extension of Subsidies)

In an op-ed for Townhall, for instance, Ken Blackwell asserts that, “Very few people would install these rooftop solar systems at all if not for the federal tax break that comes with it,” which takes the form of a 30 percent non-refundable tax credit known as the solar investment tax credit.

Even the Solar Energy Industries Association, a national trade group, acknowledges as much on its website, noting that, “the residential and commercial solar ITC has helped annual solar installation grow by over 1,600 percent since the ITC was implemented in 2006.”

Another program that acts as an implicit subsidy for solar is net metering, which requires power companies to purchase excess solar from homeowners at the same price they charge their retail customers. Most states have their own net metering policies, and since 2005, federal law has required all public electric utilities to offer net metering to their solar customers on request.

Electric companies complain that net metering ignores the cost of operating and maintaining power grids, which they say accounts for about one-third of the price they charge for electricity. Because solar customers use the grid whenever they buy or sell power, the utilities argue net metering allows solar users to use the grid as a battery without contributing toward operating costs, forcing them to raise rates on other customers. (RELATED: Low-Income, Minority Households Bear Costs of Solar Subsidies)

According to a study from the University of Colorado at Boulder conducted by Chrystie Burr, “most of the investments in solar power systems wouldn’t have been made without the … upfront subsidy and the residential renewable energy tax credit.”

Similarly, a study by Kenneth Reddix II of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill concludes that in California, “over 54 percent of all purchases would have not occurred … in the absence of government subsidies.” (RELATED: Europe’s Green Energy Industry Faces Collapse as Subsidies are Cut)

If Tesla’s new product does turn out to be a home battery, as is widely expected, Musk will stand to profit twice from those subsidies—once from SolarCity’s sales of the subsidized panels, and then again from Tesla’s sale of home batteries to the same customers.

“Elon Musk is making a big play for American solar and all the subsidies that go along with it,” an energy industry consultant told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “If you’re getting millions from the federal government and a subsidized power grid, you might as well keep offering related products.”

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Do Newer Technologies Threaten High Speed Rail?

January 13, 2015 By Jon Coupal 6 Comments

So many lies were told to convince voters to approve the High Speed Rail project six years ago, that most Californians have soured on it. They are appalled that the estimated cost to build, the time to build, the time between destinations and the price of a ticket have all nearly doubled since voters approved a $10 billion bond to kick start the project.

Add to this that the private investment that backers promised would limit taxpayers’ liability is nowhere to be seen and it is little wonder that even the former Chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, respected independent Quentin Kopp, has excoriated the project as it has morphed into something wholly unrecognizable from what the voters approved.

It is somewhat ironic that Governor Brown, who fancies himself as a futurist (as Governor in the 1970s he thought California should have its own satellite) wants to commit Californians to spending billions of dollars on what is increasingly apparent to be an aging technology. Today’s futurists and tech savvy interests are suggesting that investing in High Speed Rail might be tantamount to buying stock in a chain of blacksmith shops in 1910 just as the automobile began replacing the horse as the dominant form of personal transportation.

The first successful powered railroad trip is said to have taken place in the United Kingdom in 1804. More than two centuries later, the train remains the best way to move large quantities of heavy goods. But for moving people, is the huge amount of capital investment in equipment and track that impedes the crossing of vehicles and pedestrians, destroys neighborhoods and farmland, and degrades wildlife habitat, really essential?

Elon Musk, who heads successful high-tech companies Tesla Motors and SpaceX, believes there is a better way to move people. Musk favors the Hyperloop, or something similar, that would whisk travelers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in as little as 35 minutes. Compare this with a drive time of six hours, a bullet train time of about four hours, and an hour by air.

The Hyperloop is a hovering capsule inside a low-pressurized tube, supported by pylons, which can reach speeds of up to 760 mph. According to Hyperloop CEO Dirk Ahlborn, within about 10 years and with about $16 billion, Hyperloop could become a reality. He believes it would it would be easy to put together, the challenge is to come up with a good business model.

As with High Speed Rail, there are many unanswered questions and hurdles with Hyperloop. However, it does appear to be cheaper, faster and able to be completed more quickly than the bullet train and would be less environmentally intrusive.

