I don't think of tesla as a "car and battery" company but as a "portable battery (the supposed car) and a home battery" company.
They already partner with (or own) SolarCity so really their overarching business is as an energy company. They collect it, they store it, and they transport it.
All they need is a logistically easier way to transport it than traditional power lines which I'm guessing would step on some toes. So their next step might be something like WiTricity. That way, they can bypass physical infrastructure.
> I don't think of tesla as a "car and battery" company but as a "portable battery (the supposed car) and a home battery" company.
If they really want to be in the business of making batteries, they should get out of the business of making cars as quickly as possible. It's an expensive distraction.
It's extremely difficult, the R&D costs are enormous, scaling up is difficult, thousands of little things can sink you, and once you sell a product, you will be on the hook for it for the next decade.
To me, it seems that they are a car company with a battery side business - it makes a hell of lot more sense then being a battery company with a car side business - for the same reason that Exxon-Mobil isn't an oil company with a jumbo-jet-manufacturing side business.
Which would be a terrible idea. since both energy, and energy storage is a commodity. GM may as well merge with United Fruit Company.
The only two gains I could see would be diversification (But then why not merge with Bank of America? Or Google?), and an integrated logistics system (Except that logistics for electricity and gasoline are long-solved non-problems - and have nothing to do with auto manufacturing.)
There's a concept called "grid parity", where solar PV can deliver energy for the same cost as your utility would charge you for it's provision. This is considered a tipping point, where the economics starts pushing things along harder rather than relying on idealism. It got talked about for years as a goal, but now we've passed it in various parts of the world (starting in those with the combination of lots of sun and high priced utilities).
There's another concept that builds on this called "god parity", which points out that simply distributing energy via a grid has a cost (sometimes more than half of the cost you pay), so if you imagine that you had a tame god that could generate infinite energy for free, but you still had to pay the distribution costs, then if current trends continue, then PV plus batteries would still be cheaper than paying for a grid to deliver "free" energy to your home. It's perhaps not a coincidence that Tesla provides both of the items needed to make this happen, PV and home energy storage.
>All they need is a logistically easier way to transport it than traditional power lines
what flaws of traditional power lines are holding Tesla back right now? It's not a subject i've ever really thought about, but i was under the impression that high-voltage cabling was a pretty efficient way to transport power.
Actually it's around 6% loss in lines and transformers: 2% in transmission and 4% in distribution.[1] This works out to be quite a lot. In some high-intensity areas, Ohm's law losses can use more energy than refrigerating a superconductor over the same length. I'm not sure that there exist ways of increasing efficiency here, but getting another percent or two of global energy production for "free" would be amazing.
But I'm not really sure that the distribution network is holding Tesla back right now. With some SolarCity and a PowerWall, you're going to be able to go off-grid. In theory. The idea is to be a total alternative to traditional energy companies and utilities.
When I gave my first college lecture, I actually started wandering off half way through in my head wondering how this model of me talking, them listening ever worked or even lasted. By the end of the semester, I was "flipping"lectures and trying to engage my students more instead of just me talking.
The current model doesn't need to be destroyed and rebuilt, just remodeled as you said for a different future
Even being a poor grad student at an Ivy feels like this. The undergrads are wealthy and the grad students cherish every dollar of their ~$30k salary while still sometimes do side work to get by since city's have rents set for the higher income undergrads.
There was some resentment we had for our students to say the least.
I'm a poor grad student at an ivy, and I have to say that I find just under 30k a year far more than enough for myself. The whole starving grad student just doesn't hold up in rich private institutes. I live in a cheap house with four others, but my peers have apartments in some of the nicest buildings around. I cook my own food most of the time, but many grad students eat out twice a day, even if only at a food truck.
Now I won't pretend that 30k is much to raise a family with, or much if you have to help out your parents or siblings. But I'm saving a sizeable chunk of my income and I'm not even supplementing it with tutoring the rich undergrads, which can net you two hundred plus a week for a few hours of work.
My offers for stem PhD programs at ivy-type private research institutions were about 30k, one was more like 35k. At university of California schools, the stipend was more like 19k (and a higher cost of living). My current stipend is the standard here and not due to unusual scholarships or grant money. We're supposed to ask permission for outside work, but the department will actively help you find people to tutor.
Humanities grad students have a _much_ worse deal than STEM ones, typically.
From what I've seen, for STEM, the assumption is that your tuition is covered, you get a stipend that you can actually live on, your medical insurance is covered. For humanities, the working assumption is that none of that is true, and if some of it happens to be true, you're in luck.
