Jack Rickard – EVTV Motor Verks

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Wars and rumors of wars….earthquakes in diverse places. I’ve always wondered if there was a town in Nevada or West Texas somewhere named “Diverse Places.”

In my last missive, I revealed a bit of my view on genetics and DNA and human generations and interconnectedness. Quite intertwined – the topic of war. And I’ve long puzzled on why we have them.

If we comb through recorded human history, it’s a herculean task to find 10 generations absent of a major war between significant humanoid groups. We just fight and squabble all the time. It is a rawly competitive world among all life on earth – a 24×7 quest to both have a lunch and not be featured on the menu. All life must eat and almost all life on earth is potential prey to something. But human wars are not really an individual sport. Large masses of people are engaged both as participants and innocent bystanders and oddly, in this case, we don’t eat what we kill.

Because of the large scale destruction of buildings and crops and property, never mind the wanton slaughter of thousands or in some cases millions of people, it should be evident that war is a very rare event. But it isn’t. Indeed, it is so common a case could be made that the normal state of man is to be more or less continously at war with the rare odd year of exhaustion simply causing a natural lull in activity.

Why?

As I said, there are huge motivators simply not to have it at all and you would think that millenia ago we would all have pretty much bred the urge to war out of the species – if nothing else, by killing off at a young age all who participated.

We didn’t. We do it now. And we appear to intend to do it forever.

All things in motion owe that to some force causing them to be in motion. There really are no irrational exceptions. So what is the force or “purpose” for war.

The question always stirs up various explanations of specific purported “reasons” for specific wars. But they are irrationally varied. A quest for scarce resources, religion, ideas, to end slavery? Land? Power? Gold? The excuses for slaughtering large numbers of people are so varied it implies that a ham sandwich would qualify. Indeed a case could be made that the commonalities were simply CLASSES of reasons for war and every war has a unique cause in reality. In examining the causes of wars, we might well be simply reading messages from God in cloud formations.

There is such a thing as thinking too deeply. Why do we really have wars? Instead of reasons, let’s look at what all wars FEATURE. It is very simple and we’ve known it for many generations. Rape, Pillage and Plunder. That is what all wars have in common. No real exceptions to rape, pillage and plunder. So let’s talk about what all wars have in common and ignore for the moment the advertised motivations.

First, who fight wars? Well, if you are to have any chance of success, you need large numbers of strong humanoids at the peak of their physical health and prowess. And that means young males. Eight year-olds are curiously ineffective but 20-year-olds server very well. Males are larger, stronger, and by hormone more aggressive than females. That is post adolescent or more to the point post pubescent males. After about age 35, not so much. Waning testosterone and endurance make quarterbacks and major league pitchers a rarity after age 35.

Second, where do we fight wars? Well ideally, somewhere else. You see if you fight them here, we might lose some buildings and some innocent civilians. So to go to war, we want to assemble a LARGE number of strong young virile men and immediately march them SOMEWHERE ELSE to attack a prospective enemy for whatever “reason” the leader effectively communicates as being an excellent or at least salable idea.

Third, who wins? It is actually rare for anyone to assemble a group of 300 virile young men and march them 20 miles across the valley to attack a peaceful hamlet of 200,000 virile young men encamped there. I don’t know that its never happened, but if it did happen we would likely not hear much about it as all the attackers would be dead and very few of the attacked would have noticed or thought it otherwise a story to pass on.

And finally, what is the aftermath of victory? Rape, Pillage and Plunder.

Rape is the propensity for a hundred thousand or so young virile 20-something males running out of men to slaughter and noticing the large number of women in the area. We revere women and so rather than slaughter them we simply throw them face first to the ground and rape them with as much enthusiasm as a twenty-year-old in the throes of a testosterone storm can muster.

Pillaging is of course redundant with plunder. But I think of pillage as more about property destruction. We like to set victory fires after a good battle and buildings are just really good at creating very large fires to celebrate victory and to prevent any near term response by an enemy who has no shelter now.

And then of course the best part – plunder – really a part or extension of pillage. We gather up all the gold, money, nice fabrics, weapons, and STUFF to the extent that a person can carry it, which pretty much limits us to the gold, and march back home with the booty. Take a few slaves – children and the more comely women perhaps.

And the poor vanquished tribe is left with the ruins. All their old decrepit rotting disease and vermin riddled buildings have been burned to the ground. They will over the course of time rebuild with brand NEW buildings and streets and so forth, FEMA or no.

They will have to work hard because if they are to eat, all their food and money have been taken.

And of course, they are mostly women left and they are essentially all pregnant.

And so this inbred little tribe of dwarf cross-eyed peace lovers, squatting in their rat infested disease riddled buildings, suddenly have a huge infusion of new genetic material, build all new buildings and infrastructure, and of course unemployment hits a new low particularly among blacks and Latinos. And of course haunted by the defeat, they start fashioning shiny new weapons using the latest technology and building walls to defend their hovels from future attacks. Never again.

And what do the victors get? Well they get the gold. And the old hacked up weapons. And a little bit of genetic material in the form of quite attractive slaves really that they just couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Recall that I said that it is unquestionable that in almost ALL cases genetic cross-hybridization is inherently healthy, producing bigger, stronger, longer-lived and smarter disease-resistant offspring. And genetic inbreeding fosters diabetes, dwarfism, hip displasia, vision problems, and cleft palates. Ultimately insanity. What’s better than winning the special olympics? Not being retarded in the first place.

And so in a generation or so, the vanquished become a race of relative super humans, and the victors become increasingly dwarfish and cross-eyed. Until one day…

And the vanquished then march thousands of very healthy young virile men BACK across the valley to attack the victors and celebrate their victory with, of course Rape, Pillage, and Plunder.

I haven’t even yet introduced the concept of a Navy. But that is of course where the highest concentrations of seamen are quartered.

And so we see that regardless of what REASONS are given for having wars, the outcomes are not nearly as varied. Rape, Pillage and Plunder. And in this way the human race continuously renews the paint and carpet in their accommodations, but more importantly the genetic DNA material used to produce varied and adaptive humanoids. Given sufficient clans, and sufficient wars and sufficient means to cover ever greater distances, we wind up with a global weather pattern for DNA. Everybody is “getting their share” as famed philosopher Bob Seeger so cogently pointed out in his classic thesis “Night Moves.”

And so the fascination with heroic young men. They really are the heroes but lest we forget the vestal virgins, they play a key role as well. Any remaining wonder why war is our most popular contact sport?
The postgame contact is of course the more important. An excellent example of all this gets really bizarre – check out the mythology surrounding Rome’s Rape of the Sabine women. They abducted women from a neighboring tribe and a war ensued when the furious fathers and brothers attacked Rome. By the time all this really got underway, the abducted women were mostly pregnant, and threw themselves INTO the melee to stop it imploring all that they either lost their new husbands or their fathers and the two groups should live in peace. Indeed, they wound up jointly ruling Rome for about 5 years and the Sabines simply assimilated into Roman society.

Americans of course have always been excellent at this – spawning blue-eyed darlings by the millions across Asia in the previous century. We have simply gotten very good at doing much with even a small group of young men and of course our ability to “project” on a global basis using ships and planes has emerged as even more successful than the British, upon whose’ Navy and seamen the sun simply never set.

But the modern age has brought air travel to the masses and cruise ships are available at even bargain basement rates to the deplorables. While the geriatrics were the first to be able to afford such things it has gradually worked the availability down to younger and younger peoples over the decades. With all this global travel and romance, is war really necessary any longer?

I see signs of its demise. The biological imperative to rape, pillage and plunder just isn’t what it once was. It’s possible that war has outlived its utility. Today anyone can travel anywhere in the world at really quite trivial expense and exchange body fluids at will with little difficulty.

My wife celebrates her birthday on September 11th and can vouch for the truth of my narrative. On that morning in 2001, we watched in fascination the attack on the twin towers in New York. Her with horror, me more with fascination. In response to her exclamation, I turned to her at 10:30 that morning and replied “Yes, my dear. It IS a shame what they’ve done to us here. But you’ve seen nothing yet. Wait till you see what we are about to do to ourselves. It will be a shitshow beyond belief.”

It may surprise you that I am not only a big fan of Donald Trump, but share very little of his idealogy, which I rather detect he’s not too wed to either. And I DID share all the espoused ideology of both Presidents Bush but really deplored them both as only a true deplorable can. I found them both stupid, servile, and craven. But I will acknowledge that Bush W did rather invent the first really NEW variant on war in a thousand years. Maybe more.

Knowing that the attack eminated from Afghanistan, he cunningly devised a counterattack on Iraq. Kind of a counterintuitive counterattack. And the reasons for this remain classified apparently. They are certainly mystifying.

And so the Iraq war. But he introduced some truly disruptive new innovations he’s never been correctly credited with.

First, we took OUR women to the battlefield WITH US. Claire McCaskill’s war on women started by insisting they be INCLUDED in the army. No testosterone. Not virile. Not strong. But somehow equal and really should be part of the group of virile young men sent to wage war. Like men. But female. A kinder gentler army. Be all you can be.

And the second innovation was that we took OUR GOLD with us too, transporting it to the battlefield.

And on arrival, we immediately began raping OUR OWN women, and rebuilding the enemies buildings with OUR gold. Indeed we built power plants and roads, oil infrastructure, schools, hospitals, airports, all the things going curiously into decay in the U.S.A. We completely rebuilt THEIR infrastructure with all new. The very best and the very latest.

In this war there is no recorded incident of a single Iraqi woman even being insulted. The MeToo crowd would have been completely comfortable there as Iraqis. No harrassment. No leering comments. Nada.

But about 90% of the American female “warriors” we took with us lost the battle to keep the American military out of their pants. The estimates of the percentages of female warriors “raped” by their comrades in arms has no apparent limit but is also dreadfully confused by the propensity for consensual sex to also delay military activities – often. McCaskill was duly shocked and outraged and held numerous Senate hearings to draw attention to the scope of the problem right up to the point where they realized the scope of the problem, at which point the entire topic was dropped and simply disappeared from the news narrative.

And then, without really declaring victory, or in the alternative surrendering, we simply went home – $6 Trillion freaking dollars later.

What kind of war is that? We had 4,424 total American deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 31,952 wounded. But no pregnancies. And we deposited $6 TRILLION of OUR gold in Iraq.

And through a cunning combination of birth control and abortion, our women didn’t even generally go full term – lost opportunity of for example a female warrior from Indiana at least picking up some DNA from Queens. We actually went home entirely empty handed.

An interviewer once asked George W what he did to relieve the unbearable stress of being a war time president. His answer surprised the Interviewer when he replied that he liked to listen to opera in the afternoon. “What kind of opera?” was the follow-on question of course. “Oprah Winfrey at 3:00 – like everybody else…” And so now you know the rest of the story. He did not consciously refashion war into idiocy. He was able and equipped to do it naturally and without effort.

And so while I do think some change is in order in the nature, process and approach to war in the modern age, I’m not sure George’s vision is going to get us there. To misparaphrase if not malign Churchill, “Never have so few, owed so much, to so many American taxpayers, to accomplish so little, in the history of war…”

I suppose Obama’s approach of signing a peace treaty with a neighboring Iran that we never were quite at war with to begin with might provide a contretemps?? I’m not sure. Our payment of reparations really confuses the issue. Was it technically a surrender or simply an armistice? Were we allowed to keep our sword? Since we had no wounded it is a little murky if we were allowed to remove them from the field.

As I like Mexicans and think we need more of them, love free trade, and think we should give Detroit back to the Native Americans such as Elizabeth Warren, and of course eschew pipelines, coal, oil, and other toxic substances, you would think Trump and I would just be like oil and water, or at least oil and sunshine. Rather not. I deeply admire the guy. In circular and poetic fashion we have numerous people accusing him of being an idiot, a form of self confession and admission of idiocy. I call it the “Catch 85”. If you think Trump is an idiot, you are probably about 85 or lower on the IQ scale.

He has process, style, and a brilliant mind. He doesn’t let ideology get in the way of any of that. And he has a truly new fresh approach to war that I find deeply original, peculiarly effective and elegantly artistic. And as always, it is because he has a visceral grasp, a gut feel for America and Americans and what makes America great. He SHOULD get a Nobel Prize. But not for peace. For war.

Americans are and always have been a war loving country, but not deeply so. We are outraged by injustice and misbehaviour and evil around the world and at every evidence of cowardly wrong doing, our immediate reaction is to play Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A” pound our chests, and threaten to go kick some ass. A good ol American ass whoopin to show those who’s boss.

Lot’s of huffing and puffing and braggadocio. But long drawn out affairs resulting in children being maimed and crippled and having to endure family separations for weeks or even months or years is not our style. Body bags just don’t work for Americans. John Wayne never used body bags. Zorro got in, made his Z, and got to hell out.

And so the whole concept of massing up a few hundred thousand virile young men and sending them overseas to rape our own women for years on end just doesn’t work any more.

The new war is Video. Youtube. Prime Time. Pay-Per-View. And Trump is with it. Indeed, it could be said he invented it, credit to the Bush dynasty notwithstanding. George H.W. kind of got it. George W definitely did not.

You see we really CAN keep the good parts and command eject the bad parts of war. In this new video war scenario, we reduce the whole thing to the necessary basics.

1. Announce you are offended and do a lot of breast beating and playing of Lee Greenwood and how we are going to kick some ass here. Allow this to crescendo to a peak.

2. Alert the media and give them locations and times so they can correctly position their cameras.

3. Get our own military satellite observation equipment set up for the event.

4. Let a lot of young guys fly around in helicopters and blow shit up for a few hours. They really enjoy that.

5. Then use drones and cruise missiles to deliver a massive amount of incendiary ordnance on the announced evil target. Huge explosions. Smoke. Fire. Noise.

6. Run the whole thing in prime time.

7. We’re done. Declare victory. Go home, Prepare for the next war.

Now if you want to hone this thing to a fine art, you need to add some powdered aluminum and copper and manganese to the cruise missile ordnance pack to get a little more color into the explosions. That’s how all the New York Italian fireworks families do it. They may be a little leery of a consulting gig after Hillerary stiffed them on her victory celebration event contract. But Trump knows people. How yous doing.

We obviously need 8k video. I don’t think 4k does it justice. That means bandwidth. Musk’s SkyNet shows up just in time for this new age of war. Approved by the FCC two weeks ago.

And we need to more carefully schedule the attacks for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights (American Idol days excepted of course). Prime time is the rule. Americans need to work during the day and we don’t really want to entirely ruin the weekend. Show the strikes Thursday and Friday evenings and show the damage and have talking head opinions on what it all means Saturday evening.

The whole concept here is to sell more MyPillow and OxyClean and give Flo a bit of badly needed exposure for her new and never boring Progressive Insurance message. I know I never tire of it. Think FlexiSeal.

Imagine drone cameras ALL around the strike zone. Multiple drone cameras around every ship. GoPro’s on F-18’s and F-35s. Surround sound. Teach them freakin ISIS Jihadists a thing or too about MyPillow and the various insurance products available to them. They can get FULL replacement value you know. No wait, that’s LIBERTY insurance – how appropriate.

In the end, the mission is not a single American wounded. Nobody even pregnant beyond those who stayed at home that night to watch on television. And CNN, the born of war built by war network, pretty much HAS to support Trump at that point.

Well what about signaling the enemy of our intentions?

What are they going to do about it? Evacuate? Who cares? We don’t really need to KILL people for this to work. We want to blow shit up. Kick some ass. You know. Muraga bah gawd. We don’t really care about the enemy and whether or not they are wounded or even if any of their “innocent” civilians get killed. But if they have sense enough to get to hell out of town after we’ve TOLD them what town and time in advance, what do we care? The town is still leveled. Plenty of smoke and noise. We’ve made our point. Hell we can even claim to have WON the war. Who’s to question it? If they do, we’ll whack them too.

It is well known truism that you cannot win a war by bombing – you must occupy the ground. But we don’t want the ground. We don’t want regime change, nation building, or a 51st state. We just want to vent our displeasure and offer motivation toward the “No better friend, no worse enemy” view of the United States.

If you notice on the latest Syrian missiledrama, the Soviet Union and the bully “strongman” Putin blustered and threatened World War III. But when the shooting started, they slithered quietly out of town and we’ve not heard a word since. Who’s going to go head-to-head in a shooting war with the United States of America? They just don’t have the video cameras and audio firepower to even think of going against us. No real distribution and really no monetization of video at all. And their ad rates are comical. You can get a 2 minute commercial on the Russian superbowl for a little over $35. Their “state run” TV can’t even pay for itself, much less fund video war.

WE are the video superpower of the planet. We can swap DNA on the weekends with booked trips and political junkets and international conferences. We no longer need war to do that OR to blow up rat infested buildings. But NOBODY does Video the way America does Video. Even our SONGS, which could easily be audio, are now video. We’ve got 14-year-olds making a living on YouTube.

I believe that is what “the dear respected supreme leader” Kim Jong Un of North Korea suddenly and viscerally came to understand during the winter olympics, particularly after his little sister boxed his ears and told him to smarten the f*** up.

And that IS what all the SMILING is about with South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in – president of the country that IS the single largest manufacturer of big-screen flat-screen television sets IN THE WORLD.

And that IS what the President Xi Jinping of China summoned him to Beijing to personally deliver the message that the Americans actually believe they can pull a larger prime time viewer share with a launch on North Korea THAN COUPLES FREE STYLE FIGURE SKATING. I’m not saying it would but it has a shot. And the important part is THEY think it might – particularly among that very valuable 25-54 year-old viewer demographic.

The United States and the Soviet Union partitioned Korea at the 38th parallel in 1946. North Korea was the industrial manufacturing portion of the country and South Korea was the relatively impoverished agricultural portion.

In 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea in a Soviet backed attempt to “reunify” the peninsula. We responded.

What a difference a scant 68 years makes. Today, South Korea enjoys the highest standard of living in Asia with an average per capita income of some $33,500 and a penchant for luxury condos and elegant automobiles. North Korea features an average annual per capita income of $1800 and they eat sticks. You can have stick soup, stick stew, baked stick, broiled stick, barbecued stick, planked stick, stir fried stick or even stick on a stick. But you get sticks to eat. The SOUTH is now the industrial power of all Asia and the North is reduced to an agricultural backwater so impoverished that their main crop is sticks. And so that’s what they eat. There is no finer example of the contrast between capitalism and communism. The “unintended consequence” of communism is that you get sticks for dinner.

This means WAR!!! 8:00 Eastern. 7:00 Central. Be there. Don’t touch that dial! Actually we don’t have dials anymore but you get the intended meaning….

Do not misunderstand, you do STILL have a biological obligation as a young virile male to travel the world and spread that DNA as widely as possible. But you need not cough up a limb for the privilege. There are modern human peaceful means to spawn little half breed darlings without spending years in exile from your family and loved ones. Golf trips spring to mind.

And in this light you start to see the genius of Donald Trump. He gets it all. The DNA, the gorgeous women, the golf, the video war, the whole thing. He’s a visionary modernist with a plan for the future. And certainly an example worth emulating. I would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, or perhaps the Nobel War Prize, or …….something….

Jack Rickard

The post Prime Time VIDEO War…. appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

I’m sufficiently disoriented at this point to scarce recall what I expected of the Tesla Model 3. For years we knew the progression was from the top down starting with very premium high margin low volume vehicles and working our way down toward higher volumes and lower prices.

This made perfect sense to me and I rather scorned the Nissan approach of taking a really lame lower end car, the Nissan Versa, and adding technology until it was quite unaffordable in an effort to produce a really lame electric vehicle for the masses. I much preferred Tesla’s top down migration as it covers a multitude of sins and missteps along the way, but also because of the upscale imprimatur it stamps on the electric vehicle more generally. My view of the mission from the beginning was that this was not a technological problem. It is about acculturation of the public to the idea and concept of electric cars. They should be shown how to DESIRE one. The actual building of one is sufficiently simple minded that a 54 year old unemployable working half days falling down drunk in yellow shoes could make a car in three months that would go 110 miles on a charge and hit 94 mph. Don’t ask me how I know.

I did not purchase a Roadster. By the time they were widely available the price had risen to about $126,000 for a two-seat sports luxury car and I just couldn’t quite get my head around all that as a personal value proposition. But of course I did indeed pony up $107,000 for the $55,000 Model S using Musk pricing metrics – that never was really about $55,000.

So it didn’t faze me particularly to cough up $56,000 for the $35,000 Model 3, using the same ElonMath I was by now accustomed to.

But I guess what I was expecting was a tamed down/toned down Model S – smaller, less power, but basically a miniS for the masses. And I was hoping the disappointments would be minimal and mostly about things I didn’t care about too much.

When push comes to shove, I do care. But it’s a mixed basket. Some things seemed actually improved – like the brilliant solution to the $400 car key thing and I was delighted with the air conditioning and heat, the visibility, and actually the performance if you must know. The interior seems easily as large and spacious as the S. And actually the weeny door geometry of the S was improved a very important have inch for ingress and egress. The car looks great and the little bit of additional range over the S is actually key to a St. Louis urban area 120 miles away. The S just won’t really get there and back without charging, and the Model 3 will. I’ve done three roundtrips with at least 50 miles remaining on the clock on my return. The 310 miles is very real if you keep it 70mph or under.

True, the ride is stiff and the controls and display screen, I’m sorry they are just comically bad. My initial experiences with autopilot, autopark, summon, and even the garage door opener have been poor. I actually view autopilot not as improved safety as Musk hopes, but perhaps fatal in even the proper hands. Autopilot is a bent arrow and it’s hard to predict where it will strike in the end. But it isn’t looking good. It’s actually CAUSED me three harrowing near misses on excellent Interstate highway in severe clear weather. I’ve been an aviation pilot for years, and rather think I drive a car very conservatively but with precision and I’ve a driving record of some 45 years now without a reportable accident. I just don’t have close calls.

This past few weeks we have received our first salvaged Model 3 allowing us to do a bit deeper dive than I was quite willing to make in my brand new daily driver. And the thot plickens most curiously.

So to give you the end punch line BEFORE the reasons why, the Tesla Model 3 is not at all a tamed down/toned down Model S. In fact, despite my personal choice of color and wheels to match my S, it simply isn’t an S at all and I’ve been viewing this car through entirely the wrong lens. Broadly speaking, it has nothing to do with a Tesla Model S at all and I can’t find any indication internally that it is even manufactured by the same company. It doesn’t even use the same LOGO on the components. The familiar Tesla T has been replaced with a Model 3 logo that I don’t even know what to make of, which kind of matches my impression of all that we are seeing within the car itself.

I don’t even know what it is but it shows up EVERYWHERE on components within the vehicle. It looks like a Mason Jar used to “put up” peaches but with a cape that has a stylized 3 on it. If anyone can explain where THAT came from I’d love to hear about it. What is it SUPPOSED to be or evoke? Peach Technology? SuperPeaches?

But the really stunning thing is that ALL electronics and technology in the Model 3 are VERY next generation with NOTHING familiar from the Model S in any way shape or form. I haven’t seen ANYTHING even vaguely Model S or X in the vehicle. NOTHING. No DNA found. And the improvement, from what I can tell at this early stage, is not at all incremental. It’s like its from another planet.

I feel like we are examining a crashed spacecraft from another world. Picture Star Trek with an annoying ping ping tweet sounding every few seconds and an overly dramatic William Shatner ever ready to make huge drama from nothing as a Tesla Model S. And Star Trek Next Generation with Patrick Stewart as the Model 3. I’m down in engineering and it just doesn’t look the same here with Jordy and Commander Data as it was with Scotty ever trying to give Kirk “more power” somehow. In the Model 3, we resolve all irresolvable issues in the final five minutes with Tachyon Waves, which we never do quite have to explain but MAN are they some hot shit.

And in a way, I am shocked. It’s as if everything we thought we knew about the Model 3 is totally wrong. And the story of this remarkable device is simply a not yet revealed secret. And with all the hoopla about the Model 3, no one has ventured anything on this at all. What are they doing over at TeslaMotorsClub forums? I was aware they were kind of simple minded, but they do go on and on and on and I would think SOMEBODY would have actually looked under the hood or something.

We’ll be looking further at a number of items in coming weeks, including inside a fascinating drive unit, an astounding charging technology, and much more. And I rather doubt I’m going to have all the answers, and mostly likely some of the answers won’t even be correct. I trust you’ll mention it in the comments.

I guess I fear you’ll not find this moving with sufficient speed. People seeking sub 4 second 0-60 times are not a patient lot generally. But generally the Model 3 technology is beyond my paygrade. Which is cool.
I’ve kind of been bored with electric cars in recent months and increasingly thinking about solar. But I face a huge learning curve on the Model 3 and that makes me all dancy and chipper again.

Inn this episode we removed the heart of the melon, the battery and took a peek inside.

In recent months we’ve been doing a lot of work on Tesla Model S battery modules and packs with an eye toward using them for Solar Energy Storage. We did develop a little control kit to use the Tesla Battery Modules and the BMS board that is mounted on them and we can scarce keep them in stock at this point. http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=basicsmodulecontroller I rather had aspirations of starting the investigation into the Model 3 battery for a very good reason.

In all of Tesla put together since 2004, the company has made some amazing strides in initiating the conversion of our personal transportation to electric battery powered magnetic drive. No surprise that I rather favor that as a strategy. But understand that in ALL that time and ALL put together, they have sold 300,000 vehicles world wide.

Today they stand with 450,000 orders in hand, give or take a hundred thousand as the whim and the mood of the apostolic following’s mood varies, striving heroically to reach a 5000 unit per week production rate. That’s 250,000 vehicles PER YEAR. So with the X and S, they intend to manufacture more vehicles in the next year than their cummulative total manufacturing to date.

In the Q1 Analysts call, Elon was a little short with a guy asking where the 450,000 orders stand. I initially also thought it odd but on reflection, he was actually very nice about it. They are all over him as to when he’ll be able to produce enough, WHILE Tesla car sales in China have ballooned in the last year to over $2 billion representing 19% of their total automotive revenues. Musk is staring down the maw of a monster trying to eat him if he doesn’t paddle faster producing cars and here is some freaking moron wanting to talk to him about DEMAND for a car that’s never been advertised anywhere and which he can’t possibly make enough of for about five years coming NO MATTER what he does or how well he does it. At some point irony begets absurdity and absurdity ventures into moronic chant, and that’s where he was in a very exasperating moment. I’m sorry Wall Street, but you’re going to have to up your game or sit this one out. It won’t be like you’ve never missed a big move in technology before.

My point is, California drivers being what they are, it’s going to soon be RAINING Model 3 batteries in the junk yards. But we don’t know how to use them. And I haven’t heard of anybody else that does either.
So I’m going to share what we learn as we go along hoping to advance the token more widely as well. But if you notice something in the photos and descriptions, please feel free to jump in and suggest something. Remember, there ARE no stupid questions, only stupid people asking them. Note to stock analysts.

The first thing I would note is that in this vehicle, Tesla has integrated MOST of the vehicle electronics INTO the battery assembly which is put together in the Gigafactory in Nevada. The charger, BMS controller, junction box, DC-DC converter and all protection circuitry has been moved into a hump on the end of the battery termed for no apparently good reason the “penthouse”. This can actually be accessed for service by removing the back seat as it projects upwards exactly where the seat cushion is for the back seat. You would have to remove the seat bottom, a couple of braces, and then a bunch of star head screws, but it pops off and allows access to the fuses and contactors and so forth pretty readily.

The combined charger/dc-dc converter is a thorough MARVEL inside. We will be looking more closely at this in the future but it again has NO apparent relationship to any previous Tesla charge circuitry, and they squeeze 10kW of charger into a remarkably small and cool running package.

Contactors and fuses and so forth are most notable in the compact arrangement eliminating dozens of feet of expensive cabling and connections. They did add a pyro-disconnect. Picture a fuse you can blow up with a digital signal totally and most assuredly disconnecting the pack from everything in the event of say, welded contacts on the control relays. A total failsafe and kind of on the principle of an airbag detonator.

And no evidence of a SINGLE part in this assembly that has ever been near a Model S. Entirely different contactors. Of course a different charger/dc-dc converter which is now a “power conversion unit” and the BMS board is now entirely different and referred to as a “high voltage controller”.

It didn’t take long to strip this down and remove all that and we decided to learn to deal with a Model 3 battery as a solid assembly in the future and probably with another wreck. For this one, we opened the can to get right to the modules.

The modules are much larger than in the S or X. They are long narrow logs of cells with 23 cells in two of the modules and 25 cells in the other two.

The two 23 cell modules are at each edge of the pack and 67 1/2 inches long, 11 1/2 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches thick and weigh 191 lbs.

The two 25 cell modules are located in the middle of the pack and 73 inches long, 11 1/2 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches thick and weigh 207 lbs.

And of course what caught our immediate attention was the very very different battery management system boards located on each module and connected by a tiny two wire cable in daisy chain fashion and back to the high voltage control board.

I’ve been explaining battery management systems for 10 years now. It’s been a shitshow. And an annoying one. The number of BMS experts available in the world who know absolutely NOTHING of which they speak is astounding in quantity and awe inspiring in their insipid lack of comprehension as to what they know and think they know with almost all of it completely dicked up. And they pose a danger to battery owners everywhere. I gave UP trying to find one for EV’s and also gave up designing one of my own and developed survival techniques using LiFePo4 batteries without them entirely. Unfortunately, those techniques are simply impractical with the more energetic NCA cells used here and with Tesla’s packaging techniques.

The issue is that measuring battery cell voltages is deceptively simple. And unbelievably hard. And for simple minds, the simple part seems to be the part they like. One thing worse than no BMS is a really badly designed amateurish ass clown BMS that you THINK is working and controlling your charge cycle, but it isn’t, and your charger burns up your battery pack while you snooze peacefully one floor above the car in your now burning house. And then of course some times the amateur BMS’s themselves simply catch fire and find a ready fuel supply in the batteries they are attached to. And if none of that happens, the spaghetti wiring connecting the BMS to the battery catches fire. The end result is the end result. And it’s not a good outcome.

The problem is common mode voltage. It SHOULD be evident, but it apparently is not apparent to many, that the cells are in a stack that results in voltages 100, 200, or 400 volts higher than the return terminal. And while there are hundreds of circuits available to measure 3.6v or 3.2 v very nicely and with great accuracy, most of the semiconductors simply can’t stand to do so at voltages hundreds of volts above ground or above the potential of their own power supply.

And so you have a double problem in that you have to power the BMS circuitry FROM the battery cell, while measuring them, and you have to isolate each measurement from the others – usually with some sort of isolated communications bus linking them all together, or some combination of all of that. And so the very simple looking task quickly becomes a monster. I’ve known PHD level EE who have simply dicked such a thing up beyond all possible recognition and at times catastrophically.

The nature of one off EV builds is that EACH is unique and so EACH is a beta test site for something designed by someone else for something different. No possibility of harm there.

And so imagine my horror when BOTH the EV community AND the solar community began using salvaged EV batteries for their own concoctions, and generally without the BMS at all or using something designed for something entirely else?

But the economics are apparent to anyone. Half-priced lithium battery cells. This is what everyone has wanted all along. So it is GOING to be done. How to enable them to do it safely. Or at least more safely than hoping for good things…? And this in a world where MOST of the BMS designers out there suffer from delusional fantasies of competence.

Indeed Tesla has had six or eight totally catastrophic vehicle fires with essentially no known cause. But out of 300,000 cars, you know what? That’s not too bad all things considered. In fact I would hold it up as a model to aspire to.

Tesla has a multilevel engineered approach to battery application design and most of the parts are actually quite important. The first line of defense is the fusable links they use to connect each cell to the current collectors. If any cell does short out, it will immediately receive current from the brethren spirits adjacent and of such quantity that it burns up the little connecting wire. That takes it OUT of the circuit and it cannot receive further current from the pack or provide any to it. It’s been command ejected from the cockpit electrically.

They do cool the individual cells with coolant and heat them as necessary to prevent charging below 0C/32F – freezing. This is a major cause of cell death. But temperature control need not be terribly high tech.

