I think it's only a matter of time until Tesla buys out SpaceX, too, though. Tesla will grow by 10x in the next 5-7 years (and that's just the car business), and will keep growing faster than SpaceX will. By the time SpaceX needs to go public, Tesla may just be able to afford it.
Building solar panels in space using resources gathered in space, and beaming the electricity is an idea recently floated by ULA to create a space economy[1].
RF/microwave engineer here: It would basically be a giant death ray in space, pushing that amount of energy through the air via microwave or laser is scary as shit.
Thanks for pointing that out. I'm always amazed to see how many people don't understand the ramification of pushing gigawatts through air. People who are worried about birds getting killed by wind turbines? You have no idea what this much energy will do...
Either the power density is high enough that it roasts anything crossing the beam path, or it's low enough that it's not appreciably higher than regular old sunlight flux.
Isaac Asimov has a great short story about robots manning such a satellite. One had a glitch whereby he totally worshipped the sun and beaming the energy was the purpose of his "temple". He wouldn't let the humans interfere, which ostensibly violated the laws of robotics until they realized the robot was effectively committed to saving the earth.
If we're building space elevators, we could just cover the uninhabited desert parts of libya and algeria with hundreds of square km of photovoltaics...
> At the Earth's surface, a suggested microwave beam would have a maximum intensity at its center, of 23 mW/cm2 (less than 1/4 the solar irradiation constant), and an intensity of less than 1 mW/cm2 outside the rectenna fenceline (the receiver's perimeter).[82] These compare with current United States Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace exposure limits for microwaves, which are 10 mW/cm2,[83] - the limit itself being expressed in voluntary terms and ruled unenforceable for Federal OSHA enforcement purposes.[citation needed] A beam of this intensity is therefore at its center, of a similar magnitude to current safe workplace levels, even for long term or indefinite exposure.
Even if we assume the conversion efficiency of microwaves are much better than solar, if the beam at its peak is less than 1/4 ordinary solar irradiation, why would this be more economical than ground-based solar?
Not a rocket engineer, but it might actually be reasonable that MCT use batteries built in the Tesla Gigafactory for energy storage during the trip to Mars.
They would need a football sized field of solar panels just to generate the methane to return, as well as a team of people to keep them clean and operating.
The plan as it stands right now is solar, but nuclear needs to be on the table.
Maybe not electric rockets, but SpaceX could start shooting self-driving cars with robotic arms... into space... to manufacture giant solar panels to beam down energy 24/7 to replace all the nonrenewable baseload.
(Or more prosaically, just use the dropping payload cost to launch some big solar sails with energy collectors and then beam it down as has long been proposed.)
As usual, though, you get what you pay for.
The free energy often comes in at a suboptimal angle, and half the time you can't even use it because there's a planet in the way.
That wiki doesn't mention it but I remember from an interview something about being able to fly higher and therefore faster because you don't need to worry about a combustion engine and necessary oxygen levels (could be way off though).
Lack of oxygen to burn fuel for the engines isn't the only thing that keeps civilian aircraft generally below 50,000 feet. There's a few other things.
For subsonic aircraft, the higher they go, the smaller the "coffin corner" gets. As air gets thinner, the speed of the aircraft where it will stall goes up (in terms of True Airspeed. In terms of Indicated Airspeed it basically stays the same which is why coffin corner is a thing). At the same time, the speed of the air moving around the wings gets faster and faster. This is because the aircraft has to move faster and faster through the air to move the same amount of molecules of air over the wings to create enough lift to hold the aircraft up. At a certain point, the stall speed of the aircraft equals the speed at which air moves over the wings at supersonic speeds. The aircraft stalls while simultaneously overspeeding. Bad things ensue. It is possible to design around this (see U-2), but for civilian aircraft, there's little benefit compared to flying at more typical flight altitudes.
The other issue is in regards to the length of time the pilots will stay conscious in the even of cabin depressurization. For aircraft that fly at high altitudes, the autopilot will have an emergency descent mode in the event that cabin altitude rises above a certain point. This is less of an issue than the first one, though.
In the end, this means that for an electric aircraft to fly higher and faster, it would end up needing to fly at supersonic speeds, and thus deal with the increased energy requirements of that, as well as the regulatory hurdles.
This doesn't mean we won't eventually see electric airliners, but they probably won't have a much different flight profile than today's aircraft.
>Now SpaceX only needs to start producing electric rockets, then they can all be unified.
actually electromagnetically driven mass driver - HyperLoop is just a preview or may be a side branch - built in NV/NM, a lot of cheap land with easy permitting and a lot of Sun.
Only small amount of payload - fragile items like humans - has to be delivered in space by rockets, the rest can be shot by the mass driver. And here we come, Martians...
That's pretty typical for companies getting an offer. The company to get purchased goes up, as the buyer usually pays a bit more per share than market price, and purchaser goes down because of... the cost of it I guess. Unclear on the second one, but it's typical too.
TSLA would be paying ~10% of its market value to buy a company that loses money. And they would do so at a premium to SCTY's current market value. TSLA already had an aggressive CapEx plan. So TSLA going down makes sense.
The change in stock price doesn't give the complete picture. You want to look at the change in market cap. There is roughly a 10x difference in the change of market cap with SolarCity increasing by roughly $350 million while Tesla decreasing by $3.5 billion. Tesla has actually lost more shareholder value than it would even take to purchase SolarCity. That would seem to indicate Tesla shareholders feel that SolarCity as a company has negative value. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
From what I've seen highly volatile stocks (such as TSLA) have a sort of flyweight effect, if they go up the market expect them go up fast so the go a little bit higher than is rational, same way if they go down.
Anything other than TSLA going down would make no sense. This is what happens to prices in M&A. 1. TSLA is paying over market. 2. Were the deal to occur all kinds of additional risks are incurred, such as failed integration. 3. The deal may not even happen.
With 98.1 million shares outstanding and an offer price of $26.5 - $28.5 per share. This puts the potential cost of acquisition between $2.6 billion and $2.8 billion.
Yes, I too am extremely curious how this factors into Tesla's expenditures plan....where do they find the money for these things?? He must have been planning this for some time.
It's all stock, so the only "cost" is a devaluation of Tesla stock. That does matter somewhat for Tesla what with how frequently they raise new money.
I guess the losses of SolarCity will be an ongoing cash flow issue. I'm curious where SolarCity went wrong, their business was basically a bank investing solely in solar projects.
One simple way this could really help is just in naming. Tesla Energy is sure to turn more heads than SolarCity as Tesla is a household name now that people generally have good associations with. SolarCity always sounded a bit generic.
Course not. There's the obvious integration of batteries and use for batteries here to. Not to mention what others said that one of this companies is a bit more volatile and the other more established. I'm just pointing out one simple benefit.
Where is Tesla a household name? I never have any exposure to Tesla other than on Reddit and HN. Even now I know little about the company and my main thought is "some new company making electric cars that sound expensive, have unknown longevity, unknown reliability, and unknown depreciation, and will be hard to service."
On the other hand, Solar City reps harangue me to buy their product every time I go to Home Depot, and I see their trucks all over the road. I have no favorable impression of them either--I think "if solar is so great, why isn't my utility doing it, and why would I sign a long-term contract with some dude who hangs out at Home Depot and harasses people." But I don't see "Tesla Energy" having some kind of excellent brand equity.
> if solar is so great, why isn't my utility doing it
For the same reason many market incumbents find themselves unable to innovate. It eats away their existing revenue streams or erodes the value of their current strategy.
If you've invested heavily in non-solar energy infrastructure and that's the majority of the market, you can either invest in solar and add it to the mix, in which case new demand may fall on it, but it's likely to also start eating your existing demand (there are renewable energy source mandates), or you can fight it and try to maximize your profits on what you have. One is a long term strategy, and one is a short term strategy, but not all companies (boards, shareholders) are focused on long term. e.g.
If Linux/UNIX is so great, why didn't Microsoft create a distro (a decade or two ago)? Or, if free software is so great, why don't Microsoft start giving away their software? Because, it makes them less money. It has nothing to do with what's better for the customers (presupposing either of those are better, for the sake of argument).
That makes complete sense, as when it was available it wasn't in competition with DOS, and once they started doing more multi-user stuff, it was (mostly) abandoned.
Tesla is a household name among everyone I know up and down the West Coast, and among every single car or motorcycle enthusiast I know.
But then, both your comments about Tesla and SolarCity seem to be feigning ignorance as a way to disguise your denigration. Hint: Solar (on-prem) is a way to deprive your electricity company of revenue, which is why they're not doing it.
Of course, they use it as some component of their electricity mix, and then bill you for it.
Utilities are under constant pressure to provision capacity to meet rising electric demand. If the on-premises Solar City model (front the cost of the system and installation in exchange for being able to sell the electricity produced) was proven they would be doing it. Building new generating capacity is hugely expensive and almost always a major political battle to get approved.
Many utilities are investing heavily in utility-scale solar and wind installations. But the reality is that on-premises solar is still a gamble. Nobody is yet making money at it, quite the contrary.
No, they're under pressure to protect their coal supply line.
They know that they have to move to renewables soon and eventually coal power generation will be banned, so they're trying to burn as much of their stocks as they can before the stuff in the ground becomes worthless.