Oh, and the humanities degrees often take longer too.
I worked for a physics professor at an ivy league school, not as a grad student, but as a software engineer on his team. I was working on a project with a database that contained all the personnel information -- everyone was getting between $30 and $35k.
Aren't students with wealthy families literally attending school thanks to the contributions of others? I say this as someone fortunate enough to have parents who saved their whole life to pay my tuition - I understand I am fortunate for that, I didn't literally earn that money in any way before attending school and performing well to justify it being spent, and I still can't argue that in any way is the same as literally working for that money. On the other hand I knew classmates who basically worked like slaves for four years at terrible, thankless jobs, struggling to pay rent in an area full of luxury housing targeted at the wealthy, just trying to pay their tuition after loans and aid. This at a school where Greek house membership fees run into the thousands, literally engineering a class divide in the student social life.
I'd say "constantly reminding" someone and their surrounding peers of the fact that they are of lower stature economically is a recipe to divide the student base and breed resentment. You would be less likely to feel resentment standing in a separate line from most of your peers, looking at a bunch of students with outfits worth more than a month's rent, singled out for getting "handouts" from your school? Don't grad students typically earn a stipend working a job anyway? I don't see that as any more "living on the largess of others" than going to school on your family's money.
Aren't students with wealthy families literally attending school thanks to the contributions of others?
It would be ungrateful and counterproductive if such students felt resentment towards their parents, no?
Don't grad students typically earn a stipend working a job anyway?
I earn a salary by working a job which aims to make customers happy (same as when I was in grad school on a stipend). However, I don't feel resentment toward those customers - that would be counterproductive and harmful.
I don't remotely follow the logic you're applying here. I did not suggest anywhere that these students feel resentment to their sources of financial support, but rather that highlighting class divisions in a university will breed resentful attitudes among students towards each other. Do poor students somehow owe something to wealthier ones just for attending the same school? Please describe in clear terms exactly what kind of logic you're applying here because to me it mostly seems like something an undergrad with a swiss watch would be boistering about in the dining hall.
Did you somehow get the impression I think grad students should be resentful towards the university because of their stipends? I think most of them are grateful - I meant to convey that it's disingenuous to think of a grad student's stipend as some kind of handout, I really can't understand how you interpreted that as you did.
Wealthy students (or their parents) pay full price, supporting the university and all it's operations. Many of them pay more than full price via donations and such. One of the things they are paying for is support/scholarships/etc for the poorer students.
I don't think a grad student's stipend is a handout, just as I don't think my salary is. Nevertheless, grad students should be grateful to the undergrads/taxpayers who are supporting them, and I should be grateful to my employer's customers (I am).
My daughter attends an expensive prep school and gets a chunk of it covered by financial aid. I am indeed grateful, but I would suggest there's another possible way to frame it, which is that the wealthy parents of my daughter's classmates are paying extra to place their own children with the smartest, hardest-working students, regardless of socio-economic background (which in turn creates a more diverse student body, which is also a benefit). So while I respect that there is a charitable component, I also believe there is a transaction taking place that benefits all parties. Consequently, singling financial aid kids out as somehow special or lesser would, I think, be as unfair as either customers or wait staff in a restaurant to somehow be made feel inferior to one another.
The undergraduates with rich parents are also technically living off of the largess of others. A family probably feels more of an obligation to support their own children but it's not like the majority of undergraduates paying tuition are "self-made."
Speaking from personal experience, this would cause more resentment rather than gratitude. I worked more hours to ensure that I didn't have to wait in these types of lines wherever possible. I found that people with money were less likely to want to associate with you once they found out that your family didn't have any because it made them feel awkward.
I just want to point out that poor student are absolutely not at the mercy of rich students.
Poor students are needed at these schools to maintain the prestige and reputation of these schools. If they only allowed those who could afford to pay, a lot of great talent would end up elsewhere and then the reputation of the school would suffer.
In terms of real scarcity, it is actually the rich students who are the most easily replaceable. If those poor students went somewhere else, they would still do well and within a decade the new schools would start challenging the reputation of these elite school.
Guys, yummyfajitas is kidding. Of course he wouldn't consider a grad student stipend "living on the largess of others". Right? This is Poe's Law, right?
I was on a stipend during grad school. And I was grateful, rather than resentful, towards the undergraduates and taxpayers (in my case, far more of the latter than the former) who paid for it.
I enjoy exploring ideas that are emotionally unpleasant, but which it's hard to construct a logical argument against. Some unpleasant ideas turn out to be correct!