The main BMS board and software really is about controlling contactors and monitoring high voltage safety interlocks and threats from the outside world. That’s pretty easy stuff.

But the cell stack monitoring and balancing is where the “don’t know and don’t know they don’t knows” hit the fan. Inherently, the semiconductor devices are already LESS reliable than the battery cells. And when you put them in hostile common mode voltage floats they just can’t cope. If you connect them to a bunch of unshielded antennas (connecting wires) in a noisy automotive environment, you court armageddon.

So our strategy is to handle ordinary housekeeping such as DISCONNECTING THE ENTIRE THING IF “ANYTHING” is even slightly amiss. And using the highly engineered and somewhat road proven designs Tesla has onboard for the cell stack. We want to TALK to that over an isolated bus, learn what it knows about the battery cell voltages and temperatures, and otherwise connect NOTHING to it or to the cells at all.

We’ll overlay a more configurable contactor and charging control layer on top of it. But cell stack monitoring must remain intact and unmolested.

The Tesla Model S modules feature a dedicated stack monitoring BMS board on each module, securely wired to the individual cells and two temperature sensors. This board uses a Texas Instruments cell stock monitoring board that is designed to link vertically using an SPI bus. Serial Peripheral Interface.

But Tesla didn’t use that because SPI is a bit twitchy in noisy environments. They used an RF isolation chip on each board to allow it to daisy chain the boards on a simple two wire serial connection to the master BMS board. We figured out how to wire to that isolated bus and talk to the Ti chipset over it to get all the cell voltages and temperatures and trigger cell balancing and all that.

So note well the humble philosophy of this. We are not going to attempt to design a safe BMS for you. We’re going to steal one that is already proven somewhat safER by those educated in the art, supervised by the responsible, and with a shitpot to lose if they don’t get it right. But even in theft, it comes mounted ON the module you’ve paid for, dug out of the car someone already paid for, so it’s not much of a theft. We like to euphemistically refer to it as “repurposing.” The rag and bone man’s ancient right. And even there, care is required to keep from defeating important but not readily apparent safeties.

So there really are safety issues regarding the use of these batteries, and they have nothing to do with the child minds and their preoccupation with rubber gloves and safety glasses. Feel free to fondle the end terminals. They tingle but are mostly harmless. Like a warm stove, you’ll figure all that pretty quickly. Fires and explosions are not.

The Model 3 battery stores sufficient energy to hurl a 3500 pound car with a couple of, shall we say, “well fed” adults over 300 miles. A sudden release of that energy is non-trivial.

And so we look with great interest to the BMS board mounted on the Model 3 cells. And did Tesla build on their experience and expertise with the Ti chipset? Well no. It is ENTIRELY different. Advanced, next generation stuff.

The modules feature what is basically a six foot long flexible printed circuit board with copper runs insulated by a translucent insulating layer and connecting to each “brick” or “cell” of the battery pack plus a couple of temperature sensors. There is one of these copper run “tapes” running down EACH edge of the module. The bricks or what I call “cells” is actually made of of 46 cylindrical cells 21 mm in diameter and 70mm long. They are nominally 3.6v at 5 amp-hours capacity with the 46 connected in parallel. So 3.6v x 230 Ah per cell and 25 cells for 90 volts on the long ones and 23 cells for 82.8volts This gives us a nominal pack voltage of 345.6volts at 230 Ah for a total capacity of 79,488 watt-hours. It has been LISTED at 80.5 kWh elsewhere and that COULD be true if the amp hour capacity were 232.92 Ah indicating 5.0636 Ah per cylinder. I’m good with that but we’re parsing the fine print here.

There are TWO 38 pin chips connecting to the left side copper tape and two 64 pin chips connecting to the right hand copper tape. One of the ongoing little never discussed issues with measuring cell voltage is that if you are pumping any current through the same wires you are measuring, the drop of the wires causes perturbation of the measured voltage. So whenever you “balance” these cells, you throw off the voltage measurement.

It is my belief that this generation chip has a real measurement resolution as small as 0.0022volts or 2.2 millivolts. So very very small resistance values can cause errors. Note the three tiny wires connecting to each copper land. And I guess I think we are doing cell balancing on one side of the module, while simultaneously monitoring voltage on the OTHER side of the module entirely out of the current path. This is a stunning solution and very difficult to implement normally because it means twice the numbers of wires and connections. But the flexible PCB tape approach makes this quite feasible. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like technology from another planet.

Our interest is of course in communicating with them. And handily there are two connectors on the board apparently just for that featuring precisely TWO pins on each connector. It would be wonderful if this were CAN but of course it isn’t. On the board you will note four modules labelled XFMRS. If you can’t spell very well, and you say it very quickly, it comes out like TRANSFORMERS. And indeed there appear to be two in each module, but they aren’t very powerful at that size.

And I am curiously drawn of course to the 64 pin chip and it is quite unusual. First there are TWO of them necessary but one of the modules has 25 cells. And so the previously largest 12cell stack monitors can’t quite cover the necessary 25 cells. Collin assures me that there are indeed 3 or 4 different cell stack monitor chips out there in a 64 pin configuraiton but I can’t find them.

Linear Technologies was acquired last year by Analog Devices for a handsome $46 in cash and .232 shares in the result. In 2008 they introduced the LTC6802 Battery Monitoring chip and has done pretty well with it. They have updated it nearly annually and have recently introduced the LTC6813-1 which they refer to as 5th generation in this series.

If we blow up our image of the chip, we don’t see much. So Collin etched off the conformal coating and did some light and angle on it with a microscope to determine a little of the logo and part number.

I did a little photoshop magic on it to further enhance that.

And so what we THINK we see there is 1722 T2-A2 PZ38984. Which there is no reference to such a number on planet. This chip is indeed from outer space.

But there is also a curious little figure on the chip. And it looks like our goofy jar of superpeaches – the Model 3 logo.

And so we’re feeling a little dead ended here. A custom chip made for Tesla. And how are we going to reverse engineer a custom chip? If they KNOW they are going to sell 500,000 Teslas, and each board has TWO of these chips, and each battery has FOUR of these boards, that looks like smells like 8 million chips. I guess almost anyone would make about anything they like and print anything on it they wanted to see for forty or fifty million dollars.

Now all of this had to be done two years ago. But last year Analog announced the LTC6813-1 in a 64 pin package. Single units are $22 a pop. But I’m guessing Tesla paid less and once it was designed, LTC had the right to also introduce it separately as the LTC6813-1. So I’m going out on a limb here to say LTC started working on this chip with Tesla before it was acquired and was allowed as part of the deal to release it as their next gen chip as long as they didn’t identify it as the same as the Tesla chip. Or something like that. I hope. Otherwise, I’m nominating a chip that wasn’t announced prior to pencils down at Tesla.

The reason I like this theory is that LTC several years ago introduced an isolated 1Mbps serial bus on TWO wires they call Isolated Serial Peripheral Interface of ISOSPI. And it uses tiny external TRANSFORMERS to provide isolation. It also steps the standard 4-wire SPI to this single pair of conductors.

So my hope is that if we use the LTC isoSPI communications protocol and the LTC6813 register commands, that we can talk to this alien beast through the “universal translator” and try to make peace between our species. As you see, I’m quite willing to throw the prime directive under the bus on this one.

So we are going to gen up a little hardware to speak isoSPI to the board, and try to at least get a wakeup call to bring it to life and talk to us a bit.

As the last remaining humanoid on the Internet who COULD actually BE wrong, I have to confess I’m making all of this up out of pretty rarified air approaching lab vacuum. Hopefully some knowledgeable person will correct me in useful fashion and of course we’re open to thoughts on the 38 pin chip as well. They are very much in the daisy chain but my guess is we’ve separated the balancing from the measurement, at unusual and extreme expense and difficulty.

And so my assertion in the video and more emphatically so at this point, given the level of advanced technology and integration I’m seeing in this battery assembly, and assuming the same level of effort from the Panasonic team at the chemistry/cell level, this is the BEST most ADVANCED large scale lithium battery every produced on planet and is YEARS ahead of anything currently in work. Tesla appears to be saying to the rest of the industry, “We’ve upped our game… so UP YOURS!”

Like a 7-year-old on Christmas morning, I am in absolute DELIGHT at what we are learning about this remarkable car. The kid in me is going ape shit by what we are seeing in the charger and particularly in the motor drive unit. Across the board, this ain’t your daddy’s Oldsmobile. And I can pretty much assert that everything you THOUGHT you knew about the Tesla Model 3 is basically a miss. It’s going to be a delight, but a bit of a longer more drawn out affair to explore just what IS in this remarkable device.

Jack Rickard

Youtube teardown of 2170 cell https://youtu.be/_uKpn3zflBE

The post Tesla Model 3 – NextGen Battery appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

It is not precisely an accident that we are evtv.ME instead of evtv.COM. It’s all about ME.

That may appear a shocking admission, but it is actually a communication technique. It gets your attention. And in a way, it’s quite true, I use my self as a comic foil to disengage from the world of self aggrandizement and ego that permeates virtually everything. My mission is of course to communicate sometimes perniciously technical detail to intelligent humanoids in hopefully understandable or more rational terms, with some context as to what it might mean for the future. It’s a mission I’m bound to fail at because the potential audience for such is quite varied across the scale of competence, education, and intellect. My intent is to fail productively.

I’m keenly aware that MANY of our viewers actually know a great deal more about the topic at hand than I do. And some segment of our viewership will be ill tasked to put two batteries in a pocket flashlight and get it right before the third try. And if you pay careful attention, you might find I repeat myself a bit. Actually I don’t at all. But if you have a solid grasp of the subject matter, it would seem so. Actually I’m saying the same thing several different ways. And it strikes different levels of viewership slightly differently, noting also that a SIGNIFICANT segment don’t actually hold American English as precisely their first choice in language.

And so a word on why EVTV is long, boring, and technical. Many of our viewers know exactly why. But the recent series of Model 3 and Solar explorations seems to have caused a dramatic influx of new blood into our little club. And that is a GOOD thing I suppose but problematic at the same time.

The universal reaction is “too long, sorry”. This implies very effectively that they are very busy very important people very focused on much more important things than our trivial videos. Or else it implies the attention span of a four year old. I imagine it varies.

I’ve spent 40 years following technology, not just its development and processes, but its impact and adoption. During a couple of previous rodeos, first involving the development of the Personal Computer, and subsequently the development of the Internet, two amazing and delightful things happened. The first was that by keen observation and deep dive, I discovered I was remarkably adept at fingering which parts where important and would change the future and the world, and which parts were, while perhaps technically interesting, inevitably destined to be part of the abandoned detritus along the freeway to the future. And this was both valuable and transferable. I could empower others to know these things as well.

The second and probably much more valuable “gift” granted me was a visceral understanding of how true CHANGE occurs in our society and particularly regarding the adoption of technology. How does it REALLY migrate, adapt, and evolve to bring meaningful and REAL alteration of our future.

The caricature is of Thomas Edison “inventing” the lightbulb. In truth, there were 23 prior art “inventors” of converting electricity to light. And Edison never was a “genius” though certainly clever. He tried to explain this a number of times but it wasn’t really in his commercial interest to correct it and it was an impossible act to perform anyway in the face of media coverage and subsequent books on the topic.

I can recommend Steven Johnsons’ Where Good Ideas Come From but I don’t entirely agree with some signficant parts of it. I think it is much more about the two guys in the garage and much less about the large organizations than Mr. Johnson apparently does. But the interplay and “connections” between a lot of sources is very real.

We are all interconnected. But advances do not come from governments and governmental leaders and almost never from “corporations” and large entities. It’s not that they can’t. It’s that they don’t.

The Frisco Railroad had all the engineers and all the aluminum necessary to easily create the DC-3. But Donald Douglas with a tiny few helpers actually did. And of course AT&T could EASILY have built the Internet. But they didn’t. In fact they fought against it. Now everyone is all a twitter waiting for GM and Ford and Daimler and VW to smack down the upstart Tesla. They can. But they won’t. Dyson Vacuum Cleaners might. Google might. Apple might. Chinese battery manufacturer BYD might. But its essentially a sure bet that General Motors won’t.

Eastman Kodak SHOULD have invented digital photography, they certainly had the resources to do it. But they preferred to sell off their office furniture at 6 cents on the dollar?

Most things are started small. And spread person to person. But it takes a specific KIND of person. They have to have a good mind. THey have to be curious. And they have to be willing to tinker with stuff that doesn’t quite work, often for a long time.

I built an electric car in a little over 2 months in 1980. It went 110 miles on its first charge and I still had pedal left at 94mph when my courage failed weaving in between trucks on Interstate 55 in a high wind in a light fiberglass convertible.

And I called then for 100,000 man army to build electric cars and show them to their brother in-law. I knew that if a 54 year old unemployable working half days falling down drunk in yellow shoes could build a car in his garage that went 24 mph over the speed limit and 110 miles on a charge, using NO gasoline and NO emissions, we didn’t precisely have an enormous TECHNICAL challenge in front of us. But the acculturation and adaptation required to move to battery powered magnetic drive for personal transportation was non-trivial. Everyone was FAMILIAR with batteries. And the familiarity was very akin to disdain. Would you believe that right this minute, 10 years later, over half of the U.S. population BELIEVE if they buy an electric car now they will have to replace the batteries within 2 years and at enormous cost? We’re winning. But we’ve not won.

We are well into the early adopter stage and my impact therein will diminish exponentially as electric vehicle sales rise and the metoo’s clamor and vie for attention as the reason for it all. I’m all good with that.

But years ago, I rather mastered the art of very targeted “micropublishing”. And to do so I had to learn a couple of non-intuitive central concepts. The mission isn’t to get ALL the readers. It’s to get the “right” readers and what constitutes “right” is very much about your mission. Above all, it is about making the WRONG readers go away quickly and at minimum expense.

Those are particularly key in fadish or popular areas. The problem with alternate energy, solar, and electric vehicles is that it draws huge crowds that are totally and completely USELESS and indeed can be DAMAGING to that mission. Environmental religious adherents – tree huggers – are just a shitshow horror of misdirected uninformed good intentions. And they annoy and alienate everyone they come in contact with.

The second group we refer to as copper foil helmets. These are people who wear copper or aluminum foil helmets on their heads purportedly to block out cosmic rays, gamma rays, neutron particles, gravity waves and of course to prevent both aliens and the U.S. government from reading their thoughts. But they have an endless series of ever more complicated variations on over unity energy schemes, perpetual motion, hydrogen electrolysis gasoline mileage enhancers, and more. I actually had a pair of these whackos pay me $10,000 to let them fly out and talk to me for a day. Fifteen minutes into the conversation I handed them their check back and asked them to leave the building in all due but safe haste. It took over an hour to convince them I was serious, I was REALLY handing them back their money and REALLY had no intention of any prolonged discussion regarding an investment of over $200,000 they had already made in a totally moronic perpetual motion machine of truly ridiculous description.

Many of you will find this of no surprise. Anyone who has been a PLAYER at any level in the EV game knows EXACTLY what I’m talking about. They’ve had to deal with it as well, just not at the scale a publisher does.

So ideally, I want ALL SEVEN BILLION humanoids to take a quick look at EVTV and then LEAVE peacefully, quietly, and inexpensively. The handful that stick around, I think I can provide some very interesting information with the specific INTENT to enable you to change the entire world to a cleaner, brighter, quieter, greener, more peaceful, less expensive, existence and a seriously higher standard of living for yourselves personally but really for everyone on the orb as well both directly and indirectly.

And I’m really QUITE good at it.

And so EVTV is quite technical. If you’re not already pretty intensely interested in that already, or have a very curious inventive mind you will find it extremely LONG and extremely BORING. And I let it run as long as the topic seems to need. No cat videos. No tits. No hip fast talking entertaining personality host. Do you think I couldn’t HIRE all that for not much over minimum wage? It’s by design.

I actually had a guy from the UK call and talk for hours how he wanted to basically do what I do but better, using a young beautiful talking head woman, some jazzy music and some professional camera work to make a very appealing fast paced video series on how to build an electric car yourself. I laughed out loud and encouraged him to do so and assured him he was not wrong he would have MILLIONS of viewers. That he might as well chain himself to the wagon bound for hell I might have failed to mention. He’ll find out soon enough. Copper foil helmets and green religion snowflakes aren’t a market for anything, can’t do anything, and no one wants to sell them anything because they never never BUY anything and they avoid actually DOING anything at all. That he would intentionally filter to ATTRACT them delighted my sense of whimsy. It might actually give me a place to dump these people beyond poor Jehu.

Today we face a fork in the road. A new age in a way. Solar is not new, but it is a curious thing. More than HALF of all residential solar installations in the U.S. have had the breaker turned on for the first time in the past 24 months. Nobody mentioned that I know. But it is true. And 97% of them have ZERO energy storage capability. If they lose the grid, the $70,000 investment on the roof can’t generate enough energy to charge an iPhone in a day of full sunshine. It’s “grid-tied”.

I have to tell you that it takes a certain amount of chutzpah and cajones to be able to just walk out back in your garage and seriously intend to just build your own damned car. We’re talking a tiny fraction of the male population, and no females of any kind.

But there is about two orders of magnitude MORE people who believe they can put a couple of photovoltaic panels out in the sun and hook them up to a used car starter battery. Unfortunately, 100x the number of players, 10,000x the number of copper foil helmets and tree worshippers in the Gaia persuasion. I watched in astonishment a guy bemoaning the gradual but measurable decline in the function of his two solar panels and his $30 charge controller, searching for a solution to the problem of his BATTERY APPROACHING FULL CHARGE!!! This was a 30 minute YouTube video.

Tesla is going viral. I’m not sure I really want to go viral with it. We did a segment on the Model 3 battery. And I was actually personally wounded by the huge number of comments regarding my age, girth, weight, shortness of breath, haircut, lack of eye shadow, small breasts, and so tiny ass, clothing and dress, my shoes, facial ticks, cigarette smoking, eating habits, and how they knew what I smell like from a video I will just never know.

But it doesn’t matter. These people are not our viewers and can’t ever be our viewers. And that is not a condemnation. MOST people just aren’t interested in this stuff. And most people don’t have the tools to BE interested in this stuff. What I don’t quite understand is why they would take the time to point out that I was the difficulty.

The bottom line is that many, indeed the vast majority of you, should NOT watch EVTV and indeed should just GO AWAY. Hopefully peacefully and quietly. That should leave me with a VERY small audience of very capable viewers equipped and inclined to change the world. Many of them provide ME with information which I then REFLECT much as a mirror to the others. In this way, the info is shared and accelerates the pace of change. And I overlook the fact that they at times run our videos at 2x speed to get to the part they are interested in at the moment.

We have apparently sprung an affiliate, Jehu Garcia, now condensing our 1:24 to a scant eight minutes. And it works. Current fadish interest in the Model 3 is such that we’ve had some 43000 views on our very secondary YouTube distribution while our viewership on our native Amazon AWS space is consistent. But Jehu sports some 63,000 views on his version for child minds.

At one point Jehu was actually a paid contributor to EVTV. But he fancied he could gain riches and fame as a YouTube personality and make millions from YouTube ads. I tried to explain how YouTube works but he assured me I just didn’t “get it”. How’s that working out for you Jehu?

The problem of course is that they won’t all comment to Jehu. Some are going to “leak” back to EVTV. And between the move to the much larger Solar universe and the fadish interest in the Model 3, I’m kind of “run over the top of” now.

So the bottom line for the “too long sorry” crowd is you’re “too short sorry” from our perspective. And while we could probably shorten our videos at whim, you can’t get any taller most likely.

Lady Astor commented at a dinner party to Winston Churchill “Sir Winston, why I do believe you are drunk.” Churchill was reported to have replied “And you Lady Astor, are ugly. On the morrow, I shall be sober.”

So some techniques that are hopefully NOT in your face and obvious but very deliberate at EVTV

1. We “opinionate” and contextualize technical information. I learned long ago that reading technical material off a spec sheet is a schnoozer. If you think EVTV is BORING now, you should see a version that way. By expressing an unqualified but strongly held opinion on a technical item, which is actually usually NOT very strongly held, it makes it more palatable and also more MEMORABLE. If high current capacity is BAD and not necessary and a “stupid thing to do”, for about half of you, it isn’t necessary and for about half, it’s just what you are looking for, and in any event ALL of you now KNOW that this type of device has a relatively high current capacity. Or this battery is less stable and more dangerous. Well that’s because it stores MORE energy in the same size package. You get the drift. It’s not that I hold these opinions in very high regard or with much tenacity. They are a communication technique I learned years ago and to good effect. It emphasizes that particular feature or aspect and it should be remembered.

2. Don’t talk down to the audience. We assume half our viewership is a lot smarter than we are. Of course that leaves the other half. But on balance, a signficant portion already knows much more on the specific topic at hand than we do.

3. Don’t hide mistakes. Success provides little value to anyone about anything. Errors and mistakes contain valuable information. It doesn’t matter how we “look”. If we share mistakes, you don’t have to make them yourself. You can vicariously steal our experience.

4. Do not rely on “common wisdom” industry practice, or tribal knowledge. If it IS such a way, it should be easy enough to hook it up and demonstrate that. And time after time after time I have found direct testing OFTEN provides surprising results. Passing on the same information you just got from somebody else who didn’t know either is not productive. I call it “typing yourself smart.” If you think it so, test it. If aren’t able to test it or view someone test it, then you are rumormongering and the misinformation could easily damage someone elses body or pocketbook.

The other aspect of this blog revolves around my astonishment at the level of technology in the Model 3. As I said, I guess I expected a smaller less expensive Model S. Rather, I cannot find a single CIRCUIT, a single device, a single NUT that could have come from a Tesla Model S. Ok the sun visor is suspiciously close. But beyond that not much. And I’m trying to suse out why a company would spend billions developing a highly successful EV, and then start with a clean sheet of paper on the next model and abandon all lessons learned wholesale, baby, bathwater, kit and kaboodle?

Mr. Wang Chuan-fu is Executive Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer of BYD Company Limited. Neither Samsung nor Panasonic is the “largest battery manufacturer in the world.” BYD probably is.
Mr. Wang has an interesting approach particularly for a company stressing low cost replacement batteries. He hires the entire top 10% of ALL the engineering schools in CHina. Moves them to a campus where they are housed, fed, paid rather well by Chinese standards, and worked about 10 hours per day. At the end of the year, he fires 2/3 of them and brings in the next graduating class. Over time, he has amassed one of the largest pools of engineering talent in the world. They are by the way in just a few years now the largest electric bus manufacturer in the world and aiming to be the largest electric automobile manufacturer in the world.

Which is interesting in that Tesla has already achieved the status of ultimate automotive status symbol in China. In 2017 they sold $2 billion in Tesla cars representing already 19% of their automotive income. The Chinese car market became the biggest passenger car market in the world as of 2009, and annual production of automobiles in China exceeds that of the European Union or that of the United States and Japan combined. While Americans now buy about 17 million new cars and trucks per year, Chinese drivers purchased 22 million in 2017, a number that may rise to 29 million in 2018.

Volume isn’t the only way China represents an alternative automotive universe, either. The Chinese car universe is not governed by the whims of buyers. Facing a crisis of congestion and air pollution—and desiring an industrial advantage in building electric cars, President Xi Jinping and his transportation ministers are enforcing a quota on Chinese automakers that 10 percent of car sales be EVs by 2019 and 25 percent by 2025. The floor of the recent Beijing auto show featured a remarkable 175 electric models, nearly three-quarters of which are domestically produced. With a population of 1.4 billion, growth in their automotive market should continue unabated. By the way, they sold 1.1 million cars there in 1992.

China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show EV sales reached 81,904 in April, and 225,310 in the first four months of the year. Sales in the January-to-April period are up 149% compared with the same period in 2017. They expect to sell 1.1 million EVs in 2018.

Bottom line is America currently has Tesla as the only real possibility of even being PART of a global conversion to electric drive vehicles.

American automakers were caught completely off guard by the move to economy vehicles in the 1970’s and the result was a permanent tilt for Japan and Toyota ever since in the American market. And it is about to happen AGAIN in electric vehicles. And literally all we’ve got in the game is Tesla.

Tesla has gained approval to not only build a factory in Shanghai, but to own all 100% of it. And with China’s recent announcement of a drop in automotive tarriff from 25% to 15%, Tesla sold TEN Model S’s out of the Shanghai showroom in a single DAY. They have achieved the status of ultimate automotive status symbol in China, with 25% tied behind their back.

Back to the Model 3, since I purchased my Model S in 2013 Tesla has grown from 8000 employees to over 37000 currently. And I’m trying to picture myself as a young 23 or 25-year-old coming out of MIT, Stanford, or Rensselaer Polytechnic with a EE degree. A Masters would be cool. Where would I want to go to work?

SpaceX sounds sexy. But Tesla has to be at the top of the list as well. And so it would appear Elon Musk and Wang Chuan-fu, have similar approaches. A skunkworks campus of the top engineering talent in the world. At some point of specific gravity, it doesn’t matter WHAT you want to build or productize. You’ve already got people in house that can do that. And right now I would guess Tesla gets to chooose from the cream of the crop. I’m told they hired 2500 last year, from 500,000 applications. SO you still have a one in 200 chance.

And so rather than productize existing technology, leveraging their already considerable investment, Tesla threw it out the window and said let’s build the next generation. I just wouldn’t have the cajones to do that I have to tell you. But on reflection, in a fast changing tech environment, it is EXACTLY the right move. While BMW and VW and GM play catchup, move on to the next generation. “We’ve upped our game, so UP YOURS”.

Porsche will have a “Telsa Killer” on line by 2020? We don’t even know what a Tesla will LOOK like in 2020.

And not only have they become the most attractive place for young talent to go, they’ve also become the most attractive place for suppliers to go. Why would NOT Analog Devices and NVIDIA, never mind Panasonic want to showcase electronic subassemblies in the Model 3 which STARTS with a 500,000 order book and who have challenged such suppliers to collaborate on the NEXTGEN electric car? And what level of R&D and development would they care to make that bet with?

Note that I’m NOT predicting the future. I’m describing a well kept PAST. True, by examining chicken entrails but I’m pretty GOOD at examining chicken entrails. I’ve gutted a shitpot full of chickens.

Tesla is on a roll. Model 3 production woes actually do not matter AT ALL in even the current scheme of things. And yes, the shorts will get KILLED. Elon Musk will be able to summon $10 billion, $20 billion or $100 billion, whatever he likes with a crook of his finger. And if Tesla never turns a profit for the NEXT TEN YEARS it won’t matter. It will still be the growth stock of the century.

Never mind that orders keep piling in for large scale solar battery installations, electric semi’s or whatever else.

And I still think Autopilot is a loser. A Tesla T-boned a police cruiser yesterday – on autopilot.

And I STILL think an Apple/Tesla/SpaceX merger-of-equals stock swap is in order, as long as Elon takes the helm. Apple has repatriated their $250 billion war chest, and I know a guy who knows just how to spend it.

Jack Rickard

The post We’ve Upped Our Game…so UP YOURS. appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

Or Why Do I Do What I Do and Why You Should Too.

I received a phone call the other day from a gentleman whom it quickly became apparent that I had much in common. Both raised in the Midwest, staring out in the U.S. Navy in a very technical field, and we had both done rather well in life. He had amassed a fortune in real estate but at the age of 52, was not very happy – with a gorgeous wife, a huge modern home, any car he liked, and a $40 million commercial real estate empire. He was left unsatisfied and empty with no joy in his life.

And his central question was about whether or not I was “happy”.

Now in my family, guys didn’t talk much about “happy”. I don’t recall ever once hearing my father inquire as to whether or not I was “happy” and I have to confess, in all our put togethers I never once asked him if he was “happy”. Girls talked about happy all the time. In my world, guys just didn’t. First, it didn’t matter. You did what you needed to do happy or not. And second, nobody else really cared. You were supposed to make THEM happy or at least fed and secure. You were a guy.

My son actually told me at one point that he wasn’t happy. He’d been living with three sisters and a mother so I guess that is where he had gotten that talk. But I perhaps not very sensitively told him that it didn’t matter if he was happy or not. He was a guy and nobody gave a shit if he was happy. But if anything was amiss, it would be up to him to fix it for his own future family and including any screwups by his sisters and mother as well. Fair or unfair son, it’s on your watch. You’re a guy and that’s what the gig is. And nobody cares if you are happy.

Apparently it was the wrong response as he later decided to become a girl.

But my response to the caller was that I was quite beyond “happy” and found joy and meaning in each and every day and could hardly wait to get up each morning and do it all over again. I only sleep when my knees buckle and I actually go down hard, and that has admittedly become earlier and more frequent as the orbits around the sun accrue, the weight increases, and the energy wanes. But I can scarce imagine being happier or what I would do if I were. I live on the most gorgeous planet in the universe, overrun with life so abundant you can’t keep the chiggers off of you, in a universe mostly known for being cold, sterile, and lifeless by all observation to date. It is high privilege to be here at all.

As we had each rather succeeded beyond expectations with regards to careers and fortune, and as we had each married well and often, and had gorgeous fabulous wives, why was I “happy” and he wasn’t?

And so I’ve given that some thought and I believe I know the answer. But it goes quite beyond he and I. Between 1999 and 2016, suicide rates in the United States have increased an astounding 25%. That is the known and reported rates of suicide. Some 25,000 people per year. But there is another statistic even more troubling. We now lose 60,000 people per year to opiate overdose. Yeah, it’s unfortunate that people are so disenchanted they turn to drugs to find joy. But that’s not the part that strikes me.

People addicted to opiates take opiates EVERY DAY. They know EXACTLY what they are doing and EXACTLY how much to take. So why so many “accidental” overdoses. In a recent NPR interview a woman who had been there and done that put it rather succinctly. She acknowledged that she routinely traded sex with anyone anywhere to get her drugs and was NOT enured to it but constantly tortured by the humilation and debasement of it all. She admitted she had lied to and defrauded her own mother for money to get drugs and in the end simply stole from her outright at the end whenever she could. Her own mother.

And she reached the point where there was simply NO HOPE of escaping the addiction, and her descent into a living breathing hell on earth had no escape hatch. She was in a downward spiral and had no way out.

Fortunately, someone intervened and she was indeed struggling to recover but she openly derided the idea that drug overdose was “accidental”. She would estimate that 90% or MORE of these “accidental” overdoses were not accidental at all. They were quite deliberate. The final solution – a way out.

So it is very likely that the increased suicide rates and the increased opiate addiction are not only related, but work together to understate enormously the number of people SO unhappy that they would end their lives prematurely and by their own hand.

And the perception is that we live in terrible times, on a planet and society devolving to chaos, and the good old days are forever gone. School shootings are becoming NORMAL. Madmen mow down people in a Las Vegas parking lot. ISIS launches mass murder and terror attacks around the world. And poverty and unemployment and war and nuclear armegeddon are inevitable and increasing. If robots don’t take our jobs then AI will exterminate us. Life is truly dire and we are nothing short of the apocalypse – zombies or no.

There’s just one little problem. NONE of it is REAL. IT is a horror FANTASY so laughably inaccurate that any outside observer would find this just HILARIOUS how totally off kilter we as a species are psychologically. And this has an absolutely known cause. The cause is a conspiracy launched by Mike Lindell, of MyPillow, and Flo, from Progressive Insurance, and they are both partying like Rock Stars at our discomfort.

We are hardwired mentally to filter our environment and pay close attention to anything that might pose a threat to our existence. You might be enjoying a sunny day walking through a field of beautiful flowers, but if ONE little tiger appears, the flowers and the day are entirely forgotten and you focus like a laser on that tiger. Butterflies are beautiful but entirely forgotten if one big red barn wasp shows up to spoil the fun.

That’s because the tiger might eat you. The flowers probably won’t. It is natural. It is necessary. And it is an effective mode in favor of long and healthy and happy lives. Avoid tigers. Don’t worry about the flowers.

And so it is quite rational to be nipple deep in rose petals and hundred dollar bills, chomping on a bucket of original recipe, but still worrying fretfully about where your next meal is to come from. Our attention goes to the negative.