> If the on-premises Solar City model (front the cost of the system and installation in exchange for being able to sell the electricity produced) was proven they would be doing it.
No - this completely ignores the way the electric grid, generation, and distribution work. Just because 'utility solar' is more efficient for large scale generation, that doesn't mean it doesn't also make sense for individuals to be able to produce their own electricity.
My solar system has a break even point of 5.9 years - in another 3.4 years I will be pocketing several thousand dollars per year that would otherwise be going to PG&E. Doesn't sound like a gamble to me.
The question is, would you have had higher returns investing in a large-scale solar project?
I have achieved breakeven over buying some produce from the grocery store by growing it in my back yard, but that doesn't mean it's the future of agriculture. I guess it would help if the local Whole Foods were required to buy my excess lemons at the $1/each sticker price.
> The question is, would you have had higher returns investing in a large-scale solar project?
If you are lucky. If you are not, you've just invested in Solyndra (yes, I know they are manufacturer and not producer, doesn't matter). Local solar is much less risky.
Growing your own produce is a net negative 'investment', even when you don't factor in the labor cost. On-premises solar starts making money after a few years (or today, depending on circumstances - I took out a subsidized loan to finance them, so no initial outlay, and had lower costs the day they were installed); centralized solar might make (a few percent) more but you can't leverage, you don't have control over anything (CEO 200% salary hike? 'sure', says the board, 'we're paying a 10% dividend aren't we? That's huge by industry standards!'), and you run the risk of losing everything (whereas solar panels are on your roof and unlikely to be a total loss).
So very different risk profiles, hence very different risk/reward trade-offs.
SolarCity's business model relies on net metering laws that effectively force the utility company to do all that distribution work for free and buy the solar energy for a higher-than-market price, all subsidized by other customers.
You seem to be under an impression that utility companies are super-efficient, extremely innovative and unusually - for companies of their size - willing to try unproven business models (the whole solar-on-premise thing is pretty new). It is not exactly the case I think.
> he reality is that on-premises solar is still a gamble
It is. But that doesn't mean it is bad. It just means SolarCity will try it - and maybe become very rich doing it, or maybe will go bust - and if it works, in 20 years or so utilities will catch up. By that time it will be so regulated and red-taped that it would be hard for a small company to make it work anymore, so the utilities would fit right in.
>Tesla is a household name among everyone I know up and down the West Coast, and among every single car or motorcycle enthusiast I know.
So, right in the Tesla fanbase wheelhouse?
How's this: I live in a small province in Canada, and outside of a few tech enthusiasts, no one I know has any clue about Tesla.
I guess we differ hugely on the definition of "household name". Something is a household name, to me, when someone in every household has heard of the company.
Almost half a million people pre-ordered the model 3 so the brand definitely has some awareness and clout. Sure, those aren't assured buyers, but they are people willing to put down 1k for a car reservation. The amount of people who are still interested in Tesla beyond purchasing a car in the near future is some degree larger than that.
That sort of following and interest can help Solar get more well known, and not to mention further integration with Tesla can quicken drivers along to SolarCity products.
Not to mention, everyone I know has heard of Tesla. You must have interesting friends!
What? I've lived in the Bay Area, the midwest, Texas, and Los Angeles, and have seen Tesla's daily almost every day, yet have legitimately never spoken to anyone who has ever even worked with SolarCity
The point wasn't that I recognize Tesla's, but that Tesla's are a part of daily life in numerous places (see that 50% of the locations I mentioned are not, in fact, in California), whereas I have never interacted with SolarCity nor anyone else who has interacted with them. The point is that it's a very, very reasonable assumption that Tesla is more likely to be known by the average person than SolarCity.
> These two things contradict each other. Why would Tesla be known by people that cannot recognize Teslas?
It's not necessarily contradictory. I know Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, etc are luxury sports car brands. But if one drives past me on the road, I probably won't recognise them.
I'm very familiar with Tesla from simply reading online. Mostly HN, but they are often mentioned on mainstream news sites too. I could recognize a Tesla car in the wild if I was able to read the word "Tesla" on it somewhere, but from say 20 feet away looking at the side I'd have no clue what make it was.
Known by more people does not, in any way, mean I am claiming that people who don't recognize Tesla's know about the company. They are not contradictory at all
Do you live in an urban area? I don't believe there is a city over 500,000 in North America where you could go more than 5 minutes without someone recognizing a Tesla.
Pretty much every average person I can think of (average in the sense of their media consumption or general awareness of what's new / hip / interesting), is aware of Tesla cars at this point. They've been constantly in the mass media news for years now. Everyone knows they make electric cars. They're absolutely a household name now.
> if solar is so great, why isn't my utility doing it,
SolarCity doesn't do utility-scale solar, it does house-scale solar, and those are entirely different models. Also, business model of SolarCity is closely tied to the price structure of utilities, at least in California. These prices are structured - the lowest tier is relatively cheap, but it won't be enough, especially if you use AC or heating. Second tier is more expensive, next one yet more, and the fourth one is about twice as expensive as the first. SolarCity's pioneering idea - PPA - makes you put their solar panel on your property, and pay them for electricity instead of utility. In exchange of which you pay for all the electricity according to tier 1. Which is substantially cheaper. This model has little to do with generation on utility scale.
BTW, never seen them in Home Depot around here. They must be using some other tactics in these areas, or maybe just haven't made friends with local HD.
>Even now I know little about the company and my main thought is "some new company making electric cars that sound expensive, have unknown longevity, unknown reliability, and unknown depreciation, and will be hard to service."
It's not a new company. Tesla was founded 13 years ago. The same complaint can be made about new models of existing car comapnies. You didn't even attempt to research these things so of course they are unknown to you. That's a tautology. I don't know every car brand on the planet but I don't blame them for my own ignorance.
Most electric cars are rapidly depreciating in value. Usually they only sell for 20% of their original value after three years. Tesla cars usually keep 70% of their value. In 2013 you could even turn a profit by reselling a brand new tesla youbecause of their high demand but low supply. https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/remember-when-yo...
It doesn't matter whether I researched it or not. I was responding to someone who suggested Tesla is a household name. Being a household name doesn't come from people researching the brand. Coca Cola is a household name, and it's not because people researched them. Similarly Honda is known for having reliable cars. That's not due to people doing tons of research.
Tesla may be the best thing ever. All I am saying is that they do not have some enormous reservoir of brand equity.
I prefer SolarCity. It mentions the source of the energy and it highlights the idea of a city, and therefore a city powered by the sun. I don't think branding can get any better than that, with Tesla being the umbrella company name - it's perfect.
An unsustainable business will fail no matter the name. I am not sure why Solar loses so much. Physical stuff (atoms) businesses are different character than software (bits) as Negrpronte would say. Elon is much smarter than me and knows these issues.
this is the future of energy! end to end energy production, storage as well as one of the greatest energy users all under one roof. combined in a useful package, this could change the energy market dramatically.
if tesla now produces a range of trucks and thereby also enters the transportation sector, they're completing the full circle.
"Um, yeah, um, so we're here to announce something that is ... ah, sort of amazing ... it's the Tesla Energy Roof" (show cgi render on the big screen behind him) "and, um, it's like the roof you have now, but it's made of energy. Pre-order today."
What do you mean by churn-and-burn in the context of rooftop solar? Most people have only one roof, so a solar installation is a one-time purchase. What would low churn look like?
If boiler room selling is not hardcore enough for you, looks like SolarCity will let you go full "Glengarry Glen Ross" with an in-person "sit" at the customer's house for the real hard sell...
>You will be responsible for identifying potential customers, answering their questions regarding our service and driving to customer consultations and signing them up for our service in their homes.
>TOP PERFORMERS ONLY!
>Unlimited Earning Potential
>2 years prior experience in a quota-driven sales position highly preferred
>This position requires proactively approaching customers throughout the store by engaging the customers in one-on-one discussions and regularly moving with them as they shop
WoW. Exactly like a job I almost took but luckily bailed out of as a teenager... still causes shudders, thinking about being on either side of that relationship :-O
This is hilarious. In my first year of college I almost took a job at a car dealership. I did the group interview and "sold" them a stapler. They were very impressed and offered me a job. One of them told me it wasn't compatible with college given the time commitment and that I should quit college and take that job, pointing to his "success" of owning five cars.
Trying to work something out here, need input, as I've never had this happen before:
I advised a friend to buy Tesla and SolarCity stock some time ago, and they did so. The SolarCity stock was much higher at the time than it is now, perhaps $60-70.
I see that the offer from Tesla involves "0.122x to 0.131x" exchange for Tesla stock. So what does this mean for people whose positions in SolarCity were currently down? They have to hope the Tesla stock eventually goes up enough to recover the loss they suffered on SolarCity?
Probably, yes. They're buying SolarCity with Tesla stock and paying a 20% or so premium over current SC stock. But yeah, if your friends bought say when SC was 50% up, then now they'll have to wait/hope Tesla stock goes up.
Yes, and up significantly. This is valuing the SCTY shares at
$26.50 to $28.50. Your friend would need to wait for TSLA shares to more than double (which would be a higher market cap than Ford, GM, Honda or Nissan).
Actually there's a lawsuit against Zulily basically saying that shareholders who purchased at a higher price than the shares were acquired for are not satisfied with selling at that lower price. https://www.internetretailer.com/2015/09/23/shareholders-see...
