Musk endeavours

[dspp]

Since China has 9.5 million km2 this can easily be done. It is just 0.6% of land area.

Similar sums show that pretty much any country can do it. So does practical experience - Portugal went all winter with zero coal use in the last winter.

regards, dspp

Why China? The problem energy consumers are in the USA; how does 100% solar look for them and what if you include conversion to solar from fossil fuel for heating and vehicle use (since the claim is that fossil fuels can be rendered obsolete)? I could do this calculation but as you've already had a go would you mind repeating for the US? Thx, GS.


GS

The reason China was being discussed because apparently Musk made some statements in a utube video about what could be done, and others here were sense checking them and saying he was wrong. I've not listened to what Musk actually said, but I could see that the sensecheck was itself wrong as I do these sums in my day job occasionally. Hence my doing a simple calc to show reality.

USA consumes 3,911 TWh/yr elec. Assuming same yield as my Dorset solar that is 22,325km2 of solar, or say 44,650 km2 of land. That is 0.5% of USA land which is 9.8 million km2.

These numbers are annual numbers. To actually design a system you wouldn't do it all solar, or all wind, etc. But what they illustrate is that it is technically feasible. To actually design an optimal system you come to me (or someone similar) and I/we do lots of fancy sums to calculate the ideal mix of wind, solar, storage, hydro, nuclear, fossil, etc to give a particular confidence level of "power on demand" (which of course is always less than 1.0 even in a conventional system) and the corresponding price to the user.

It is easy. It is being done. It is increasingly cost-effective. It is the future.

regards, dspp

[ReformedCharacter]

I'm not good at maths but decided to have a go to see if his figures look credible. I'll say that again, I'm not good at maths. So if anyone is inclined to point out any basic errors in my calculations I'd be grateful. The figures I have used are rough and ready and rounded to make it easier for me:

I Ha of solar panels = 1,500,000 kWh per year (actually this was calculated for India not China)

China consumes 6000TWh power per year, therefore it would require

6,000,000,000,000,000 / 1,500,000 (4,000,000,000) Ha to produce all of China's power requirements.

That is 40,000,000 km2. China's total land area is c.10,000,000 km2. So it looks to me that if all of China's land were given over to solar panels, it would generate only a quarter of the country's present power requirements. OK solar panel efficiency will improve but so far it takes a long time (decades) to make relatively small incremental improvements. Please correct my maths!

RC

I'm grateful to those who have provided better maths than my own. I first got interested in solar power in the early 80's whilst working in Africa. I'm pretty amazed that it has become viable as a major contributor to power generation. It didn't seem likely then that it would happen as quickly as it seems to have done, A pleasant surprise though because it may have some major benefits in poorer parts of the world.

RC

[odysseus2000]

RC
I first got interested in solar power in the early 80's whilst working in Africa. I'm pretty amazed that it has become viable as a major contributor to power generation. It didn't seem likely then that it would happen as quickly as it seems to have done, A pleasant surprise though because it may have some major benefits in poorer parts of the world.

I have often thought that solar will make this the African century when the sun rich but often financially poor countries of Africa get low cost & reliable electricity via solar panels & lithium ion storage.

Many of these nations have many difficult troubles which will not be instantly fixed by the potential of low cost electrical power, but if it happens, it will be transformational reducing the now relentless struggle for light, refrigeration, heating, communications, transportation etc & slowly in the by & by, likely bring improved government.

There have been many potential new dawns for African nations based on various well intentioned Western & more recently Chinese initiatives. Most of these have needed hydrocarbon fuels that were often seen by the ruling elites as a way to control & profit from their population plus the costs of maintenance/replacement have been crippling. Solar gets around many of these systematic issues and offers imho the chance for much improved living standards for the poorest people.

Regards,

[dspp]

I too have been surprised at the progress that has been made, both in renewables and in conventional fossil. Back in the early 90s I was reading tech papers on early fracking of tight formations. My sense-check was that the permeability of these formations was comparable to marble. I just couldn't compute that as ever being economic. Ditto for my equivalent sense-checks of early solar where it seemed to me forever destined to be niche. The only ones with a chance to be the alternative backstop fuels (to coal) seemed to me to be fission nuclear, wind, or perhaps the various heavy oils.