Moreover, for taxpayers, it doesn’t appear that public dollars are being spent on the design of this project. Unlike High Speed Rail, the Bay Bridge and the Twin Tunnels projects, keeping this project in the private sector – at least in the concept and design stage – is resulting in some fairly notable progress in a short period of time.

In addition to the Hyperloop concept, rapid advances have been made with driverless cars. Fuel efficient personal vehicles directed by computers show great promise and the technology is no longer theoretical. Google has already built a prototype. And best of all, they can operate on an existing infrastructure project which we call roads.

High Speed Rail’s cost dwarfs all other public infrastructure projects by many factors.  Before we commit more money to this project – whose funding is very much in doubt – shouldn’t we be sure there isn’t a better and cheaper alternative?

This article was originally published on HJTA.org

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

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Elon Musk’s Hyperloop — Will It Become Reality?

December 27, 2014 By James Poulos 3 Comments

Silicon Valley impresario Elon Musk’s Hyperloop transportation concept is back in the news. With a price tag that seemed daunting, especially when Musk warned he lacked the time to pursue the project, when it was advanced a year ago Hyperloop achieved little beyond sparking the imagination.

But now, Dirk Ahlborn, the head of his own California startup, has stepped forward to seize the initiative on making Musk’s super-fast trainlike vehicle a reality.

In a surprise for those outside the Silicon Valley bubble, Ahlborn recently announced  his JumpStartFund has the wherewithal to take Hyperloop off the drawing board and into reality. “I have almost no doubt that once we are finished, once we know how we are going to build and it makes economical sense, that we will get the funds,” he told Wired magazine.

Ahlborn predicts the effort will cost $16 billion and 10 years’ time, assuming a technical feasibility review planned for next year doesn’t reveal any insurmountable hurdles. In the meantime, JumpStartFund has “created the sub-company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. to develop the system,” relying on crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and an improvised “collective” of engineers to move the ball forward, according to The Guardian.

Some 100 experts drawn from Boeing, NASA and Musk’s own SpaceX have been enlisted by JumpStartFund — and have already produced a 76-page memorandum laying out their vision for how the project can proceed.

Remarkably, JumpStartFund’s collective has “expanded on Musk’s concept and now envisions a huge interconnected Hyperloop system, spanning coast to coast and linking many of the U.S.’s major cities,” as Quartz reported.

Uncertain expectations

Back in August 2013, when Musk first revealed the Hyperloop concept, critics immediately dismissed its real-world applicability. Not only did supporters of California’s current high-speed rail project find reason for skepticism; analysts worried Musk had simply underestimated practical challenges like overheating, despite ballparking the cost of Hyperloop at somewhere around $10 billion.

Nevertheless, Musk’s track record of innovation attracted serious attention to the idea. Unlike a traditional train, Hyperloop would “send passengers hurtling through low-pressure tubes in ultra sleek pods at speeds of up to 800 miles per hour,” as CalWatchdog.com previously reported. “At that clip, a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take a mere half hour. That’s two hours and eight minutes faster than California’s bullet train promises to make the 432-mile jaunt.”

Provocatively enough, from the very beginning, Musk envisioned California as Hyperloop’s home.

All told, the scheme created near-perfect conditions for a storm of media interest. Hyperloop was controversial without being outrageous, farfetched without being ridiculous, and — theoretically — competitive with one of California’s biggest and most fiercely challenged infrastructure projects in history.

But without direct funding and dedicated personnel, Hyperloop couldn’t begin the complex research and development that would lead to its construction. As media interest moved on, and Musk broke new ground with Tesla and other marquee projects, public expectations around Hyperloop moved to the back burner.

Privately, however, Hyperloop remained relevant to the kinds of people it would need to move forward.

A welcome surprise

For now, the Hyperloop team’s sky’s-the-limit approach has yet to attract the political rancor associated with California’s high-speed rail endeavor, which has benefited from the unswerving devotion of Gov. Jerry Brown.

As research advances, however, attention from policymakers and activists will likely become inevitable. The costs associated with the project — borne by private investors, not public funds — could prove enough to renew argument about the future of Brown’s bullet train.

As CNBC revealed, the Hyperloop team “estimates that the cost of the system would be $20 million to $45 million a mile, as contrast from what it says are costs of up to $200 million a mile for a conventional mass transportation system.”

This piece was originally publish by CalWatchdog.com

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