Sell-side analysts are not going to pay shareholders $30 for their shares though. Tesla stock is not cash, but is better than nothing. If anyone is losing in this deal I think it will be non-Musk Tesla shareholders.
As a TSLA stockholder, I hope they do; I'd rather TSLA wait to buy up SCTY assets when they're in bankruptcy rather than pay a premium to SCTY stockholders (sorry Elon!)
There's a risk that another company will offer to buy it before this happens. The board of Tesla probably feels this is the right time to get in on a promising business.
The same thing happen recently Shell made a takeover offer for BG Group. In Feb 2015, BG Group shares were at their lowest point in 8 years (https://au.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BG.L#symbol=BG.L;rang...). Then Shell makes an offer and the price bumps up. But not enough to make back the losses on the shares in the past 8 years.
Shareholders will vote on the offer, and have two choices.
1) Vote No would mean they back SolarCity to increase the share price back to at least where they paid for it. If the No vote is successful, the price instantly loses the gains its made in the past 24 hours, and potentially drops a little further.
2) Vote Yes if shareholders think that the gains they'll get from having Tesla shares (dividend, price gains, cash flow, capital to expand, etc.) will make the SolarCity business a better business/more competitive, etc. There may not be the same doubling/tripling/quadrupling of share price than if they stay a separate company, but it's a much lower risk.
Same thing happened for the BG Group/Shell deal. In the end, 99.69% of BG Group and 83% of Shell shareholders approved the takeover. I think we'll see something similar for the SolarCity/Tesla deal as well.
How does it make sense? SolarCity is losing an extraordinary amount of money and is heading toward a bankruptcy. Tesla does not have the free cash flow to stop the bleeding.
Elon is a very large (~20%) SolarCity shareholder and this is pretty much a bailout for him.
Amusingly it was Elon's other other company that was buying SolarCity's bonds--SpaceX. I love Elon, but man he gets creative with financing. Makes me nervous that it could all blow up.
Can you explain why you're worried about Solar City bonds when they have the same risk as high yield corporate bonds? Are people going suddenly stop paying for electricity?
If the risk-adjusted return on those bonds is fair for their price then why wasn't there an independent third party buyer at that price? Isn't it more likely that SpaceX has overpaid for the bonds due to Musk being overconfident in Solar City?
Elon will end up with about one Tesla share for every ten SolarCity shares he previously owned. How does this in any way bail him out or save him? Save him from what, exactly?
Now Tesla is "burdened down" by SolarCity, if you prefer to think of it that way. If anything it's liable to hurt Tesla's stock while SolarCity gets its feet under it. As Tesla's stock drags down, Elon will lose more money than the 20% of $2.1 billion that his SCTY stake was worth today. That's a $420 million stake, and Tesla just dropped $3.2 billion in market cap when this news came up.
I'm totally guessing, but it seems to me this move protects SolarCity from the danger it was in. If SolarCity can make it a bit longer, a couple more years, which they will with no trouble (they were not on the verge of bankruptcy whatsoever), soon Tesla will have all the revenue they need to help SCTY grow. And that's Elon's gamble, as has it all been.
It the letter it noted that the reason for the public disclosure was due to Elon's significant stake of ownership in SolarCity and SEC disclosure obligations.
It doesn't "screw" the homeowner per se, but its not as financially beneficial to them as them financing the system themselves (which, admittedly, can be difficult for a lot of homeowners). If Solar City can still be profitable financing installs instead of doing PPAs, and sales can be turned around using the Tesla model, its a win.
I'm pretty sure the big win is giving Solar City access to Tesla's financing facilities.
No no, I don't mean them installing their own systems vs Solar City doing it.
If you have a PPA, the installer reaps all of the financial benefits. If you finance the system, you get all of the financial benefits. Its the difference between leasing a car versus financing it and then driving it until the wheels fall off (keep in mind, panels have a 25 year warranty but will still produce above 80% capacity for decades after that).
It loses a phenomenal amount of money and before this afternoon appeared to be heading towards bankruptcy. Elon owns something like 20% of SolarCity which definitely makes you think that he wanted to save his stake with Tesla's money. IMO this is actually very troubling for Tesla.
- They will install solar panels on your house for free.
- You pay them a much lower rate than what the public utility company charges for the electricity generated from those solar panels.
- You save tens of thousands of dollars and lower your carbon footprint by hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 over 20-30 years.
- They lose a ton of money installing those expensive panels but make a TON of money in the long run selling you that electricity that is generated for next to nothing.
So as you can see, Solar City losing money is actually a good thing because it means they're making so many damn sales that in 10 years they're going to be reaping the profits from those sales like crazy.
From what I've read, that if you plan to stay in your house more than 10 or 15 years, then it makes more sense to buy panels and other hardware yourself, but if your horizon is lower then you should lease them.
That said, purchasing the hardware costs as much as a car, so maybe can't do that.
Even if you plan to stay in your house long-term, buying the equipment outright risks getting stuck with outdated technology. It seems there have been a lot of advances lately in solar panel technology, so if you had bought panels a few years ago, they would not be nearly as efficient as if you bought them today. And if you bought them next year...
The retail price of electric power basically never decreases. Therefore, if a solar purchase makes sense today, it won't be regretted later. If it doesn't make sense, i.e. because the cost of financing the loan is greater than the projected savings on electricity spending, then it would be reasonable to wait for higher-performance panels.
Sure, but if I can lease today's equipment for a short time, and then upgrade to tomorrow's equipment, and get the better performance, that might work out in my favor. I'm not out the full cost of the equipment today, needing to amortize that over 15 years.
You're paying for the full cost of today's equipment either way, the difference is that with the lease, once you reach the end of the lease term you have the choice of either throwing it in the trash or paying the cost of a new system to keep what you've already paid for once.
If you read the fellow's comments, he seems to be basing his judgement solely off the fact that they're losing money.
Yet by that standard, Tesla as well as Amazon are "awful businesses" too. He's not looking to the future, or closely examining why they're losing money.
Elon is the chairman of SolarCity, it was founded by his cousin and he is the largest private shareholder. Now after the shares have tanked in value he is buying it with new TSLA shares... This stinks to high heaven. If he really believes it is valuable he should have bought it himself, not with other people's equity.
As for why I think it's an awful business:
1) Huge amount of debt
2) Hugely negative free cash flow (-$790m last year)
Sometimes this can work, but it's absolutely the last thing Tesla needs (they need to put cash to work building out the battery factory and production of the Model 3, not subsidize solar panels).
But he's not abusing shareholders as you seem to think. He obviously believes Tesla stock is going to be fantastically valuable in years to come. He believes he's making the right move for everyone. And isn't that the CEO's job? To do what he believes is best? And do you think after the past decade of performance, this is where he's finally going to go wrong and steer it into the ground, after getting this far?
He wouldn't have done this if he hadn't carefully analyzed every aspect of the situation and concluded it could all be done. He's not just throwing dice in the air. Neither SpaceX nor Tesla could have done any of the things they've done if he was.
Much higher revenue with much lower costs will help the business. Having Tesla shareholders bail out Elon's side project (his cousin started it, Elon is the chairman and he owns a giant stake) looks really awful.
Out of the blue comments like this without any context or information are worse than useless. Many, if not most people have no idea about SolarCity's business model, so all this does is negatively bias people against them for no reason other than an anonymous stranger's bare opinion. You may be right, but until you give some supporting facts, you are only hurting the discussion.
Pontificating that a name change will really turbo charge SolarCity isn't exactly contributing to the discussion either. SolarCity is an awful business because it loses a huge amount of money. Go look at their financials, it's beyond ugly.
Looks like SCTY's revenue is climbing every single quarter. Not sure how that is "beyond ugly" - the vision is a solar-powered world and their revenue is growing. They are losing a lot of money too, yes, but that does not mean the business is "ugly".
I think it's been proven that "losing an awful amount of money" does not equal "an awful business" It might - but that alone is not proof. Many businesses invest (pour more money in during an early phase than they make) and end up doing really well.
In the time it took you to detail the supposed biases of the link (which you didn't back up yourself, mind) and post a throwaway shoot-the-messenger comment, you could have read and understood whether the arguments they put forward are persuasive and correct, something with infinitely more value.
The tl;dr:
* SolarCity is massively in debt. True.
* The solar industry as a whole, including SolarCity, has a tricky future since government subsidies are sunsetting soon. True.
* SolarCity acknowledged those risks and others, and disclosed them to the SEC. True.
* A promient Wall Street advisor rated their stock a "Sell" based on all this. True.
I see nothing in that article that is misleading, non-factual, or even a question of interpretation of unarguable facts.
I'm all for pointing out when a source might have a bias, but that absolutely does not invalidate what they have to say or "discredit" its poster.
SolarCity is massively in debt .. because that's their whole business. They take money from banks or companies like Google and invest it in solar projects, expecting a reliable return for them and their investor. Debt is the whole point.
Government subsidies are sunsetting as solar is getting exponentially cheaper. It comes down to selective reporting.
The "risks reported to the SEC" are classic fodder for reporters trying to make a story out of nothing. For purely legal reasons, companies will enumerate in the 10-K even the faintest risks to their business to preempt any claims.