Fast forward two decades to now and it seems I am partially correct about tight oils as the EROEI approaches unity (and the economics only works at 0% free money), but I was wrong about solar. On a levelised cost basis solar, wind, and nat gas are about even now with the trend being against nat gas. Nuclear indeed seems increasingly irrelevant. The EROEIs for wind (20x) and solar (10x) seem to be OK, so they can scale as the fundamentals are OK.

However this is not free power. It may be endless, but it is not free. It seems to be viable to scale at about the equivalent of $80/bbl, and given the way the tech trends are going, i.e. flattening, I don't see that going below say $50/bbl equivalent in my lifetime. That corresponds with electricity for the user at about £0.10 - £0.15 per kWh, i.e. the current level in the UK.

If an economy is viable at those levels then it has a future. If not, then trouble lies ahead. Transportation is viable at those levels, so too is heavy and light industry. What is more problematic is fertlisers (i.e. energy in disguise, currently at less that $50-80 equivalent), and then there are the other constraints to growth - primarily water.

I am hopeful, but cautiously so. There is plenty of room for volatility en route, at all scales.

regards, dspp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_re ... y_invested

[odysseus2000]

dspp

However this is not free power. It may be endless, but it is not free. It seems to be viable to scale at about the equivalent of $80/bbl, and given the way the tech trends are going, i.e. flattening, I don't see that going below say $50/bbl equivalent in my lifetime. That corresponds with electricity for the user at about £0.10 - £0.15 per kWh, i.e. the current level in the UK.

Yes, it's the fuel that is free, but you need machines to capture it.

The advantages, as I see them are:

It provides reasonably predictable energy costs over life times of circa 20 years. This in itself is huge compared to the extreme volatility one sees in hydro carbon pricing. The recent sharp move up in oil being an example of how calculations of costs etc can change in days. If installations are managed sensibly for 20 + year lifetimes this will allow the systems to self finance for eventual replacement & as I understand the technology many things can be re-cycled & silicon being essentially sand exists in huge abundance. All of these things with free fuel, add up to me as low cost by the standards of our century long experience with hydrocarbon fuels & machines to harvest the stored energy, plus if one believes climate change renewables have a cost benefit analysis which is the difference between a stable planet & an unstable one.

There are no expensive decommissioning costs that one has with nuclear power or the potential for weapon proliferation that came with the trade in uranium.

In the .U.K. one likely has all the oil refining capability we will need.

It provides more political stability with less need for the west to maintain extensive defence links with the oil producing nations of the Middle East.

The power is produced with substantial less emissions of potentially health hurting chemicals & carbon.

Electrical machines are in general simpler & less costly than fossil fuel ones, good examples being electric cars.

No doubt humans will find ways to have wars, but imho the transition to renewable power with storage will have substantial benefits for the human species that were inconceivable even 10 years ago.

If I am right with a lot of this analysis it makes Tesla with electric cars, solar & storage very like Rockerfella's Standard oil in its very early days, I.e. very cheap.

Regards,

[dspp]

All of these things with free fuel, add up to me as low cost by the standards of our century long experience with hydrocarbon fuels & machines to harvest the stored energy,

No I am afraid renewables are not cheap by comparison with a century of oil. Oil economics, in energy terms, are typically an EROEI of about 100. In contrast renewables are in the 10-20 range (full lifecycle, including build/decommission costs). So renewables are expensive compared with the cheap 100x oil that fed the last century, but cheap compared with the previous forty centuries (before coal). Cheap enough to be sustainable provided humans are sensible, not cheap enough to be a bonanza.

It provides more political stability with less need for the west to maintain extensive defence links with the oil producing nations of the Middle East.

Global defence relationships are required irrespective of Middle East oil (and gas). They were required before, back even before the days of large-scale long-distance sail, and will be required forever imho. There are key pieces of geography and key nodes of humanity that dictate strategy.

If I am right with a lot of this analysis it makes Tesla with electric cars, solar & storage very like Rockerfella's Standard oil in its very early days, I.e. very cheap.

Standard Oil was a predatory monopoly that begat the anti-trust laws as a reaction. I do not see Tesla's cars + solar + storage having any enduring defensible barriers to competition. It is not that I am agin Tesla, indeed I wish him well, however I cannot see Tesla having any more pricing power than (say) Ford, GM, Toyota, VAG at their prime. OK, maybe a smidge more, but not as much a (say) Apple. That is why I have no direct investment in Tesla, just whatever my index funds naturally dial in. What am I missing ?