Over the course of a hundred years or so, our news media has become an enormous trillion dollar finely-honed business. And it is a competitive business. And the mission strategy is really really simple – capture the attention of large numbers of humanoids and sell that attention to Flo and Mike for cash. They in turn, let you know of their less dangerous offerings and you buy the pillows and insurance in grateful relief.

And so the game becomes find the most horrifyingly negative story you can out of the lives of the seven billion people available, and package it for maximum sensational impact, and get it on the air before the competition does. Don’t worry about the facts. Kind of squishy things anyway. You’re after IMPACT. It’s really pretty simple. If it bleeds it leads. And good news is no news at all.

Charles Kuralt was the only journalist I’ve ever followed with enough intellect to see through the glare. He was rewarded by being shitcanned to a Sunday Morning death slot on CBS – replacing a test pattern originally as I recall. He travelled around the country in an RV finding and telling heart warming stories about real Americans in every day life who did something interesting or heroic in ways large or small. It just didn’t make the cut. No viewers. No advertisers. But slightly better than the test pattern. He closed the show each week with a minute of “dead air” silence and a beautiful nature scene. That gig still marks CBS Sunday Morning Show to this day, largely in memoriam to Charles.

Clickbait on the Internet works in precisely the same way and for precisely the same reasons. And so we are inundated all day every day with horrible scenes of death and mayhem, disaster and evil. And unfortunately, only a very small percentage of the population are REALITY AWARE and able to resist the constant blare of negativity.

For the rest, a certain fatalism sets in. Things are SO bad that there is little or nothing that can be done, and if it were done it would have to be done by something HUGE. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffet, or the United States Government. We are essentially assured that all we can do as individuals is sit on the couch and watch the television or Internet and suffer hoping someone somewhere will do something. And buy beer of course. Or pillows. Or even insurance.

I think it is a deliberately Satanic message designed to destroy the world. But the world is just a little hardier and more resilient than expected. Reality DOES happen anyway.

Dr. Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author a year older than myself and seems pretty happy as well. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His eighth book, Enlightenment Now (2018), uses social science data from various sources to argue for a general improvement of the human condition over recent history. And he’s taken a look at the human condition over recent history to find out whether things are truly going to hell in a handbasket or not. His findings will delight you. Please DO watch this fasincating TEDtalk. He’s about as entertaining as I am but the information is CRUCIALLY important for you to fully understand.

By EVERY metric, poverty, war, homicide, life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy, employment, death on the job, death by terrorist attack, death by automobile, standard of living, death in combat, disease – literally anything you look at remotely related to human happiness, we are not a LITTLE bit better but PROFOUNDLY better off now compared to just 30 years ago and ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better off by every metric over the past 200 years.

I knew this viscerally and anecdotally but had no idea the MAGNITUDE Of it until this video. We are ABSURDLY better off in every conceivable way. COMICALLY better off. Indeed we live in an age of miracles.

Almost any of half the humanoids on the planet, if they know the magic NUMBER of any other humanoid, can talk to them in real time in less than a minute and at trivial cost. That includes over half of all people on planet everywhere now. The starving babies of Africa haunting my youth now sport American T-shirts and most of them have cell phones.

The Internet allows us to access almost ALL known information with a few keystrokes in a few seconds WORLDWIDE.

Air conditioning in the U.S. is now ubiquitous. We can control our personal temperature in our home, office or car on the hottest July day or in sub zero January nights. Electrical appliances have reduced the work effort just to feed and cloth ourselves and keep our houses up from over 60 hours per week to less than 15 hours per week in the last hundred years. Yes, common electric appliances have granted us an astounding 45 hours of free leisure time PER WEEK by themselves.

And we are orders of magnitude safer from murder, terrorist attack, and war than we have EVER been. That is the REALITY of life on planet earth at the moment.

And none of it is by accident. Individuals have had many many ideas for improvements and enlisted dozens, then hundreds, then thousands then millions in the cause of deploying those ideas. Rome wasn’t invented in a day nor was the washing machine. Our ability to grow food per man hour and per acre has increased several orders of magnitude, not by the wave of a magic wand, but by steady incremental improvements in equipment and process. By EFFORT focused on IMPROVEMENT of key aspects of our daily lives.

And none of that was driven by people sitting on the couch, gobbling oxycontin and watching CNN in despair.

And so a couple of key items for my friend on the phone.

1. I believe we are born on this earth as the enormously powerful spirits, each with a unique set of gifts or “powers” unlike those of anyone who has ever lived here on earth before. We also come equipped with a unique set of challenges, handicaps or limitations and a life before us which will present other challenges at every step along the way.

2. I believe that I was a deliberate act of a creator who loves me completely and is totally absorbed watching to see what I might do with this life on earth, this very unusual opportunity he has given me.

3. I believe that this is NOT an idle training exercise. Life on earth is hazardous duty and the REAL deal and we are acting as cocreators with God in an act of marvelous creation that is very much in process toward the most beautiful and complex piece of artwork in the Universe ever conceived. Every move we make and every breath we take counts either toward perfecting that or destroying it. It is IMPORTANT work.

4. I believe I was personally gifted with an unusual intellect and other gifts at birth that imply and require unusual results. Where much is given, much is asked. I’m not to spend time taking in each others wash and polishing the silver however laudable and worthwhile those tasks are. I should tackle the big problems and work diligently and manfully toward their solution. It doesn’t matter whether I win, lose, or draw, gain recognition, fame, or fortune. I should expend supreme EFFORT at them each and every day over a long period of time until they are completed and that is ALL that matters.

My first rodeo had to do with personal computers and I mostly learned and gained tools from that experience though I did contribute where and as able. Wrote some tutorials and software for the Sinclair, the Commodore 64, and IBM PC.

Rodeo two had to do with a segue into PC’s as communications devices and the formation of a global and free Internet interconnecting everyone everywhere. It was a fully formed vision by 1985 and I and hundreds of others dedicated every waking moment of our lives to it. The hundreds became thousands and the thousands became tens of thousands and the tens of thousands become hundreds of thousands. I more or less had completed my work by 1998 and got out of active work on it though I continue to use and observe it to this day of course. Fifteen years starting at six in the morning and going to midnight seven days a week. I recall one day working 44 hours straight without a break and that rather overran the day.

Rodeo three had to do with converting personal transportation from gasoline based devices to battery powered magnetic drive. Ten years of up at five and working to 6:00 PM seven days per week. Not quite the level of effort I was able to muster in the eighties and nineties but the best I can do. It was and is my belief that this conversion will solve half a dozen problems simultaneously including making our economy much more stable, preventing loss of life and limb by our children in “petrowars”, improving the noise level and level of pollutants in our land and cities, particulate emissions and nitrous oxides most particularly and improve the general health and vitality of our population by not breathing those things in day-in and day-out. And that we can achieve the same or better mobility on 1/5 of the energy used with the earlier technology.

And I am now taking an interest in solar energy storage with the belief that point-of-use generation of electrical power can change the entire world for the better in all ways. It’s 10:00 AM Sunday morning and I’m at it now since 6:00AM. I’ll take the late afternoon and Sunday evening for a family Sunday dinner as I do most Sundays.

I’m thoroughly entranced by the dual magic rocks of lithium battery energy storage and silicon crystal photovoltaics to produce that energy. With no moving parts, no noise, and no emissions of any kind, these magic rocks can convert sunlight into electrical energy and store it for later use. It just doesn’t get any cooler than that. And we can use the power to drive our cars of course. Driving on sunlight.

And so I think the key to having happiness and joy in this life revolves around appreciation and gratitude for the beautiful planet and what we have, while devoting every waking moment to a higher purpose and ideal – a holy mission to improve the entire world. Not a modest mission. Not a doable mission. I launch only at things I know I will probably fail at. Impossible missions. Implausible missions. Suicidal missions.

As I once mentioned to my associate at the time Brian Noto, “I didn’t come all the way to Pebble Beach Golf Club to lay-up”. Then I stuck a 230 yard fairway wood over the cliff, across the bay, and onto the green.

As to money, yes I probably have a lot of it. But I know little about it. I’m not very good at managing it. I’m not very interested in it beyond its ability to buy the next tool or toy directed at the mission. And I don’t even know where it comes from – somehow people have always sent me money in the mail. I think its so I’ll keep working on the mission. And a very fortunate thing, as I three-putted the hole of course, and simply have no future in golf. Or time for it.

And so my advice to my children and to young people everywhere is find something you really like to do, do a hell of a lot of it until you get REALLY good at it, and then devote yourself to an impossible mission much larger than yourself and your own miserable life paying utility bills and cell phone bills and wondering what you look like to others. And by daily devotion to your craft and that mission, you can move the world millimeter-by-millimeter and inch-by-inch. If others want to join you, allow it and show them how it works.

As Steven Pinker suggests, progress is quite possible but it is never inevitable. It requires the long term often unsung and unrewarded efforts of many constructive creative people over long periods of time. Persistent effort over many years usually is more important than sudden breakthroughs or inventions or luck.

And in this way, you assume to yourself and your life, meaning and purpose and joy. You matter. Your LIFE matters. Indeed you are responsible for an entire planet and will be called to task for what you did with it.

And so while my countenance tends toward saturnine, I really am a happy guy. I believe everything I do matters.

Contrast that with a life spent seeking personal comfort and banked wealth far beyond your personal needs. For what? If you don’t know where you are REALLY, why you’re there, and what you are supposed to be doing, how would you ever be happy or have meaning in your life?

As importantly, we are each interconnected in ways the human psyche remains forever oblivious to – by design. Those connections are reality. And every move we make and every breath we take alters the future for all we come in contact with. The example you set, the encouragement you offer, and the correction you offer where needed, has a rippling effect not only on those you are in contact with, but on many of those who they are in turn in contact with as well. You are not made privvy to the lasting effects. But you ARE responsible for the results.

And so you see, George, you really did have a wonderful life.

While loathe to speak for others, I’m told and feel I should point out that this is precisely the process Elon Musk used as well. While in college at Stanford, he reportedly pondered what “missions” would have the greatest impact on life on the planet. He came up with establishing man as a multiplanetary species, electric vehicles, and solar power as the three things most likely to have the greatest beneficial effect on the state of human existence. Subsequently, he has spent every waking moment and every dollar he could beg borrow or steal toward those missions. And all kind of simultaneously. He calls this “finding ways to think about the future that don’t make me sad.”

I do em one at a time, but am perhaps not as gifted as he. But I think you’ll find his life has meaning and purpose, and that his golf game probably sucks as badly as mine.

Jack Rickard

The post All the News That’s Fit to Print appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

We’ve been myopically focused on our own technical navel here recently and I suppose that continues with our most recent video on our new Singineer 12kw off-grid inverter.

But we follow developments at Tesla quite avidly. I become more enamored of my Model 3 every day, and particularly now that Elon repaid me the purchase price, about six times over actually. Like many EVTV viewers, I’m not only driving gasoline free, but my cars are free as well. Free as in beer.

I bought a Model S in early 2013 using the house’s money by some good timing on Tesla stock and call options that in truth could have bought me three Model S’s. Many of our viewers did as well. But I actually left a lot on the table cashing in the options a little early in the runup. I’m hoping not to make that mistake this time.

I am not a stock analyst and indeed don’t even play one on TV. And it absolutely upsets me to think one of our viewers might lose some ducats playing the stock market based on my recommendations.

But I’m detecting kind of a perfect storm. And I don’t want it said that I hogged the information and left anyone out.

In late May Tesla’s stock went deep in the tank on Model 3 production woes and Elon’s brusque handling of the earnings conference call. At $275, I went quite in on 200 contracts for September 21 $400 calls. That basically gives me the right to buy 20,000 shares of Tesla at $400 before September 21. Total cost, $43400 I was already long on Tesla common stock.

This week the stock hit $370 and I confess I did take a LITTLE bit off the table, enough to cover my $2.17 per share cost at the current $24.50 price. Placing my current bet value at $490,000 that day.

But I’ve vowed to ride this one out. I’m not cashing in yet. I smell the perfect storm. And I intend to ride it out.

Elon himself purchased $10 million in Tesla stock earlier in the year and then an additional $25 million in May while blustering and blowing about putting a world of hurt and an epic burn on the Tesla short sellers.

Meanwhile an entire raging and really quite loudly venomous group of Tesla short sellers has emerged and Tesla is the MOST shorted stock on any exchange anywhere with over 30% of their available common stock sold short – a $12 billion dollar bet agains Tesla. These guys lost over $1.5 billion with this dubious strategy last year but Musk vows to create the largest short squeeze in history this year. And the battle has grown heated.

Sunday he issued a memo noting the discovery of sabotage at the Tesla factory. What appears to be known is that a “disgruntled” employee who did not get a desired promotion had purposely broken some automation assembly line OS software and has also apparently disclosed highly proprietary data to third parties outside Tesla. Not connected at this point is a very suspicious fire in a very new paint booth.

I find it hard to believe that an employee would actually do such a thing merely because he failed to get the promotion he deserved, even in alt-left libtard California. There has to be some money in this somewhere, and it really probably has to come from the shorts. We’re talking Federal prison time if that’s the case, unless of course Hillerary is a Tesla short, in which case she walks free of course.

The short squeeze Musk refers to works kind of like this. A short sells stock in Tesla that he never owned in the first place. He does this by “borrowing” shares in the company he doesn’t own from his broker. He actually gets the money into his account from the sale at the time he sells it. So in theory, if I sold a thousand shares of Tesla today at $353, I would receive $353,000. Of course I can’t really spend that on whiskey on women as it is the collateral for the stock I owe. But I also have to pay INTEREST on the money instead of earning interest.

If the stock goes down to $275, I buy 1000 shares to “cover”. Now I don’t owe anything. And I get to keep the $78,000 difference as a lovely parting gift.

Of course, if it goes UP, I have to make up the difference between the $353,000, and the then current price of the stock. And if that difference exceeds my “margin” that I can borrow from the broker, I actually have to pony up the cash. And there is NO LIMIT on the losses. If Tesla goes to $1000, I have to come up with $747,000 cash, plus interest, plus transaction costs.

In practice, I have about 30 seconds to come up with that. Otherwise, and as a practical matter, the brokerage just buys the stock to cover automatically and deducts any losses from my account. It’s a forced sale. And they don’t care at what price. It’s at the NEXT price.

So it’s kind of a neat way to gamble using the house’s money. Until it goes wrong. Real “investors” just don’t short. But Day Traders do.

But I want to focus on timing here. Tesla has this EXTREMELY unusual 30% short overhang here. And if it starts to go bad, the need to cover drives up the price of the stock, which causes more widespread need to cover, which drives the stock up further. And it makes no sense at that point. It’s like a crowd seeking to escape a fire in a nightclub. A rush for the exits. You don’t want to be the last guy buying to cover as that ensures maximum loss. This is called a short “squeeze”. You are forced to cover even if you think the stock is still overvalued simply by the panic of the other shorts. And in this case it is exacerbated by being a kind of automated panic operated by broker computer systems.

So again, I want to focus on timing here. No secret sauce. Musk has been promising a short burn for a year. And everybody has the information that production woes on the Model 3 have been material. And Musk had already set a hard deadline of the end of June to produce 5000 cars per week.

But on MONDAY, he issued a very strange tweet. And the jist of it was that there would be a short “explosion” in “three weeks”. That was on the 18th.

That means about July 8 or 9, right after the fourth of July weekend.

So walk with me talk with me. The story is that Musk is going to announce 5000 cars per week by the end of June. Everybody already knows that. He would likely announce success if it produced 5001 cars on any single week even if it could never do it again. You can almost stage that. So he IS going to announce he won, and everybody already knows that. But he’s now saying it will cause a huge explosion of the short position. I would prefer implosion myself. But semantics.

I just don’t buy it. Nobody of that intelligence exhibits that level of confidence over something everybody already knows is going to happen. UNLESS, they have a little something tucked into the right hip pocket to casually toss on the table to ensure cranial detonations and excrement flying in all directions. Something they know about and nobody else does. And secrets are hard to keep unless you are one of very few who know the secret. And that has to be something you can control And that basically goes to ANNOUNCEMENTS, not production figures.

So it brings up the question of overkill and how you ensure it. Yes, he has to announce success with the 5000 per week. Now what else can he announce that would ENSURE panic in the shorts.

There is little to announce that hasn’t already been announced or at least pre-announced or noted that it would be announced soon – or something like that. So it isn’t a big truck sale. Or a big power storage sale. The Boring company is really a bit boring and already announced but in any event isn’t owned by Tesla shareholders.

My dream candidate would be a Tesla/Apple merger. But impossible. Cooke and Musk just aren’t THAT smart. But picture short smoke as all that would be left at the bottom of the crater. We’re talking signficant impact on American suicide rate statistics. Like guys jumping out of buildings.

But you see my yearning for drama here. That has to be part of it. It can’t be dry numbers.

I confess an allure to a Tesla network like Uber. I think it would be instantly successful. You can get a ride anywhere and ALL the drivers and ALL the cars are guaranteed to be Tesla. EVERYONE would pay a PREMIUM for that ride. But Elon envisions that as part of autonomous driving. And so far autopilot is quickly shaping up as precisely the shitshow for him I predicted it would be several years ago. I just don’t think he’s goine to go to the obvious but not very dramatic manned version of a Tesla “network.” It would burn the shorts but has other issues.

He could of course reverse himself and announce that the flamethrower that is marked as NOT A FLAMETHROWER really IS a flamethrower after all. Nahhhh……I don’t think so.

So a secret that is not a secret, but that not everybody knows, that is really really dramatic.

Well, we all know about the Model Y. But we’ve never actually SEEN one. And it is purported to be a crossover SUV, which in the U.S. outsell sedans by about 40,000 to 1. And I’m kind of picturing a vehicle that is ENTIRELY a Model 3, but a bit higher, has a cargo area/hatchback, and does NOT have falcon doors and hepa filters and all that but could probably be sold for a bit of a premium over the sedan – say base $42,000.

In reality – a minor body change for the Model 3.

I found it really kind of suspicious that in the past month or so he’s talked about a March 2019 announcement of the Model Y. Crimminy, I put a deposit on my Model 3 in March of 2016 and got delivery in February 2018. March 2018 would be more symmetrical for a next model announcement, not March 2019. But he has been a little plagued by production glitches on the Model 3. But why mention it at all?

Of course, he also unveiled this week a Model 3 assembly line in a tent that they put up in three weeks for the superpower Model 3. A Model 3 variant….

So I’m picturing this. Sunday evening, July 8th. Musk holds a special event to announce to the world that he has achieved 5000 units per week. And at the event rolls out the absolutely cool lookng Model Y crossover SUV. And announces they are taking deposits online right now. $2500 per unit. Delivery in late 2019. And on Monday morning about the opening of the market announces they’ve received another 500,000
deposits for Model Y, without the inconvenience of the shitshow they had with people camped out all day at their service centers last time.

And it is a risk free announcement even ff the three on stage are the only three prototypes in existence and none of them even drive. He doesn’t have to deliver anything for a year and a half from assembly lines he already has working. And adding another GENERAL ASSEMBLY line he has just proven takes THREE WEEKS.

That rather sharply puts a point on the fact that he no longer is concerned about Model 3 production – hell he’s announcing a new model already and taking orders for it. And whatever the number is by Monday morning, and I will certainly be down for one, it will cause cranial detonations. Why wouldn’t I order one? The freaking shorts are the ones paying for it!!! For me its a free SUV.

If you cannot achieve a precision fit with a 12 lb sledge hammer DON’T FORCE IT. It would be ENTIRELY unnecessary to show artist conceptions of a Model 3 Pickup Truck. It just really isn’t necessary. Overkill.

But it establishes that a new kind of automobile manufacturing process can churn out variants at will and demand isn’t the problem. And now production isn’t the problem either. We’re talking BODY WORK. Stamping machines. NOT rocket science. And suddenly the demonstrated future of Tesla starts to reveal. And we are reminded that OVERKILL is ALWAYS appropriate.

For those with an ear to hear, FREE TESLAS FOR SALE. Free as in beer.

The post FREE TESLAS FOR SALE – Free as in Beer. appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

We have drawn no small interest in our SELFISH SOLAR initiative – indicating everybody knows there is something wrong with the devolving net metering situation across the land. And this week’s video takes a deep dive into Selfish Solar. It may get a little technical. So set your Life Alerts on STUN and cinch up your Depends old guys. We’re going in….

As you can see from the recent AmerenUE bill I used 1140 kWh in this period. That normally would have billed $94.96. But I offset it with solar and indeed generated 1597 kWh for a 457kWh surplus. But at $0.0247 per kWh “avoided production cost” that generated an income of $11.29, just barely offsetting my basic connection charge of $11.24. Interestingly, even though I DID offset that connection charge, they still collected taxes on it as if I did not – $1.48 leaving me with a net bill of $1.43.

My point is, this is a rigged game. And it is rigged against YOU. In every way. In large ways. In small ways. Indeed it is the small, sly picayune elements that annoy me the most. They never miss a trick. Taxes on charges you didn’t incurr????

But beyond that, the bigger point is that the polyanna kumbayah concept of investing $100,000 in your roof and using it to generate income from the utility company never was going to happen. And your attachment to that vision is being used against you.

Rather, I would advocate, just pay the damn $11.24 for a BACKUP connection from the grid, and don’t bother with exporting power at all. Generate your own electricity right where you consume it. Store the excess for use at night or during inclement weather. And tap the grid when you need to during extended periods of bad weather or if your system goes down for parts.

But most of the comments we receive on selfish solar are some variation of “just do this and you would STILL be able to export power to the grid.” That rather misses the point. We’re trying NOT to deal with that at all. You just won’t give up the vision. And they will and do use that to control you.

Battery storage of solar electric makes no economic sense at all at the moment. We are spending huge amounts to demonstrate nonsense here. But that’s where I live. What I know is that at some point it will make very good economic sense to do so. If the technology and tribal knowledge is there to do so.

Everything changes. The world is in a state of constant flux. Here’s some good news. At the end of 2016 lighting consumed 25% of our TOTAL electrical use in the United States. And at that point, 88% of ALL lighting in the U.S. was STILL incandescent bulb. In this video I mentioned that we just bought an LED fixture that gets 133 lumens per watt. Indeed, LED lighting uses about 11.5% of the energy of incandescent for exactly the same light.

And the light has gotten better. I can get LED light now down to 2700K temperature (warmish yellow light) instead of the harsh blue white light the early bulbs gave off. And last week I bought 8 of GE’s latest vibrant color LED bulbs that look very much now like an ordinary 60 watt incandescent bulb for $24.95. That’s a little over $3 a bulb.

And so as late as 2016, only 12% of our lighting had been converted to LED. But the prices are falling and the experience of LED is improving dramatically. And very soon now the adoption of LED light to save on electric bills DOES now make sense and is going to take off like a rocket – exponential growth. And in a period of about a year EVERYONE is going to convert.

That means that 25% of our total national electric usage will be reduced by 88.5% to maybe 3% or 5% over the course of the next year or so.

Well that’s fantastic. Less belching smoke from coal fired plants and as everyone knows, if demand for a product goes down, the price has to go down too doesn’t it?

Not in the surreal land of government/huge corporate monopoly structures it doesn’t. It means drastically reduced revenues in the face of the same fixed costs. And so the PUC’s just have a little private meeting with the utilities and in a non-vote vote simply raise your per kWh rate. And batta boom batta bing, problem solved.

Sure, this will be offset somewhat by the adoption of electric drive for transportation. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that your costs per kWh from the utility company are never going to go DOWN in rate. But they will go up. And potentially dramatically. Change causes the requirement to update things in fixed plant investment. And so it will happen.

Against that backdrop, about half of ALL existing residential solar installations in the U.S. have been installed in a little over the last two year period. While focusing on STormy Daniels and the plight of those piteous children from El Salvadore, the media may have failed to mention one of the most significant paradigm shifts in the last 100 years.

And 97% of those installations are grid-tied with no energy storage capability at all. And for good reason. Battery storage adds 50% to the price of an installation and the concept is you NEVER have to use it. The batteries go bad without ever being used other than the twice annual 5-minute outage. And so no one wants to pay that.

Of course, in the event of hurricane, tornado, flood, or zombie apocalypse, that $70,000 solar installation on your roof cannot actually produce enough power to charge your cell phone because on loss of grid power, it becomes TOTALLY INOPERATIVE. By design of the utility company in ANOTHER unholy deal with Underwriter Laboratories on the very pressing need to prevent injury to utility company repair workers of which NOT ONE EVER has had the slightest tingle from a solar installation to date WORLDWIDE.

I hear all the time about the vaunted Tesla Powerwall. I ordered one three years ago. I ordered one again when it was revised and updated and repriced. Hell I’ve ordered a solar ROOF from Tesla. All to no avail. They’ll let me know when they are shipping to my area. Why hasn’t this happened? After paying a brazillian dollars for Solar City, don’t they WANT to sell solar roofs and powerwalls?

They can’t get them approved. I’ve heard from several people who actually paid the price and took delivery. They eventually got refunds because Tesla cannot “get them approved.” In Australia perhaps. Or Puerto Rico. But not here. It just isn’t happening.

The utility oligarchy has already started the war and it has been raging for several years now. But they are using silencers and muffling their guns hoping you won’t notice until it is won. Which is odd because it was over before it began. They have all the artillery, AND your political structure in their pocket. But they are desperately afraid you’ll find out because sufficiently enraged, there have been set backs in some areas of the country by consumers and solar advocates. They are actually very fearful of this whole green thing. Indeed they are rushing to install huge solar installations of their own in a bid to claim the high ground here. Which is actually a good thing.

But they very much want to keep the serfs on the fiefdom and under control. And so teaching them to read and write is strictly verboten.

Edison’s original vision for his electric lighting system involved installation of a steam engine driven generator at each installation site.
This proved impractical because steam engines are noisy, smelly, require fuel, and are subject to frequent breakdowns. And so central “stations” emerged. Westinghouse used Tesla’s Alternating Current to allow large generation sites and the transmission of electricity long distances by wire.

Cool. But that was all developed in the 1880’s. That’s 130 years ago.

If we forget economics at the individual level, and also throw out the brazillions invested in the existing system, how would you design electric power production today from a clean sheet of paper?

And the thing that jumps out is we already HAVE solved most all the problems. You can use magic rocks on the roof to convert sunlight to electricity NOW and we typically just don’t do much with our roofs. They are kind of useless space required to keep the rain off and the sun OUT.

Sun doesn’t shine at night. Store the energy in batteries. SOME homes in the 1880’s actually ran on batteries if you can believe it.

And so you generate power ON SITE at the same geographic point where you USE it. Batta boom batta bing.

Electric grid? Why not? You can move electricity around. There is NO WAY to properly size a solar installation to use because the loads vary constantly and the irradiance of the sun varies constantly. And obviously, the sun goes down in New York long before it does in Los Angeles.

In an ideal world, the grid can be a balancing mechanism and economic arbitrageur of power economics. But it is extremely ill suited to being an energy storage service.

Battery storage has been problematic because of the short life, high maintenance, and large weight and volume of lead acid batteries. Lithium technology solves all of that but it is 3x the cost. But as we adopt electric vehicles, the availability of remnant batteries becomes obvious and the costs of lithium batteries repurposed to solar energy storage plummets.

Selfish Solar is a way to gain CONTROL over your electric energy future and insulate yourself both from the viscitudes of hurricanes and zombie apocalpses AND the frontal attack from your own utility service.

But in getting down to the where and the how, we have a couple of issues. First, all the producers of solar power management equipment are wrapped around an axle catering to the whims of the utility companies.

Second, they have been mired down in a never ending cycle of adding accomodation for yet another battery type/scheme/thingy.

And third, RETROFITTING grid-tied solar installations is just devilishly difficult in some non-obvious ways. The option to go grid-tied takes you down a very different path than having battery backup. And the central issue there is that battery based systems tend to be DC COUPLED in that the solar panels which produce DC power, and the batteries, which store DC power, are curiously ill matched to our universal 240vac two phase power system that ALL of our appliances and devices depend on.

Grid-tied systems by contrast are almost universally AC COUPLED. In that they convert the solar panel DC into 240vac at the earliest opportunity. And increasingly THAT opportunity is moving to the roof itself with small microinverters on each solar panel. Eventually these will simply move INTO the solar panel assembly itself and many future “solar panels” will simply produce an AC output. The wiring and installation issues all get easier when we can bring 240vac down from the roof already packaged for us and connectible to whatever AC system we have in the house.

So our quandry here at EVTV is how to use EXISTING AC COUPLED grid-tied systems with an incompatible DC storage device using the minimum possible equipment.

Grid tied inverters work by detecting the AC sinusoidal waveform provided by the utility grid. They then produce an output that is locked in both fequency and phase to the grid power system. By bumping the voltage just a few volts, they BECOME the current source for loads and the current flows from the grid-tied inverters to the loads. If they produce exactly what the loads require, the voltage of your house system will be just enough higher than the grid to keep from drawing any current from the grid.

In the event that the loads are GREATER than the power output capability of the grid-tied inverters, the voltage falls slightly. But you have basically unlimited power available from the grid to “hold it up” by providing power (current) into the house from the grid.

But if the grid-tied inverters produce MORE power than the electric dryer and air conditioner need, it simply increases the voltage ever so slightly above the grid regulated level, and your system becomes a SOURCE of current and power TO the grid.

This increase and decrease in voltage gets a little unmanageable to explain, involving phase shifts between the grid-tied inverter and the grid itself, but think of it as simply raising and lowering the voltage, ohms law being much easier to explain than RMS averages and phase angle relationships.

And I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to note that the grid-tied inverters detect the presence of the grid power NOT by power, but by frequency. And that a very small window of about 2 Hz off on frequency means LOSS OF GRID to the inverter.

Why is that important. If you lost the grid, and your power output exceeded the level demanded by the loads, the grid-tied inverters increase the voltage to export power to the grid. If the grid isn’t there, there is no place to export to.. And as the voltage rises, eventually the damage and blowup to the attached load devices and the grid-tied inverter itself ensues. And so normally there is some maximum voltage it will go to before protection algorithms simply shut down the inverter. Basically, the grid-tied inverters HAVE to have a place to “store” or export excess power to.

Enter the off-grid inverter. Since all the grid-tied inverters apparently need are a 60Hz sinusoidal waveform, the idea of using an off-grid inverter to provide an output for the grid-tied inverters to synch to arose about 12 minutes after the grid tied inverter was invented.

But if you take a 300 watt inverter working from a 12 volt battery, and use that to trick a grid-tied inverter into operation, experience indicated that it would work, but a few minutes later the 300 watt inverter blew up, and sometimes set the battery on fire. Then the house. Then the neighborhood.

And so using off grid inverters to energize grid-tied inverters without a grid, became a bit of a solar power faux pas. And that lesson has become part of the tribal lore of solar power. Don’t do it. It won’t work. And it will blow up all your equipment. Including your airconditioner.

I have been suspicious of this for some time. And so after developing our battery control system for TEsla batteries and battery modules, I had the instrumentation necessary to observe power flows in real time. And so we shut off the grid, entirely, and began experimenting with it. Remarkably, we didn’t blow much up. Indeed, within certain constraints it worked very well because the transformer based H-bridge inverters we were using allowed the excess power to basically reverse “rectify” right into the battery as DC.

There ARE a couple of provisos here though. The amount of excess power the off-grid inverter can absorb is limited by the power output rating of the off grid inverter anyway. So the 300 watt inverter was NEVER GOING TO WORK in the first place, simply by power rating. You have to use an off grid inverter capable of handling the maximum difference between what the grid-tied inverters produce and the load demand in BOTH directions.

That is, if the loads demand MORE than the grid-tied inverters can produce, the off-grid inverter has to make up the difference within its maximum power output level obviously. But the reverse is true as well. It must be able to ABSORB the power difference between max grid-tied output and loads within its power rating as well.

The transformer is probably important as well. It is a little old-school today, but it does an excellent job of providing isolation. But like all inductive devices, it also resists changes in CURRENT level. And so it is a bit “spongy” call it or resilient to changes in load and grid-tied output. Think of it as putting a bit of slack in the line.