To add, it's bizarre that the top-voted comment is touting the upside of a name-change. As it stands, folks will get the wrong impression that a name change will be a critical factor for a company in turnaround mode.
Substantive critique is fine, but drive-by dismissals are not.
The comment you're replying to may not have made the deepest point, but was still a legit thing to say. If you have a problem with it, the burden is on you to respectfully refute it, not take a cheap shot. We're trying for good—collegial—conversation here.
Some people think SolarCity is doing terribly because they're losing so much money. Actually them losing money is an incredibly great sign for the long run (assuming they don't run out of money - which Elon won't let happen).
Here's how their business model works:
- They will install solar panels on your house for free (or cheaper than the full cost).
- You pay them a much lower rate than what the public utility company charges for the electricity generated from those solar panels.
- You save tens of thousands of dollars and lower your carbon footprint by hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 over 20-30 years.
- They lose a ton of money installing those expensive panels but make a TON of money in the long run selling you that electricity that is generated for next to nothing.
So as you can see, SolarCity losing money is actually a good thing because it means they're making so many damn sales that in 10 years they're going to be reaping the profits from those sales like crazy.
I totally understand the business model, but I'm betting this was a really tough pitch to VCs when SolarCity was just starting up.
"We'll be lucrative by the early 2020s, assuming solar starts seeing widespread adoption" carries a lot more weight now than it would've a few years ago, just because of the explosion of programs and services like Project Sunroof.
If the failure mode is "public utilities have achieved regulatory capture", then isn't having something like Tesla come in with billions of dollars of support an effective solution?
You're asking a different question, in a very loaded way.
Bringing your question back to SCTY, one of the critiques of SCTY in NV was that SCTY was expecting/betting to be able to sell back electricity to the grid at retail (not wholesale) rates via net-metering. Inarguably, this was a threat to the utility and its ability to re-coup its large capital investments (sunk costs) in the grid.
There are other solar companies whose business model doesn't rely as directly on "billions of dollars of (taxdollars in) support."
There are two different regulatory things going on here. The first is a tax rebate for installing solar. The second is a policy requiring utilities to purchase excess energy from people with solar installations. My interpretation of the article you linked was that the utilities were attempting to conflate these by arguing that the money to pay consumers for their excess power originated from the public, and that they're attempting to place caps and how much energy can be sold back to the grid and don't care much about the installation subsidies.
From what I can tell, the biggest jumps in Solar City's business were when the caps on excess power were lifted. Which makes sense. Rebates are nice and reduce their risk and increase how deep they can go in, but increasing the net metering cap from 3% to 10% more than triples their revenue and cuts their return period to a third what it was. Those caps are not subsidized, in fact often being implemented as trivial accounting tricks where a user gets credits during the day that they can spend that night or next month.
Net metering is effectively a subsidy for solar for customers with solar once you take into account things like the cost of maintaining the grid, and will become more and more of one as tech improvements and economies of scale drive down the cost of utility-scale solar and the actual free-market price of power at peak solar times compared to the rest of the day.
Eventually that's true. However, we have yet to hit that point as solar is still a small fraction of electricity production in the US and the daytime peak is huge.
1) if people get script money, which they spend on energy, they effectively get to use the utility as a battery - at a cost for the utility.
2) The utility can't (and honestly, shouldn't) directly shoulder that cost, so they pass it on to other clients.
3) net-metering cap serves as a limit to prevent the utility from being unsustainable, because the rooftop energy business can't survive without it.
What SolarCity effectively wants is to move the cap so that they get more parts of a pie which they are stucturally forced to share with the utility. Effectively, we're witnessing the woes of a growth-hacking model in an environment where the main source of margin and growth is regulatory decision.
Not exactly how it works. The projects are leveraged off balance sheet with separate, often tax advantageous entities owning the panels in a complicated lease buyback structure. 'Losing money is a good thing' is not true if you understand time value of money and debt leveraging. I haven't done much research but Solar City is probably hurting now because Nevada renagged on gridnbuyback provisions and lots of other states are eliminating residential incentives and subsidies for solar.
Also although they were the first to do some of the complicated financing stuff, rooftop solar installation has turned into a very low margin business with lots of competition in most markets. It's not really groundbreaking stuff they are doing.
Not at all. In a ponzi scheme the later investors pay for the profits of the earlier investors. In this case Tesla is taking a loss on customers but turning a big profit in the long run regardless of whether later customers sign on.
Unfortunately, their business model and pricing is far from competitive in some areas of the United States. I inquired into their services, and when it came to pricing, they were at least 50% over the average of all service providers and plans, and in the bottom 10% as far as price per kw/h.
Also, the home owner has no ownership stakes in any of the hardware. That's great during the service period (10 years if I recall), where they maintain and manage the hardware. However, at the end of the term, you are offered to buy the equipment with a hefty baloon payment. To the point ehere you'd be better off and come out FAR ahead by paying out of pocket from the onset and own the equipment outright.
The buyers likely can't afford to outright buy. Being the cheapest isn't usually the best idea in business either. Apple does pretty well being much more expensive than the average.
well then think of it like the perks package. solar city allows people that couldn't afford solar to afford solar (at least up front). electrons are electrons, sure just like a job is a job but some jobs have a beer fridge and some jobs do not
I think the key here is batteries. The utilities will fight (lobby) to give themselves the upper hand when it comes to buying solar power from consumers. Tesla plans to make lots of batteries. Batteries also happen to be good solution to these legislative issues.
A match made in... the backroom?
It's not about brand at this point, it's about economies of scale and production?
Its about sidestepping regulatory capture. If you can drive battery costs down far enough, you don't need net metering subsidies than can be taken away on a whim.
Converting to metered grids (on which consumers can sell) costs a small fortune, often for very little benefit. Even environmentalists have been weighing in against it as wasteful.
Tesla's home battery solution offers an obvious response to this situation - you can minimize or avoid grid sell-off by doing in-home storage to smooth demand. That has the potential to make SolarCity an incomparable player in non-metered markets, keeping with Musk's general "no viable competitors" ethos.
Also, Tesla automobiles are giant batteries themselves. If you're looking at demand shifting, it's rarely a bad thing to have two days of storage capacity plugged in all night. I think that is where the true magic happens, converting non net metering markets to profitability.
The lease payments do not make it to SCTY's balance sheet, they're securitized and sold as SolarBonds, a financial beast of their own, with no secondary market, no default protection and no rating from a ratings agency.
I've currently invested in Solar Bonds, and am comfortable with the risks they present. I don't need a secondary market and I'm not worried about vast amounts of people no longer paying their electric bill.
> I'm not worried about vast amounts of people no longer paying their electric bill
No one was worried about vast amounts of people no longer paying their subprime mortgages either. Not saying your investment strategy is wrong, but "predictions are difficult, especially about the future".
If the lease payments backing the bond stop, Solar City will attempt to rectify the situation, but it's not responsible for the remainder of the debt in any fashion. This specific aspect of operation is similar to other online servicers, like LendingClub, which would not compensate you in the event of a peer-to-peer loan default.
• your inability to initiate bankruptcy proceedings against SolarCity;
• the lack of certain “customary” investor protective covenants in the indenture;
• your inability to require us to repurchase the Solar Bonds upon a change of control of SolarCity;
• lack of cross-default provisions in the indenture with respect to our other debt; and
• the lack of an underwriter to conduct third party due diligence and other types of “gatekeeper” actions typically taken by an underwriter in an underwritten public offering.
To expand on this, it seems clear to me that Tesla should be in the business of selling home solar installations. The question is whether this the right way to get into the business. This was a cheap way to get 1/3 of the market.
There is an existing partnership where SolarCity sells and installs Tesla batteries.
I think Tesla's ability to sell another company's installations is limited by the impression they are trading on their brand. ie. a "Trump Steaks" problem.
On the 1 hour and 32 minute Tesla conference call this morning Elon mentioned:
-there is redundant/duplicate hardware between solar panel & the Powerwall installations
-substantial drop of cost of sales for SolarCity between 30-50%, also drop on tesla's side
-biggest asset is SolarCity's installers
-also some strengths in the SolarCity's sales side
-a special deal with SolarCity would be a conflict of interest
-a seamlessly integrated product/system is just better, and "you aren't wondering if you should blame the solar company, the battery company or what if you are the end customer"
-installation crew can do everything in one visit instead of two or three
Other interesting note:
-Elon explicitly said Tesla has the potential to be a trillion dollar market cap company
My take on it is if the deal is viewed solely based on past performance and traditional financial analysis it probably has big issues. If viewed from a future standpoint where Tesla pulls off things like the Model 3 successfully, it could be a pretty good deal for Tesla. A bigger question for shareholders is what kind of shareholder dilution could occur between today and say 5 years from now on whatever roadmap Elon is imaging and isn't public.
I believe that the regulatory environment for solar is becoming rather un-cooperative. I also think that the solution to the uncooperative (Utilities don't want to pay for solar electricity) situation is a Tesla product, batteries! It makes sense to me. It also reeks of backroom planning.
Don't forget the carbon credits: by owning the panels on your roof, solarcity (and others in the same business like sunrun) own the carbon credits. Which they can then sell in the carbon markets.
When you buy your own panels, there's no way to cash in on the carbon credits. I'm waiting for some startup to provide a way to market them...