Regards, dspp

[dspp]

FB,
My biggest clients' factories in just this GW-scale electrical energy space are indeed located in India and China and Brazil. As an engineer it is a pleasure to visit them.
regards,
dspp

[odysseus2000]

Hi DSPP,

You are going wrong imho where a lot of Wall Street goes wrong, using the a physics metric (EROEI) for a business.

Instead of looking at EROEI let us instead look at a consumer, say someone earning the minimum wage. He/she has to work about an hour to earn enough to buy 5 litres of fuel. This spend then allows the consumer to get to his/her job and to work say 8 hours, earning 8x the cost of the fuel. Depending on how far the work is from the persons home determines how many of his/her working hours have to be used to pay for fuel.

Now let assume that the person gets an electric car and a solar system with storage. There will be additional re-payment overheads or loss of savings for the solar system but the overheads for the electric car will be like those for a fossil fuel car and the cost of the solar system will be spread over say 20 years if leased, recovered more quickly if bought. The person now charges his/her car from stored solar collected when they are at work. He she knows that the cost of the stored energy will be fixed over the life time of the system. Some times in winter he/she will have to take in overnight grid power likely from renewable wind other times there will be surplus to export.

Whether the EROEI is 100x as it was in the early days of Rockerfella’s Standard Oil, or 40x or 20X or what ever will not trouble the consumer. The calculus will be is it cheaper and does it work as well as using fossil fuel. From what folk who are trying to flog system to me say the pay back time for solar will be around 5-7 years and currently they are a bit vague about storage but say similar time. They are selling so one has to be a bit cautious, but if these numbers are anything like correct there is a very substantial saving when compared to fossil fuel. If you have an electric car which you charge the return should be very much faster.

Regarding military alliances, as things now stand the West has to be able to deal with any blockade or military trouble in the Middle East on a short time scale as we are so desperate for their oil. One can argue that we fought both Gulf wars to protect oil supplies. Sure their will be other potential flashpoint that will need guarding with standing armies, but removing one potential trouble area, especially given the problems created in the 1970’s by the oil weapon, is to my way of thinking a big plus.

In addition to all of this we have governments worried about carbon emission and given that all countries could move to renewables with storage there will be big moves to encourage everyone to have solar panels, to put them on government buildings, Schools, road verges, railways etc (essentially certain in my view) I.e. as I see things we are at a situation very like the early days of Standard Oil when slowly the world embraced oil for transport, heating and later as feed stock for the plastics industries. During this period there was huge growth for Standard Oil, made in that case even more by many cartels etc, but without them, oil was a good business to be in and Standard Oil would still have prospered. Why wouldn’t the UK or any democratic government not want clean air for the voters and lower costs for their transport? They could do this by encouraging solar, wind and storage and by at the same time raising carbon taxes. If this happens, Tesla look the most likely business to surf this wave of advancement.

Next let us consider the case that there will be no great profits for Tesla because many competitors will emerge. This makes a ton of sense but I believe it is wrong for 21st century business. If this thesis was correct would we have the dominant players that we see?

Why does NFLX dominate movies? Why didn’t Disney kill them?
Why does EBAY dominate auctions? Why didn’t Sotherbys kill them?
Why does Amazon dominate everything it enters? Why didn’t Walmart kill them.
Why didn’t Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry etc kill Apple iPhone?
Why are Apple computers the machines of choice? Why didn’t Microsoft wipe out Apple?
Why did Kodak collapse, why didn’t they lead in digital photography?

If the commodity thesis was valid then none of these quasi monopolies should exist and the incumbents should have got more powerful. As I see things there is far more to business in the 21st century than offering a low priced product. One can e.g. buy lots of powerful smart phones from India and China for much less than an iPhone, but who do you see doing that?

Sure you will likely be able to buy an electric car from many makers, but how many will have the attractions of a Tesla. Anyone who can evaluate tech specs may decide that Tesla ain't for them, but most folk want market leading products and Tesla leads in electric cars, solar and storage and imho folk will want to buy one. Looking at the reservation figures for Tesla even with delays of months to years encourages me in this belief.