Another problem is that if the battery gets full, and you disconnect the battery, all bets are off. You have lost your storage device to absorb excesses. And so the battery controller must be able to shut OFF the grid-tied inverters before disconnecting. The safest way to do that is to use our CHARGE ENABLE output to energize a relay connecting the grid-tied inverter outputs to the system. In this way, BEFORE reaching full, the battery can disconnect the grid-tied inverters.

We tested this on two inverters of two different manufacturers and at the 10kw and 20kw level several months ago and were amazed at how well all that worked. But it was using Tesla full packs of 300 to 400vdc. The peak voltage of a 240vac rms waveform is 240 x 1.414 or 339.36 volts peak to peak. Well that is right in the wheel house with our Tesla battery voltage. And so I could readily understand how the power was transferred through the transformer, and using exactly the same H-bridge PWM action used to produce the 60 Hz waveform in the first place, through the switches and into the battery in a kind of back handed rectification.

I advocate strongly for the use of full EV battery packs as solar energy storage. It caresses my sense of elegance that we could just take a pack out of a car, plug it in and use it without a lot of reengineering or processing. But quite beyond that, the current levels at 339vdc or 240vac rms are simply a great match for the wiring we already do. 10kW of power is about 30 amps at 339 vdc. And so 20 kW would be 60 amps. These are all comfortable current levels for ordinary house wiring.

The problem is that we have the vast body of viewers who want to experiment with this using weeny packs of two Tesla Battery Modules at 48v. And they want off the shelf MPPT charge controllers and inverters that are by and large 48vdc at this point. Indeed a 300-400vdc inverter has to be special ordered from China and there really just aren’t any available in the U.S.

But the 48vdc “standard” is not very well standardized, and really not a realistic solution unless you are building Tiny House Nation in Montanna. First, the voltages they operate at are really NOT a good match for the voltages of the TEsla Model S pack. And second, to do 10kW of power requires 208 amperes of current. That is signficant I2R loss as heat and you have to use huge cables. And this can be a bit misleading.

We use large cables all the time in electric vehicles. And runs are very short. But there is a false sense of security here. In an EV, we ARE at higher voltages. And while we might do 500 or even 1000 amperes, it is for six seconds. Not all afternoon. A 10kW CONTINUOUS load is a lot of current over a lot of time and so you get away with nothing here. We’re really talking 4/0 cable for even short runs if you want to install this safely. A cable fire NEXT to a lithium battery is little better than a lithium battery fire directly.

But it is clear I’m losing here. And I get it. Tesla Batteries are now $17,000-$20,000. They weigh 1330 lbs. And it is just easier to deal with the 27 inch long slabs at 56 lbs to build what you want. And while you could put them in series, the equipment to do 300-400vdc is again mostly unobtainium.

The problem is, the inexpensive and commonly available 48vdc product out there is just not well suited to the Tesla Battery Module Voltages.

First and most dangerously, almost all the battery types supported want to charge to 56v or higher. If you charge a 2S1P Tesla Battery Module set to 56 volts you will at a minimum destroy it completely. But you risk fire and explosion.

As well, the low voltage cutoff of most 48vdc inverters is 42-44vdc. At 44vdc the Tesla System is at about 56% state of charge. You’re leaving half the capacity of the battery on the table. A 20% level of state of charge would be down around 38.25 volts. And 36.5 volts to actually cutoff operation would be perfectly reasonable.

So we went to a Chinese inverter manufacturer who makes a 48vdc inverter we like and asked them if we bought a small quantity of these would they add a battery type catering to Tesla Battery Module voltages. And they did. We just got them in and began testing and were delighted to find that they worked perfectly with our Tesla Battery Modules.

The unit is 175 lbs and uses a large copper transformer and some good switching electronics. It has three fans that are controlled to come on as needed and the box does an impressive 12kW of continuous power and a whopping 36kW peak output for up to 20 seconds. And the pricing is very good. We can buy them in quantity, ship them here and offer them at a profit at $2995. That’s under 25 cents per watt.

But the really good news is it allows us to start eliminating other devices wholesale. It features an AC input that can be grid or generator. And it will automatically use that input to charge the batteries in the event that battery voltage falls below the battery alarm voltage of about 39v as we measured it. It can charge at up to 120amps. AND it can power the loads while it is doing that. So our 6kW grid tied charger GOES AWAY. The charger is built in.

And so you can use the grid as backup if the battery is drained too low, and indeed you can use a generator. It even has a generator start relay set when it needs to charge. You can use this to start up your generator obviously. And it will wait up to 15 seconds for a stable AC waveform before it starts the charging process. This is rather important when working with generators.

The question then becomes, can we make the MPPT charge controllers go away? And I say controllers plural because as battery sizes and arrays grow, we find the choice and power levels of MPPT charge controllers somewhat limiting. When you get up into the 3kw to 5kw range these things get expensive. And if you want to make use of even a modest 10kw array, you are using two or three of them.

Well there is a way. And it goes to making our system work with EXISTING grid-tied photovoltaic systems anyway. Our Solar Edge grid-tied inverters, for example, use series strings of panels at around 500vdc to make power. 500v is far too high to work with MOST economical MPPT charge controllers which tend to be limited to 100v or 150v at best. We’ve found a couple but they are pricey and a bit erratic frankly when charging to our 50v charge limit.

Many installations today use microinverters on the roof – one per panel that actually produce 240vac down to the equipment room. And so the ability to use AC coupling to existing grid-tie inverters would be huge.

The question is can we do the same charging from grid-tied 240vac with this 48vdc inverter as we did with the high voltage inverters with the full battery pack.

The manufacturer assured us that it absolutely could not and would not work ever under any conditions. It would just shut down automatically and entirely if we tried it.

Well, we ARE located in Missouri. So you kind of have to SHOW ME. I’m not very good with the “being told” thing. In this video, we demonstrate our test results.

One of the things that keeps me going around here is days like that. The results were frankly astonishing. We hit a peak of 280 amperes, 13,500 kw of power IN to our battery through this inverter WHILE the entire shop was running on the Solar Edge output at about 4,500 watts. And we did 230 amperes for 40 minutes until the battery was charged.

The inverter ran cool and quiet without complaint throughout. Never a hiccup.

In surveying this, I would like you to note again the relationship between a 12kW inverter capable of brief sojourns to 36kw, a 25 kw max array output from the grid-tied side, and a battery capable of 1300 amps by design. I don’t think any of this works with a little 5kw inverter.

That said, do note that the cell voltages for the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt batteries are essentially the same as the Tesla Model S, 3.6v nominal, 4.2v max charge, and about 3v fully discharged. So voltage wise, the Tesla Battery Module Setting on this inverter would work quite well with those batteries as well. I just ordered a kind of old beat up Nissan Leaf battery pack from eBay for $2300 and we have a new addition to our clan who is working on a controller for the Leaf. A 24 kWh battery probably working at 18kWh at this point is not precisely where we want to go. But it is budget minded at $2300, about the cost of two Model S battery modules.

What remains is to control the Solar Edge output when the battery gets full. We intend to do that with normal contactors on the summed output of the Solar Edge inverters. We’ll use the CHARGE ENABLE output of our battery controller to energize those contactors, and so when we reach the fully charged voltage set in the configuration, the contactors will de-energize and disconnect. When the battery stte of charge falls to the RESUME level, the charge enable output will again close the contactors, and after a 300 second timeout, the inverters will produce again.

Tnere IS another technique I would like to dabble in. Ostensibly both the Solar Edge and Enphase grid-tie inverters have a bit of a hidden feature. If you shift the frequency of the off-grid inverter between 60 and 62 Hz, the inverter produces 100% power at 60 Hz and nothing above 62Hz. But if you could shift it within that window, you can actually modulate the output from 0 to 100% in quite linear fashion.

Unfortunately I have discussed this at length with the inverter manufacturer. Subsequent to our testing and this weeks video they are really QUITE interested in working with us further. But they are literally out of memory space on their current microcontroller. So adding CAN control is kind of out of the question at the moment. But we continue to head scrum on possible future products. They are awakening to where I want to go with this.

Of course, it is a serious disappointment that American made componentry suffers enormous arrogance and hubris sufficient I cannot bear to even discuss it with them. They embarrass me mightily. That is I am embarrassed FOR them. Often relatively small in both size and sales, they have somehow developed the idea that if they ACT like a big stupid corporation, they might get to be one someday. I can only shake my head in wonder and hope they get what they ask for. Punishment enough.

Click on the manual photo below to view the current state of the documentation for this inverter which is now available in our online store.

What’s left here? Well quite a bit actually. We want to perform this testing with Enphase’s new IQ7x microinverter. We’re still waiting on availability for this latest microinverter as it works with large panels of up to 96 cells and was specifically designed for the Panasonic HIT 300 watt panels we already use on our 13,500 watt test array. You might find it curious that Enphase just recently invested $25 million in a 10% stake in SunPower Solar. Recall they make the 22% solar panels and cells that we use on our flexible solar panels. They are going to retire their house microinverter and use the Enphase model exclusively. Long term, I would look to them to do the first viable solar panel with INTEGRATED grid-tie inverter built into it. This would seriously decrease installation costs and complexity.

This week we have begun a new project. We are going to call it the PowerSafe 100. This will be a single cabinet using a very strong heavy Wiegmann NEMA enclosure made of 12 gauge steel. Lifting eye bolts on top and heavy duty wheels on bottom. This monster will be 72x36x30 inches and weigh right around 2000 lbs. But it will hold 20 Tesla Model S battery modules for a slick 100kWh of storage. It will include the 12kw Inverter inside with a liquid cooling system for the batteries, solid copper bars for the high current connections to the inverter, and a control panel mounted in the door sporting our EVIC display and SUB and CAN ports and all manner of switches and dials and controls.

The idea is to get everything in one box and only do AC connections to it. Grid/generator in one port. AC output to your loads panel out one port. And a third port to connect 240vac from the grid tied inverters on the roof. Perhaps a generator start output. This should be enough to power any reasonably sized large home with a couple days storage and the idea is to easily connect to an existing grid-tied solar installation without having to redesign the whole thing from scratch. As we adopt LED lighting and more efficient heating and cooling technology, the storage will actually appear larger and ever more useful.

We see that as a $50k solution probably not attractive to most of our viewers but will demonstrate about the level we think all this will be at in a few years. At 50 cents per watt it is right in line with Tesla’s Power Wall, but you can build it yourself and if you fail to mention to the utility company that you have installed it, I’ll try not to spill the beans from this end. And of course it is 10x the storage capacity and twice the power output.

The enclosure looks a bit to me like a largish gun safe. Ergo the PowerSafe 100 project title. And of course all the piece parts are pretty much already available in our web store if you want to follow along the build yourself. We hope it will BE safe of course but we actually named it after A safe.

I see this as more or less what a future home power station looks like. And I really think it’s possible and workable right now, if perhaps not economically attractive yet to the consumer. If you want to play, we think we can enable it.

The post 100kWh Tesla Power Wall on Steroids. The PowerSafe 100. appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

I discovered an interesting gift early in my technical career, say 1980 or so – closing in on 40 years. Engineers are notoriously bad at and dismissive of documentation chores. And I rather had a knack for reducing dense technical material into matter more suitable for ordinary humanoids. As management and customers tended to be more normal humanoids than engineers, they were where the money and power came from. And so I could do well with this talent.

And so I focused much less on design and much more on technical documentation. I not only got very good at it, but very quickly was compensated far beyond what my engineering skills would otherwise warrant. With this very positive and almost immediate feedback, I focused on mastering that craft and improving it. It’s worked out very well for me personally.

One thing I did learn fairly quickly is that you can’t actually succeed at this game. You can only fail with varying degrees of grace. Kind of like singing. Try to only sing for drunk people and you’ll do better. And so if you only write for intelligent people, you will also.

And so I can be a bit dismissive of the fairly substantial group of humanoids who I really just can’t help anyway. Kind of a Biblical “Don’t cast pearls before swine” thing.

I’ve become a bit ensnared, really from just side comments, in attracting political engagements while describing batteries. it’s kind of astonishing, but such are our times. And my response is that it is NOT that I disagree with your position or point of view, but rather that I am astounded at your existence. And that is kind of the end of the conversation from my perspective. Nothing to see here, move along.

I’ve done some technical stuff in the past week or so and so to mix it up I thought a bit of philosophy and politics was in order. I don’t seek to debate with the alt-left libtard faction who I almost don’t beliee actually EXIST as I do to illuminate/clarify a couple of things for the sentient. Over the years I have become aware, by intent focus and study, of a couple of “life” things that might be interesting and useful for our intelligent viewers and readers. It is JUST that and a little squishy. Not precise. And not strongly held. But I find it a useful point of view and so endeavor to share it for those with an ear to hear as it goes quite to our current highly energetic national pastime – hating each other over politics.

And it involves God’s perfect plan for the world, which really is quite perfect.

Let’s consider a world that is bordered by perfect chaos at one edge, and perfect order at the other. And let’s describe the tendency toward chaos as LIBERAL and the tendency toward perfect order as CONSERVATIVE, just for the sake of the discussion.

Man has evolved over millenia and lessons have been learned and knowledge gained at great cost in human suffering over many thousands of years. Men have roles. Women have roles. Some form of political organization and governance is required in order to cooperatively build and do large things by groups of people and so forth

As a hive/tribe, it is imperative that those hard won lessons be carried forward generation to generation and century to century. I don’t mean it is important. It is IMPERATIVE. And so a tendency to order and maintaining our governmental, religious, family, gender roles, and corporate structures are of EXTREME importance to our personal and group lives, prosperity, success, and survival.

In pursuit of that perfect order, there is an inherent resistance to ANY change in the status quo. ANY change can pose a threat to our very survival. And so in the pursuit of order, all must be sacrificed to maintain the status quo. The CONSERVATIVE end of the view of mankind.

What that means and implies is that to keep having it as good as we have it, we can’t change ANYTHING. And so inherent in that assumption is that we cannot IMPROVE anything. We cannot PROGRESS at all.

And so it happens that for a certain quantity of humanoids, rather genetically and as their gifts, they have a countering point of view that we DO need to change things and we in fact need to deconstruct the status quo on a variety of levels to improve the lot of mankind and progress. We need to CHANGE things to fix them or improve them. And that point of view I would nominate as LIBERAL.

The extreme end of conservatism is a kind of tyrannical enslavement of the human individual to the purposes and survival of the hive. Ultimate ORDER at the expense of all.

And the extreme end of liberalism is the destruction of ALL forms of structure, hierarchy, traditional values, and organization. Ultimate CHAOS at the expense of all.

Picture a perfect circle with a line right at the center bisecting it top to bottom. Immediately to the right of the line, picture a row of people one person deep. It would be the tallest and so most numerous group fo people to the RIGHT or CONSERVATIVE side. One row to the right of that is MORE conservative, but of fewer in number. And one row to the right of THAT is a MORE conservative group of slightly less number of humanoids. And so it goes so that the LAST row consists of a single person at the extreme right at the three o’clock position on the circle.

This perfect circle is of course perfectly mirrored on the LEFT side. With the largest group of very slightly liberal humanoids adjoining the line of separation. And the row to the left of that being slightly MORE liberal but slightly fewer in number. And to the left of that, an increase in intensity toward liberalism and chaos but a decrease in total numbers and so on to a single individual at the nine o’clock position.

And so we have two factions, equal and opposite forces, with the total pressure of each half exhibited at the center line in opposition. If they are totally equal, it is a lockup. But with the slightest angular venctor caused by any deviation in mass left or right, the circle is FORCED forward toward you. Like a sailboat tacking in the wind. Let’s think of this as forward. And if the deviation is in the opposite direction, it would RECEDE BACKWARDS from you.

For movement either forwards or backwards, someone must cross the line. If someone just to RIGHT of the centerline crosses the line to join those immediately to the left of the line, FORWARD. And to move backwards, someone to the left must move right and cross the line. Not too hard to picture as the vast majority of people are of course immediately adjacent to the line and their conservative or liberal views are not very extreme or even strongly held. Indeed almost imperceptible.

The ideal is to be canted JUST a smidge left of the line. The left side provides motive power forward, and the right provides the counterbalance to maintain what has proven valuable over time. And so a perfect balance tacking slightly forward in the winds of an everchanging world. A perfect balance and course.

If no one crosses the line, there is no movement. We are locked up. So what causes liberal and conservative migration? Information. New information, new ideas, new facts, can cause personal growth and change in the point of view of individuals. In any direction. But without new information and the EXCHANGE of information and ideas, there is no change in anyone’s point of view. No movement. Or at least no course correction.

And so for many thousands of years, progress was made at a very limited pace because the flow of information was pretty much limited to person to person direct exchange using a common language. I suppose decrees from the King of any political structure would count. And wars and trade caused the fluid movement of humanoids about the planet mixing and providing for wider communication of information.

The invention of writing was a key technological advance. It caused the storage and forwarding of information and ideas to be decoupled from a human carrier and indeed to become durable over time.

A rather “liberal” blacksmith, Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg entered the world in 1394 in Mainz Germany. In 1439 he produced a means to mass produce movable type and combined it with a screw press from a winery to create Europes first “printing press.” This has long been heralded as an invention of the ages but probably is STILL underestimated for its ultimate impact on the progress of humanity.

It enabled, really for the first time, the mass migration of information without the necessity of a humanoid to act as carrier. Writing had of course existed for many centuries but he productized and automated its distribution. And so more invention and technolgical change occurred in the subsequent two hundred years than had been achieved in the entire previous history of mankind. It dramatically increased the flow of information and so the promulgation of information and ideas within our rather simple analogy of the circle. And SO the Rennaisance and the introduction to the Industrial Age. The rise of financial structures. And so forth.

In the last century, newspapers and books were common and published in astounding quantities. But in the 1920’s transmission of audio information by radio waves was developed and in the late 1930’s the similar transmission of both audio and video – Fransworth’s “televison”. This drastically reduced the overhead and time and expense to disseminate information.

And so the twentieth century again saw more tehnological and social development than the previous entire recorded history of humanity.

Some of the social developments were not really that great. And Mao and Stalin and Hitler managed the murder of hundreds of MILLIONS of humanoids by ill combining RADICALLY LIBERAL concepts with RADICALLY CONSERVATIVE control structures. I would nominate this as a radical form of DEVIANT DERANGEMENT. It falls outside the circle. Indeed it is a rupture in the circle wall and you can view it either as the RIGHt wall or the LEFT wall with equal precision. But these FEW deviant deranged humanoids spume forth from the circle in a kind of excrement of humanity.

In the period 1980 to today, we have seen the development of “personal” computational devices connected by a global universal and free “Internet” which dramatically decreased the cost and increased the velocity of information and ideas. And so the atomic motion within the circle increased and indeed, technological advancements within this latest period again eclipse the SUM of ALL human technological advancement prior to 1980.

And as presented by STeven Pinker and linked in a recent blog here the quality of life among humanoids has DRAMATICALLY increased in the last 30 years and FANTASTICALLY increased in the past 200 years.

But the increased motion and heat within the circle has also increased the production of genetic mentally deranged deviants, the DERANGEMENT noted in Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. Deranged alt-left libtards. They are bent on the destruction of EVERYTHING. And so my question and note that I don’t agree or disagree with their point of view at all, I am ALARMED at their EXISTENCE and in previously untold numbers.

Ironically, I am almost universally viewed as an alt-rigth conservative or at least an extreme conservative. Which is hilarious to me personally.

I AM NOW AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN A LIBERAL

I did serve in the United States Navy and did work for Department of Defense contractors for a period – I suppose the ultimate structures for maintaining the status quo. But rather quickly went on to advocate the development and advancement of personal computers, the Internet, electric vehicles and solar power. Much of my adult life has been a virtual WAR with governmental structures, telephone companies, large corporate structures of all types, oil companies, and now electric utility monopolies. I’m not wanting to change them. I want to disrupt them and sit with a bag of Jalapeno Fritos and a Dr. Pepper chortling with glee as they sell off their office furniture at six cents on the dollar and all of their employees join the ranks of the permanently unemployed. I generally advocate their TOTAL DECONSTRUCTION AND DISMANTLEMENT. We can repurpose their stuff for more productive uses.

My first wife was from the PHilippine Islands and my latest love interest of the past 24 years now is an African American from San Francisco. I happen to know without any doubt at all that genetic cross-hybridization is INHERENTLY and essentially ALWAYS healthy and I’ve done my personal best breeding both widely and with some enthusiasm to improve the genetic makeup of the human race. And to no small success I might add and further note.

As an aside, some little known facts for the youngsters: there are about 3.5 MILLION young gorgeous educated black women in America with no HOPE of marriage due to a ridiculous 9:1 ratio of educated professional employed black women to similarly situated black men. And statistically, the rate of divorce of couples comprised of a white man and a black woman is less than HALF that of either white/white or black/black couples. I’m not making this up. Do with this information what you will to your advantage.

I found it HILARIOUS to hear Hillerary Clinton blame her presidential campaign loss on women voting as their domineering husbands directed. I stand in line at the polls with a little piece of paper my wife and Queen actually prints out for me with all the myriad state, county, and local races and the confusing and deliberately misworded ballot proposals on it that I can’t make hide nor hair of. She’s the freakin PRESIDENT of the local League of Women Voters and this morning I coffee sorrowfully and pathetically alone and bereft of supervision as she is in Chicago at their national convention. Bottom line is I kind of vote as she tells me. And yes, as a black American woman, she pretty much decreed we would both vote Trump. Did I mention she has a PhD in Information Science and her dissertation was on voting technologies and their implications? Hillerary is clearly a DERANGED alt-left libtard of the most ill-begotten sort and we are both intensely relieved that she didn’t accidentally somehow get elected POTUS.

The perfect circle really is perfect. We desperately and more so today NEED to retain the traditional values and structures that got us here – to maintain order and health. And of course, we face a vastly IMPROVED future by adopting technologies to dramatically reduce costs and inefficiencies in energy use for personal transportation and our homes businesses and factories. But for the perfect circle to work, it has to not only provide for the rapid and universal communication of information and ideas, but ALL participants of the circle need to be able to EVALUATE that information and those ideas based on common understanding and language. You have to have a baseline concept of what TRUTH is and what FACTS are and what ideas represent – a lingua franca. And you have to modulate that with a strong sense of fairness and justice. Truth, Justice and the American Way if you like. Or on a more spiritual level we must all LOVE each other and desire to HELP each other get through this life here on earth.

IF you take the cynical view to POLLUTE the information pool with lies, deception, and misdirection in order to create an imbalance in favor of your own agenda, you are a DEVIANT and a DERANGED outcast from the circle. If you intend to distort the flow of information with ANY form of approval or disapproval of the words and concepts used to to transmit information, ie the entire CONCEPT of Politically Correct speech, you are a DERANGED and DEVIANT non-viable life form that should be outcast from the circle entirely. And so the true HITLERs and STALINS and MAO’s of our world are PRECISELY the DERANGED DEVIANTS that seek to destroy this perfect circle. Ironically, they screech these labels at perfectly sane LIBERALS within the circle most of all.

And so to clarify, Trump is not now nor has ever been a conservative. Ridiculous notion. Everything he’s ever done in life is devoted to change and progress. He may be the most liberal President we’ve ever had. He virtually lives to dismantle our current political status quo and on a global basis.

Elon Musk is a raging liberal.

Jack Rickard is a raging liberal.

Most hilarious is the emerging number of rising stars in the alternative media of the Internet and Youtube. Some of these people actually BELIEVE they are neo-conservative “red pill” conservatives. They are as liberal as they ever were, but the alt-left libtard deranged deviants have forced them to THINK they are conservatives to join forces with normal humanoids to eject the DERANGED from the circle.

Dave Rubin comes to mind. He’s homosexual and “married” to another man. But he’s been ostracized by the alt-left libtards, indeed ATTACKED by them as he increasingly interacts with conservatives and other displaced disenfrachised liberals on his actually quite EXCELLENT YouTube news show. https://www.youtube.com/rubinreport

Candace Owens is a raging liberal.

Jordan Peterson has likewise been VICIOUSLY attacked by alt left libtards who were seeking to legally RESTRICT non politically correct pronouns. They comically portray him as HITLER and an alt-right conservative. For Christ’s sake the man is a Harvard Professor, more recently at the University of Toronto , and noted author in PSYCHOLOGY. He’s a poster child for true liberalism, though I would see him as just left of our perfect centerline – very well balanced actually. His book “12 Steps to a Successful Life” has sold MILLIONS of copies and his Youtube videos often get a million views. https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos

He’s currently on a national tour with David Rubin and they are seeing SRO crowds of almost entirely young twenty-something MEN. Essentially ALL their audience are liberals but very uncomfortable with the deranged mantra of the alt-left libtards who have somehow hijacked the “liberal” flag while leading them into depression, dsyfunction, and ultimately in the extreme – suicide.

I would posit that this represents MILLIONS of such young men. They ALL know SOMETHING is really very very wrong. Peterson and Rubin are very effective at communicating just what that something is, and offering concrete steps to escape it. Ergo the attraction to the message.

Liberals are devoted to the deconstruction of the status quo in favor of progress and improvement. But they play by the rules. They seek TRUTH not misdirection and misinformation to “get their way.” And they discourse with LOVE not HATE.

Demonically deranged alt-left libtards have stolen the “liberal” flag and this has led to the wholesale displacement of true liberals by their lies, deception and hatred. Who does that sound like to you?

As Dana Carvey the Church Lady was wont to say “Might it be….. SATAN.” You can actually detect them quite easily. Disdain for Truth, Justice and Fairplay. They will say anything and do anything in any twisted lie to disrupt the game toward their own agenda/ends. They have no sense of rules or propriety. Anything goes on the road to seeking maximum power and impact. And they spew venomous accusations of “equivalency” with the proper use of truth and logic. It is a vomit of hate and deception.

The man I most admire in the World was Winston Churchill. When confronted on his running for a Parliament seat as a conservative that he had held years before as a Liberal, he put it rather succinctly. ” A Young Man who is not a Liberal has no heart. And an old man who is not a conservative has no brain.”

I buy into that. But then I never really grew up.

I would urge all to stay true to their proper roles in the perfect circle. We DO need to preserve what is valuable and hard won lessons of millenia as the human species. But we do also need to progress. And if we hold to our views and express them with love and a strict adherence to truth and justice and fair play, we face a remarkable and indeed astonishing future of promise, hope, and unbelievable properity and joy. Your opponents views have extreme value to YOU. And yours to them. They should be communicated freely, but with a common backdrop understanding of reality. Rules. Truth. Justice. Fair play.

And as to Satanic alt-left libtards, liars, and deranged deviants, they must be outcast, resisted, and eliminated from the perfect circle. Perhaps with a little love and effort, some can be reclaimed from the clutches of Satan. But not something I feel personally called to invest in. It is NOT that I disagree with their point of view. It is that I am ALARMED and deeply offended by their EXISTENCE. And they routinely soil and pollute the pubic discourse within the perfect circle. That they have infiltrated our primary communications media is a temporary abherration. We’ll simply reinvent the media. So Bravo Rubin, Peterson, et al.

The Internet detects censorship as damage, and routes around it. So if status quo forces at Google Facebook etc. attempt it, you know what to do.

Presenting themselves in the media they control, you would think half the country is of this ilk. They simply are not. They are tiny minority who have leveraged liberals in opposition to conservatives to destroy the circle and thus mankind. And liberals are awakening to this shitshow of deception. Relax you are NOT a conservative. It’s ok to remain liberal. But you also don’t need to support Joseph Stalin to be one.

Alarm is not my intent. Simply awareness and reassurance.. They have already lost and their current hysterical screech is a clear sign of it. It’s what it sounds like when the devil takes his licks. Everything ultimately for the perfect good and in it’s time.

The post What’s a Liberal to Do??? appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

It has come to my attention that our examination of solar energy storage issues has brought us TOO MANY VIEWERS. That’s right. We now have too many viewers at EVTV and I have to put a stop to it. Not to fear. As always I have a brilliant solution at hand.

Too many viewers. Jack this is the INTERNET and you want MORE viewers. Yes, I know it’s the Internet. Al Bore and I invented it, remember.

We have hosted EVTV on Amazon’s AWS service since the earliest days of Amazon OFFERING AWS as a service. YouTube is not really precisely our venue and never was. YouTube is blocked in some countries but generally Amazon.com not. So I hide in the backroom server of the store.

One of the oddities of AWS is that I PAY for every download of EVTV from AWS. Always have. We now we have TOO MANY viewers. Amazon has decreased the rate but my bill still climbs. And I have to make some go away.

I know EXACTLY how to do that. Let’s talk about Donald Trump. It drives some of our viewers CRAZY. They are fully aware that I’ve called EVERY SINGLE SHOT, every twist, and every turn in the electric vehicle saga on target and ahead of time for nearly 10 years. They’ve watched me build DOZENS of electric vehicles successfully. And so how could I be THAT brilliant and SO WRONG about something as simple as Donald Trump.

Good question. But it assumes I’m wrong and they know something I don’t. Perhaps. I AM as you know the last man standing on the Internet who COULD actually BE wrong.

In any event, I can count on my politics to winnow the viewership and the most shrill TDS sufferers can also be pretty strongly identified with something else. They never DO anything, they never CREAT anything, and they are actually allergic to personally taking part in any kind of technical innovation at all. They limit their activities almost solely to ADVOCATING that somebody ELSE spend THEIR money on the cause dujour.

Our mission is to aid and abet those capable of taking personal responsibility for their world and taking direct personal ACTION to improve it for the benefit of all and at the brutalizing cost of their own time and treasure in doing so. If you’re not in THAT group, I just really have no motivation to pay the freight for you to view EVTV at all.

Another curious thing about our target group is they are not threatened by political opinion whatsoever. Many do NOT agree with my politics, and aren’t threatened by that in the slightest. Ho hum. Jack on Trump again. Some interesting points. But mostly on the top of his head.

I won’t lose a viewer there. But I might cause the occasional thought bubble to form. Little enough harm for the day.

The window on our politics and Donald Trump is largely formed by traditional media. Watching their death throes is fascinating to me, but for now, they still form the information lens of our society. And it has become so dirty that it is really difficult to see any notion of reality through it. I would urge you to start looking locally with direct primary evidence in your local area.

Cape Girardeau has just been named the most beautiful city to live in in the state of Missouri. And my lawn care guy just FIRED me. Understand that my last lawn care bill was $1295. And my “lawn boy” is actually a nice little company titled MY SIDE OF THE FENCE and the owner is a personal friend since the days of his youth when he was our regular waiter at a local upscale restaurant, MOLLIES down the street. He’s also a lector at our church. He FIRED me. Can’t do my lawn(s). Actually four residential properties and the EVTV commercial building.

It is a touch humiliating to be FIRED ignomiously by your lawn care service. But I understand the man’s position. He simply can no longer accomplish the work because he is now entirely UNABLE to hire help to do such work, particularly in the current July heat. The pool of people at the bottom of the economic pecking order available to do such work at even fairly signficant pay has just dried up. Why? They’ve all found better jobs elsewhere.

This is repeated at the local grocery store, and ALL fast food services in the city. They all have signs HIRING FOR ALL POSITIONS on the window where you GET YOUR FOOD. And many of the people BEHIND the window now are clearly coming to work from an adult shelter. The lower rung less desirable and lower paying jobs all over town are simply UNABLE to hire. In a University town? You’ve got to be kidding. We have 10,000 starving students. Ok, maybe not in July. But we have them most of the year.

Don’t take my word. Check it out in YOUR community. If you order food through a drive through it is now IMPERATIVE that you check your order before leaving the window. If you take it home for the kiddies, you may be surprised to find you have someone else’s order ENTIRELY. We are in desperate need of more Mexicans. They’re going to start to offer sign-on bonuses here in Missouri for anyone willing to cross the border illegally.