> You save tens of thousands of dollars and lower your carbon footprint by hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 over 20-30 years.
Most consumers don't give an eff about carbon footprint unless it saves them money or the pollution does affect them directly. Also I dont think there are too many people in USA spending tens of thousands of dollars in electricity bill.
Solar Panale is a great idea if there is technological breakthrough but else it a tried and failed model.
> Also I dont think there are too many people in USA spending tens of thousands of dollars in electricity bill.
They do spend that much, the average in the US is $115 a month, and the spread is lowish, ranging from $90 to $130 a month between states, and up to $150 in outliers like Alaska. Or in other words, a US average of nearly $1.4k a year.
A 10 year horizon puts total electricity expenses at $14k, a 30y horizon you mentioned puts it past $40k.
However, those are not savings like the guy implied that you replied to. Solar today tends to lower your bill by maybe 5-10% on average over large amounts of customers tops. So savings would be a few thousand bucks, not tens of thousands.
More importantly, that's a rate for today, and it remains to be seen how that will develop into the future.
The big untold truth for customers is that there's a high probability that electricity prices will come down sharply. Renewable energy resource price points are dropping fast, both on the hardware side, the soft-market side, and spurred on by subsidies. We've already seen crazy low record rates, like the latest PPA (power purchase agreement) was as low as 3 cents. PPA's set electricity prices for contracts that last well into the future, so they're essentially the industry's prediction for where the market will go. (i.e. a 20 year contract at 3 cents per kwh might look silly when the price is 5c today, but it implies industry experts expect the price to drop such, perhaps to 2 cents near the end, that the average cost level over 20 years will drop below 3c.)
Those PPAs will spread and start to affect electricity prices, 3 cents already undercuts wholesale prices of most coal, gas and nuclear capacity for example. And those wholesale prices will push down retail prices, too, such that existing solar installations on average over 20 years may actually turn out to be more expensive than the market rate, i.e. no savings at all, because their financing assumes rates to stay stable, or drop less than they likely will as far as I can see.
I'm still a huge fan of solar and urge anyone to consider it, but as an investment as a consumer I think it's financial benefits are oversold.
Actually if SolarCity used a realistic discount rate to measure the value of their future cash flows which extend 40 years out, the company would be massively insolvent. Ahhh, the beauty of non-GAAP accounting...
The pitch for user adoption seems to be that it will be cheaper and eco-friendly. But I question that, for example if your solar panels break or malfunction. You will always be paying for energy outside of solar as a back up.
So two companies with great potential. One (Solar City) has a problem convincing investors and is exposed to wide fluctuations and the other (Tesla) is pretty good at managing expectation and enthusiasm in the market. So I guess the idea here is to limit exposure in one of them by absorbing it in another. Might work but goes counter intuitive to the idea that I always thought was the most important in Musk companies: Focus. Focus on delivering one main value. Hope this works out.
He's expanding the stack of technologies and resources he can directly control. First there was the car, but the car is only useful with good batteries, enough service stations, and cheap power. Step 1, open service stations and provide cheap power. Step 2, integrate the batteries so you can control production and reduce cost. Step 3, integrate power generation so you can control cost of that cheap power you are providing.
This is the equivalent of Ford buying Exxon (which already includes the service stations), and then offering cheaper gas to all Ford customers. Who doesn't think that would influence at least some people (or companies! Fleets of cars!)
I'm not sure how that's relevant. Musk being a founder of both companies doesn't magically make them different in what they are and do. The pieces of the pie in play are similar, if apportioned differently. They would combine to a similar whole.
If he's using these for the SuperCharger network and plans to "gas-up" cars with solar... I don't think they can get that level of efficiency from panels spread through a gas station lot? Because that's where this purchase would seem to make sense to me, is with a nationwide network of SuperChargers powered by solar.
I'm sure some value would also come from selling to residential buyers with Teslas?
It's cheap, but currently there are 649 supercharger stations, and 3906 superchargers[1], and he gives that power away for free to Tesla owners. Buy cheap sell free doesn't really scale, unless it's subsidized in some other way (and reducing cost even more may make that more palatable).
There's also the powerwall play. I imagine a lot of people that signed up for powerwall will want solar at the same time, if they don't have it. Maybe this is actually a way to hedge against powerwall coming in at cost (or a way to get an installation network). If most the installs come with some solar installation as well, maybe they can see the device at a loss and meet cost expectations while still not losing money.
Elon is using a public traded company to save his other failing businesses. In a sense he already did this before using his private loans guaranteed by Tesla shares. But at least in that case it was his own money. Now he wants to use other shareholder's money to bailout his floundering solar energy investment.
The CEO is his cousin, but he has recused himself of voting on the deal. I doubt the SEC & FTC will care; Wall Street on the other hand, I think they all see what this is about.
According to the announcement, Musk has recused himself from voting on this proposal on either side. It seems unlikely that the SEC would see funny business on Musk's part in a decision that was made by everyone except Musk.
Also: "Elon Musk founded company [that's running out of money] offers to purchase Elon Musk founded company that has run out of money"
I feel like not three months ago there were plenty of articles about Tesla having less than 2 years operating budget left even after accounting for increased revenue from presales.
Others have already made this point[1] but to me, SolarCity has some aspects that make it look like more of a of a tax-arbitrage business than a solar panel retail business. It reminds me a bit of the ethanol blending tax credit, which led, in some cases, to companies mixing ethanol with petrochemicals solely for the tax benefit.
You are probably right but (1) SolarCity would be foolish as a business not to take advantage of tax incentives (2) the primary purpose of these incentives in the first place should be exactly this - to encourage businesses like solarcity (3) over the long term of course the business model assumes panel prices reduce and become more efficient so the tax thing isnt required in the long term to prop them up
There's taking advantage of tax incentives, and then there's this:
"According to the Kroll report, SolarCity reports solar system costs when claiming tax credits that are 75 percent higher than solar system costs disclosed to investors in the company’s quarterly investor earnings call."
That's a legal tax loop hole though, they are allowed to file based on retail prices they sell their panels for even though they buy them at wholesale bulk prices
Solar keeps getting cheaper. People are wagging their fingers about bad financials, when SolarCity is still building a huge state-of-the-art factory.
When investing in something like this, it doesn't really make sense to look at what they're doing now, but where they're going to be in the near future.
It's not the same, but definitely similar. I made it in response to someone else's comment but thought it'd be a good top-level comment too. Should I delete the original? shrug
> In addition, as a result of their overlapping directorships, Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias have recused themselves from voting on this proposal at the Tesla board meeting at which it was approved, and will recuse themselves from voting on this proposal at the SolarCity board as well.
Source: https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-makes-offer-to-acquir...
They're not voting in the board meetings, so can only recommend it to the board and then not vote.
Almost, but not quite. JB Straubel will be the next Tesla CEO. This will happen after the Model 3 launch and after Tesla sells off its car manufacturing to focus on battery/energy/infrastructure.
Do you have a source for selling off the car manufacturing part of Tesla?
Its worth noting that JB Straubel is just as passionate about electric vehicles as Elon is. JB actually worked on electric aircraft at his previous company, Volacom.
This could be an all time Machiavellian move just to punish the Solarcity shorts on Wall St., which include Jim Chanos and others. The after hours bump to SC is killing the shorts and that might be the point more so than the deal actually closing.
It's very unlikely they would do something like this just to punish short-sellers.
Also, Tesla is also popular among short-sellers, and it dropped in value (which was expected), so it wouldn't make any sense to 'punish' short-sellers in SCTY only to 'reward' them in TSLA.
This only stings the shorts if they don't go through with it. Otherwise they're paying a premium and stinging themselves too. And if the shorts can hold on, and they don't go through with it, then the stock price will go back down.
That would be pretty interesting, but is it legal? Is it just illegal to manipulate stocks for gain (or personal gain), or is any manipulation (if provable) illegal? It seems a fuzzy rule based the SEC description[1], which is probably why it's so hard to go after people for it.
What if you know it won't be (such as a condition of the offer being incompatible with a prior contract you know about on the other side)? At what point does it cross from marketing to market manipulation? Both have an intended side effect. Just increased media exposure for a period could be a side effect.
>What if you know it won't be (such as a condition of the offer being incompatible with a prior contract you know about on the other side)
I'm pretty sure that's intent to commit fraud.
ANAL, ANA-Finance Guy.
I'm pretty sure the "intent" is the important part here if the primary purpose of a financial move is to manipulate the market that's where you start getting into trouble.
Making a non-sincere offer and publishing it in order to create media traction that would have a major impact on the market can quite possibly be illegal.
That said if the offer was intentionally non-sincere only an idiot would publish it as part of the PR, 30% premium on a stock however seems to be a pretty sincere and good offer to me tho.
It's fraud to offer someone a deal you know they aren't allowed to accept? It might be fraud to let it go through with prior knowledge, but if you clued them in that they shouldn't do so before hand, then I'm not sure how you could be found at fault for someone else's breach of contract.
It's probably only distinguished by whether you admit your intention was to never have the deal succeed, or claim that you came by the knowledge, or at least the understanding, after the initial offer.
There's an interesting calculus potentially at play: there can be a sincere intent that the offer be accepted, but the offer might have never been made were it not for the positive side-effects that mitigate the downside.