Regards,

[tjh290633]

Somehow I think that you are blinded by your own prejudices. There are more Android phones than iPhones. Most people don't want the leading technology until it has been tried and tested. Electric cars have their place, but are impracticable for the majority.

Some people are prepared to buy Teslas, but many more are happy to buy a small economical car that meets their needs. A Ford Model T it ain't.

TJH

[odysseus2000]

Hi TJH,

Yes, there are more Android sales than iPhone as shown in the first table:

https://android.jlelse.eu/apple-vs-andr ... 6253e9793f

But if you look at where iPhone outsells Android, later graphic, you find that iPhone dominates in the most prosperous nations. Why is this?

The model 3 is not going into a market where folk had no choice before as did the Model T, but as a relatively low cost electric car the model 3 offers what was unavailable to many. If a purchaser has solar & storage, the economics of owning a model 3 are over whelmingly better. If governments follow through with carbon taxes the economics of electric become yet more compelling. Fossil engine makers may say this is unfair, but as with Rockerfella's Standard Oil, what goes is what the politicians allow.

As I see things most folk are being influenced by their experience & are not looking at the numbers & the business & purchasing habits of the current generations of the advanced nations.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

FredBloggs
Yet sure as eggs are eggs a 21st century model T is almost certain to emerge. It will probably be from a company we in the west are hardly aware of, if at all presently. In the 21st century it is by no means a given that the most successful companies will be from the west. Though I feel it quite likely that for a while the two hemispheres could indeed have their own leading companies. In my own field of expertise in the old energy economy, this is certainly the case right now.

I believe this is very likely as both market needs are different.

For the less developed nations the need is for something, like any mobile that works at a low price & ditto for electric cars, solar, storage etc & they will struggle to finance it, but will as the advantages are overwhelming.

For the advanced nations folk will want the best, safest, most fashionable & consumers have the prosperity to have it.

This suggests to me two markets: Analogues of Android/iPhone.

Regards,

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

FredBloggs

Yet this is an interim state. As the emerging economies become fully emerged/mature (Look at South Korea as an example, perhaps as a newly emerged mature economy) the west and east will increasingly look the same. Naturally, there will be emerging economies for a long time in Asia, Africa etc... But the retail habits between mature and emerging nations will converge.

Agree but the question is which way will they converge?

As far as I can tell, they will all move towards the Weatern advanced economy model since people are the same species and with prosperity will come the want of the best their is.

Arthur

[dspp]

o2000, etc,

- There are legitimate economies of scale, and there are network effects. For car production scale economies are strong, but network effects are weak. For some IT products the network effects are extremely strong. The extent to which network effects are in play tends to determine the outcome in terms of how many companies can viably contend a market. For conventional automotive there are/were dozens of contenders, and in electric automotive I see no reason why there should be a significantly different outcome. The reason I say this is that I do not see a future where the automotive manufacturers will have been permitted to acquire dominance in the adjacent market of fuel (electricity) supply and to control a corresponding network of incompatible delivery points. For sure some will try, either to pump-prime the market or to seek to access network effects, but I expect that attempt to fail - either because of competitive responses, or because of legislative responses.

- I have had many conversations over the years about who sets the market price for energy. Some put forwards the poor-man hypothesis, i.e. that the poor farmer buying their first barrel of oil to add fertilisers/tractors/transport gets so much extra value that they will set the price. Their income after all might rise from $500/year to $1000/year. Others put forwards the rich-man hypothesis, that the wealthy billionaire will outbid them for the last barrel of oil to fly their pet dog halfway round the globe in their private jet*. What does the wealthy man care if they have to outbid the poor farmer ? Such debates are valid in a zero-sum economics of finite extractable resources such as oil. They are an irrelevance in non-zero sum economics of renewables. Need more power, just add another panel. Need even more power, just add another panel factory. Once EROIs reach 10-20 then both are viable and it is a very soft price response, quite different than savage supply/demand match in the oil price.