Another tell: all over Cape Girardeau, there are now scaffolding around ALL the buildings. Many of those same fast food establishments are tearing a perfectly good building down to the ground and erecting a brand new building in its place. Siemers Drive in Cape Girardeau is starting to resemble Shenzhen China. Every empty lot in this “new” commercial area is filling in and it is changing from one WEEK to another with entirely new businesses springing from the ground like mushrooms after a spring rain.

Is THIS the kind of American we want to live in? In the local dialect: “Duh…yah….”

Mingled in all this is a fascinating paradox that what purport to be intelligent people, with the benefit of University educations, in very nice suits with really some strikingly handsome neckties, seem strangely dazed, confused and clueless about issues that our local methamphetamine addicts with a sixth grade education seem to grasp intuitively.

I just watched Trey Gowdy, and the Fox News Sunday morning team, totally amazed at Donald Trumps European visit benumbed and seriously ALARMED that our imbecile President seems curiously unaware of the very deep EVIL of Vladimir Putin and the Holy Roman Russian Empire. And that he totally FAILED in his meeting and press conference with him. And of course the leader of the opinion was a little titty blonde girl younger not than my shirts, but than the shirts that I STILL WEAR. But Britt Hume, a Boardwatch subscriber from the late 1980’s on, fell right in with them, and Trey Gowdy, who I’ve always viewed as brilliant was waxing eloquent over how bad a blunder this was, though he had NO IDEA what would cause such bizarre behavior. I don’t think he was putting us on. He really doesn’t know.

Let me boil it down to basics. Trump went to Europe. He took a STICK to our allies insisting that they DOUBLE their expenditures on military hardware and personnel and do it NOW not in 2024 when they and he would no longer be in office anyway. Oh, and the figures he demands they already voluntarily signed up for DECADES PRIOR. And the ONLY clear and present foe all that military expense would be FOR was defense against RUSSIA. Plausibly ISIS but that threat seems to be going away anyway (no mention of this in the FAKE NEWS PRESS).

And he took Vladimir Putin into a room, talked with him for three hours mano-a-mano, and came out and gave him a CARROT. Very nearly a big wet kiss. This our traditional foe and nemesis.

WHAT PART OF THIS IS CONFUSING!!!!! You have to coach me a bit. What PART of all that causes you mental consternation? Since it is EXACTLY what I would do, I’m a little lost here.

Speak softly and carry a big stick. He’s putting the spurs to our purported allies to make sure we HAVE a big stick, while dramatically leading by example in increasing U.S. military spending. And he’s telling our opposition that we are very willing to find common ground where possible and let the air out of confrontation. Let’s personally just make peace. You and me Vladimir. Old buddy.

What really ARE the issues between the U.S. and Russia? The Ukraine? Crimea? Syria? Iran?

I don’t mean to be condescending or pull rank on you here. But can we agree that the knowledge of geography among most Americans, and certainly those of recent benefit of our educational system is just tragic? I mean absurd to the point of high comedy.

Crimea BORDERS on Russia and is 850 miles from it’s capital city of Moscow. It’s populated almost entirely by Russians and its history of being part of Ukraine at all has been dubious from the beginning. It is obviously of crucially strategic importance — TO RUSSIA. But precisely what pray tell is OUR interest in Crimea?????

I assume you know where YOU are. Click on the map image for a Google maps tour of where CRIMEA and the UKRAINE are. We’re sending arms to the Ukraine? For what purpose? SO the Ukrainians can be free? From what? Do you know any Ukrainians? Do you have Ukrainian relatives? And as I say, most importantly DO YOU KNOW WHERE UKRAINE IS?????

What would you think if Russia was pouring weapons into NEWFOUNDLAND??? What if we annexed CALIFORNIA and made it part of the United States? What should Russia’s position be?

Syria was a shitshow before either we or the Russians got there. I won’t do the history of the conflict but we CAN talk a bit about recent developments. Assad gassed some kids with Chlorine. Google it. Chlorine gas is a horror.

Trump announced out loud and before the world that we were going to send a bunch of missiles, in our video prime time slot, in another episode of his should-be-patented VIDEO WAR concept, (like video games but louder and with rubble). Putin manfully and heroically declared that if Trump dared to do such a thing, it would mean World War III and mutually assured nuclear destruction. And Trump said: “Hold my beer” and pushed the button.
Putin then immediately ordered all fighter planes out of the air and all ships to depart Syria poste haste – at least temporarily, proving finally and for all what a deeply evil boogeyman with supernatural powers he really is. And we lit up the sky and made a lot of noise and rubble over a nearly unpopulated area because of course Trump had announced the target so everyone could evacuate. Nonetheless there were some hapless yuck Russians who got blown up anyway. And Putin issued a mouthful of silence on the matter.

IS this not what you recall from the press on it?? There’s a reason for that.

Did they tell you that on the outbreak of peace with Russia a few years ago, NATO announced they were going to move missile defence installations into Poland and Romania, hundreds of miles closer to the Russian border? Oh they did NOT???? Whatever were they thinking?

The FACT is that our real areas of conflict with Russia are TRIVIAL and almost entirely CONTRIVED to keep you spending money on military hardware. Just as it was during the cold war. You’re being defrauded for MONEY.

Let us turn to the purported “issue at hand” the “deeply troubling” issue of Russian meddling in our holy and sacred political process. I know. But that IS the meme and that IS the narrative nomatter how absurdly insulting it is to anyone with an IQ NOT requiring an adult shelter facility.

In a brilliant stroke and one of the few modern examples of actual TREASON in recent history, Mueller/Rosenstein held a press conference announcing 12 indictments of Russian GRU agents directly caught RED handed so to speak in election meddling.

I heard that press event in its entirely and the ENTIRETY of the ACCUSATIONS was that Russia had employed a fake meme on Facebook termed Guccifer 2.0 to distribute really cute and catchy snarks against Hillerary Clinton. I never tired of them.

And secondly that they had in an act of cyberwar hacked INTO the Democratic National Commmittee server and stolen Hilleraries precious e-mails and exposed them to the world.

There is so much so dicked up with this I hardly know where to begin. First, the FBI and the Intelligence community HAVE NEVER SEEN the DNC server. So they could hardly know that the root password of this Linux server was “admin”. Talk about data security. Or that John Podesta’s gmail account password was “password”. They did mention spear fishing. Actually it’s Pfishing and no one familiar with using the technique or guarding against it has used the term Spear Pfishing for about a dozen years. It’s just Pfishing.

Second, what were Hilleraries e-mails doing on the DNC server? They never were. They were on Hilleraries private server in her bathroom and if they were obtained by Russians, Rosenstein just admitted that Hilleraries private server WAS hacked by Russians. The DNC server had a bunch of information about the plot to steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Never mentioned nor addressed, except by Putin, was the fact that no one has ever questioned that the very damning admissions in Hilleraries e-mails were all true or that the DNC info about outright corruption and stealing were true as well.

What I found VERY interesting was that Wikileaks and Julian Assange were not mentioned either. Though Assange HAD posted an offer of $20,000 for information regarding the MURDER of Seth Rich, who worked for the DNC at the time. And Wikileaks is of course where we actually got the damning Hillerary e-mails.

Neither the FBI nor the intelligence community can determine with ANY assurance of accuracy WHO hacked the server without examining the server and really most probably having detailed logs of the IP traffic and a VERY good idea of when it actually occurred. So we can ONLY be talking about secondary human sources reporting he said she said information. And I’m sorry. Our intelligence community and FBI have no magical powers people. Putin has no magic powers. And Mueller has no magic powers. And Rosenstein has no magic powers.

The INDICTMENT is not a conviction, indeed no evidence has been offered, it is a PURELY political ploy in an ONGOING effort by professionals in the EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT to unseat the duly elected President of the United States of America and it apparently bothers them NOT ONE WHIT that they do so in the context of very important relationships with world powers that have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy our civilization. That is HOW BADLY and how DERANGED they are with regards to Trump. They would prefer YOU be blown up in Nuclear holocaust to Trump remaining as President.

The concept of Russian MEDDLING in our elections in any serious sense is patently absurd. Our actual ELECTION apparatus is unbelievably fractionalized and entirely run by elderly patriots at local election boards that in Missouri are almost ENTIRELY independent even of the Secretary of State of MIssouri and who each manage elections entirely differently from all other counties and which would NEVER cede their personal power and prestige to an Internet connected system. My wife is on the local election board and did her Doctoral thesis on Information Technology of Elections. I DO know and I KNOW I know in this case.

The ONLY meddling with those systems, and several resulted in convictions and jail time, were by DEMORATS running the machinery in select districts. Note that there were NO Republicans even accused of such a thing. They prefer the time honored technique of Gerrymandering of course.

But apparently what we DID have was not collusion or meddling, but an actual CONSPIRACY among high ranking professionals in the Justice Department and FBI to wiretap Donald Trump during his transition and a deliberate plot to frame him with evidence of Russian Collusion to have him impeached and removed from the Presidency. An attempted COUP by career bureacrats in Washington DC.

Leaving Russia in the enviable position of having spent $10 or $12 million dollars on public relations to influence the election and instead causing a politically partisan SHITSTORM of epic proportions literally tearing the fabric of U.S. Democracy apart. Talk about the return on your dollar. I can guarantee you if THIS is the outcome, Vladimir would be a moron not to give the GRU $100 million in 2020 and tell them “SHow me what you can do with THAT!”

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy… and he is US!”

I watched the entire press conference with Putin, and the entire Chris Wallace interview. I found him brilliant, urbane, genteel, and very clever with a surprising sense of humor.

Was he lying? Of course. That’s his job. He is very much an advocate for Russia and works tirelessly to return it to its former glory. He truly wants to Make Russia Great Again. He should have a freakin hat. I’m thinking a RED hat.

Trump’s carrot. And the press conference. He misspoke? I don’t really know WHAT this guy is doing in dealing with the shitstorm. But walk with me talk with me.

With regards to Russian meddling in a U.S. election:

TRUMP: “Well I really don’t see why they would.”

or the corrected version:

TRUMP:”Well I really don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

What specifically is the DIFFERENCE between these two phrases? I find both probably truthful and oddly NOT mutually exclusive. He said nothing both times. I don’t see why they would. It’s hopeless. I don’t see why they wouldn’t. It couldn’t hurt (Russia that is). Your parsing a non-statement of nothing. If it makes you all feel bettter, “wouldn’t”. Got it.

So it makes PERFECT sense to me that his mission in going to Europe was to spank the shit out of our friends and allies and suck up to Putin. He’s brilliant. And I only say that in that it is EXACTLY what I would do and I would make it a priority of the Presidency to do JUST THAT. And in just that way.

We live in a different world now. It is interconnected by a global Internet that honors no national boundaries. It detects censorship as damage and routes around it. And it allows and promotes long distance attacks on computer servers. IT has some negatives, outweighed by enormous positives. Change your password from “password” and your root level access to a politically important server from “admin”. Better yet, pony up for some actual IT expertise in actually hardening your system in effective ways using modern tools. Only if your server is at least as important as the Chinese restuarant where we order lunch online.

This is NOT magic guys. It’s done to death. And it IS a war. The only people NOT in it effectively is the U.S. government and the Russian government. But they will be. At least clumsily so. You have to defend against online malefeasance. Get used to the idea.

Rather forgotten in all this was the Chinese government sponsored hack of the Office of Management and Budget U.S. government server where they downloaded detailed information on 22 million past and present US Government employees. Korea’s attack on Sony. Etc. The WAKEUP CALL was 20 years ago. If you are just now waking up, you might as well go back to sleep. You’re outta the game at this point.

Does Trump trust and believe his own intelligence community and FBI? The one run by John Bannon who is so professional and non-partisan that he did his level best to discredit him before and after his election and last week accused him of Treason? The FBI run by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strok? Who launched a modern day coup and tried to unseat the duly elected President of the United States, an actual ACT of Treason?

Oh yeah, he trusts them. He trusts Putin too. He’s just a really innocent TRUSTING kind of guy, which you need to be to survive 30 years in Manhattan Real Estate.

On another topic, I am also struck by again the almost UNIVERSAL condemnation of Trump on the topic of Trade. And again, this is juxtaposed with my intense admiration of both his genius and his cajonnes. It simply takes my breath away, on both counts.

The financial press has chimed in with the DemoRat propoganda machine to condemn his actions and indeed, the moment seems dire with China talking about another $200 billion in Tarrifs and Trump threatening another $500 billion raise and call. Understand this affects me personally as we spend a fortune on goods from China and so in effect do our customers.

But Trump in no sense started a Trade War. He’s simply the first U.S. President to show up for it. Our “foes” declared war long ago, selling freely into the huge U.S. market for their products while totally excluding U.S. products through a masterful maze of tarrifs, currency manipulation, regulatory barriers, everything in the arsennal. Since we did NOTHING in response, our FRIENDS decided they’d try it too. And THEY got away with it with no response. I could go ON AND ON about this. But a couple of easy to understand examples. This is not reports. This is first hand knowledge.

We are purportedly in a North American Free Trade agreement with our ‘dear friends” in Canada. I can order anything I want from Canada totally tarrif free. But we had a guy in Canada order 9 additional braided battery straps. With shipping, we charged him $76 dollars for them. But they were hung up in Canadian customs for six weeks because he didn’t want to pay $75 import duties on them. Their “tarrif” in this “free trade zone” was higher than the price of the goods and only a dollar less than the goods plus shipping. What kind of “free trade” is that?

I ordered some blanks to fit into the Tesla Model S gear box so you could mate to VW transaxles from China. To have them made accurately, I sent ONE to China. They charged a $200 tarrif on the go-by sample, but I pay NO tarrif for the dozen shafts I ordered from China.

At this point it is EVERYBODY. The U.S. has 4% of the feet and 32% of the shoes in the world. We are STILL the largest market in the world by a lot. And these countries are just as Donald Trump describes them, pulling a raid on the piggy bank while your elected officials have looked the other way very deliberately. In steel, aluminum, batteries, and wine, as it so happens, this is actually predatory attacks. The GOVERNMENTS, including our friends in Australia, actually pay the manufacturers money as a subsidy so they can undercut U.S. producers in an attempt in the case of steel and aluminum to put them out of business.

We used to have 13 of the 15 largest aluminum producers in the world. We are down to two. And they are fading fast.

The Chinese government pays steel and aluminum producers CASH to make sure they undercut U.S producers in sales in the United States. To add insult to injury, they then deliberately devalue their currency against the U.S. dollar. This is an ATTACK.

Trump once again has worked this out and decided to counter. Not with tit for tat as most of the child minds believe but with a brilliant proposal that just sucks the air out of the room.

Let’s present two choices. How about we just cutoff trade with all of you. You can no longer sell your products in the U.S.

Effectively, and incrementally, and very effectively in the other sense of the word. You see, that just won’t work. Germany would be bankrupt in less than a year. The EU bank would collapse in less than that. China would collapse economically. It would be a global disaster. Armageddon. Zombie apocalypse. The end of civiliation. For Americans it means price increases, inconvenience. For Germans and CHinese, it means bankruptcy. It means a depression.

And the huge risk is of course a worldwide depression affecting indeed the U.S. as well.

He has another option to offer. When doesn’t he? Free trade. But not free trade as in Paul Ryan free trade. A pan-global free trade zone. ZERO tarriffs allowed. If you deploy A tarrif on anthything from anybody, you are simply excluded from world trade.

What would a world with TRULY free trade look like? Well we’re not entirely certain. You see tarrifs are really a tax. And like all taxes, they suppress economic activity and take money out of the economy. But these have crept in little by little and bit by bit over time until they have tentacles into everything worldwide. And its a niggle here and a nobble there. But at this point, it pervades all economic activity and it is invisible. But cummulatively it is ENORMOUS. We’ve been boiling the frog for so long and so slowly, we don’t know what a live frog looks like any longer. We think it’s like hot oily green milk.

It really isn’t a matter as to whether the other countries will cave. They already know they have to. The question is a game of liars poker. Can they hold out long enough for the idiotic Americans to stop Trump themselves. And I admit it is an open question. From what I can ascertain through this dirty lens of fake news television, it is very much an open question. China chooses massive rampup. Germany very cunningly targets tarrifs on Trump states for the 2018 election. They MIGHT be able to get Americans to do what they cannot – stop Trump. But if Americans don’t, they will absolutely have to capitulate.

And of course what is missed by the American people is why would we bother to go through all that at all?

Here’s the why. Trump is visioning IMPOSING PROSPERITY on a global basis. Free trade wouldn’t hurt Germany, it would dramatically increase the standard of living there. The price of AMerican goods would fall forcing all prices to fall. But it would be inconvenent for the unholy alliance of benefactor industries and the political elite – corruption and greed if you will.

This would be replicated worldwide. In every nation. American companies would have a sudden windfall from sales overseas, paying workers more who can then purchase lower cost goods from Germany and China.

You see the entire tarriff scam is a HUGE hidden tax on EVERYTHING. Truly global and absolute FREE TRADE would be the single most stimulative thing EVER DONE BY ANYONE to ALL economies WORLDWIDE and simultaneously.
We don’t even KNOW the outcome – its never been done before. But it would be HUGE and hugely beneficial to individuals.

The scope and daring of the vision is what fails on the buy-in. Nobody thinks he can do it. Well actually he does. And I do. And oddly he may have convinced the ultimate free trade hawk of all time. Larry Ludlow. But generally it is TOO big and TOO GRAND a vision to succeed. Kind of like declaring you are going to convert all automobiles to electric.

But picture this, if he DOES succeed, NOBODY ON THE PLANET will be able to get their grass cut EVER AGAIN. We’ll just have to give up grass. And it will be the DEATH of FAST FOOD.

Think about it….

Jack Rickard

Oh, yeah. We did a video this week. Something about a PowerSafe 100. If you watch it here it’s a link to YouTube and I don’t have to pay for it…

The post Trump Derangement Syndrome and Putin on the Front Lawn. appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

I get a lot of questions about Tesla stock recently. I am not a stock analyst and don’t even play one on tv. But I can say that the ones who do apparently are REALLY bad at it. You can pretty much make money on their recommendations using the George Castanza maneuver, whatever they advise, do the opposite. You’ll run about 60% correct that way.

I will also offer a singular note of caution. The NASDAQ is a casino. And the house never loses.

That said, I am actually a very good stock picker. I’m a very bad stock timer. I will see an outcome extremely clearly and with generally 100% accuracy. But I always think it will take two years, and it always takes five. I would make a lot more money in the stock market if I would take long naps, say several years.

Stock picking is NOT good enough. The problem is that you can go along making money in great and easy fashion for awhile, and then a tsunami or market “wind” will hit that has nothing whatsoever to do with your stock picks or their ability to make money. In the 1929 stock crash, Boeing was in the midst of making the equivalent of $100 million that year. Didn’t matter. Their stock got taken out back and shot with all the others. This happened here in 2001 and again in 2008.

So it IS a casino.

Understand too, that my ONLY interest for over 30 years has been tech stocks and particularly high growth stocks. And that is a very very different game than traditional ownership or “investment” in stocks that make money and pay dividends. If you want to run a retirement plan using Utility company stocks that pay dividends, I have no idea what you are talking about.

Tesla’s stock, like all high-tech growth stocks, has been controversial in its early days. More recently, this has attracted a ravening hoard of “traditional” investors who have shorted 30% of the float, absolutely sure that Tesla will fail as an auto company and deeply deeply frustrated because they haven’t been able to cash in. The disconnect is enormous and both they and the financial press have entered a phase now that resembles nothing so much as Trump Derangement Syndrome. I just howled when Judge Piero appeared on “The View” and accused Whoopi Goldberg of having Trump Derangement Syndrome. Whoopi denied it vehemently, cussing and yelling and spitting and foaming at the mouth and threw her off the show and actually chased the good Judge out of the building, proving inarguably that she did NOT suffer TDS and was of course perfectly calm and sane. While hurling expletives and actually spitting on the Judge physically. Wow. She showed her. No Trump Derangement Syndrome here..??????

Morgan Stanley this morning noted genteely that Tesla’s stock was suffering “bewildering volatility” making an investment strategy difficult. The financial press now resembles nothing so much as CNN and MSNBC going after Trump, but they are after Tesla actually mocking the same fake news techniques. And the shorts, in desperate straights from their homes looking out from under the interstate overpass now, have simply come unhinged in Whoopi Goldberg fashion.

From my perspective, both Tesla and Trump are hitting on all cylinders and my only regret is that I can’t actually trade six month call options on Trump. But I CAN on Tesla.

In my world, GROWTH and MARGIN are king. Profits are actually an irregularly necessary evil. Profits cause us to take money OUT of the game and send it to Washington DC, where older wiser people who know what to do with it can actually put it to much better use – like studying whether or not hogs sweat.

So investing in growth stocks is about GROWTH, and any theoretical profits should be deployed to expansion to produce MORE GROWTH. And historically, over the past forty years this is where you get 10x, or 100x, or 1000x and depending on when you get in sometimes 10000x your money.

Ten years ago, in 2008, Tesla had zero sales, zero revenues, and zero profits. Today, 10 years later, they are on pace for $20 billion sales in a single year and 26-30% margin. I like that a LOT because it allows me to dismiss the $20 billion as chump change, and image $100 billion or $300 billion in its place.
And if they do generate a profit, I view that as fudiciary fiscal mismanagement.

Apple Computer WAS a growth stock and traded in and out of that for 25 years very successfully. Today it suffers such eggregious mismanagement that they accrued a ridiculous $250 billion in cash reserves and are paying dividends – a public admission by CEO Tim Cooke that he doesn’t know what he’s doing and can’t imagine where to deploy $250 billion. They very legitimately hit the wall of what I term the law of large numbers – it just takes a shitpot of new business each year to maintain the same percentage of growth as you reach large numbers. And in most cases the only way to shed the cash and continue growing is by acquisition, which is why I advocated they buy Tesla, Solar City and SpaceX over five years ago. Tesla’s blue sky and Musks vision are EXACTLY what Apple needs. And Apple’s deep pockets are what Tesla needs.

In any event, Tesla is expected to announce Q2 results next week and most have them coming in at about $4 billion in revenues – up 45% from the same period a year earlier. And if we throw out all the capital investment required to get there, it is pretty widely accepted that they suffer a margin of 26-30%. At that pace, I would say looking forward we are pretty much assured a base of $20 billion per year and taking the low end of margin. That’s about $5.2 billion cash flow for 169.8 million outstanding shares or about $30.62 per share. Stock price to earnings is historically a 12-13 ratio event. But not in high tech growth stocks. If you’re not a 20 you’re not a player and so I would put fair value on Tesla at the moment at about $612 per share.

Tesla is literally being forced to do a quarter or two of profits to demonstrate they can. This is so idiotic I am embarassed by it. They should plow EVERYTHING back into growth with their factory in China, rollout of Model Y, and Semitruck along with much more aggressive expansion of solar tile roofs and power panel technology. Much like Trump, they have to modify a successful and winning strategy to cater to howling spitting planet of the Apes Whoopi Goldbergs of the world. It is sinful.

But the volatility mentioned by Morgan Stanley is a blessing if you want to do a bit of day-trading using CALL options. I’ve been doing this with September 21 Tesla 400 calls. These option contracts are MUCH more volatile than the underlying stock. Each contract is priced per share but in 100 share contracts. The September 21 400 call gives you the RIGHT to buy a share of Tesla stock on or before September 21 for $400 per share. Now why would you want to do that when it is trading at $308???

Well it’s a future bet. You’re kind of betting that it will be $400 by September first, but the leverage of the bet shrinks with each passing day. So if the stock never changes, it might cost you $4 per share for that option, but it will go down 10 cents per share per day with no change in the stock as we approach September 21. On that date they EXPIRE and are worth nothing.

The contract is for 100 shares, so a single contract will cost you $400 at $4 per share. But if the stock moves just a bit, say to $320, the option might go to $6 – $600 for the contract – a 50% profit from a move in the stock of just 3.8%. This is called leverage. And it is why a trader would do such a thing.

Here’s a look at the last four months of Tesla stock movement.

You can readily see that if I had just bought at the bottom and sold at the top, you could make a fortune in options. I never do that. Tops and bottoms are impossible to catch accurately and people who think they can generally get to sleep in the car with the shorts under the overpass.

Even what I describe is risky. But what I do is chase trends instead of peaks. If the stock turns up and keeps going up for a day or so, I will buy options. Once it peaks and turns down, I want to see it continue down for a day or two then sell. And as you can see in the chart, I did that through about 5 roundtrips in the past few months.

Yes, I would do MUCH better at the tops and bottoms. But hitting them is almost impossible. The trend is your friend. My big score was of course early June. When a stock is moving from $280 to $370 in a two week period, everybody is a stock trading genius. This is a 33% change in stock price. And the $4 option becomes $24. And if you buy 1 contract for $400, you sell it for $2400. And it works better if you have 500 of those contracts.

All the while, several thousand shares of Tesla sit unmolested and unfazed and untraded.

It is gambling. And right when you are really getting into it, a market wind (or hurricane) can blow through and scatter all your chips. So it is of course best to be playing all this with the house’s money in the first place. Don’t use your rent for this. It’s a side game. A side bet. And nothing is assured.

The good money is made on long term investing in a company who’s products you have tested and used yourself, on the concept that others will discover and purchase and use it as well. If you can use the house’s money to do that, you are driving on sunshine – for free.

Long term, I don’t see Tesla as “profitable” for 20 years. But the blue sky in solar, in solar energy storage, in cars, and in trucks, and more generally just in batteries, is simply enormous. There is room to grow right into the law of large numbers into some pretty DAMN large numbers. Ergo my $1500 per share call on Tesla common stock by February 2023.

Musk himself has acknowledged that the Model 3 rampup is the last “bet the company” move they’ll ever have to make. And it probably was just that. They did it with the Roadster and with the Model S, and now with the Model 3. Model Y, semitruck, Tesla Pickup, will all be more on the order of the Model X introduction – not a particularly risky period for them. And going forward, they can do it out of revenues, out of further capital investments which should be ready willing and able, or any combination of the two. I look for big things with the addition of the Shanghai factory and probably a European facility as well. And I would be astounded if that $20 billion was not at least $100 billion by February 2023.

There are a couple of other intangibles I am very encouraged by but just not able to price in. Tesla, much like BYD, has reached a critical mass of just raw engineering talent. I’m talking about just a body count of really smart young people with a good education in the fundamentals of electronic design, software, and materials who want to change the world. That critical mass becomes an attraction in its own right and the rich keep getting richer. If you are a top engineering graduate from MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Stanford, et al and you don’t already KNOW that SpaceX or Tesla is the top place on your list of dream jobs, you need to go on to more graduate work. And probably some psychiatric testing.

For the foreseeable future, Musk gets to pick from the best of the best. And he actually doesn’t care where you graduated from or if you ever graduated anything. That raw body of engineering talent and creative young minds becomes an asset all on its own. And if you go to Freemont and get on that team, and get used up, overworked, burnt out and thrown out, you’ve just had the best experience that is available for money and the rest of your life will be easy by comparison and no company anywhere will ever turn you down unless you are a serial killer with a Turban who sleeps with Whoopi Goldberg and eats Thanksgiving at Maxine Watters house. Some will give you a trial start even then.

And ever lurking on the horizon is autonomous driving. It’s a seven TRILLION dollar siren song. I don’t believe in it. But it’s not my job to pee on people’s dreams. I would predict that if it can be done that’s where it will be done, because Musk wants it SO bad…

Finally got my SUMMON mode for Model 3. Lame Elon…just lame….

Jack Rickard

The post Tesla Derangement Syndrome appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

On the morning of Tesla’s earnings announcement I believe the stock was trading about $293 and the September 21 $400 call option was about $1.90. Today, it closed a little over $380 and the option was about $11.50.

A bet of 100 contracts would have cost you about $19500 at risk. And this afternoon, not two weeks later, have traded at about $115,000. So say $95k profit in two weeks. That’s enough for a free Tesla Model 3 Performance model. Basically my claim on June 20 and again on July 26. Free Teslas. Coming soon to a driveway near you.

You see, everyone has a freaking theory about the future and a lot of yadda yadda about why they think that will happen. And a very few actually can see it coming, over and over and over. The reason is because its the same thing, over and over and over. But there are only a very few in the second group. And they are always there because of their book on sex education. That’s the little green book where you make a noted entry every time you get screwed. At this stage in life, I have a very thick little green book, kind of dog-eared and frayed about the cover.

So what happened? Tesla announced a HUGE per share loss. And the stock went up. Today, Saudi Wealth Fund took a 5% position in a stock with a 30% short overhang. And Elon followed up by announcing he’d like to take the company private at $420, and had the financing in place to do it.

That’s a $5 billion haircut for the shorts. The only question is when are they going to climb into the chair and put the cloth around their neck. And of course subsequently I guess they jump out of the barber’s chair and hang themselves on it.

Of course, the ride ain’t over till the fat lady flings. Hang on to your hat. The volatility ride isn’t over and it will still go BOTH directions. Maybe not at the same time. But pretty close.

So is this real or just FAKE NEWS. Is Musk simply twizzle tweeting the shorts, or seriously thinking about going private?

I would nominate that it is real. Really bright guys don’t really make empty gestures. With Musk, a tweet about a hole borer or a flame thrower may look like a flight of whimsey. Or it might mean a tunnel and a flame thrower.

So why would he take it private? Several reasons.

1. Reduce the management overhead and cranial damage of dealing with the press and quarterly announcements.
2. Reduce the emotional impact of a volatile stock price on Tesla employees.
3. Decouple stragic initiatives from short term quarterly results.
4. Terminate ATTACKS from short sellers.

Under number one, understand that Elon Musk must personally preside over a shitshow every three months where every word is scrutized and every stammer potentially costly. He can say he doesn’t care about day traders and the stock price all he likes. He still has to manage expectations with every Tesla vehicle wreck and news byte, and he kind of has to participate by law and convention in quarterly earnings releases and a discussion of results that goes several hours and involves substantial prep time. It is hard to drain the swamp when you pretty much HAVE to explain the breeding cycle and romancing rituals of alligators to an interested set of stock analysts who have little comprehension of what you are really trying to do with the company.

So the personal cranial damage he takes on every three months is a very real energy drain and distraction from his more favored activities. Don’t underestimate this. He’s running the equivalent of five companies at once, SpaceX, Seattle Satellite, Solar City, Solar Energy, and Tesla. And he’s running them like an entrepreneur scrambling for oxygen in organizations of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of individuals. He has been operating way PAST the limits of what one savage can do on one buffalo hunt for a couple of years now.

Number two is also very real. A serious percentage of the compensation of a large percentage of employees at Tesla involve stock options. That’s part of their pay package. It’s hard to focus on production issues on Monday when you suddenly realize that you are suddenly a multimillionaire on paper – albeit not yet vested. But it’s no better on Wednesday when the stock price has tanked and you are staring into a black gaping hole in the future where you net minimum wage. And on Friday you are right back where you were when you hired on – and thankful for it.

And so you have pocket phone alerts going on all over the factory with every stock move. The entire work force becomes preoccupied with the ticker. How do you run a railroad this way?

Number three is a common complaint from all CEO’s of publicly traded companies. To win, you have to plan strategically over a five and ten year horizon. But the pressures you face daily are all about very short term quarterly results. And you find yourself doing goofy things moving deliveries up the time line or delaying them down the timeline based on truly unimportant movements of cash on paper back and forth across an imaginary line based on quarterly earnings dates. You might as well pitch a tent in the parking lot and hire clowns to make balloon animals for the kids. It has nothing to do with your performance over time or success in the future. It’s just gaming the system to please moronic stock analysts. But its like dust, it creeps into everything. You find it in your coffee cup, in the men’s room, and on top of your desk.

Number four is probably the deal here. Tesla is absolutely THE MOST SHORTED STOCK IN THE HISTORY OF INVESTING and has been for YEARS. They had 39 MILLION shares sold short out of a TOTAL of 169 million shares and about 129 million “float” or tradable shares. This is like 30%. And this isn’t really a peak. It’s been waffling back and forth between 25% and 30% for years now. All those guys preening and stroking themselves on Seeking Alpha have grown very very frustrated – and shrill. It is not easy to maintain your image as a brilliant financial trader when you are living in your ICE car under a highway overpass and buying cell phone minutes in bulk ahead of time.