Well, in this case, the question is will some people that have shorts and have to pay higher premiums decide to drop them if the offer sits for a while and continues to affect the market, if they expect it to go through? Does getting more exposure in the media affect the companies in a lasting way beyond the timeframe of the deal?
In a perfectly rational and efficient market the answer would be no. I don't think we're in a perfectly rational and efficient market. So I guess the question is whether the market is irrational enough or inefficient enough that there's some way to game the side-effects of this usefully.
Seems to me that if Tesla can bundle things from companies/divisions they own it may work out well for them. Driving a Tesla? Bring it home and plug it in to pull power from your PowerWall, which was charged during the day by your SolarCity panels. Charge a little less on the secondary items, but increase your volume by trying to drive sales to Tesla vehicle owners who might otherwise have never considered such a thing.
If they can combine the PowerWall with the vehicle charging station, that just makes it better.
I think the major problem is the total lack of synergy between Tesla and SCTY.
Tesla has a sales program which is basically 0 marketing, 0 sales, 100% inbound and SCTY is tele-sales + door to door (which is payroll intensive and harder to manager). Tesla has an operations cycle which is completely centralized except for the car delivery. All of SCTY is contractors installing stuff on customer roofs.
I do not see any operational synergies between the two companies except for the superchargers (and buying SCTY for superchargers feels wrong).
What the press release talks about is combined installation of solar panels and Tesla home infrastructure (charging station + Powerwall). I think that speaks to the sales perspective too - it could be very easy to upsell the (incoming) Tesla customer to a Tesla + SolarCity installation, for a lower CAC than the usual SolarCity sale.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 473 ms ] threadI think it's only a matter of time until Tesla buys out SpaceX, too, though. Tesla will grow by 10x in the next 5-7 years (and that's just the car business), and will keep growing faster than SpaceX will. By the time SpaceX needs to go public, Tesla may just be able to afford it.
So it's not outside the realm of possibility.
[1] http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Published_Papers/Comme...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Microw...
Either the power density is high enough that it roasts anything crossing the beam path, or it's low enough that it's not appreciably higher than regular old sunlight flux.
Found it: "Reason"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(short_story)
> At the Earth's surface, a suggested microwave beam would have a maximum intensity at its center, of 23 mW/cm2 (less than 1/4 the solar irradiation constant), and an intensity of less than 1 mW/cm2 outside the rectenna fenceline (the receiver's perimeter).[82] These compare with current United States Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace exposure limits for microwaves, which are 10 mW/cm2,[83] - the limit itself being expressed in voluntary terms and ruled unenforceable for Federal OSHA enforcement purposes.[citation needed] A beam of this intensity is therefore at its center, of a similar magnitude to current safe workplace levels, even for long term or indefinite exposure.
The plan as it stands right now is solar, but nuclear needs to be on the table.
(Or more prosaically, just use the dropping payload cost to launch some big solar sails with energy collectors and then beam it down as has long been proposed.)
That wiki doesn't mention it but I remember from an interview something about being able to fly higher and therefore faster because you don't need to worry about a combustion engine and necessary oxygen levels (could be way off though).
For subsonic aircraft, the higher they go, the smaller the "coffin corner" gets. As air gets thinner, the speed of the aircraft where it will stall goes up (in terms of True Airspeed. In terms of Indicated Airspeed it basically stays the same which is why coffin corner is a thing). At the same time, the speed of the air moving around the wings gets faster and faster. This is because the aircraft has to move faster and faster through the air to move the same amount of molecules of air over the wings to create enough lift to hold the aircraft up. At a certain point, the stall speed of the aircraft equals the speed at which air moves over the wings at supersonic speeds. The aircraft stalls while simultaneously overspeeding. Bad things ensue. It is possible to design around this (see U-2), but for civilian aircraft, there's little benefit compared to flying at more typical flight altitudes.
The other issue is in regards to the length of time the pilots will stay conscious in the even of cabin depressurization. For aircraft that fly at high altitudes, the autopilot will have an emergency descent mode in the event that cabin altitude rises above a certain point. This is less of an issue than the first one, though.
In the end, this means that for an electric aircraft to fly higher and faster, it would end up needing to fly at supersonic speeds, and thus deal with the increased energy requirements of that, as well as the regulatory hurdles.
This doesn't mean we won't eventually see electric airliners, but they probably won't have a much different flight profile than today's aircraft.
This is actually a troll perpetrated by some Manhattan Project scientists when they went into town.
actually electromagnetically driven mass driver - HyperLoop is just a preview or may be a side branch - built in NV/NM, a lot of cheap land with easy permitting and a lot of Sun.
Only small amount of payload - fragile items like humans - has to be delivered in space by rockets, the rest can be shot by the mass driver. And here we come, Martians...
See the rest of this thread for the other interpretation of electric rockets (as in, with reaction mass, but external beamed power).
SCTY should trade up into the range of the offer.
It could also mean shareholders believe Tesla's management has gone off the deep end.
I guess the losses of SolarCity will be an ongoing cash flow issue. I'm curious where SolarCity went wrong, their business was basically a bank investing solely in solar projects.
On the other hand, Solar City reps harangue me to buy their product every time I go to Home Depot, and I see their trucks all over the road. I have no favorable impression of them either--I think "if solar is so great, why isn't my utility doing it, and why would I sign a long-term contract with some dude who hangs out at Home Depot and harasses people." But I don't see "Tesla Energy" having some kind of excellent brand equity.
For the same reason many market incumbents find themselves unable to innovate. It eats away their existing revenue streams or erodes the value of their current strategy.
If you've invested heavily in non-solar energy infrastructure and that's the majority of the market, you can either invest in solar and add it to the mix, in which case new demand may fall on it, but it's likely to also start eating your existing demand (there are renewable energy source mandates), or you can fight it and try to maximize your profits on what you have. One is a long term strategy, and one is a short term strategy, but not all companies (boards, shareholders) are focused on long term. e.g.
If Linux/UNIX is so great, why didn't Microsoft create a distro (a decade or two ago)? Or, if free software is so great, why don't Microsoft start giving away their software? Because, it makes them less money. It has nothing to do with what's better for the customers (presupposing either of those are better, for the sake of argument).
Actually, they did! Xenix was Microsoft's Unix distro, licensed and derived from AT&T's System V source.
During the late 1980s it was the most popular Unix variety of all, measured by number of installations.
But then, both your comments about Tesla and SolarCity seem to be feigning ignorance as a way to disguise your denigration. Hint: Solar (on-prem) is a way to deprive your electricity company of revenue, which is why they're not doing it.
Of course, they use it as some component of their electricity mix, and then bill you for it.
Many utilities are investing heavily in utility-scale solar and wind installations. But the reality is that on-premises solar is still a gamble. Nobody is yet making money at it, quite the contrary.
They know that they have to move to renewables soon and eventually coal power generation will be banned, so they're trying to burn as much of their stocks as they can before the stuff in the ground becomes worthless.
No - this completely ignores the way the electric grid, generation, and distribution work. Just because 'utility solar' is more efficient for large scale generation, that doesn't mean it doesn't also make sense for individuals to be able to produce their own electricity.
My solar system has a break even point of 5.9 years - in another 3.4 years I will be pocketing several thousand dollars per year that would otherwise be going to PG&E. Doesn't sound like a gamble to me.
I have achieved breakeven over buying some produce from the grocery store by growing it in my back yard, but that doesn't mean it's the future of agriculture. I guess it would help if the local Whole Foods were required to buy my excess lemons at the $1/each sticker price.
If you are lucky. If you are not, you've just invested in Solyndra (yes, I know they are manufacturer and not producer, doesn't matter). Local solar is much less risky.
So very different risk profiles, hence very different risk/reward trade-offs.
> he reality is that on-premises solar is still a gamble
It is. But that doesn't mean it is bad. It just means SolarCity will try it - and maybe become very rich doing it, or maybe will go bust - and if it works, in 20 years or so utilities will catch up. By that time it will be so regulated and red-taped that it would be hard for a small company to make it work anymore, so the utilities would fit right in.
So, right in the Tesla fanbase wheelhouse?
How's this: I live in a small province in Canada, and outside of a few tech enthusiasts, no one I know has any clue about Tesla.
I guess we differ hugely on the definition of "household name". Something is a household name, to me, when someone in every household has heard of the company.
That sort of following and interest can help Solar get more well known, and not to mention further integration with Tesla can quicken drivers along to SolarCity products.
Not to mention, everyone I know has heard of Tesla. You must have interesting friends!
Also California is Tesla's home turf, not really a good example for the country or the whole addressable market.
>The point is that it's a very, very reasonable assumption that Tesla is more likely to be known by the average person than SolarCity.
These two things contradict each other. Why would Tesla be known by people that cannot recognize Teslas?
It's not necessarily contradictory. I know Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, etc are luxury sports car brands. But if one drives past me on the road, I probably won't recognise them.
https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/444228348319784960
I don't think the Model S is very distinctive so I may have missed more in my peripheral vision. The Roadster was much more of a head-turner.
I have seen more McLarens, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris than I have Teslas.
I live in an area of about 100K population.
Depends on your utility, some are: http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/solar/choice/in...
