Tesla has been in the news a lot in the last week, with their Model 3 going into production, and their announcement of the world's largest lithium-ion battery storage project in South Australia.
The latest news is unofficial, but from generally reliable sources. A website called Teslarati has published screenshots from Kim of the Like Tesla YouTube channel, which seem to indicate that she and other top referrers are now being offered discounts on "a Founder's Series next gen Roadster" as part of Tesla's referral program. If true this would seem to indicate Tesla formally taking a step forward in the level of their commitment to actually going ahead with this vehicle. They stopped producing their original Roadster in 2012, the same year they started delivering their Model S to customers.
There is also speculation online that the Next Gen Roadster will be one of the "few other things" to be mentioned at the unveiling of the Tesla Semi in late September, as alluded to by Elon Musk (Tesla's CEO) at a shareholder meeting last month.
Related Stories
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/tesla-build-titanic-battery-facility
Tesla announced today that it will build the world's largest lithium-ion battery system to store electricity in Australia. The 100-megawatt installation—more than three times as powerful as the biggest existing battery system—will be paired with the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, operated by the French renewable energy company Neoen, in a deal with the state of South Australia. The Tesla battery should smooth out the variability inherent in sustainable power generation schemes.
"Cost-effective storage of electrical energy is the only problem holding us back from getting all of our power from wind and solar," says Ian Lowe, an energy policy specialist at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, near Brisbane. The Tesla system, he says, will "demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale storage." It might also win over skeptics who doubt that renewables can match the dependability of conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, says Geoffrey James, a renewable energy engineer at University of Technology Sydney.
[...] The battery installation will be a key feature of the state's aggressive move toward reliably generating half of its electricity from renewables by 2025. That drive suffered an image problem last September and again in February, when power blackouts hobbled the state. Conservative politicians were quick to blame South Australia's shift away from fossil fuels. "It's very easy to use a blackout to attack renewable energy," James says. Investigations concluded that the failures were not due to the reliance on renewables but rather to the collapse of transmission towers in one case and unexpected power demands in another. In addition to helping match renewable energy generation and use, James says, the battery facility's "high power capacity will be available in quick bursts" to keep the electricity's frequency in the right range in the event of grid disruptions and demand surges.
Also at BusinessInsider, The Washington Post, and Tesla.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:11PM (3 children)
Let's start speculating and get free press about a product which may or may not ever exist!
I guess a new Tesla Roadster speculation is better than Apple, which gets all of that buzz for incremental unimaginative yearly updates of their products...
(Score: 2) by n1 on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:43PM (2 children)
One important difference.... Apple never got their hype machine working for the iPhone 6 before the iPhone 4 was released. Tesla has the already hype for their equivalent V4, 5, 6 and 7 before V3 of their core product offering even reaches a single customer.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:15PM (1 child)
That is very true. You don't want people to go: eh I'll wait for the next one. Though at the same time if I was looking to purchase a vehicle, I would be looking at 3 seriously. I doubt they can meet the demand though, and I won't pay premium. So maybe witht he demand so high, they want to deflate it by getting people who would wait to wait.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @02:31AM
the Osborne effect [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by n1 on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:19PM (3 children)
Rather than writing a comment about how we shouldn't be giving the company that needs no advertising, free advertising about speculation of a possibility that there at some point will be a product to allow a chance to join in the 'early adopter' party of the second generation roadster, yet another status symbol product from TSLA, i will just copy some of the comment I made on the last TSLA story we did...
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=20433&page=1&cid=536731#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
How much more capex and opex in the next 2 years is it going to take Tesla to develop the semi, the pickup truck, the model y and the new next gen roadster along with the solar roof tech (still no functional prototypes demonstrated) and whatever other projects they have on the back burner for when a disappointing quarter comes to an end.
Tesla is currently 'production constrained' due to 'new battery technology' whilst working at 'full production capacity' amid falling sales (massacres in the Hong Kong and Denmark makets) and they're “just no room at Fremont, we are bursting at the seams,” and yet is going to scale up this 'full production capacity' to include hundreds of thousands of M3, developing and releasing the MY along with the semi,pickup and roadster.
It is good that there's so much positive speculation to happen around the same time as actual tangible information is showing signs of peak demand in regard to existing product lines, and the M3 and solar roof can now be brushed aside if expectations are not met, already onto the next big thing, and we can shift our time horizons yet again.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @12:14AM
anyone interested in Denmark can read this,
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/denmark-is-killing-tesla-with-a-jaw-dropping-94-sales-drop--and-elon-musk-saw-it-coming-2017-6/ [businessinsider.com]
Danish tax breaks for imported electric cars have been taken away...
Are you still so sure that electric cars are taking over in a few years? I never was, the big tax incentives and "the latest thing" have driven a fad, but it won't last.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday July 14 2017, @08:21AM (1 child)
Ha! After our previous discussion [soylentnews.org], when I subsequently saw this story I knew I had to submit it to draw this response from you!
Just kidding. In fact, AFAICT, this is the first indication that Tesla has officially made any kind of commitment to making a new Roadster. Elon's tweets (like this [twitter.com]) are one thing. But for Tesla to use their official app to tell some of their most valued customers that in exchange for helping Tesla, they can get a discount on the new Roadster, seems almost as close to an official announcement as you can get (apart from an actual official announcement).
So if by this ...
... you meant that this story shouldn't have been submitted by me or accepted by the editors, then obviously I disagree.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by n1 on Friday July 14 2017, @10:20PM
I really appreciate your comment and the submission in general. It's nice to have a constructive disagreement on the internet!
As I am actually an editor for SN, personally I wouldn't have accepted it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have submitted it or someone else accept the submission.
I probably take the strongest stand on the relevance and validity of stories, defend some, reject others.... But no one has veto power over a story, and I'm happy to go along with consensus but will also share my thoughts in the comments.
my only concern about my rants on this topic is that they can be seen as a dismissal of BEV or alternative fuel vehicles, which they are not, I just have big issues with how Tesla and Musk do business, as someone who has run their own business, I don't see how anyone can replicate the successes or emulate the business model in another sector. It is impossible to teach a lesson or learn from Musk as an entrepreneur and visionary in business and technology.