Now you put that in a context of somebody making $40,000 a year in the Tesla factory and whose dreams of immediately rising to become one of Musks trusted closest advisors may not have worked out. Suddenly here is a charming guy buying him $14 drinks and offering a years salary for just a bit of information. And he explains he is just interested in protecting the poor grandmother investor from being mislead by Musk the tyrant egomaniac.

Or worse. There has been evidence of actual sabotage in some mysterious incidents in the plant. Could someone really do this? I like to think not. And I’m going to say not. But my little green book threatens to put a kink in my back as I sit on my stool with it stuffed in my back hip pocket. It kind of causes me to lean in the other direction if you know what I mean.

I am actually really naive and it is hard for me to picture an investor actually stooping to such an evil act. And anyway, how could any employee take a paycheck from the company and then do something like that for mere money? It just can’t be. I don’t want to live in a world like that.

Except I do friends. Except I do.

It’s hard to short a stock in a private company.

And it has to be hard for Musk to work a couple days a week at SpaceX. Huge responsibility and huge investors. I think Google has $1.5 billion in there. I don’t recall who else but there are a couple of funds and others with lesser amounts.

And then work three or four days at Tesla which is publicly traded. There is a huge contrast in personal freedom to make decisions and have them implemented. At Tesla, he has an SEC advisor and several lawyers at his elbow explaining some long winded tortured line of reasoning why he CANNOT do this and CANNOT do that. He says “I’m talking about changing the quality of paper in the mens’ rooms.” YES BUT that could be interpreted by the street to mean this and such and that could be interpreted by the courts to be an attack on LGBTQ something or others.

And at SpaceX he has a desk in a corner and anything he utters everyone just takes off all asses and elbows flying in all directions to make it happen. “No paper. Get blowers.”

Could he do it? Tesla would have a valuation of $82 billion at $420. But he owns a lot of it. It would take about $65 billion cash to pull it off. Where would it come from?

First, Musk has had no difficulties raising money in the debt market. An LBO or Leveraged Buy Out is based on using future earnings to pay back debt used to purchase the outstanding shares. While that normally DOES require some earnings, the Tesla story only gets better every day. And every debt offering they’ve had so far has been OVERsubscribed and at times at embarrassing levels.

But he indicated in the tweet that funding was in place.

Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is set on diversifying the country away from it’s dependence on oil but still toward energy. They’ve been a huge player in solar for example in recent years. They have a written plan titled “Vision 2030” and it is all about being in alternative energy resources. They have a Saudi Public Investment Fund known as PIF and they plan to eventually control more than $2 trillion in assets.

Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund announced earlier TODAY that they had taken a bit less than 5% of Tesla’s stock out already. Writing a check for $65 billion would by significant for them, but very much in line with their strategic objectives.

The logistics of an LBO are always a freaking adventure. IF a majority of shareholders tender their shares at $420, its a done deal. I’m thinking this isn’t quite done. I’m thinking $1500 in five years. So while I don’t mind playing footsy with the futures contracts, a few thousand shares stuffed into the mattress really don’t get traded at all. Privately held companies DO have shareholders. And they can sell stock to a now unlimited number of accredited investors. But they are not very liquid. You are in for a VERY long term. You can only sell them in a private sale. And no market can be made in them.

But it is unclear as to what happens to the “holdouts” in a case like this. I would want to roll into the private shares myself even knowing the liquidity issues. And you never really know a daily value of your shares. But I can understand why Elon would want to get the volatility out of the game. I’m just unclear as to how I personally continue to participate.

But while they bicker folly on TV, I would take this concept very very seriously. Elon correctly demurs to the ultimate decision of the shareholders, but as he owns about 29% (or 27% I forget which) of the company personally (just bought $10 million worth a few months ago) he only needs about 21% to vote yea with him, and he has sufficient institutional ownership who might want to get with that.

The game goes on for those really lost on this. You see once private, there is always the concept of a FUTURE INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING then. So the company gets stabilized, does all the capital expense of two more gigafactories and a big rollout of energy storage and solar tile roofs, and gets some solid performance numbers and cash flow going, and they simply come out five years from now at $10 per share, but on a brazillion shares representing 30% of the company or whatever.

All of this is a little problematic for the small investor. Elon has referred to some sort of Mutual Fund we could be in to continue to participate. I would prefer some means of converting my publicly held shares into shares in the private company. And I would deeply resent being a shareholder for these many years and then be shunted aside after all this time with no option to continue.

We have a saying here in Missouri. You should at least dance with the one what brung ya.

In any event, Musk has kind of closed out the short position for them. He promised the burn of the century but in a way he has been most gracious about it. Theoretically he has capped their losses at the $420 level with this maneuver. They should take the haircut and toss a quarter on the counter as a tip. Kind of a stock tip. Their panic will be limited between the $380 and $420 level for the moment. But they DO have to cover the borrowed shares at some price some way. It’s not really optional unless their bet is he can’t pull off the LBO. I don’t think he would threaten it without “funding in place”.

Bottom line if you are wondering and watching fake cable news – it’s real. And his twitter announcement was not a leak. It was a move to forestall a leak and forced by the public announcement of the Saudi investment. Once funding even appeared to be “in place” the temptation for insider trading within his own organization would just be IRRESISTIBLE. His own brother could not be trusted. And the legal ramifications of ANY of that would be potentially disastrous. The “tweet” to just 20 million of his closest friends, followed by the immediate and inevitable coverage by financial TV, brilliantly closed the door on all that. Speculation that his tweet could itself be an SEC violation is just moronic uninformed sea lawyering of the most ignorant sort. It was a brilliant play to ELIMINATE any possibility of insider information or trading. You can’t DO any insider trading if it’s all already public knowledge.

The squalling in the financial press will be the real entertainment here. I expect this to reach a howling rage tomorrow. This is a personal swipe by Musk aimed specifically AT the press. You mattered not. But if you thought you mattered, you matter not now. And they get it. If he takes it private, it says Haines when Musk SAYS it says Haines. Their position of defending that already well defended grandmother investor just went out the window.

And so Musk in just a few tweeted characters entirely TOOK OUT the stock analysts, the shorts, and the press in one smooth move. And he chided his employees in the process. They can still own stock. They just can’t know its price or trade in it except for defined trading periods.

$420. Tonight, Elon Musk is tokin on a number and diggin on the radio. That’s my generations’ version of “chillin and Netflix.” The guy has a beautiful mind.

The post TDS2 – Free Tesla Model 3 Performance Model appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

A scant 24 hours into the ShitsStorm set off by Elon Musk’s 420 tweet and I’ve rather had a change of heart on the whole matter.

My two personal heroes in this season of life are Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk. And it is striking how similar the national disconnect is on both men. Both are truly disruptive agents of change and dramatic change causes deeply agonizing controversy in the oft bovine mass of humanity. In this season and of these men, this goes beyond restlessness of the herd and moves into near stampede at a whisper from either. The rolling eyes, the bawling and braying, and the fevered milling offer ample evidence the herd is about to bolt and head straight for the cliff.

From the lofty heights of sentience, it’s a little hard to picture what all the fuss is about. The changes offered in both cases should be heralded and welcomed by all, and I’m confident that the prevailing light of historical review will laud both men beyond all reason. Washington and Edison never had it so good. These two men, each in their own way, offer entre into literally a guilded new age of breathtaking beneficence.

And so it should be of no surprise that their every utterance renders a reaction not so much of opposition, but deranged and agonized psychosis rising to the level of their vision. But it is.

And so you have alt-left libtards suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome, and mystified Trump supporters who cannot fathom who would oppose the worldwide imposition of peace and prosperity by the U.S. The TDS elite do not appear even to oppose what Trump offers or even HAVE a policy issue to talk about. They oppose TRUMP HIMSELF and by extension, anyone who supports him and are raging in apoplectic FURY in their reaction. I mean they are literally physically attacking people violently in restaurants and gas stations across the land in kind of a pathetically inept attempt at civil war.

And the Trump supporters, while genuinely offended, are relatively sanguine about it offering little resistance. More mystified. You want civil war? You DO know which side owns the 300 million guns you want to ban, don’t you? I mean…REALLY???? You can’t be serious. Candace Owens seemed more fascinated by the display than personally fearful. A bunch of white people screeching insanely – literally foaming at the mouth – about racism and cops to a black woman with black and latino policemen standing calmly by? It was a surreal scene.

The confrontation between the shorts and traditional professional analysts, and Tesla fervent supporters and believers, is for the moment more genteel – but barely. It was escalating daily and threatening to go out of control. I initially thought Musk’s maneuver to take the company private very clever. It would essentially rain on the battle and subsequently retire both armies from the field allowing him to get back to the business at hand – saving the world. http://evtv.me/2018/08/tds2-free-tesla-model-3-performance-model/ But a brief televised confrontation between the two sides has led me to a change of heart less than 24 hours later. I think Musk may have made a grave miscalculation and one that “beyond these waters there lie beasties.” I would offer him the following advice: Re-evaluate this entire matter with EXTREME care.

The scene bite that caught my eye was a badly moderated “debate” between Mark Spiegel and Galileo Russell. Mr. Spiegel is the managing member of Stanphyl Capital. He was smooth, debonaire and represented a seven figure short position on Tesla stock – mostly long PUTS. Galileo Russell hosts a YouTube channel titled Hyperchange and sports a long position in Tesla stock – 60 shares to be precise.

If you recall, during the Q1 earnings call Musk kind of had an exploding spleen over a probably idiotic analyst questioning the number of reservations – basically implying waning demand for a car that has never been advertised, is not available in Tesla show rooms, which no one has ever had a test drive in, but enjoys 455,000 $1000 deposits for a SLOT to buy the car. Musk had had six months of trying to answer how they were EVER going to actually make enough cars for this group already onboard to own one, and here was a guy implying that demand for the product was drying up. So he simply said he had had enough of stupid questions and went to a YouTuber for the next several questions. I think that was Galileo Russell who then had fifteen minutes of fame.

This scene turned the financial analyst community dramatically against Musk and Tesla. And Musk subsequently apologized for the moment during the Q2 earnings call.

The purported debate between the two was a fizzle of course. Poor Galileo came across as a starry eyed do gooder woefully out of his league in talking financials and Spiegel of course represented a hard-eyed bet that rising revenues with rising losses is not a sustainable business model and surely at some point reason would prevail and the bigger the bubble the bigger the burst. Tesla would actually go up in flames and shorts would win massively.

It struck me both were way out of league, but it kind of framed the basic disconnect in a new way for me.

To a Mark Spiegel, the road to Teslas current moment is wildly implausible. It makes no sense to him. None of it. The numbers just don’t work. He doesn’t really understand why it got to where it IS, but he’s sure it is some kind of derangement that will eventually correct and come back to the proper order of revenues, earnings, and profit that allow gentlemen of his persuasion to properly “model” and come to valuation. In his world you long undervalued companies, short overvalued ones, and ultimately reason prevails.

To a Galileo Russell, Tesla isn’t a car company at all. It makes a FABULOUS car that represents excellent incremental execution of a much grander vision of an energy future where electricity is generated and stored at the point of use using clean, quiet limitless sunshine and that can be used to cure all ills of humanity, including the need for personal transportation and meanwhile it’s a great ride.

Ignoring Mr. Russell’s gushy and adolescently awkward presentation, I am firmly in his camp. I see Tesla as a technology company with some precision and focused application to real human problems and energy is what it is all about. The blue sky of billions of buildings that need solar energy worldwide, the innate problem of storing that energy, in batteries, and electric powered (sunshine powered) mobility is just gargantuan, enormous beyond belief. By the time Porsche and VW catch up with their CAR, Tesla will be building solar powered homes on Mars. And I have personally put credibility on the line with a real and serious prediction of a $1500 stock price by 2023.

And to Mssrs Russell Rickard et al, the short in shorts is short sighted.

Here’s the problem. Russell and Rickard invested in the startup phase of Tesla by investing in both the stock AND in purchasing the cars. MOST people who can afford a Tesla can afford to take a flyer on the stock. Indeed there are a NUMBER of EVTV viewers who have done this in reverse and parlayed Tesla stock investment INTO owning a Tesla car using the house’ money. Basically the shorts have funded the rise in stock price and volatility allowing us to actually buy product and demonstrate demand using Tesla’s stock itself.

Here is something Elon Musk DOES know but has momentarily discounted. Tesla IS a cult. The small investors in Tesla Stock are also the people buying the car. And yeah, we are all excited that he’s reached the half million unit level. But that is NOT a breakout into general population. That is STILL a cult car and a cult stock and the linkage between the small investor and the car is very important to Tesla at this stage and should NOT be forfeited prematurely. Don’t rain on your follower’s dreams Elon. You just aren’t that big a shit yet. You still need the apostlehood for awhile longer, so don’t get too far out over your skis on this important point.

You see Galileo and I don’t NEED your $420. We want to Buzz LIghtyear this thing to “Infinity and BEYOND!” With patience and fortitude, we think we see 10x that return. The $8 Amazon stock going to $1880.

That’s the ticket we bought and we want the ride.

Going private would represent a huge liquidity hit. But we’ll take it with you because we believe your reasoning is sound and we’d love to revel in the agony of the shorts.

But this all comes unravelled pretty quickly in the hard light of 24 hours later. Musk has asserted that ANYONE holding Tesla stock will NOT be excluded and he indeed hopes that any shareholder who wants to transition to private shares WILL BE ABLE TO and he hopes they do.

Well we hope that too but we can’t and you can’t make it so we can. I don’t believe….

I had referred obliquely to a recent liberalization of the rules regulating the number and type of investors that private companies can offer ownership to. I welcome, applaud, and am quite enthusiastic about these dramatic changes. But they are aimed at startups and as it turns out, have severe caps on capitalization of such entities. Like $50 million. They simply don’t apply to anything like a Tesla even in Tesla’s earliest days. I do not currently see ANY path to translating a publicly traded share to a similar share in a private company. I would be astounded to learn it could be done.

John Coates, a professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School, was quoted, “I know of no legal way to offer public shareholders of a listed company an equity security while also going private. I also know of no legal way to offer $X billion worth securities of any kind to more than 35 unaccredited investors without registering with the SEC.”

Musk has reserved a waffle zone alluding to a special “fund” like they do with SpaceX. That’s actually a Fidelity mutual fund and it by law cannot be specific even to SpaceX. There are diversification requirements for such Mutual Funds. And so if we participate in such a fund scheme, we are very subject to dilution, diversification, and a whole host of other games that can be played by the fat cats representing the major investors owning a privately held Tesla. I don’t think that is Musks intent, but along the way to $60 billion in funding, he would likely not be the only voice of control.

So I view $420 as a woefully inadequate offer for my legitimate position in Tesla. And a “special fund” an opportunity to get specially screwed the main value of which would be a further entry in my little green book of sex education.

Beyond that it only gets worse. Even if you COULD offer a share for share transition, there is not only a liquidity hit, but potentially a bit of dilution as well. Somebody has to pay the piper for the whatever billions are required to move from publicly traded to private ownership and that can only be paid with equity in the company. In theory you are just swapping the publicly traded shares for the new private shares. But every transaction has its carrying charges. And no one is going to front that kind of money without a bonus hidden in there somewhere. And so I have no desire to trade my share in Tesla the public company for the equivalent of 0.90 share in the new private company.

Too high a price to pay for you to avoid a quarterly earnings call. Suck it up and plan on spending an hour or so on the phone with those yucks every three months.

Elon refers to a “shareholder vote”. That sounds very democratic. It isn’t. For all you poor hapless Galileos out there, Elon and six of the largest current Tesla stockholders own over 50% of the shares NOW and can simply vote to go private. ALL the small fry voting together don’t even matter. You get $420 per share and no voice in it whatsoever. You can take it or take it but those are your only two options. You will have been FIRED as a Tesla owner. But it’s very convenient. Ameritrade simply wipes your shares and puts the cash in your account. You don’t even have to click on anything.

Ergo my admonition yesterday to “dance with the one what brung ya”. I think it would be curiously inelegant for Musk to thoroughly piss off all those who have supported him thus far along with his own employees who have been so heroic in helping him get here. I think a few days further consideration are in order. And I believe once the board, the committee, and the advisors all weigh in, the ultimate outcome will be naught.

Well not quite. I understand Musk has also now further plans to offer a Tesla branded pair of short shorts in the Tesla Merchandise section of the company website. This is the dog whistle that mostly what all this is about is killing off the shorts. So don’t worry about it and enjoy the show.

So I’m taking profit this morning. I’ve liquidated all September 21 CALLS though I retain my December 21s and sold off half my core holdings in common stock. If my normal fine sense of timing prevails, it will no doubt zoom to $560 this afternoon. Whatever.

There IS a very tiny sliver of daylight under the door however that may be an “unintended” consequence. This entire hoopla kind of forces all players to suddenly face the daunting task of evaluating just what IS Tesla worth and more importantly what WILL it be worth in the future. As this is pondered by a number of other large entities, that kind of puts Tesla “in play” as a possible acquisition target.

There is this fat vegen chic at every shareholder meeting demanding in the most screechingly strident tones that Musk remove all the leather from the Tesla cars immediately. She of course has the right to do so because she owns precisely ONE share of Tesla common stock. I WOULD be curious as to what her position on all this is. I understand she is assaulting Trump supporters at a popular Hollywood eatery this afternoon but perhaps she can weigh in later, so to speak.

Who knows? All of this might put the idea in her head to mount a takeover move on Tesla. A hostile takeover by another name would smell as animal product free.

The post Tesla ShitStorm appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

Selling yesterday. Buying back in today at a lower price. The Tesla ShitStorm continues unabated.

Two law firms have launched “investigations” into Elon Musk’s “stock manipulation”. With his avowal to burn the shorts, and his announcement this week to take the stock public at $420, a case can be made. And these class action lawsuits don’t ever actually go to trial. They are generally settled so often that it has become its own genre of “greenmail”. The shorts will actually be able to partially recover in the settlement what they lost in the market.

Similarly the SEC has announced they are investigating as well. This of course at the direct request of the wounded shorts. I have no idea how that will come out but I would expect nothing substantive. If Musk was not just tweeting, and was in fact considering going private, the fact that he didn’t “file” a notification just isn’t going anywhere. It’s hard to make a case on transparency when he’s announced it to 22 million of his closest associates on twitter and with the story breaking on ALL financial news tv networks within the hour. It has been reported he DID discuss it with some members of the Tesla board of directors a week before and if that can be verified he’s pretty much a clean walk. But the fact that he was investigated will play into the greenmail settlement. It would have been slightly better if the tweet had occurred after market close instead of during trading hours.

The board has dutifully scrambled to support. They are looking to seek outside advice, form a committee of course to look into privatization, and Musk will of course recuse himself from those deliberations. SO for good or ill, whatever was and might have been prior, the topic of taking Tesla private is now officially on the table and the wheels are grinding slowly into forward motion.

In a perfect world, that will continue for about, I’m just guessing, three months, until the next quarterly report preferably with positive cash flow on hand. And I HOPE the conclusion is that it is just too problematic to carry employees and current small fry shareholders along for the ride and the whole thing is dropped.

In itself, that does a very interesting thing. It puts the irrational task of truly valuing Tesla as a company, enterprise, technology, and idea fully in the crosshairs. It brings it to a point. No, you can’t wait and see. The entire world has to do their very best at peering into the future and valuing this entity right NOW and with no small pressing urgency.

This is of crucial importance to any funding, secured or not and puts the pressure on Saudi/Softbank/10cent et al to actually ANSWER the question of what it might be worth.

It puts it right on the plate in front of the large major shareholders of Tesla. No waffling. No hopes and dreams. No hedge bets. What IS the damn thing worth going forward. And you have to decide NOW. And will it be better public, or can even larger gains be had by taking it private, ramping it up, and doing ANOTHER IPO round later?

That applies to us small fry as well. The individual shareholders have little say so in this but they do suffer the outcome whatever it is. And do you sell at $420 or roll into whatever goofy magic fund Elon manages to cobble together?

In the NFL, you have players and you have the fans. But public markets are kind of fun because EVERYBODY is in the crowd cheering and booing, and EVERYBODY can be a player on the field as well. So I would say there is not a CEO of any publicly traded company IN THE WORLD who is not glued to the screen over Elon Musk and the Tesla story. And they are not only a rapt audience, but potentially a player. And what this means is that as of this week, Tesla is basically “in play.” Whatever Musk thought he was doing, he’s put his company “in play.”

And what that means is that ANYBODY can play. I can personally make an offer for the entire company – funding secured or not. EVTV LLC can offer a 1 for 1 stock swap acquisition/merger of equals for all outstanding shares of Tesla within a day. And actually, if we did file it the board would have to consider it and we might even be able to force it to a shareholder vote.

Yes, I know Elon’s got 21% of the company. But people do funny things for money and his other shareholders might not be as loyal as you think.

Actually they are. And the reason is very simple. Beyond the 21%, Elon kind of has a pocket veto. If it doesn’t go his way, he just walks. And half of the Tesla valuation equation really IS Elon Musk.

So what do you think Elon? We could become EVTV/Tesla – the most dominant automotive manufacturer on YouTube. I might even be inspired to go back to weekly.

In all deal making, to be effective, you have to put yourself in the other guy’s yellow crocs. And I really can’t come up with any really good reasons for Elon to ally with a small garage in Missouri and a 300lb wheezing “has been/never was” who is down to working half days, as a partner – even in very fashionable yellow crocs. He’s going to ask. And I really have nothing persuasive here to go to. It is true, that if I walk one mile south, and one mile west, and one mile north, I do know two places where I can wind up back in the exact same spot. But I don’t think that will really cause him to recommend the deal the to the board.

Over six years ago I described in gory detail why a merger of Apple, SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City would be a win/win/win/win for everybody that touched it from any direction. It seemed Messrs Cooke and Musk ignored that with great vigor. I think they each severally and together made a huge strategic blunder. As a very long time shareholder in both, and in the case of Apple, VERY long time shareholder, might I at least dust off this hoary old image one more time?

And in this case, I would like to add my INTENSE dislike for the software in the Model 3 screen display. And how minimally required I think it is to have my iPhone just show up on screen when I get in the car.

The case then and now remains more about Apple than Tesla. Apple has just recently repatriated a brazillion dollars cash from it’s hoarde overseas. I really don’t know HOW much money was involved or what it wound up being. At one point the larder was purported to be north of $250 billion. They paid some reduced taxes on it to bring it home, courtesy of the Donald and super accountant Tim Cooke immediately jumped all over it. As a gay atheist living in California in the Apple culture I just don’t believe he did this to support the Trump agenda frankly.

At one time Apple was very much like Tesla, a very rapidly growing high-technology company led by a visionary leader who was personally protected 24×7 by a reality distortion field.

But eventually, it fell prey to the law of large numbers. If you have a startup with $2 million in sales, and you double it year over year, you have $4 million in sales. This is great fun. Of course you have to maintain your current $2 million in sales and find $2 million in new business to do that. But hey, its a huge market.

To maintain the same rate of growth the next year, you have to find $4 million in NEW business. And eight million the year following.

This works pretty well until you get to $10 billion. At that point you have to find $10 billion to grow 100%. And at $30 billion you have to find $30 billion in new growth. And pretty soon, the number is so large you can’t possibly do it as the total market for your product isn’t that big.

To feed that monster, you generally cannot grow it organically. You have to purchase entire companies to gobble up their market share. But as your size approaches the limits of the market, governmental regulators, going back to the Standard Oil days, begin to examine and often prohibit further acquisitions as being anti-competitive.

Remarkably, Apple has somehow managed to achieve near 100% market dominance of an enormous smart phone world organically. And since they didn’t acquire competitors, there was never a moment when governmental entities could intervene. Ergo the world’s first Trillion Dollar market capitalization of a corporation.

They could easily have gone into becoming a carrier themselves and shut ATT out. But that not only invites governmental intervention, but causes fear among all carriers that might service their product.

Along the way the cash started to pile up and it got into everything, the vacuum cleaner, the carpets, the cabinets. It was ruining the decor.

Today, Apple is paying dividends and buying back stock furiously while paying huge taxes on the profits. All of these are unredeemable and incontrovertible signs of fudiciary mismanagement on a scale heretofore unthinkable. And so no one really knows what to think but they keep buying the stock.

Generally, I applaud the concept of sticking with your core competency and not diversifying for the sole purpose of diversifying. But Apple is starved of blue sky and severely constrained by the law of large numbers. There’s no place to go with all of this.

Well almost no place. They currently are very much NOT dominant in solar energy, although their new campus is certainly a model of how to power by it. They have essentially become a power company on the side.

Rumors of Applecar notwithstanding, they currently enjoy no presence, much less dominance, in the automotive market.

They have no nexus in satellites or space launch. Or just off the top of my head, say a global satellite network that comes to OWN the Internet eventually offering gigabit data rates to handheld smartphones anywhere on the surface of the earth, and as Buzz Lightyear says, “and BEYOND”.

Elon Musk is on the verge of building a MOAT around the concept of blue sky in hard technology. He comes very near to owning the IDEA of blue sky in hardware and software technology.

And he has an insatiable appetite for cash. The guy really knows how to spend it QUICKLY and with impressive efficiency. He converts cash into technology directly and effortlessly. He can gobble billions for breakfast like cheerios.

So Apple needs blue sky and growth opportunity – and frankly they need to replace Steve Jobs finally. Tim Cooke is a great XO but he just can’t captain the ship.
They need a visionary leader.

Musk/Tesla/SpaceX et al need a really not yet discussed but impressive level of capital to put all his plans into play. I mean hundreds of BILLIONS.

And frankly they could use a little expert financial management, discipline, and market credibility. Tim Cooke is very good with quarterly earnings calls. The SEC is not a mystery to him. The vagaries of being public are almost handled by his assistants they are so mundane to these people. Apple executes the business part of being a business as well as it can be done on par with any corporation in the world. Duh.

This could be done with a cashless stock swap and would overnight DOUBLE the value to BOTH sets of stock holders. Let Musk be the CEO and Cooke the CFO/COO and get a really outstanding and active board of directors. I would be willing to sit on that for an embarrassingly huge amount of money and perks. And a parking spot of course. Maybe a new MacPro.

Musk would be basically a replacement for Steve Jobs and would be relieved of ALL of the detritus/crainial damage of “running” the business end of the entity. He could hang out sleeping on the factory floor, doing the odd bit of code, or whatever it is he LIKES to do as CEO.

Understand that Apple is not the only suitor in the gallery. I’m thinking of cashless mergers here primarily. VW is huge and known for acquisition and could certainly use a win and maybe a CEO as well.
Google already has a relationship. I guess I don’t think Amazon is a player here.

But Apple has the unique need for a visionary CEO and has a uniquely problematic mountain of cash. It brings discipline and market credibility. It needs new blood and ideas. This match was meant to be.

AppleT as in Apple Tea, not as in applet.

Jack Rickard

The post Tesla and Apple – AppleT Destiny Denied appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

Tesla continues to awe and amaze the aborigines. Elon announced Friday that he was reversing position and backing away from his plan to take Tesla private. I for one am quite relieved. I have publicly stated that Tesla has some enormous blue sky opportunities ahead and have predicted a stock price of $1500 by February of 2023. The concept of privatization really meant to me that I would no longer be able to participate in the party.

Musk’s reasoning for the reversal was entirely logical and I find no disingenuous aspects to it. And it was pretty much what I had predicted. He had promised that existing shareholders would be able to retain their shares into the private zone and found out that this was just not something he could technically accomplish. I had feared he would waffle and revise.

But the second very real issue was the existing large block shareholders. Many of these have their OWN investors and charters and prospectuses which kind of outline what percentage of their holdings can be in private startup ventures that are illiquid. On consulting with them, he found they would not only vote against privatization, but would have to liquidate THEIR holdings in Tesla if he prevailed – no choice in the matter.

I found it VERY interesting that the “committee” received a proposal from Silverlake Investments that included up to $30 billion in funding to go private with the largest investor in the package – VOLKSWAGEN. See my previous blog about Tesla now being “in play” and likely suitors. It was still shocking to see this play out so quickly. I’m unaccustomed to making predictions on Mondays that are old news by Friday. The pace of developments here is just shocking.

So here it is Monday morning, with another stomach churning lurch downward in Tesla’s stock price, and for me, another buying opportunity.

The parallels continue. The alt-left libtards insist I am part of the Trump “base” blinded to his sins and the shorts would have you believe we are likewise Tesla fanboyz who simply cannot see reality. I find both positions interesting, but just not very.

In both cases clearly I see things they don’t. That’s not blinded to my way of thinking. Feels more like being the one-eyed king in the land of the blind.

The underlying forces that affect Tesla appear quite positive and increasingly so. Their production of the Model 3 is persuasive to me. I find the Bloomberg Model 3 Production Tracker quite conservative in that they are working mostly from VIN numbers of REGISTERED Model3s, not production numbers but cars hitting the road. As they have to be paid for and delivered before they can be inspected and registered, that count starts to look irrefutable and rather unfudgeable.

Tesla claims their labor hours in producing the Model 3 have dropped 30% from peak and so the cash flow at 5000 units per week is impressive. More so at 6000 and rumor has it that the actual factory production is getting very close to that. My rather basic Model 3 came in at about $56,000 and that went directly to Tesla – no intervening dealers of course. And so at 6000 units that looks like/sounds like $336 MILLION dollars per week coming in the door via the web site. I’m guessing with all wheel drive and performance models coming online, more like $350 million. Good work if you can get it.

I actually do NOT believe all 455,000 of the original reservation holders are actually going to buy a Model 3. The reservations were for a $35,000 Tesla Model 3. And I was clear in predicting there IS no $35,000 Tesla Model 3 and you would never see a $35,000 Model 3. The only existing $35,000 Model 3 is parked right next to the $55,000 Model S. And there the two cars sit firmly lit in Elon Musks imagination. They were always price targets for his design team. Not sticker prices for you and I.

Further, we have not escaped the “low hanging fruit” paradox that has plagued EV manufacturers from the advent of the first sale. For any EV, at any price, and at any specification, there is a latent demand from a small band of Jack Rickard types that are going to buy it regardless. Indeed they are waiting for you to finish the design and get it made- and somewhat impatiently.

But after you have filled that latent demand or picked the “low hanging fruit”, selling the same car into a wider audience of just general car shoppers is a much more difficult sales/value case to make.

And so Tesla is having no difficulty meeting “demand” for the Model S and Model X as the low hanging fruit for those cars and at that price point has pretty much been picked. New buyers are almost entirely friends and neighbors of the existing apostleship and not only is this “word of mouth” advertising the most effective, but Musk correctly assesses that it is the only kind that will work at all hence his reluctance to purchase an ad on say EVTV, to promote the car. I’ve already sold all we can just by talking about it.

All of that said, and assuming Tesla can achieve 10,000 Model 3 units per week late this year or early next, it will be a couple of years before they can work off the backlog and competently deliver a car to a buyer within a month. And anyway you count it, thats a million cars later.

Further, the vaguely blue sky is hardening to a delightful cobalt blue. Talk of the Tesla Pickup Truck has turned ugly and Musk is now chiding his design team to develop it parallel with the Model Y.

The Model Y is of course the crossover Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) version of the Model 3 – basically a rebodied car using the same chassis and drive train but with a different final assembly body work. There is no doubt that SUV’s outsell sedans by a signficant margin in the U.S. today. And Tesla nees one. The overly ambitious Model X just wound up being too expensive for almost anyone.

But the number one selling personal transportation device worldwide has been the pickup truck for nearly a half century and the Ford F150 sales have never been challenged for about 37 years now. GM can produce all the TV commercials their budget will allow showing smiling yucks prefering the Silverado to that “other” truck. What they can’t do is tick a notch in the sales numbers.

I don’t think Tesla can either. But they could certainly sell a lot of Tesla pickup trucks while failing.