SolarCity doesn't do utility-scale solar, it does house-scale solar, and those are entirely different models. Also, business model of SolarCity is closely tied to the price structure of utilities, at least in California. These prices are structured - the lowest tier is relatively cheap, but it won't be enough, especially if you use AC or heating. Second tier is more expensive, next one yet more, and the fourth one is about twice as expensive as the first. SolarCity's pioneering idea - PPA - makes you put their solar panel on your property, and pay them for electricity instead of utility. In exchange of which you pay for all the electricity according to tier 1. Which is substantially cheaper. This model has little to do with generation on utility scale. BTW, never seen them in Home Depot around here. They must be using some other tactics in these areas, or maybe just haven't made friends with local HD.
It's not a new company. Tesla was founded 13 years ago. The same complaint can be made about new models of existing car comapnies. You didn't even attempt to research these things so of course they are unknown to you. That's a tautology. I don't know every car brand on the planet but I don't blame them for my own ignorance.
Most electric cars are rapidly depreciating in value. Usually they only sell for 20% of their original value after three years. Tesla cars usually keep 70% of their value. In 2013 you could even turn a profit by reselling a brand new tesla youbecause of their high demand but low supply. https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/remember-when-yo...
Tesla may be the best thing ever. All I am saying is that they do not have some enormous reservoir of brand equity.
http://www.fakesteve.net/2007/05/john-doerrs-my-asshole-comp...
if tesla now produces a range of trucks and thereby also enters the transportation sector, they're completing the full circle.
Elon may have a rude awakening transitioning from"pull" marketing to "push" marketing.
You can't do a 1hr webcast and get 400k solar "pre-pays."
<crickets>
(Not churn in the saas sense of the word)
>You will be responsible for identifying potential customers, answering their questions regarding our service and driving to customer consultations and signing them up for our service in their homes.
>TOP PERFORMERS ONLY!
>Unlimited Earning Potential
>2 years prior experience in a quota-driven sales position highly preferred
>This position requires proactively approaching customers throughout the store by engaging the customers in one-on-one discussions and regularly moving with them as they shop
http://www.indeed.com/cmp/SolarCity/jobs/Sales-Representativ...
I went to college instead.
I advised a friend to buy Tesla and SolarCity stock some time ago, and they did so. The SolarCity stock was much higher at the time than it is now, perhaps $60-70.
I see that the offer from Tesla involves "0.122x to 0.131x" exchange for Tesla stock. So what does this mean for people whose positions in SolarCity were currently down? They have to hope the Tesla stock eventually goes up enough to recover the loss they suffered on SolarCity?
[0] https://www.irs.gov/uac/irs-reminds-taxpayers-they-can-use-s...
To your point, shareholders might balk at TSLA's offer.
Edit: Yes he is...sorry, he only recused from the board meeting/votes, not the shareholder votes that are yet to come.
Shareholders will vote on the offer, and have two choices.
1) Vote No would mean they back SolarCity to increase the share price back to at least where they paid for it. If the No vote is successful, the price instantly loses the gains its made in the past 24 hours, and potentially drops a little further.
2) Vote Yes if shareholders think that the gains they'll get from having Tesla shares (dividend, price gains, cash flow, capital to expand, etc.) will make the SolarCity business a better business/more competitive, etc. There may not be the same doubling/tripling/quadrupling of share price than if they stay a separate company, but it's a much lower risk.
Same thing happened for the BG Group/Shell deal. In the end, 99.69% of BG Group and 83% of Shell shareholders approved the takeover. I think we'll see something similar for the SolarCity/Tesla deal as well.
Elon Musk: I want to buy Solar City. Can I get a family discount?
Lyndon Rive: Everyone gets a family discount.
-- Sometime later --
Lyndon Rive: Hey Elon, can I get a family discount on a Model X?
Elon Musk: ...
(in that case he'll regret not giving a steep discount on that Model X)
Elon is a very large (~20%) SolarCity shareholder and this is pretty much a bailout for him.
Now Tesla is "burdened down" by SolarCity, if you prefer to think of it that way. If anything it's liable to hurt Tesla's stock while SolarCity gets its feet under it. As Tesla's stock drags down, Elon will lose more money than the 20% of $2.1 billion that his SCTY stake was worth today. That's a $420 million stake, and Tesla just dropped $3.2 billion in market cap when this news came up.
I'm totally guessing, but it seems to me this move protects SolarCity from the danger it was in. If SolarCity can make it a bit longer, a couple more years, which they will with no trouble (they were not on the verge of bankruptcy whatsoever), soon Tesla will have all the revenue they need to help SCTY grow. And that's Elon's gamble, as has it all been.
I'm pretty sure the big win is giving Solar City access to Tesla's financing facilities.
You could say that for pretty much every service you buy. Yet people keep spending money for things they could do (cheaper) themselves!
If you have a PPA, the installer reaps all of the financial benefits. If you finance the system, you get all of the financial benefits. Its the difference between leasing a car versus financing it and then driving it until the wheels fall off (keep in mind, panels have a 25 year warranty but will still produce above 80% capacity for decades after that).
More like Solar City is going to ruin Tesla's financing facilities.
Not if Tesla can borrow those credit lines, and then lend them out with Solar City installs at a profit.
Not losing $300 Million / quarter.
Musk has lots of work to do for sure.
- They will install solar panels on your house for free.
- You pay them a much lower rate than what the public utility company charges for the electricity generated from those solar panels.
- You save tens of thousands of dollars and lower your carbon footprint by hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 over 20-30 years.
- They lose a ton of money installing those expensive panels but make a TON of money in the long run selling you that electricity that is generated for next to nothing.
So as you can see, Solar City losing money is actually a good thing because it means they're making so many damn sales that in 10 years they're going to be reaping the profits from those sales like crazy.
That said, purchasing the hardware costs as much as a car, so maybe can't do that.
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/10/384958332/the-great-solar-pane...
The retail price of electric power basically never decreases. Therefore, if a solar purchase makes sense today, it won't be regretted later. If it doesn't make sense, i.e. because the cost of financing the loan is greater than the projected savings on electricity spending, then it would be reasonable to wait for higher-performance panels.
Yet by that standard, Tesla as well as Amazon are "awful businesses" too. He's not looking to the future, or closely examining why they're losing money.
As for why I think it's an awful business:
1) Huge amount of debt 2) Hugely negative free cash flow (-$790m last year)
Sometimes this can work, but it's absolutely the last thing Tesla needs (they need to put cash to work building out the battery factory and production of the Model 3, not subsidize solar panels).
He wouldn't have done this if he hadn't carefully analyzed every aspect of the situation and concluded it could all be done. He's not just throwing dice in the air. Neither SpaceX nor Tesla could have done any of the things they've done if he was.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASCTY&fstype=ii&ei=...
http://watchdog.org/225430/solarcity/
It's a fake grassroots news organization funded entirely by a 501(4)(c) with a fixed political agenda.
In the time it took you to detail the supposed biases of the link (which you didn't back up yourself, mind) and post a throwaway shoot-the-messenger comment, you could have read and understood whether the arguments they put forward are persuasive and correct, something with infinitely more value.
The tl;dr:
* SolarCity is massively in debt. True.
* The solar industry as a whole, including SolarCity, has a tricky future since government subsidies are sunsetting soon. True.
* SolarCity acknowledged those risks and others, and disclosed them to the SEC. True.
* A promient Wall Street advisor rated their stock a "Sell" based on all this. True.
I see nothing in that article that is misleading, non-factual, or even a question of interpretation of unarguable facts.
I'm all for pointing out when a source might have a bias, but that absolutely does not invalidate what they have to say or "discredit" its poster.
SolarCity is massively in debt .. because that's their whole business. They take money from banks or companies like Google and invest it in solar projects, expecting a reliable return for them and their investor. Debt is the whole point.
Government subsidies are sunsetting as solar is getting exponentially cheaper. It comes down to selective reporting.
The "risks reported to the SEC" are classic fodder for reporters trying to make a story out of nothing. For purely legal reasons, companies will enumerate in the 10-K even the faintest risks to their business to preempt any claims.
The comment you're replying to may not have made the deepest point, but was still a legit thing to say. If you have a problem with it, the burden is on you to respectfully refute it, not take a cheap shot. We're trying for good—collegial—conversation here.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949506 and marked it off-topic.
Here's how their business model works:
- They will install solar panels on your house for free (or cheaper than the full cost).
- You pay them a much lower rate than what the public utility company charges for the electricity generated from those solar panels.
- You save tens of thousands of dollars and lower your carbon footprint by hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 over 20-30 years.
- They lose a ton of money installing those expensive panels but make a TON of money in the long run selling you that electricity that is generated for next to nothing.
So as you can see, SolarCity losing money is actually a good thing because it means they're making so many damn sales that in 10 years they're going to be reaping the profits from those sales like crazy.
"We'll be lucrative by the early 2020s, assuming solar starts seeing widespread adoption" carries a lot more weight now than it would've a few years ago, just because of the explosion of programs and services like Project Sunroof.
SolarCity's business model is incredibly risky. [0] They've already gotten shut down when trying to "sell you that electricity."[1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520789
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-solar-power-buffett-v...
Bringing your question back to SCTY, one of the critiques of SCTY in NV was that SCTY was expecting/betting to be able to sell back electricity to the grid at retail (not wholesale) rates via net-metering. Inarguably, this was a threat to the utility and its ability to re-coup its large capital investments (sunk costs) in the grid.