- defence/security issues are part of the human condition. The issues in play and the locations of interest will change as technology changes, but will not disappear. I think Middle East will remain important for the next forty years, just increasingly in different ways, but with plenty of volatile switchbacks between old and new ways en route. The Hormuz, Bar-el-Mandeb, Suez will remain valid chokepoints. Their effect will be weakened both due to decreasing importance of oil, and decreasing importance of sea (vs rail: see some of my other posts on that), but they will still be very important. So too will the large populations that comprise the Arab street.

regards, dspp

*I first came across that last point of view almost twenty years ago, put forwards by a VP of Gulfstream, who went on to opinine that the last drop of kerosene on the planet would be burnt in one of their jets. I think he knows his client base better than I do

[odysseus2000]

dspp
- There are legitimate economies of scale, and there are network effects. For car production scale economies are strong, but network effects are weak. For some IT products the network effects are extremely strong. The extent to which network effects are in play tends to determine the outcome in terms of how many companies can viably contend a market. For conventional automotive there are/were dozens of contenders, and in electric automotive I see no reason why there should be a significantly different outcome. The reason I say this is that I do not see a future where the automotive manufacturers will have been permitted to acquire dominance in the adjacent market of fuel (electricity) supply and to control a corresponding network of incompatible delivery points. For sure some will try, either to pump-prime the market or to seek to access network effects, but I expect that attempt to fail - either because of competitive responses, or because of legislative responses.

This I feel is the most important part of the discussion & is the same as that between Buffett and Musk over whether moats are relevant in the 21st century.

The existing power producers, including Buffett, are arguing that there should be no support for roof top solar saying that to do so will hurt for poor folk who can not afford to buy solar. It is a weak argument as they receive subsidies for lots of their own renewables and these come from the pockets of all including the poor.

If we have a situation where, as I expect, there will be lots of players in the car making market even new folk like Dyson in the UK I believe that in the by and by most will fail due to lack of innovation, not due to moat type behaviour and the ones that try this, like Microsoft, will get to be loathed by many consumers.

The question to me is are Tesla with their production capability in cars and in batteries capable of producing cars and storage that, like the iPhone, are desired by most consumers or will someone else come along and beat them?

If Tesla can do this they will emerge as market leaders and although likely to get loathed as was Walmart and now Amazon by the less successful and politicians looking for votes the odds favour them doing very well.

We will just have to wait and see.

Regarding the poor man, rich man model and who will burn the last gallon of kerosene I am reminded of the previous Saudi minister of energy who noted that the stone age did not end due to lack of stones. I don't think the kerosene age will end with the lack of kerosene, I think it is ending with the development of electric motors and storage. We are already seeing Boeing and Airbus both working on electric flight and meanwhile the potential for hyperloops suggests that a lot of the current aviation market may be lost to this technology.

I may have all of this wrong, but if I am right I expect electric cars and storage to rapidly in 5-10 years become more common than fossil fuel cars are today and that children who are taught the history of the world will wonder how folk lived through the world when society ran upon oil and gas.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Fred Bloggs
Whilst I largely agree with the last post. Though I disagree about kids wondering how we managed with primitive fossil fuel devices. The cars, the aircraft, everything will outwardly look very familiar. Only on the inside will it be significantly different. I really don't think many youngsters (indeed when I were young) give a nano second of thought where the electricity comes from. No more than they wonder where milk and potatoes come from - The supermarket, stupid.

Ha ha, can't argue with that even though I did say those taught the history of the world.

The decoupling between what folk experience & its origin continues to grow. That is the reason why I think one has to focus on costs.

Person x may not care whether they drive an electric or heat engine, but if the former goes faster & costs less to run, they will care about image & price & want electric imho.

Regards,

[Itsallaguess]

If we have a situation where, as I expect, there will be lots of players in the car making market even new folk like Dyson in the UK I believe that in the by and by most will fail due to lack of innovation, not due to moat type behaviour and the ones that try this, like Microsoft, will get to be loathed by many consumers.

Are the cutting-edge innovators like Musk trying to do too much at once in the car-market though?

I'd have thought the best chance to get mass-market appeal regarding electric would be to simply concentrate on the drive-train, and forget about the vast majority of the automation side of things completely.

People are quite happy driving their cars the way they do today, and would like a viable alternative to having to put petrol in their cars for every journey.

Given the huge (and numerous...) safety-related issues surrounding the automation side, I wonder if that will be the undoing of Tesla and the other manufacturers who are chasing too huge a leap from where we are today, and what the car-driving public want to buy.