More bluesky reality popped up again last Friday with the surprise announcement that the Tesla Semi had driven cross country to Annheuser Busch in St. Louis and JB Hunt in Arkansas entirely autonomously. JB Hunt is one of the largest over the road trucking companies in the world and I was in the Navy with one of the sons. The company claims it didn’t even have a chase car on it which I find very nearly preposterous. They did have teams on site and ready at Supercharger stops to hook up as many as four Superchargers to the trucks simultaneously. But they were driving across country unaided in any event.

There are a couple of interesting aspects to this. First is Tesla’s own little logistics problem shuttling quite heavy battery and drive unit equipment between the Gigafactory in Sparks Nevada and their assembly site at the Freemont California factory.

This is no small expense. But if you charge it on solar, and don’t need a driver, it becomes somewhat less expensive operationally. And they have a good test track for autonomous electric Semi trucks and trailers. They can tweek shapes and hardware ad infinitum and get a pretty good take on efficiency improvements in range and speed and of course check autopilots on various weather variables.

As you know, I’ve been an autonomous driving skeptic – I still can’t get either homelink or summon to work reliably and indeed I would characterize it more like “comically”. It is SO baaaaaad.

And I further predicted legal difficulties over the basic concept. It’s already happening too. A man was arrested for driving under the influence this week after crashing his Model S into a firetruck. Yes, this was the second instance of a Tesla trying to mate with a firetruck on a public road. But this guy’s story of course was that it was in autopilot – he thinks.

But the over the road truck market is just pregnant for this. Talk about low hanging fruit. First lets address all the poor truck drivers about to lose their jobs. Some news. There are now over 60,000 unfilled positions for truck drivers – can’t hire em at any price.

And you can make a VERY good living as a truck driver. If you are not habitually drunk and can see out of one eye, you start at about $50k per year and if you aren’t also brain dead you can do $100k per year within a year or so.

So why isn’t EVERYONE a truck driver? Well it’s a hard life. It’s an easy job to begin with. But living on the road day and night for weeks months or years at a time just isn’t a life.

A friend of mine had two wayward sons who discovered this in short order. They stumbled on truck driving to make money and it went SO well they quit their truck driving job and invested in their own brand new shiny tractor and tried their hand. That went well enough they bought a SECOND and then a THIRD.

They were just raking it in but had a very difficult time hiring a third driver that wasn’t just a horror. And so they scaled back to two trucks and the two of them. Again, they were making it work big time.

Two years later their trucks are for sale and they’ve taken jobs doing a milk run between Cape Girardeau and St. Louis that has them home for dinner every evening.

About two years of hard truck driving drives home the lesson that money isn’t everything. Very few can stick with it. It’s a hard life and rather a mean life as well.

So I’m guessing not many tears even from truck drivers themselves. The trucking industry just wouldn’t be able to contain themselves if someone can come up with a driverless over the road rig. Indeed, if he could just pull off the over the road train he described – a driver in the head truck and four following behind him autonomously, there IS no price they would NOT pay for this. And frankly, they wouldn’t care if it was powered by Kingsford bag charcoal. Virtue signaling is not what trucking companies are about.

But the deep cranial damage caused by dealing with truck drivers is. They suffer deep and ongoing pain over this and anyone with an aspirin will do.

So going forward, I find Tesla at this mornings $308 share a license to steal money and it cannot be legal for long. I keep looking over my shoulder fearful Mueller is going to show up wanting to squeeze me for any information I have on Trump maybe overfilling a bicycle tire in direct violation of federal safety standards, and willing to send me to jail for the rest of my life over Tesla CALL trading to get it.

The parallels between the press coverage of Trump and the press coverage of Musk continue to build. I think purported “journalists” are actually starting to ape each others behavior in this area. I guess once prostitution becomes socially acceptable it is just ok. But it brings just a little taste of vomit to the back of the throat to watch the whoring going on in a career field rather close to my wheelhouse as a publisher. Yet another head of Tesla’s Public Relations/Corporate Communications has moved on. Now THERE’s a job you want to apply for.

More brightly, our testing of the PowerSafe 100 continues with ongoing mysteries and anomalies sufficient to keep me entranced for days and weeks ongoing. I just have never had it so good. So many strange results and surprises. We put 2500 amp hours IN to the battery this week and promptly took 1588 out and found the limit both times. ?????? This makes no sense. The device magically kicked off the Solar Edge grid tied inverters without interrupting power production at all and promptly five minutes later they all came back up and no one can explain why or more importantly how. Potentially very useful information.

I think it is notable that our investigations into AC coupled charging of solar energy storage batteries has not gone unnoticed

U.S. manufacturer ENPHASE (stock symbol ENPH at $4.73) really invented the microinverter in 2011. It has quickly gained a 27% share of all residential rooftop solar and they have JUST completed their acquisition of SunPower’s inverter business. They will now be sole supplier to SunPower. Recall they make the 22% efficient cells with no electrodes on the front, all back cell connections. I love em buy you can’t actually buy the panels. I get them from China on our flexible panels.

Enphase is quietly rolling out to investors their IQ8 ENSEMBLE concept which will not be available until sometime next year. But it more or less duplicates our on grid/off grid concept specifically with AC coupling to a device that then charges the batteries in a solar energy storage capacity.

One of the reasons ENPH is rather suppressed as a stock play is the Chinese manufacturer HOYMILES. Still very preliminary but they are talking about the same concept – AC coupling their microinverters to batteries.

Of course in both cases they are talking about smallish batteries at eggregious prices. We just don’t think that dog will hunt. But repurposing inexpensive salvaged EV batteries will.

And so we seek to enable YOU to add a largish battery inexpensively (relatively speaking) to an existing AC coupled grid-tied system using any or all of that basically by plugging it in to the loads panel.

And our PowerSafe100 is a Tesla PowerPack2 sized version of that.

In this episode I discuss our new display efforts and ongoing developments with the Raspberry Pi display and ESP32 based Tesla Model S battery module controller.

Collin and I have been collaborating very productively and I might say enjoyably on the software for both the ESP32 controller and the Raspberry Pi display and are enjoying very pleasant and daily progress.

But I do describe in this video the reason for my reluctance to deal with 48v systems in a discussion of I Squared R losses and how devilish they are to deal with. Fans and liquid cooling schemes are just not very effective when your heat problem is in a conductor itself.

Ultimately this is headed for a crying need for a new Inverter design where we can use large strings of 16 individual modules for our 345 volts, but do 20kw and have control of the software and frequency and so forth of the output. I don’t really see anyway around it. We need to do our own inverter. Tesla already has a bidirectional 50kW inverter for their Powerpaks and I guess I need one too.

The post Tesla to a T appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

Hurricane Florence again pointed up both the vulnerability of our grid system and the advantages of solar power – along with its’ principle weakness.

Duke Energy is an interesting case. This utility grid operator is putting in solar photovoltaics at a furious pace all over the southeast.

The largest is at the Warsaw Solar Facility being constructed in Duplin County North Carolina — a 65 MW project, but there’s also “the 40 MW Elm City Solar Facility being built in Wilson County and the 23 MW Fayetteville Solar project being constructed in Bladen County.”

It has not been so long since Florida’s Duke Energy announced plans to expand the company’s solar footprint. Its plan is to add up to 500 MW of utility-scale solar in Florida by 2024.

Their efforts have actually made North Carolina the second largest state with regards to installed solar, after California of course.

At the same time, they have been pernicious in fighting manfully to prevent residential customers from installing solar power at all.

This dichotomy is particularly marked in the aftermath of last month’s Hurricane Florence. One nuclear power plant was shut down entirely and two others operated at limited capacity, while over half of Duke Energy’s 3.4 million customers were without power for nearly a week and some 80,000 suffered outages for nearly two weeks.

But the damage to solar installations across the state was trivial with a handful of panels damaged.

If we take the costs of the national average kiloWatt-hour of electrical power, we find that less than 30% actually goes to power production. Another 30% goes to transmission, that is the transportation from a power plant to an urban area. And about 40% goes to distribution, the local wiring within a community.

And of course, both transmission and distribution are still done primarilly with overhead wires that also feature efficiency losses of 10-12%.

This is why I’m increasingly focused on the concept of generating power AT the point of use. Solar photovoltaic technology is no longer a science project.

Over half of North Carolina’s solar plant has been installed in the last 24 months and indeed you will find this remarkable state of affairs holds true across the country. But 97% of it has NO power storage capability at all.

To quote East Kentucky U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie, “The world doesn’t need a better solar panel. It needs a better battery.”

So peering into the future, let me sum up what we are about and why we are about it.

The transmission and distribution of electricity represents 60% of the cost of electrical power and is based on a concept over a century old. Electricity should be generated and used at the same geographic location. Point-of-use generation.
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The extant corporate utility-grid structure does not favor this change. They will employ any method to prevent attack on the status quo whether or not it makes any sense. Their favorites are regulatory and legislative obstacles and of course their “nuclear option” is simply to shut off your power.
They no longer go to the expense to do a good job of maintaining their system in the face of weather events or other natural disasters. It is now “acceptable” to allow customers to be without electrical power for 1-3 weeks. And these events now occur several times per year. This is the new normal.
Photovoltaic power generation has become economically feasible. But it suffers one fatal – defect. The planet rotates on its axis and we cannot stop it without causing numerous unintended consequences. No sun at night.

All problems have solutions and usually the simplest solution is the best one. Lithium batteries last for years, store a relatively large amount of power in a small space, and require very little maintenance.

Lithium batteries are expensive. But the electric vehicle adoption curve has COMMENCED it’s vertical climb. Tesla produced 80400 electric cars in the last three months and ALL automotive manufacturers have now announced electric models.

An interesting aspect to this is that consumers are very suspicious of batteries in general, even batteries included. And so to sell electric automobiles, unusually gracious warranties must be provided specifically on the batteries.

This leads to an unusual seam in the zone. Remaindered batteries from electric vehicle wrecks have zero value in the automotive replacement parts market.

And so we focus on developing the tools to allow you to access the salvaged batteries for use as solar energy storage.

To deal with the utility grid is very simple – simply cut the cord and go off-grid. But this has some problems of its own.

Everyone knows that the solar energy available varies with the season. But few realize how MUCH it varies. We can produce 3.5x MORE electricity here in Missouri in June than we can in December from the same installed hardware.

And smaller weather events also pose a variable. Four days of rain cuts our power to the bone. Four days of sun and we have more than we can store or use.

And so for the present, we advocate maintaining a link to the grid. But we advocate you remain under the utility grid radar by simply maintaining a basic 200A 240vac link to the grid and paying the monthly minimum connection fee. Do NOT seek a “net metering” agreement or do anything to alert them that you are anything but a very low usage residential or commercial customer.

As it is QUITE common to have empty houses or apartments or dark warehouses for months or years, they really don’t have much in the way of tools to DETECT that you don’t use much electricity – as long as you pay that $11.24 connection fee every month. And you quite likely need to have a grid connection just for local code compliance.

And so you should have one. And use it as little as possible as a backup to augment your power system.

So we’ve inverted the usual scenario. Instead of a battery back up system for grid power, we envision a grid backed up battery system.

And we advocate abandoning the kumbayah vision of everybody sharing and loving each other. Do NOT seek net metering or compensation from the grid operator.

We call this SELFISH SOLAR. And of course the end mission remains the same – total independence from the grid ultimately. And we further see it as based on repurposed EV batteries for solar energy storage.

And of course a further mission is to reduce the complexity and cost of all this and primarily the complexity. How to do it with FEWER components and fewer changes to the vast majority of the extant solar installations in the country – 97% of which are grid-tied inverter or microinverter systems.

And we are whittling it down bit by bit. We found what is essentially a 12kw bidirectional inverter WITH an auxilliary input for recharging from the grid while remaining isolated from it completely.

And we continue to work on a control system for managing repurposed EV batteries to feed it.

I’ve a new diagram fairly accurately depicting our EVTV shop system.

As you can see, we’ve basically simply connected our PowerSafe100 to a subpanel using a 100A circuit breaker. This is basically all you need to do to convert an existing grid-tied solar system to run entirely on batteries.

Well not quite all. You can see we don’t actually have a grid input to the PowerSafe100 at all. We have a cord we can plug into a 240vac socket on the wall to recharge if necessary. And so if we get low, we manually shut down our inverter, go to the grid meter base and turn on the grid power, and plug in to charge.

That could certainly bear some further automation. But as it is now it is VERY safe and the occasions where we need to do that are mercifully few so far. We’ll see how December goes.

The second thing is control over the grid tied inverters. Recall we actually do have a switchbox on the Powersafe to connect grid tied solar and control it with a contactor. But we’ll probably never use it with our Solar Edge system.

For one thing, its in the other room. And for a second, I don’t think we’ll need to. I have an inverter coming with a set of dry contacts allowing me to switch operation from 60Hz to 62.5Hz. And my thinking is that if the batteries become too full to store excess grid-tied inverter output, we will kick that on for about a half a second.

Which should be just long enough to drive the grid-tied inverters crazy and cause them to drop offline. The rest of the devices in the shop absolutely will not notice.

Grid-tied inverters ALL apparently share the same feature, no doubt mandated by the UL1741 anti-islanding requirement. They have a 300 second time delay between detecting a valid power waveform and frequency and actually starting to produce power.

And so with a half second bump to 62.5 Hz, I think we can shut off grid-tied inverters of any manufacture, and they will automatically come back up in five minutes. We would use power from the batteries for that five minutes and so for a few minutes, we CAN absorb excess power from the photovoltaics. If cell voltaged again reach our cutoff point, we bump the frequency again for a half second, resetting all the grid tied inverters for another five minutes.

This gets us OUT of reverse engineering the Power Line Communications protocol of 300 different grid-tied inverter schemes. We simply derail them any and all with a momentary frequency shift. The EVTV stumble step. A frequency stumble.

Collin and I have been underwater for several weeks working on the new ESP32 based Tesla Battery Module controller and associated Raspberry Pi display. They are coming along famously.

Click on the image at right to view an early cut at a User Manual for this fascinating device.

Our most recent work has to do with adding a connection to the Amazon IoT Core Services. This is their public Message Queing Telemetry Transport protocol MQTT broker. They have a useful overview at https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core/features/

The topic of MQTT and our Raspberry Pi Display is the particular subject of our video last week. Presented herein for your viewing pleasure and convenience.

As described in the video, we basically decoupled the display and the controller and connected each to the Amazon cloud.

This REQUIRES an Internet connection to a Wireless Router wherever the display is located AND the same wherever the Tesla Battery Module controller is located. I’m pretty comfortable with that as Wireless access to the Internet has become more or less ubiquitous at this point.

For off-grid installations, the cheapest smallest Wifi router can still act as the hub for UDP connection of the display to the controller. But the benefits of global access to your solar system data will be lost.

Here’s a little cutie I just can’t get over. Do you know what a wireless router cost in the mid 1990’s? This one is $24.95 and has open source software in it (OpenWRT). It’s about 200 hundred times as fast as the $5000 things we saw in 1995.

It weights 1.4 ounces and fits in your pocket. Requires 5vdc power. It’s a James Bond style wireless hub.

To do this MQTT magic, we relied on an AWS_IOT library developed by ExploreEmbedded for the ESP32. Unfortunately, the library suffers from a few serious issues and hasn’t been updated for two years. So Collin forked it on his github account at https://github.com/collin80/AWS_IOT and made some timing changes drastically reducing the occurrence of publishing errors and enlarging the size of MQTT packets. If you have an interest in doing MQTT, this library is a must and it contains links to some excellent ExploreEmbedded tutorials on the topic of setting up Amazon Iot Core and using the library. For software developers, we of course have our EVTV ESP32 CANdue board available in the online store NOW and obviously it works with all of this because that is what we are using to develop our battery controller.

Meanwhile, Tesla remains the most volatile stock I’ve ever seen. A dream for day traders and a nightmare for investors. I’m kind of in Day Trader mode and was buying with both hands this morning as the stock plummeted to $252 per share.

Musk has become a victim of the same press and fake news as Donald Trump at this point. Reality just doesn’t match. Their energy storage sales are tripling this year and actually building OR buying enough individual cells for solar energy storage is getting to be a problem.

They just DOUBLED their best ever quarter in the manufacture of automobiles with an 80,400 units quite beyond what even their fanboyz were projecting.

And the National Highway Safety Administration just came out that Tesla Model 3 is the safest sedan ever built.

(https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-lowest-probability-injury-any-vehicle-ever-tested-nhtsa), Tesla said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not only given the Model 3 sedan a perfect 5-star safety rating in every category and subcategory, but it also “has the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested.”

“The agency’s data shows that vehicle occupants are less likely to get seriously hurt in … crashes when in a Model 3 than in any other car,” Tesla said.

The car is selling like hotcakes as new owners give test drives to friends, neighbors, and relatives without ANY advertising expense to the company whatsoever. How is this going to come out????

So they are doubling sales quarter to quarter, on the world’s safest electric car with a 310 mile range and sports car performance, with TWICE the margin of any other automaker. And they have at least three other viable unrelated businesses taking orders and cash – solar energy storage, solar roofs, and semi trailer trucks.

You do need to be a guru to tell the future here. (Duh NOT). I”m rooting for the shorts to drive Tesla down to $200 per share SO I CAN BUY MORE.

We’ve become a nation of the silly and the lame. It doesn’t matter what Trump “tweets” and it doesn’t matter what Musk tweets and it really really doesn’t matter what YOU tweet either I have to tell you.

It matters very much to the world what both of them DO. And I would note that the future of our world very much depends on what you do too. Some less so on what you tweet.

An unintended consequence of the global Internet. We did not foresee the possibility that humanoids would confuse online utterance with reality. Who knew?

The post Solar MQTT. Selfish Solar on a Global Scale – BOB (Battery on Board). appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

We’re partying like rock stars at EVTV.

The jist of our mirth revolves around making LARGE batteries out of Tesla Model S Battery Modules and using AC coupling from grid-interactive inverters to harvest sunshine into the batteries.

This was widely reported as impossible. And it turns out it is not only possible, but very nearly inescapable. Indeed our primary issue of the moment is to get them to QUIT charging our batteries in controlled fashion

In this episode, we hardwire our Powersafe100 battery/inverter/charger system into our shop power distribution system. A kind of pricey and physically large power switch let’s us quickly switch between running on grid power to running entirely on the Powersafe100 with zero possibility of getting confused about all that or hooking them up to each other with potentially disastrous consequences.

The main thrust of all of this is to address the 97% of residential solar power installations that have no energy storage capability at all. The model that has emerged is to use grid-interactive inverters, and increasingly microinverters, to convert the photovoltaic panel output directly into 240vac power.

These microinverters are not only a famously good idea, but we look for this to quickly morph into ACM’s – AC photovoltaic modules, where the microinverter becomes an integral part of the photovoltaic panel itself. Within a year, mayhaps two, you will no longer have to wire up microinverters and panels. The panels will simply put out 240vac instead of the DC voltages you may be accustomed to.

This will dramatically ease installation issues. Solar panels will be just like wiring in an electric dryer or stove. Using normal house wiring, you’ll connect them into a circuit breaker in an existing loads panel. Perhaps a manual disconnect switch to comply with code requirements.

But as thousands of Californians learned the hard way during the recent storm of wildfires, having solar on your roof does not imply power to your smart phone. These installations are ENTIRELY inoperative on loss of grid power. For the unschooled, it can be quite a shock to learn your perfectly operational $70,000 solar roof is TOTALLY useless if you lose grid power.

The issue of course is anti-islanding requirements that the utility companies have insisted on that prevent solar installations from making power when the grid goes down. A 240vac 60Hz grid power signal MUST be present for the grid-interactive inverters to “synchronize” with in voltage, phase, and frequency. This is a totally fraudulent control scam by the utilities and entirely unnecessary. We’ve had automatic disconnect switches to protect the grid for over 20 years, accomplishing every safety requirement BETTER than the UL1741 requirements for the grid-tie inverters.

But the next phase of utility grid deeply evil behavior is already underway. That is to extend peak demand charges to residential customers as they have so profitably with their commercial and industrial accounts. Make no mistake, this is driven SOLELY by greed. They make more money using demand charges. And the subscribers bill goes UP in ALL cases.

They have successfully done this in mandatory fashion in Massachusettes for residential customers beginning in January 2018 and it is oddly an “option” in Arizona and Colorado now. But it is a forced option. If you have a net metering agreement, you will find your were automatically signed up for it there.

And there is a nationwide epidemic of grid operator “consultants” advising them on how to unctiously phrase “the narrative” to public utility commissions and the public to achieve acceptance.

One of the most Machievellian elements of this is the preposterous claim that those with solar panels on their roof are stealing from the other subscribers by producing their own electric power. This results in a “cross subsidy” where other ratepayers must pay more per kWh because the solar guys are using their fair share and helping to support the company. They actually refer to people who have spent tens of thousands of dollars to help produce electricity in a sustainable and clean fashion as “free riders”.

Kind of causes just a little taste of vomit in the back of my throat. What kind of person arises each AM to shave and charge off to make a living, effectively devoting their life to crap they know to be fraudulent and evil. Stop for lunch, and then do more of it in the afternoon.

In any event, peak demand charges work like this. You pay a LOWER rate per kWh of electricity, but then an enormous rate based on your highest 15 minutes of use in the month. So it’s like $15 per kW for any period of more than 15 minutes where you use more than 5kW, plus $10 per kw for distribution. Then your regular monthly duties based on kWh.

In this way, those who use little in total kWh can be sacked for using the grid at all – effectively erasing any economic advantage from installing residential solar at all.

Make no mistake, these peak demand charges are coming to a theater near you. Like your home.

I had warned of a future war with the grid utilities as early as 2009/2010. Everyone laughed then. The electric grid was “friend” to electric vehicles at that point, sponsoring pilot programs and so forth. Well the war is on, and they are hoping enough of you are blissfully unaware long enough for it to be won before you know you’ve been had.

Ergo my vision of “selfish solar” where you use the grid rarely, and by slowly trickle charging batteries that then power the residence. It is innately “peak shaving” in design and implementation.

Because of the immense variation in solar incidence, both by weather and by season, it is difficult and expensive to build a residential power system that can be entirely off grid. And if you could, in most municipalities you would find it illegal to occupy the premises if you did so.

But using remaindered lithium batteries from salvaged/wrecked EV’s, we could reduce the impact of grid rate manipulations. The seam in the zone is battery storage.

As you can see above, it is only in the past 12 months that residential energy storage has had an awakening. Indeed currently it is on par with large scale utility deployments of battery storage for the first time ever.

So at EVTV, it feels like a race against time to develop and demonstrate ways and means to survive and thrive in such a bizarre future where solar power on residences is actually under attack and every effort is being made to basically outlaw it one way or another.

While it has kind of reduced our videos and blog levels, I’m pleased to report that things are going well. With very little in the way of manpower to do it, we are winning on several fronts at the same time. The problem is we are drowning in projects all with the top priority.

Collin and I have suffered a serious breakthrough in talking to the MOdel 3 battery module BMS. No, none of the chips on this device are commercially available – they are truly Tesla custom chips. But we’re getting voltage readouts now and have done a shield design for our ESP32 controller to talk to it reliably and support more code development. I’m believing that balancing and temperatures are achievable as well.

I purchased another wrecked Model 3 which should be delivered this week. Unlike the first, this one runs and drives.

I purchased it mainly because it was nearby in Nashville. But incredibly it starts and drives, has key cards, and has just 746 miles on the odometer.

Richard thinks he can get it back on its feet. And he made be right. Had an interesting conversation this week with a body shop in North Carolina. He had purchased a Model 3 for just $16k at auction.

https://epc.teslamotors.com/#/catalogMore incredibly, Tesla now has a parts catalog online. https://epc.teslamotors.com/#/catalog. And Dennis of North Body and Paint reports that he called Tesla and ordered some parts from it. They told him there was no telling how long it would take to get them. But three days later he had them – including a hood that was offered on eBay at $750 but he got directly from Tesla at $450.

He also reported that all the testing and inspection to get a car back into the system is now GONE. It’s not a problem and they no longer disable salvaged cars. This is FANTASTIC news for those wanting to resurrect a Tesla. I don’t suppose some wiring diagrams would be just too much to ask???

We are rather fully partnered with Sigineer Power. We no longer need to call it the EVTV inverter/charger as they are not only accepting our changes, but migrating them into their full product line. They have also agreed to produce an initial run of 96volt inverters that will relieve some of the I2R issues with the 48v systems, but more importantly accommodate the Model 3 modules. It will have 3 voltage settings for batteries.

Four Tesla Model S Modules in series.
The 23 cell Model 3 module.
The 25 cell Model 3 module.

I’m also pleased to report that since this current episode was shot, we have replaced the 12kW inverter with the new 15kW model. Notably, this model has a set of dry contacts allowing us to switch from 60 to 62.5 Hz for a few hundred milliseconds if the battery becomes full or the charging power level from the Solar Edge becomes excessive – more than 15kw.

We are offering this inverter at the same $2799 as Sigineer. The difference is we have them in stock here in the U.S. and can ship the same day.

It is also interesting to note that we have converted our entire 13.8 kW TEST array, previously DC, to use the new Enphase IQ7X microinverters. AND we have found that they work simultaneously on the same system with the five Solar Edge inverters. No really conflict issues between them at all. The 62.5Hz kicker takes them ALL – Solar Edge and Enphase – offline for five minutes.

Our Wiegmann enclosure is in and we have begun assembly of Powersafe 100.1 for Walter Crumbly. This one will be much nicer. Starting with cast iron 6-inch casters.

We have had a lot of very subtle and niggling software issues with the ESP32 controller, almost all due to using abandoned libraries for AWS_IOT. I’m coming to the exact OPPOSITE view of our little buddy Damien Maguire.

Free and open source is increasingly becoming aligned with NEVER FINISHED and ABANDONED by KIDS in my mind. Collin’s work excepted. He’s been a stallion in hunting down little things in these libraries, which were never updated at all by the original authors, which we found astounding that they were ever working at all. We begin in appreciation of such work and end cursing it.

Of course, I have a unique talent in being able to break things no one has ever broken before, apparently. But some of these have truly been hard to get a rope around. Like losing our entire control system whenever we microwave chicken. Or losing just current sensor reporting every day, at some point during the day with no apparent pattern or event triggering it.

The problem is you want your solar system to work day and night for weeks or months on end. And little glitches like that are hard to test for and detect.

In any event, the wireless and IoT Cloud enabled ESP32 controller is nearing release. Soon(ish) I hope.

Our Raspberry Pi 3B+ based display is just working famously. But I really don’t know how to get this to the point where you can use your own MQTT broker and TSL1.2 security credentials. We don’t even really have a file system for the ESP32. But we’re working on it.

And so I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with targets of opportunity here. On any given day we have more to do than we can quite say grace over.

The post Solar Battery Frenzy appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

Very unusual video this week. But it kind of demonstrates that my enormous talents as a young exciting titty blond video talking she-head may not be quite as overwhelming as I imagine, and perhaps my more proven skills as a writer should probably be the proper tool for the job of discussing a bit of a complex topic – and one that it appears a good bit of the population is more than a little bit poorly led. Money. What it is. Why you need it. And more pointedly, why you need it online.

The video garnered some 60 comments in its first 2k views – about three times the comment rate we normally enjoy. Much of it was condescending, patronizing, and astonishing in how very woefully ignorant of the basics they exhibit. What has become of our educational system. We certainly paid enough taxes to have a fantastic system the envy of the world. But increasingly, it appears not even the very basics are passed on to the next generation.

The central theme of the many “corrections” I received from this misbegotten tribe of the unschooled was that Bitcoin was already here and Amazon could not be trusted.

To back up a bit, many of you know that from 1985 until 1999 I was “editor rotundas” of what started as a raggedly little newsletter and grew to a 168 page per month four color printed magazine titled Boardwatch Magazine. This was not part of a publishing empire, nor funded by angels. It started as a photocopied list of computer bulletin boards in the Denver area. It was grown entirely organically with no debt of any kind ever. And I sold it in 1999 to MecklerMedia and later Meckler AND Boardwatch to a new publishing rollup – Penton Media – netting some $40 million in the process.

It was not originally entirely about the Internet – but about personal computers as communication devices. Personal Computers were widely viewed as limited to three basic applications at that time – Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and Database applications. I very early saw them as ultimately the communications device of the world. And we discussed how to transfer files from one computer to another via a MODulator/DEMmodulator or MODEM over normal telephone lines. But also electronic bulletin boards, online services such as CompuServe, GENie, and AOL, and at some point around 1986, the NSFNET largely because NCAR and NIST were both resident in Boulder Colorado at the time and were 2 of the 6 SuperComputer sites linked via leased 56kbps data lines on the NSFNET the new version of ARPANET.

Bulletin boards or BBSs were much more popular at that time. But by the mid 1990’s most of our publication was about the network of networks or “Internet” branching off the NSFNET backbone. In a stroke of luck I’ve always been deeply suspicious of, I happened to be ON an internet site on the University of Champagne Urbana at the MOMENT Mark Andreeson uploaded the first browser for Windows. The file actually popped up in the directory I was in using FTP. November 30, 1993 as I recall. Our January 1994 issue was already completed and scheduled to go to the printer the next day and I literally had a “stop the presses” moment. As a result we were the first publication to publish a story about accessing a graphical version of the World Wide Web from a PC.

Actually XWINDOWS had a browser the previous summer which Mitch Kapore of Lotus 123 had demonstrated for me on a Linux machine in Cambridge Massachusettes. Which is why I knew what Mozilla was the moment I saw it. But Linux was not widely used in the PC community yet at that time. Indeed Windoze was kind of a new thing to PCs in late 1993.

I later did a 16-page tutorial on installing Trumpet Winsock on a PC that became the most ripped off piece of copyrighted material probably ever, as about 7000 Internet Service Providers provided it to their customers so they too good get on the World Wide Web. Actually with my blessing of course.

Along the way, I gave voice to a common theme online. It goes a bit like this. “There are so many people online now, that if I wrote a poem and posted it online, and everyone who liked it sent me a penny, I would have a shitpot full of money in almost zero time.”

I had actually encountered this exact example online of course. But also saw it expressed with regards to hamburger recipes, and dozens of other things.

The problem was, there was no way to send anyone a penny online. Indeed at that time no one could really send anything in anyway at all.

In the Interim, there have been numerous proposals. Today, eCommerce is almost entirely powered by credit cards. But it’s kind of a one way deal. Merchants can get accounts allowing them to receive credit card payments. But the unwashed online have no way to accept them. They can only pay.

Worse, the recent account of Patreon deplatforming Carl Benjamin, online personna Sargon of Akkad, points to something far deeper.

Patreon has become sort of a one-off payment system for YouTube much as PayPal did for eBay. YouTube has cunningly structured their ad revenue model such that about 25 people make a million dollars a year on the service from advertising revenue. The other billion get about $40 per month. So many YouTubers open a Patreon account allowing their supporters to send them money by credit card directly – bypassing the whole YouTube gig.

And so a growing army of political commentators are able to generate tens of thousands of dollars from those hungry for alternative news outside of the main media sources which have just reached ridiculous heights in misinformation promoting alt left libtard political positions. And from their point of view, something must be done about this info leakage.

And so they are pressuring Patreon to deplatform these commentators. Oddly, the commentators see the outcome quite clearly and are already bailing on this, so the media are going after the credit card companies and what they propose is astonishing. They are DEMANDING that credit card companies monitor spending and speech so they can financially cutoff anyone not carrying the part line. Sam Harris, David Rubin, Jordan Peterson and others have already bailed on the system.

But it points up a glaring omission in the development of the Internet. We never DID address Penny a Poem. So while we need to address this egregious assault on free speech it’s true, I have my eye on bigger fish. We need a secure, frictionless, and anonymous means of exchange on the Internet. Gold and cash are simply obsolete. And credit cards always were a miserable solution.

Along the way PayPal was the most promising. It was launched by Elon Musk oddly enough and Peter Thiel. But they raised quite a bit of venture capital to get it off the ground. It had actually enabled eBay to grow in ways it just never could without it and so they eventually bought it. Elon didn’t actually want to sell it by the majority of the ownership of the company did. I can’t help think we would be much further along if Musk had stayed and managed it. But I guess I wouldn’t be driving a Tesla today if he had.