There are other solar companies whose business model doesn't rely as directly on "billions of dollars of (taxdollars in) support."
From what I can tell, the biggest jumps in Solar City's business were when the caps on excess power were lifted. Which makes sense. Rebates are nice and reduce their risk and increase how deep they can go in, but increasing the net metering cap from 3% to 10% more than triples their revenue and cuts their return period to a third what it was. Those caps are not subsidized, in fact often being implemented as trivial accounting tricks where a user gets credits during the day that they can spend that night or next month.
2) The utility can't (and honestly, shouldn't) directly shoulder that cost, so they pass it on to other clients.
3) net-metering cap serves as a limit to prevent the utility from being unsustainable, because the rooftop energy business can't survive without it.
What SolarCity effectively wants is to move the cap so that they get more parts of a pie which they are stucturally forced to share with the utility. Effectively, we're witnessing the woes of a growth-hacking model in an environment where the main source of margin and growth is regulatory decision.
Also although they were the first to do some of the complicated financing stuff, rooftop solar installation has turned into a very low margin business with lots of competition in most markets. It's not really groundbreaking stuff they are doing.
Also, the home owner has no ownership stakes in any of the hardware. That's great during the service period (10 years if I recall), where they maintain and manage the hardware. However, at the end of the term, you are offered to buy the equipment with a hefty baloon payment. To the point ehere you'd be better off and come out FAR ahead by paying out of pocket from the onset and own the equipment outright.
A match made in... the backroom?
It's not about brand at this point, it's about economies of scale and production?
You aren't just whistling Dixie... http://www.solarcity.com/newsroom/press/following-nevada-puc...
I doubt losing Nevada as a market did anything to help SolarCity's bottom line.
Converting to metered grids (on which consumers can sell) costs a small fortune, often for very little benefit. Even environmentalists have been weighing in against it as wasteful.
Tesla's home battery solution offers an obvious response to this situation - you can minimize or avoid grid sell-off by doing in-home storage to smooth demand. That has the potential to make SolarCity an incomparable player in non-metered markets, keeping with Musk's general "no viable competitors" ethos.
I treat it like a riskier CD, no more no less.
No one was worried about vast amounts of people no longer paying their subprime mortgages either. Not saying your investment strategy is wrong, but "predictions are difficult, especially about the future".
The prospectus https://solarbonds.solarcity.com/assets/bond_document/180/?f... lists the following risks (among others).
• your inability to initiate bankruptcy proceedings against SolarCity;
• the lack of certain “customary” investor protective covenants in the indenture;
• your inability to require us to repurchase the Solar Bonds upon a change of control of SolarCity;
• lack of cross-default provisions in the indenture with respect to our other debt; and
• the lack of an underwriter to conduct third party due diligence and other types of “gatekeeper” actions typically taken by an underwriter in an underwritten public offering.
I think Tesla's ability to sell another company's installations is limited by the impression they are trading on their brand. ie. a "Trump Steaks" problem.
-there is redundant/duplicate hardware between solar panel & the Powerwall installations
-substantial drop of cost of sales for SolarCity between 30-50%, also drop on tesla's side
-biggest asset is SolarCity's installers
-also some strengths in the SolarCity's sales side
-a special deal with SolarCity would be a conflict of interest
-a seamlessly integrated product/system is just better, and "you aren't wondering if you should blame the solar company, the battery company or what if you are the end customer"
-installation crew can do everything in one visit instead of two or three
Other interesting note:
-Elon explicitly said Tesla has the potential to be a trillion dollar market cap company
My take on it is if the deal is viewed solely based on past performance and traditional financial analysis it probably has big issues. If viewed from a future standpoint where Tesla pulls off things like the Model 3 successfully, it could be a pretty good deal for Tesla. A bigger question for shareholders is what kind of shareholder dilution could occur between today and say 5 years from now on whatever roadmap Elon is imaging and isn't public.
At most you can infer then that them losing money is no sign at all, because losing a lot money can also be a sign of failure obviously.
When you buy your own panels, there's no way to cash in on the carbon credits. I'm waiting for some startup to provide a way to market them...
Most consumers don't give an eff about carbon footprint unless it saves them money or the pollution does affect them directly. Also I dont think there are too many people in USA spending tens of thousands of dollars in electricity bill.
Solar Panale is a great idea if there is technological breakthrough but else it a tried and failed model.
They do spend that much, the average in the US is $115 a month, and the spread is lowish, ranging from $90 to $130 a month between states, and up to $150 in outliers like Alaska. Or in other words, a US average of nearly $1.4k a year.
A 10 year horizon puts total electricity expenses at $14k, a 30y horizon you mentioned puts it past $40k.
However, those are not savings like the guy implied that you replied to. Solar today tends to lower your bill by maybe 5-10% on average over large amounts of customers tops. So savings would be a few thousand bucks, not tens of thousands.
More importantly, that's a rate for today, and it remains to be seen how that will develop into the future.
The big untold truth for customers is that there's a high probability that electricity prices will come down sharply. Renewable energy resource price points are dropping fast, both on the hardware side, the soft-market side, and spurred on by subsidies. We've already seen crazy low record rates, like the latest PPA (power purchase agreement) was as low as 3 cents. PPA's set electricity prices for contracts that last well into the future, so they're essentially the industry's prediction for where the market will go. (i.e. a 20 year contract at 3 cents per kwh might look silly when the price is 5c today, but it implies industry experts expect the price to drop such, perhaps to 2 cents near the end, that the average cost level over 20 years will drop below 3c.)
Those PPAs will spread and start to affect electricity prices, 3 cents already undercuts wholesale prices of most coal, gas and nuclear capacity for example. And those wholesale prices will push down retail prices, too, such that existing solar installations on average over 20 years may actually turn out to be more expensive than the market rate, i.e. no savings at all, because their financing assumes rates to stay stable, or drop less than they likely will as far as I can see. I'm still a huge fan of solar and urge anyone to consider it, but as an investment as a consumer I think it's financial benefits are oversold.
This is the equivalent of Ford buying Exxon (which already includes the service stations), and then offering cheaper gas to all Ford customers. Who doesn't think that would influence at least some people (or companies! Fleets of cars!)
Henry Ford wasn't a founder of Exxon. Musk is a founder of SolarCity.
I'm sure some value would also come from selling to residential buyers with Teslas?
There's also the powerwall play. I imagine a lot of people that signed up for powerwall will want solar at the same time, if they don't have it. Maybe this is actually a way to hedge against powerwall coming in at cost (or a way to get an installation network). If most the installs come with some solar installation as well, maybe they can see the device at a loss and meet cost expectations while still not losing money.
1: https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
I feel like not three months ago there were plenty of articles about Tesla having less than 2 years operating budget left even after accounting for increased revenue from presales.
[1] http://www.newsmax.com/BradleyBlakeman/solar-kroll-subsidy/2...
"According to the Kroll report, SolarCity reports solar system costs when claiming tax credits that are 75 percent higher than solar system costs disclosed to investors in the company’s quarterly investor earnings call."
When investing in something like this, it doesn't really make sense to look at what they're doing now, but where they're going to be in the near future.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949754 and marked it off-topic.
They're not voting in the board meetings, so can only recommend it to the board and then not vote.
Its worth noting that JB Straubel is just as passionate about electric vehicles as Elon is. JB actually worked on electric aircraft at his previous company, Volacom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JB_Straubel
http://www.businessinsider.com/solarcity-tesla-deal-short-in...
Also, Tesla is also popular among short-sellers, and it dropped in value (which was expected), so it wouldn't make any sense to 'punish' short-sellers in SCTY only to 'reward' them in TSLA.
1: https://www.sec.gov/answers/tmanipul.htm
I'm not making a case, I'm actually wondering.
I'm pretty sure that's intent to commit fraud.
ANAL, ANA-Finance Guy. I'm pretty sure the "intent" is the important part here if the primary purpose of a financial move is to manipulate the market that's where you start getting into trouble. Making a non-sincere offer and publishing it in order to create media traction that would have a major impact on the market can quite possibly be illegal.
That said if the offer was intentionally non-sincere only an idiot would publish it as part of the PR, 30% premium on a stock however seems to be a pretty sincere and good offer to me tho.
It's probably only distinguished by whether you admit your intention was to never have the deal succeed, or claim that you came by the knowledge, or at least the understanding, after the initial offer.
In a perfectly rational and efficient market the answer would be no. I don't think we're in a perfectly rational and efficient market. So I guess the question is whether the market is irrational enough or inefficient enough that there's some way to game the side-effects of this usefully.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/04/jim-chanos-im-short-tesla.htm...
If they can combine the PowerWall with the vehicle charging station, that just makes it better.
Tesla has a sales program which is basically 0 marketing, 0 sales, 100% inbound and SCTY is tele-sales + door to door (which is payroll intensive and harder to manager). Tesla has an operations cycle which is completely centralized except for the car delivery. All of SCTY is contractors installing stuff on customer roofs.
I do not see any operational synergies between the two companies except for the superchargers (and buying SCTY for superchargers feels wrong).
It also makes the accounting simpler and liability, this way no one is going to sue Tesla for giving too good a deal to Solar City, or the reverse.