AeroHorn

Wow, you guys use a lot of power. I installed a 4.25kW system (13 panels) last June. Over 11 months (6/17 to 4/18) it has produced 6.3MWh, or average of 570 kWh/month (SF Bay Area). It cost $17k (SolarCity) - 30% tax credit - $500 Tesla credit = $11.4k, which is about 10 years of electric bills. I have a credit of 570kWh right now, and May being a big producer, I'll end with a credit of about 0.9MWh, for which I'll get practically nothing (PG&E wholesale rate). I need to switch on my AC a bit more in summer to not give PG&E free power.

Don't give them ideas. Singing of national anthem when there is no relevance, as opposed to during Independence Day ceremony for instance, is akin to a misplaced religious ritual to generate a vacuous sense of pride and belonging. 5 day cricket is where it's at. You haven't watched sports until you have watched the teams take multiple drinks (10-10:15), lunch (12-1pm) and tea (3-3:15pm), and overnight (5pm-8am) breaks, along with a rest day (3 days, 1 rest day, then 2 days), of course; anything less would be uncivilized. During the drinks and tea breaks, a cart rolls onto the field and players (both teams) gather around to have their biscuits and scones along with tea, of course. The funny thing is that many of these 5-day games end with no decision. (The two teams couldn't finish playing 2 innings each).

A question. My wife was asked to wear a CPAP. But she doesn't wear it because she says it feels like the air pressure is too high. I think it always auto-sets to 4 out of 10, and there is no manual adjustment. Is this just a matter of getting used to the feeling of air being blown up the nose? She used it for a month about 6 months back and hasn't used it since.

Graduate school is the engine that keeps the University at the leading edge, through a virtuous cycle of leading edge research that attracts money that builds facilities that establishes programs/specializations that builds out the faculty pool that attracts top grad students, which makes a great University for undergrads to explore and achieve. I loved my graduate studies in Aerospace, and I think (likely biased) the undergraduate program offers best theoretical/experimental grounding compared to other engineering disciplines, due its very nature (from aerodynamics and structural mechanics to orbital mechanics and control theory). But I am most conflicted when someone asks me for my opinion on studying Aerospace. Just the last couple of weeks, two kids that love Aero talked to me and I reluctantly had to tell them that they will love studying it, but will find very few career options, and will be frustrated watching even the few Aero-focused entities such as Boeing, NASA, etc. advertise and hire students from other disciplines over them; whereas in actuality, it should be the other way around since going through Aero really prepares the students to handle most other engineering tasks from first principles.

Comparing Q1 numbers with Q4 is not appropriate. Q4 is generally strong for auto sales, especially electric, with Q1 being a slow one. Tesla did better Q1 YoY. Actually, I expected quite a bit of cannibalization of S and X by 3. Either due to low availability of 3 or, more likely, there being a steady market of 100k/year for S/X, it didn't happen. I think Tesla, with its supercharger network and brand has shown that they are a formidable player in the 80-100k+ car market now. What I find very disturbing is the Autopilot failure. Multiple people have tested it and have been able to reproduce the exact failure, which is Tesla cars happily plowing into a barrier when on Autopilot. The first video below is at the same exact location where the accident occurred (101S and 85 in Mountain View, bay area). If I were Elon, I would immediately disable Autopilot on all cars for anything greater than 35mph or something similarly severely limiting until I figure out what is going on. It is easy to understand the logic behind the way the software is acting; hence I don't this is a bug as much as a design flaw.

That doesn't mean that the other 70% are cancelling their orders and taking their deposits. I think most of them are waiting for other options to be available, such as AWD, smaller battery, non-black interior, etc. For example, my preferred configuration is smaller battery with light color PUP, neither of which is available. If other car companies were offering viable alternatives now (Audi, Jaguar, etc.), then many would have comparison shopped and bought other cars. Right now, the only competition is Bolt, which the reservation holders already know about.

Yep, you can be the first in line for 3 when you buy S/X. Couple of weeks back, I took my kids to the Tesla showroom to see the 3, but they saw the S and X and their ranking is X, S, ......, 3. S and X look so futuristic and are so well designed. Regarding towing, X with its mass and its torque beats the pants off any other vehicle. Have appropriate tires and others are toast.

I don't know how much automation exists at Tesla. Elon has talked about designing and building the machine (factory) that builds machines (cars, toasters, etc.). But Elon is part science fiction story teller so his projections of factories that look like alien dreadnoughts have to be treated accordingly. But what remains true is that every layer of automation adds to complexity, not removes it. The Wall-E future of us being lazy bums while being served by robots is unimaginably complex world. Anyone trying the second level automation has to first master first level and then spend orders of magnitude more time and resources to get there. I think Tesla is just trying to (I hope) be like Toyota in building machines and not trying a half-baked 0.1version of Elon's dreadnought fantasy.

Interesting last 2 days for Tesla. Stock dropped by >15%, with multiple bad news, from potential autopilot related crash to Model 3 delays, which was supposed to be 2.5k/week now but probably isn't. Tesla is a fascinating study with a caricatured Silicon Valley philosophy (optimism in tech so release beta version, boldly go because failure is not a failure per se, etc.) combined with charismatic/conjuring leader (do-everything CEO is engineer who sleeps on the floor and answers your questions on twitter, cultish following, etc.) that has definitely achieved its top objective, which is shake up the energy/transportation industry, but lacks enough discipline to put its survival at risk. The cars are great, battery driven world is still TBD (imo) due to materials needed, and I have real concerns with traffic where daily transportation is not mass transit based. Continue talking about Tesla cars. Just wanted to reinstate Tesla thread here.

There is a good chance that the "flat earth" messaging is just an excuse to keep his steampunk hobby in the news. It must be pretty gratifying to him to have national news covering his antics, which otherwise would have been completely unknown. If that's true, I am impressed with his backyard engineering, and more so with putting himself in an elaborate firecracker.