Paypal has become a mess in the interim. We don’t even accept it any more at EVTV and no longer have an account. No, I wasn’t deplatformed. I fired them for incompetence and malfeasance years ago.

Some promising ventures currently include ApplePay and Amazon Payments. But they haven’t really taken root very well. And they are basically a credit card proxy – although you can send payments to friends who do not have credit card merchant accounts.

Most of the comments on this video are from religious proponents of Bitcoin and they assume I guess that I just have never heard of it. I had Bitcoin within weeks of its introduction. I broadly do understand blockchain and the encryption and worldwide verification of it, though I’ve never been a miner myself. I rather early realized Bitcoin wasn’t going to make it and would never fulfill it’s intended promise.

From my point of view, it had about two years to reach what I call viable mass – slightly more accurate than the term “critical” mass. It failed to do so, and with every passing day since, the odds of it EVER reaching viable mass has declined exponentially. At this point it has zero chance to become a global currency. Understand I am saying ZERO chance. And the 125 also-rans aping its motif share that dismal outlook and for not only the same reasons, but they inherit the Bitcoin curse. The more Bitcoin DOESN’T make it, the more they won’t make it either because they are perceived as just like Bitcoin.

So why is it still around? It’s a ponzi scheme. The central attraction to Bitcoin is you can buy a five dollar bill and sell it for $5000 later because there will be even MORE people who will want it then and it is limited in total coins. You just can’t lose. And as it climbed the lofty heights to $20,000 that did appear to be the case. And as it fell step by step from $20,000, many lost a lot.

But maybe it will come back. I hope so. I still have some Dutch Tulip bulbss around here somewhere and maybe they will be worth a LOT of Bitcoin someday soon.

So lets talk a bit about what Money is. For those who know, please forgive me but astonishingly there are apparently a lot of viewers who just have no idea.

Money is a proxy for goods – wealth. Resources. Labor. Food. Shelter. Clothing. Electronic gadgets. And it is kind of a one-off. It represents those things and allows us to trade for them indirectly – in one-off fashion. It is a promise that you can have that stuff later. And for it to work, you have to be willing to accept the promise. It is at its heart a belief system. If you give your bushel of wheat and trade it for money, you BELIEVE that the symbolic you receive can be exchanged for a bushel of corn later.

This is very handy in that it is PORTABLE, not only geographically, but also across time. Wheat is harvested at a different time than corn. And so I can sell my bushel of wheat now, and use the money to buy corn, which I don’t even grow, LATER. Or next year.

But it IS a belief system. I am amused at all the people who rail that US Dollars are a “fiat currency”. It is not true value or wealth like silver or gold. What nonsense.

Silver or gold have very little “value” in and of themselves. Gold has some curious aspects that caused it to be mined and held beginning about 6 thousand years ago.

1. It is quite rare. All the gold in history that has been mined and is now above ground can be contained in a cube 21 meters on a side.

2. It is shiny. Like all primates, we are fascinated by any shiny bauble. Reasonably pure gold simply does not combine with oxygen directly at any temperature. And for this reason, it does not tarnish like copper, silver, iron, or any similar allow of other metals. You polish gold and it stays shiny. And so it came to be useful for shiny baubles – jewelry.

3. It is very malleable. You can hammer gold so thin you can seen through it and it will retain some integrity. It is a very soft metal with no real structural characteristics.

And as it was sought as much as 6000 years ago. But it has a perceived “value” mostly because it is “rare”. And that is the key – perceived value. And so it came to be used for money because everyone AGREED it was valuable due to its rarity and usefulness.. In reality, more so the former as the actual uses were pretty paltry – but I suppose important. It could get you laid. Because chics like shiny baubles. Even among the lower primates.

But today, about 50% of all gold is in jewelry, 40% is held as investment, and only about 10% is used commercially. I would argue again that the 50% in jewelry is MOSTLY because it is an investment, and we would have not nearly the amount of gold jewelry if it were not such a good value investment.

And so it all goes to our BELIEF system in gold as having value, with the exception of tiny bits of it that are used because it is also a very very good conductor of electricity. And so gold plated connector pins just work better for some high frequency applications.

So if the belief system holds up for the U.S. Dollar, it is just as good an exchange proxy as gold. There is one difference. Gold is inherently limited to a certain amount, and we can print dollars if we are a government – debasing it. Would you believe that MUCH gold was minted as coinage debased with other metals as well? So as a practical matter, it is difficult to truly differentiate them even on this point.

So Bitcoin had to be adopted and accepted as a belief system. And if it didn’t do so rather shortly after introduction, it probably never would because it carries the stigma that many don’t buy into the belief system. That it has many admirable traits in that it is reasonably secure, reasonably anonymous, and very easy to transmit online is a good start. But if no one accepts it as payment, it fails – quite utterly.

And on introduction, if millions of merchants and millions of buyers had perceived the very real advantages of block chain and adopted it – in other words “went viral”, it would have been a GREAT innovation in the history of money.

But it didn’t. And that time has passed since introduction, the implication is that people have not accepted it, and so everyone becomes MORE reluctant to accept it. A death spiral based on time. At this point, with the many losses by those who were BUYERS at the $20,000 level, I would say that any innovation in this area in the future is DOOMED TO FAIL if it even begins with the letter B. It is not only marked for death, but it BECOMES the mark for death of a currency.

So for you Bitcoin religious zealots, understand that I am not PREDICTING the death of Bitcoin, I’m pointing out that it is already dead and has been for some time. You are part of a herd of ignorant savages who haven’t got the word yet.

And I tend to think of the failure as a lack of viable mass. Not enough people with STUFF were willing to trade it for bitcoin. So you were held captive by your ability to exchange it for more fungible currencies like US dollars that DID have an established belief system. And that exchange point was the aha moment regulators and defenders of status quo needed to essentially kill it.

I will ignore for the moment that the cause of death could have anything to do with the almost universal propensity for all open source projects to form a circular firing squad and immediately appeal to anyone who will listen for more ammunition. Bitcoin did indeed succumb to internecine warfare quite some time ago.

No the problem was a dearth of places to spend bitcoin. Most of the merchants accepting Bitcoin were selling Ethereum. And versa vice. I was astonished to watch a ready market emerge exchanging some 125 different blockchain crypto currencies. The trading market of the dead. And all of them sharing the Bitcoin death spiral. It’s like watching someone shoot themselves in the head and 124 others wanting to get in on the action by copying their strategy. So they form a club?

I actually had one viewer very condescendingly offer to speak to me about this so he could get me educated on it and all straightened out.

But the tiny few merchants who went out on a limb and accepted it were slaughtered by technical issues and the inability to make it fungible. And so even the progressive online merchants who drank the koolaid soon simply would not accept it.

So why do I want Amazon. com to join in this madness? A secret plot to kill Amazon? Well that hardly works for me as I had invested in Amazon in the late 1990s at about $8 per share. The ONLY thing they sold at that time was books. But I buy a lot of books.

So why do I propose that Amazon get into a blockchain cryptocurrency – I’m calling it Amazon CrypScrip. Well, first, because uniquely THEY CAN and I really don’t think anyone else can. And secondly, because WE NEED IT. The future of online commerce kind of hinges on it.

As I said, a currency is a belief system, and Amazon.com is uniquely positioned to make that belief system real all by themselves. Amazon is well on the way to being “the store” in the way that Taco Bell became the RESTAURANT in the scifi movie Demolition Man.

In this future scenario, competition had caused all restaurants to be absorbed into one giant industry consolidation – Taco Bell. So when you went out to eat, you went to Taco Bell.

I am not advocating for or against, I’m just reporting. Shopping malls across America are transitioning into enormous fitness centers and tattoo parlors. Some kiddy play zones involved. One thing they are NOT going to be in the future is retail store locations. That apparently didn’t work. And Amazon seems to be the cause.

As to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing rather depends on how much Amazon stock you own. If you don’t own any, here’s a stock tip. Buy it. With both hands.

I’m personally addicted to Amazon. As mentioned, I started with books but I’m actually getting into groceries at this point. Why?

I trust them. They’ve made every dicked up transaction “right” for me in the last 20 years. I’ve actually had some doozies. It happens. But they make it right.

Secondly, I actually have the perception that I have ordered stuff at the computer and gone downstairs to find it incredibly sitting on the porch. SOME time must have passed, but I’m a little unclear how or why.

At this point if it were for sale down the street and CHEAPER, I would probably still buy it from Amazon. Why should I go down the street and hump that stuff up to my house myself? Let UPS bring it up. At this point, I’m a good enough UPS customer several different ways, that if I ask the kid to hump something heavy up the stairs to my bedroom, he’ll actually do it and entertain me with tales of the antics of his girlfriends dog while he’s doing it.

So Bitcoin was the right idea, but they simply failed to implement. They never could achieve viable mass. But what is the attraction? It addressed several elements of what a 21st century online currency would have. What are they?

IT IS REASONABLY SECURE. One of the abject failures encountered in trying to put lipstick on a pig in using existing credit card companies as online currency is the horrendous level of fraud involved. I know you think that the REASON they are going to 19% with no grace period in a world of 3% interest rate money is because they are greedy blood suckers. Actually they need all that to cover the HORRENDOUS losses they are encountering through online credit card fraud. It is very deeply in their interest for you NOT to know very much about this. So you don’t. But their losses are terrifying. And that’s where the money goes.Blockchain cryptocurrencies are not totally secure. But they are clever. And they could dramatically decrease this level of fraud, and so level of cost. Every transaction is appended to the chain and the entire thing re-encrypted. That takes a lot of processing power and ultimately bandwidth. But we truly live in an age where processing power and bandwidth are so low cost, you can essentially ignore it. Well I can. Jeff Bezos maybe needs to pay attention to it. But I don’t.
IT IS REASONABLY ANONYMOUS. And careful use could make it more so. In this respect it is a bit like cash.
IT IS NEARLY FRICTIONLESS. Meaning you can transmit it any place in the world, to anyone, at any time, at basically no cost.

I typically pay $45 to send a wire transfer to China. They pay about that on their end just to receive it. That doesn’t support penny a poem.

Credit cards are little better, the good deal is 1.25% of the transaction plus 25 cents. How do you transfer a penny if it takes 25 cents to make the transaction???

So I absolutely LOVE these characteristics of blockchain cryptocurrencies. They are endlessly divisible. You can already easily transfer 1/1000 or 1/10000 of a Bitcoin. And the merchant or the purchaser basically pays nothing. So it literally enables you to throw a penny into the wishing well online, or at the alligator to see if it will wake him up and make him move.

So how do you achieve viable mass? You can’ t get a large number of merchants to take it until you get a large number of people online to have it to spend. And you can’t do that now because there is no place to spend it that takes it.

Chicken and egg problems are so common in the development of the Internet that I normally don’t spend much time on them. Let the lightweights handle it. They will.

But in this case, maybe it needs a nudge from someone older and wiser. Or at least older. Or at least fatter.

A large number of merchants would be ideal. But second best would be one really really LARGE merchant with many individual items you could spend money on.

The original concept of Amazon when founded in 1994 was actually quite simple and truly it was a brilliant connection for Bezos to make. He noticed that there were about 1.5 million books currently in publication, and book stores typically carried 150,000 of them in any one store. Taking the bricks and mortar out, he could list MOST of the 1.5 million and offer them online for sale. That was the original thinking. And it was inescapably correct and it worked very well. I want a book. And driving from one bookstore to the next trying to find it just isn’t in my plan. So Amazon filled an immediate need, apparently not so very obvious.

Amazon revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2018 was $220.957B, a 37.11% increase year-over-year.
Amazon has 158 million U.S. members and 100 million are PRIME subscribers as of April 2018
Over 300 million shoppers worldwide.
Over 2 million “sellers” or merchants on Amazon.
Amazon has over 3 BILLION products in 11 market places worldwide as of January 2018 with a total of 562,382,292 products in the U.S. market alone.

And so we can see that Amazon actually IS a viable mass of merchants (2 million) and products (3 billion) and shoppers (300 million).

They essentially ARE the viable mass necessary to establish an online currency. They can do it in 10 minutes. Not two years.

So if Amazon issued their own blockchain cryptocurrency, it’s over.

But wait, Bezos owns the Washington Post. Isn’t he kind of a leftist anyway?

I’m more than a little uncomfortable representing his politics. For the feeble minded, it is probably handy to reference a party line to know what you believe.

For the more gifted, things are little muddy and vary from topic to topic and even within the same topic on any given day. But the really encouraging thing here is IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Let’s simplify this a bit conceptually to see why CrypScrip might work.

Picture a gift card. An Amazon gift card. Now I suppose the head of Amazon can control who they will sell the gift cards too, but that has some legal problems as every wedding cake decorator will readily attest. But once Amazon sells a gift card, they rather lose control entirely over who the gift card is given to. And they rather have to honor the gift card if it appears to be a validly issued gift card. They have little control over who they sell the gift cards to, and no control over what happens to it after. It could be passed on from person to person to birthday to Christmas forever, unless it has an expiration date, before finding its way back to Amazon. So “deplatforming people is going to be very difficult using Amazon CrypScrip.

Why would you want such a gift card? Well with the right software, you can buy a single gift card of $1000, and send $40 to each grandkid. Or a penny each to LOTS of grandkids.

Note that there IS a bit of cost for Amazon to accept the $1000. But it is a one time thing and all transactions after that are limited in cost to the processing power and bandwidth to record the transaction in the blockchain. Here’s a very big AND. And Amazon gets to hold the US dollars for the period between when the gift card is issued and when the gift card is redeemed. They would do best with NO expiration, because a large percentage will NEVER be redeemed. They will just travel from person to person, merchant to merchant, and of course to the grandkids, forever without EVER being redeemed. They are as good as money, because at any point they CAN be redeemed for any one of 3 billion items.

This is precisely the same effect the US Dollar enjoys as the petrodollar. Hundreds of billions of US Dollars are held overseas as reserves to purchase oil. They will never be presented in the US to buy things. America’s “gift card” used to buy oil. And we all benefit from “the float.”

And to some degree even the original credit card transaction can be eliminated. Few know it, but Amazon already has an Amazon CASH service where you can walk in and pay cash for Amazon credits. This is actually a very EXTENSIVE network of physical locations. In our little town of 35,000 here in Cape Girardeau Missouri, there are currently TWO locations, Freds on South Sprigg street and the CVS pharmacy at William and Kingshighway. They are a bit cagey about just how many locations there are, but available in 300 cities. Actually 7-11 is in on the deal and GameStop as well.

So a bit under the radar, Amazon is already dabbling in being a bank. And they have a huge relationship with banking giant JP Morgan. https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-bezos-and-jamie-dimon-best-of-frenemies-11546664451

Actually Amazon is also ALREADY in the gift card business. You can purchase gift cards in any denomination up to $2000. They never expire. And you can send them via text message or e-mail. The minimum amount is $1. There are no fees or transaction costs either to purchase or send the gift card or to redeem it. The terms of use are more than a little bizarre.

But the bottom line is that between Amazon CASH and Amazon GIFT CARDS, all the machinery is already in place to actually be an online currency. It would take some work on software basically to roll this mashup into an online currency and allow exchanges between individuals in gift card fashion and division into variable transfer amounts. But it is no great heroic advance to fulfill the CrypScrip vision.

I’m obsessed on Amazon as a solution because it leverages their existing status of viable mass to ESTABLISH the belief system that the currency has value because it can be exchanged for any of so much on such a large scale already. What precludes Bitcoin et al from ever becoming viable, is already extant in Amazon.

It would be a tiny step for Amazon to add the advantages of bitcoin. It is impossible for Bitcoin to add the steps to become an Amazon. And it really is that simple.

Will it happen? Unfortunately no. Personal courage is simply not in fashion these days. Jeff Bezos has the intellect and has the means. I have to believe if he had the personal courage to make this dramatic stroke, it would have already been taken. And I assume this discussion has already been had internally at Amazon.

But if this post has titillated the neurons, please send a penny. If everyone on the Internet would do so, I’d have $40 million from one blog entry. After all, what’s a penny in the grand scheme of things? Is it too much to ask?

A penny for your thoughts? Or I suppose with inflation, your two cents worth?

Jack Rickard

The post A Penny A Poem Revisited – Thirty Years Later appeared first on EVTV Motor Verks.

I’m running a bit behind on written articles in the blog, or perhaps a bit ahead on videos. I forget which. In any event we’ll discuss the last two videos simultaneously and at the same time, concurrently, together, and in aggregate, as a group, together.

In our video of January 17, 2019, we open up with the final 3 minutes of our video from May 17, 2009. Yes, we approach 10 years of video publication at EVTV.

I had some small experience and some small success as a writer and magazine publisher over the previous 30 years. But my estimation in the spring of 2009 was that the ad sale for printed magazines was difficult in a very new and different way. Basically you couldn’t get anybody in the business world on the telephone anymore to explain what you were doing.

This is like sales cold calling, but it isn’t nearly as cold. At Boardwatch Magazine, most of the people we contacted by telephone were pleased to take the call. Either they knew all about us and would readily speak to us, or they knew nothing about us and were delighted to learn we existed at all. I was fairly certain that a publication about electric vehicles would be received similarly. Understand we don’t bother calling people we don’t think would be interested in the first place. B2B is slightly different than selling life insurance via unwanted sales calls.

But the world had gone through a phase shift regarding telephones. Company land lines were essentially abandoned. IF you didn’t know the cell phone number of the individual already, he didn’t want to talk to you. And basically the modern communications have so enhanced our ability to interact with people, that instead of communicating with 10 or 12 people directly in a day, everyone could now interact somewhat cogently and directly with 50 or 100 or even 150.

That’s an amazing increase in productivity. But it renders everyone feeling as if they were going 800 mph with their hair on fire ALL THE TIME. So if you DID have their cell phone number, realistically they probably still didn’t want to talk to you. Actually, whatever their desires, they’re simply UNABLE to talk to one more person today than they’re already talking to. We’ve hit the wall.

And so the concept of a video series magazine. I saw a guy in New Zealand doing a bit on a very bottom feeder approach to building an EV – Gav’s EV. Short videos. Very low resolution. And he built such a bad car he couldn’t get it licensed in New Zealand because the frame was rusted away.

So how about feature length HD video? At that time, it wasn’t QUITE HD – 1280 x 720, but WAY beyond the 360 pixel stuff commonly on line. There was not nearly enough bandwidth to carry it. And indeed most of the often aging PC’s widely owned didn’t have the horsepower to PLAY such a video if it was already on the hard drive.

Worse, it was a huge learning curve for me personally to edit video. And indeed, once edited, it could take 17-24 hours just to RENDER and output the video. Our little rPi Battery Display today has more horsepower than my very expensive desktop full blown computers of 10 years ago.

The progress in both bandwidth and computer speed and storage over the past 10 years has been astonishing.

I saw the adoption of battery driven vehicles as single stroke solving a good half dozen problems at once. Heat, vibration, fossil fuels, trade imbalance, military oil colonialism, and the unhealthy effects of vehicle exhaust among them. You DO know that a good way to end it all is with a car and a closed garage door? So why do you think a billion of them doing that is ok as long as it is out of doors? Suck starting an Oldsmobile through the exhaust pipe just doesn’t make sense to me.

Al Gore had just released a documentary titled An Inconvenient Truth predicting that we would all be dead from Global Warming by this time. It didn’t of course happen, but it has left a very wide cult of very confused adherents that rather fail to notice none of the predictions turned out. This has morphed into a political sect seeking to control entire populations with this witch hunt. But at the time it seemed plausible and so our first video was titled A Convenient Response to an Inconvenient Truth.

Brian Noto and I had built a fully functional fiberglass kit-car replica of a 1957 Porsche Speedster as an electric car using newly available Chinese LiFePo4 batteries and an enhanced Warfield forklift motor from NETGAIN. We used a Kelly PWM controller to manage speed and power. We started in September 2008 and drove it Christmas day. It rather exceeded expectations. I drove it up to 94 mph on the first drive and it achieved 110 miles on its first charge.

And my story since has been that if a 54 year-old unemployable with ZERO automotive experience, can build an electric car that does 94 mph and can go 110 miles on a charge, working half days falling down drunk in yellow shoes, then what we have here is NOT precisely a technical problem.

This being AT the time of the home mortgage financial meltdown, which I am certain derived from the six months of $4.50 per gallon gasoline summer, my question was why aren’t there dozens of electric models available from those like General Motors and Volkswagen that DO know something about cars.

And the ONLY OEM I could find proposing one was curiously named TESLA, and their car had become a standing joke of delayed delivery with people doing satires on the ever coming soon TESLA which of course just never quite seemed to be actually available.

And so the original mission was to enlist 100,000 garage tinkerers and innovators and focus their attention on the problem of building a custom electric car themselves. In the process of demonstrating that it could be done, and exhibiting the enormous advantages of electric drive I had already experienced to their friends, neighbors, and ever supportive brides.

Having survived the introduction of the PC, and the Internet, I rather knew what the response would be and counted on it. First, the status quo would try to kill it. And if they were unable to do that, to somehow figure out a way to have invented it.

Elon Musk’s approach was to do it himself. The problem with that is that it provides a convenient point at which to kill it.

My approach was to have a diffuse group of unmanageable individuals around the entire planet EACH do it separately, and in demonstrating the to me obvious advantages, acculturate the population to an idea they were inherently resistant to. The problem was essentially that EVERYBODY knew entirely to much about BATTERIES and the experience was NEVER GOOD.

Lithium ionic batteries being the key. But I first had to kill something myself – the deeply ingrained tradition in the small but already existing group that DID build electric cars already – with inexpensive lead acid batteries. They did their best to ridicule and abuse me out of existence. But compared to FidoNet Network 104 and the newsgroups on the Internet, they just didn’t know how to be abusive enough to get the job done. Indeed, they were by contrast genteel and polite in the extreme, though blissfully unaware of what an online dogfight REALLY looks like. I had already been engaged in these e-mail imbroglios since 1983 or thereabouts.

But this approach from the grass up doesn’t provide the status quo with a good point to kill it. It’s everywhere. Laws don’t matter. Threats don’t matter. These tend to be crusty old guys with a garage, a ball game on the radio, a garage reefer full of beer, and kind of an attitude anyway. And an electric Corvette or Beetle would be sufficiently astonishing that they quickly became local “Edison” celebrities just by building it.

Understand virtually ALL of them actually build much better cars than I do. Some of these people are artists and want each individual wire to march across the firewall in perfect parallel and then curve down in perfectly symetrical arcs. Many used to build hotrods and show cars. If I could show them the electronics and the batteries, they were universally much better at actually building cars.

And they DID take them to car shows. And they were met with a really odd polite resentment from the other hotrod builders as the crowds would simply draw to and focus on the new guy – with the all electric fully restored Pinto. They literally stole the show at every car show they attended.

Not everyone feels equipped to build a car from scratch in their garage. But this created a latent demand of “low hanging fruit”. By the time the Leaf and the Tesla Roadster were available, there was a small group VERY ready to buy the initial offerings of these new OEM electric cars. And I believe that this formed the early group that bought Electric Minis, Leafs, and provided the much needed oxygen for a $110,000 Tesla Roadster to get Tesla off the ground.

We’re a bit past our sell-by date here. The electric vehicle has passed from the tinkerer and innovator stage of the adoption curve described by Everett Rogers and Geoffrey Moore. Classically, at 2 to 2.5% market penetration, you are considered well and safely into the “early adopter” stage and at this point Tesla by itself enjoys that kind of penetration. So we are at the point where demand turns vertical on the curve and grows exponentially.

Right on time, the status quo OEM’s are scrambling to get in the game. The latter phase will be their herculean and usually remarkably effective efforts to rewrite the entire history of the thing so when you think about it, they really invented it from the beginning. This is as much predictably part of the adoption curve as all the rest.

And so in this video, we take a victory lap and congratulate the many who actually did the work and built the cars and so without doubt and without exception (and sadly without reward or recognition) really DID directly change the world for the better. You will be forgotten widely, but will remain forever my personal heroes, joining the cadre that built the Internet and the online world – DESPITE BillGatus of Borg.

So what’s ahead for me? Well 50 years of Camel cigarettes and Kentucky Fried Chicken have taken their toll. But I fear I may have a few more miles to go before I sleep.

Having built the largest residential photovoltaic array in the world in 1998, I rather thought the solar thing had progressed heroicallly by now. Instead, I find a shitshow of recalcitrant utility companies furiously rolling back the clock, a squabbling industry of go nowhere lost dazed and confused inverter and charge controller guys who remain tiny in the face of growing demand, and just a mess really. Because they never did address energy storage.

I had a 50kWh Trojan industrial lead acid battery pack in my Morrison Colorado home in 1998. It featured an absolutely FOOLPROOF automatic transfer switch that allowed us to have power when the grid went down without putting ANYTHING out on the grid and cost a paltry $400 of the $275,000 cost of the installation. UL1741 and the other regulations established by the Utility Companies have NEVER had ANYTHING to do with safety of anyone. They were and are a land grab, seizing your assets without compensation.

So I am mystified to find an entire solar industry completely lacking in leadership or clue. Nothing interoperates. The utilities control everything. And with HEROICALLY falling prices it has progressed really VERY LITTLE in 21 years. And all proponents are scrambling manfully to dig fallen quarters out of the grass while rivers of hundred dollar bills flow through the air above them SEEKING a home.

It is madness.

And the central issue with solar power is simply that the planet blissfuly rotates on its axis every 24 hours. And the rain falls on the good and the evil in like amount. And utility grids are comically poor candidates to act as energy storage devices. They have ever been plagued with load management issues of their own for over 130 years.

The solution is laying on the ground in front of you. Magic rock photovoltaic panel seeks magic rock lithium battery for long walks in the moonlight.

And so once again, it is ALL ABOUT THE BATTERIES.

Right on time we have the exponential growth in electric vehicles. But along the way to success, they had to make an enormous concession. We never did quite get everyone over their poor experiences with batteries. Indeed, specifically with cars, what is the most common symptom of a failed gasoline powered car? You turn the key and it fails to start – dead battery.

Now it could be caused by many things. But for the not very mechanical public at large, the experience is “the battery is dead”. And whatever repairs are needed, the battery also needs recharge or replacement.

So to address this, and to assure the buyers that LITHIUM batteries were different, the manufacturers had to make a huge concession. A ridiculous warranty on the batteries. Minimum 8 year 100,000 mile warranty on THE most expensive part of the car.

My wife drives an early 2013 Tesla Model S. It was out of warranty last year. But the BATTERY WARRANTY continues to 2021 – another 3 years.

And what that means is that essentially every electric vehicle that has been sold thus far, ALL of them, are STILL under battery warranty and will be for years to come.

So if anyone actually HAS a battery problem with an electric vehicle, they call the manufacturer. And they replace the ENTIRE battery for FREE. This isn’t a lead acid car battery. Nothing is “prorated” by time or miles. You just get a brand new battery. And they install it.

But EV’s are wrecked like any other car. And I could make the case that Musk & Co. have gone to extremes to make a very HIGH PERFORMANCE electric vehicle that about 1% of the drivers owning them are competent to drive them at all. The result is what looks like a demolition derby under the influence of bathtub gin.

Enter the auto salvage industry. This is an integral part of our automotive ecosystem. They buy wrecks and either restore them to operation and sell the now usable car or part them out. But in the case of THE most expensive and valuable part of the electric car – the battery – there is essentially ZERO automotive replacement market for these parts. ALL EV’s are still under battery warranty. So no one is going to buy a battery from the junkyard to repair their car.

And so EV’s make a perfect source for relatively low cost lithium batteries for solar storage. I’ve been singing this song for about a year and a half and it seems our viewers have learned the tune.

We’re selling a lot of our bms controller for Model S batteries these days as well as MOdel S battery modules which have established a pretty steady at this point price of about $1300 per module or $250 per kWh.

But I am actually seeing the more numerous Model 3 batteries going for a premium. People are scarfing them up left and right at ridiculous prices, and then rushing to the keyboard DEMANDING to know when I’m going to have a controller done for the Model 3.

Flattered or offended? I can’t decide.

But it IS important. These batteries have very high energy densities and are simply quite dangerous. Tesla has a HUGE motivation to NOT have vehicles bursting into flames and so for their entire history, they’ve put more effort into battery management, with some of the best engineering minds in the field, than any other aspect of their cars.

In this video we do show you what happens when a cell is punctured or overcharged. So we think it is IMPERATIVE to use the Tesla BMS to the greatest extent possible. And so we’ve devoted a truly deranged amount of resource to try to produce a safe “controller” to operate the Tesla BMS. Note that we simply do NOT attempt ever to actually design a Battery Management System. We do a CAN controller to communicate with the BMS boards on the Tesla modules, and indeed have such a controller for the entire pack (which I prefer strongly.)

And yes, we are working on a similar port of our ESP32 controller for the Model 3 modules. As these use custom Tesla chips with a lot of secret sauce, I can’t say we will ever get it done. History being what it is, I’m hopeful we stumble onto something as my experience is it is better to be lucky than good. But IF all that works out, a tested product would be toward the end of the year. ALl of you scarfing up those cheap Model 3 batteries at $16,000 will be able to buy the same thing by then for $7500. They are building, and wrecking, a LOT of Tesla Model 3 cars. We bought the FIRST wrecked Model 3, not in very good shape for $28k and our most recent, nearly running Model 3 for $22k. We talked to a guy in North Carolina that bought one he thought he could repair at $15k. There are 16 on Copart right now.

In this latest video, we came across a PART of a Model 3 module, and so took one of the cells down to parade rest and show you what’s inside and how it compares to the Model S 18650 cell.

We have a very limited number of these to offer as examples – simply something you can keep in the glove box to show people what one looks like in conversation.

We also discuss the theoretical chemistry of the cells, but also the MANUFACTURING chemistry – the actual commercial battery materials used to make a cell. It rather explains why Musk prefers to refer to these as Nickel/Graphite batteries and points to the largest cost component as nickel.

We are pleased to see we are not the only savages on the buffalo hunt. A group in California Tech-Direct is focusing on Leaf Cells – their BMS efforts are probably a fire waiting for a victim but they appear to be working on it. And we would predict a day when ALL EV batteries will be repurposed for solar energy storage.

We do pay attention to economies of scale and cost trends. But we care little for the actual price of things at this point as they are subject to almost daily change. The garage built electric vehicles never paid for themselves with savings at the gasoline pump, though there were savings.

Similarly experimenting with EV batteries is unlikely to make economic sense for many years in reducing your electric bill. But I am convinced that in a nation with 250 million cars and 100 million residences, eventually remaindered car batteries are scalable for the future of solar energy storage. And without that storage, the promise of two magic rocks will remain unfinished.

We serve to enable, abet, and encourage the tinkerers and innovators who do not want to be among the masses who change a light bulb. We need the MEN who will take responsibility for and work to CHANGE THE WORLD and in no small way. Not talk about it. Not dream about it. Not be part of the political movement.

I’m an old man. I only have time, patience, and will to lead and confer with those who use their HANDS and their MINDS to actually CHANGE things, starting in their own shed and on their own rooftop. I believe only they have the ability and the will to change the world, leaving the lightweights and the girls to vote on shit and try to get some facetime on CNN. IT’s kind of like the weather. Everybody talks about it. Who’s doing anything about it?

So for the corporations who want me to consult, and the YouTubers looking for a good cat video, please stand aside and don’t get in any of these guys way. We don’t need your money, and we don’t have time for your silly malformed ill-informed fantasy opinions. You should view EVTV ONCE for a few minutes, and move along quietly. We are far too long and far too boring and far too old and really really fat for you. Jehu needs 10 million viewers and a Youtube income so he can try to get legal and get a green card. We don’t.

I note a blip in this latest video among the 24-35 age group. We never get any of those. You need to move out of mom’s house, marry, raise your children, etc. When you’re done with all that, you can come back and join the men. Till then, this stuff just probably isn’t good for your head. Remember…safety first…

Jack Rickard

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