It's fine to be grateful, but a grad school stipend is not charity. You are being paid to perform a service. If the undergraduates (or more commonly, their parents) and taxpayers did not think research and teaching were useful, they wouldn't pay you.
It's weird how people who claim to like exploring "edgy" ideas never doubt the concept of property. Rich students exist on the largesse of grad students, not the other way around; the institution they attend would not exist without them.
The majority of poor students already know that they're getting a free ride; shoving it down their throats in public helps no one. Actually, it would likely lead to even more resentment which would probably even leak into the classroom environment. On the other hand, I would argue that the vast majority of rich students don't appreciate their position at all.
Meh, I usually agree with your comments, but in this case the resentment is towards people who have a lot of money and haven't earned it (not that they're bad people, they've simply been dealt a good starting hand).
I have tons of lab work you can do for me if you want to get your hands dirty, your pants wet, and your skin dyed for weeks. Desk job versus hands on both have pros and cons. Luckily I'm half/half each so it makes both good and both bad.
There is plenty of science and engineering jobs tat let you do both.
you realize every sweetener is a chemical, right? What if they replace sugar with sugar? There are tons of types of sugars that can replace one another. Lots of sweeteners actually come from plants and microbes.
A middle ground is best from my experience in lecturing. Lecturing for the first time made me realize why I had always slept through classes in HS, UG, and grad school. But as a lecturer, doing a complete 180 flip is too work intensive. I found lecturing 2/3 classes a week with worksheets in the class and 1 class a week devoted to project meetings with my student groups was most effective.
While meeting many student groups would seem like it would take a lot of time, it ended up being about the same as a lesson prep + lecture time (there is needed prep and recovery time in lecturing).
People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach. They're paid to research and so of course they'll be lazy on sharing what they've learned from teaching. Universities have teaching centers, but those can only do so much when you really need to also be talking to fellow instructors in your specific field since every topic can't be taught the same.
> People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach.
I understand that this is the prevailing attitude, but it is not true. If they were not paid to teach, there would be no consequences for them failing to provide lectures—i.e., they would not be fired—then instructors would simply not show up. It's not volunteer work.
As a former academic, I can tell you the sad truth is that most instructors simply do not care about that aspect of their jobs and phone it in. I think it's probably more accurate to say that there is no reward for being a good, caring instructor (and vice versa, no real punishment for being a lazy or ineffectual instructor).
While acadmeics would get fired for not teaching at all, they wouldn't get fired for very bad, poorly prepared teaching. And that leaves more time for research and grants, which is how you get promoted.
> People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach. They're paid to research and so of course they'll be lazy on sharing what they've learned from teaching.
Tenure-track professors are rewarded mostly based on research, but many classes are taught by lecturers, instructors, adjuncts, and other non-tenure-track teaching staff. These people should care about teaching efficacy, though they are often overworked (see below) so perhaps they just don't have time.
You say overworked, but I think underpaid is the more important aspect to consider for that class of teaching positions. The effort/compensation ratio is not incentivizing.
>Tenure-track professors are rewarded mostly based on research, but many classes are taught by lecturers, instructors, adjuncts, and other non-tenure-track teaching staff.
But a lot of those people are teaching to pay the bills as they do research in an effort to get on the tenure track.
People also need to realize, college instructors aren't paid to teach. They're paid to research and so of course they'll be lazy on sharing what they've learned from teaching. Universities have teaching centers, but those can only do so much when you really need to also be talking to fellow instructors in your specific field since every topic can't be taught the same.
I was a lecturer in math and engineering for one semester at a big ten university. Most college teaching is done by adjuncts, who have no research responsibilities unless they're also holding down a separate research job or trying to do scholarship on their own time. They have nothing to share because they don't last long enough to develop real expertise.
Students hate flipped classrooms from my experience teaching. But lecturing is also ineffective. It should not be a binary process but rather one where you use one method for X types of learning and the other from Y types of learning. Flipped sometimes works and doesn't. It's really up to the instructor to know when to use what and constantly get feedback to determine which is best.
What about the idea of mandatory vacation? If a company gives you 2 weeks, you must take it. If 2 weeks before the end of the year you have not used it, you can't come in then.
They already partner with (or own) SolarCity so really their overarching business is as an energy company. They collect it, they store it, and they transport it.
All they need is a logistically easier way to transport it than traditional power lines which I'm guessing would step on some toes. So their next step might be something like WiTricity. That way, they can bypass physical infrastructure.