Lots of talk on this thread about someone coming in from left-side with a mass-market option, and I wonder if this will be the way someone is allowed to do that - by dropping the vast majority of the autonomous aspects, and simply concentrating on getting the under-bonnet technology onto the streets as cheaply as possible.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[TUK020]

Yet sure as eggs are eggs a 21st century model T is almost certain to emerge. It will probably be from a company we in the west are hardly aware of, if at all presently. In the 21st century it is by no means a given that the most successful companies will be from the west. Though I feel it quite likely that for a while the two hemispheres could indeed have their own leading companies. In my own field of expertise in the old energy economy, this is certainly the case right now.

"The Innovator's Dilemma" suggests that the battle for supremacy in the new technology is probably being fought in a segment below our radar.
50% of vehicles sold today in Shanghai are electric. Most happen to be scooters. Anyone tracking the leading brands?

[PeterGray]

The question to me is are Tesla with their production capability in cars and in batteries capable of producing cars and storage that, like the iPhone, are desired by most consumers or will someone else come along and beat them?

I think this is a mistaken view, it's not about one or two key manufacturers. As dspp has argued phones and cars are very different. HC cars comfortably support a large number of manufacturers. I see no reason to think that electric car production will be any different. And I'm not convinced that combining battery and car production provides a large advantage. Current manufacturers do well buying in a range of critical parts from specialist parts manufacturers. Batteries can be produced to specification off site by specialists just as easily. And you may do better using a someone who's bread and butter is batteries, and who has to keep at the front end of stable technology, than trying to do it in house.

Peter

[odysseus2000]

People are quite happy driving their cars the way they do today, and would like a viable alternative to having to put petrol in their cars for every journey.

Given the huge (and numerous...) safety-related issues surrounding the automation side, I wonder if that will be the undoing of Tesla and the other manufacturers who are chasing too huge a leap from where we are today, and what the car-driving public want to buy.

Lots of talk on this thread about someone coming in from left-side with a mass-market option, and I wonder if this will be the way someone is allowed to do that - by dropping the vast majority of the autonomous aspects, and simply concentrating on getting the under-bonnet technology onto the streets as cheaply as possible.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

The problem with now is the accident rate, something like 3000 deaths/ serious injuries on uk roads every year.

If cars can be made safer by computer control, the benefits will not only be more people not being hurt, but also reduction in insurance premiums for computer controlled cars, large rises in insurance premiums for human driven cars.

Making cars safer is a huge market if it can be done. Current data, as I understand it, suggests that many accidents can be prevented by computer driving, not zero but significant reductions.

Will people want to be safer on the roads?

My guess is yes & that the politicians will not need too much arm twisting to sanction it.

So if someone comes in from left field that doesn't have all that the best have I expect they will do similarly to what Lada did, I.e. a very small market share & folk will shun them making second hand prices too low for many new ones to sell.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

PeterGray
The question to me is are Tesla with their production capability in cars and in batteries capable of producing cars and storage that, like the iPhone, are desired by most consumers or will someone else come along and beat them?

I think this is a mistaken view, it's not about one or two key manufacturers. As dspp has argued phones and cars are very different. HC cars comfortably support a large number of manufacturers. I see no reason to think that electric car production will be any different. And I'm not convinced that combining battery and car production provides a large advantage. Current manufacturers do well buying in a range of critical parts from specialist parts manufacturers. Batteries can be produced to specification off site by specialists just as easily. And you may do better using a someone who's bread and butter is batteries, and who has to keep at the front end of stable technology, than trying to do it in house.

Peter

IPhones are very much the model of buying all components from specialists & remote assembly in China.

The advantage of inhouse everything is control & speed of change, plus the ability to sell components to other makers & that you are not paying out margin to another business who might at some future date decide not to supply you. Tesla e.g. sold components to Daimler before Daimler started to make them at Daimler factories.

If one can reliably make stuff in house, the advantages as I see it are substantial.

In my nano scale electronics manufacturing business I have to buy in many things & it can be a pain if something becomes difficult to get. This doesn't happen with basic things like resistors/capacitors, but with processors or more specialist stuff if someone like Digikey gets a big order from someone else the lead time for replacement can be weeks & so I try & avoid anything like that, but I would much prefer to have it under my control although for me it is impossible, I can see why Tesla want it. There was interesting analogue with Pace who were making set top boxes for Sky. Lord Sugar convinced Sky to go in house by buying his Amstrad business & this wrecked Pace.

Regards,