Energy
What Tesla and Honda’s early success have in common
“To the more established brands, it is a young upstart company with performance claims that seem unreasonably optimistic. Instead of being rooted in reality, its new sporty two-door appears to be little more than the expressed will of a mercurial leader. There are already rumors of potential bankruptcy. Surely, this is hubris run amok.”
The automaker in question? Honda in the late 1960s. Fifty years later, Tesla and Elon Musk are the objects of great admiration, but also constant targets of criticism. In a recent article in The Globe and Mail, Brendan McAleer tells a fascinating story of a young company with a charismatic leader, which finally found great success by tempering its expansive dreams with a dose of reality.
In the sixties, Honda and its founder, Soichiro Honda, faced attacks very similar to those being launched at Tesla today. Mr. Honda’s pride and joy was the Honda 1300, aka the Coupe 9. It was an innovative, forward-looking little car, with an air-cooled four-cylinder engine, independent suspension, and excellent fuel efficiency.
The problem was Soichiro Honda himself, who apparently couldn’t resist the urge to keep improving his design. At one point, he ordered the assembly line to stop so that new features could be added. “Eventually, his engineers set up a desk in the factory to deal with his constant interfering,” McAleer writes (sound familiar?). “Honda was forced to step back and his engineers worked to combine his passionate ideas with the practical needs of modern mass manufacturing. The next car they produced was the Honda Civic. You could say it did pretty well.”
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Above: The iconic Soichiro Honda celebrates the first H1300 car off the production line (Image: Honda)
Like Mr. Honda, Elon Musk is famous for his interest in every detail of his company’s vehicles. However, it’s safe to say that the extremes of emotion Elon inspire go far beyond anything ever aimed at Mr. Honda, at least in the Western press. Is Musk “a messianic figure or the fraudulent leader of a cultish mob?” McAleer asks.
Noting that the truth surely lies somewhere in the middle, McAleer lists some of Tesla’s strengths and weaknesses. The latter include a consistent failure to deliver a product on time, quality-control issues and “an apparent inability to turn a profit” (which it might be more accurate to call a lack of interest in turning a profit).
McAleer goes on to say that Tesla’s corporate culture appears to discourage internal criticism, and cites Model X’s Falcon Wing doors, which even some at Tesla have characterized as a mistake, as a symptom of a top-down culture. He doesn’t seem to be enamored of some of Model 3’s innovations: “Clean-slate thinking is one thing, but ignoring the lessons learned by others is a mistake.”
Tesla’s greatest strength is the fanatical devotion of its customers, and in today’s brand-centric business world, that may be an insurmountable advantage. As a brand, Tesla is one of the greatest in history, right up there with Harley-Davidson and the Grateful Dead. Legacy automakers are gearing up to offer vehicles to compete with Tesla (as they reportedly have been for several years now), but it’s difficult to imagine any of them ever rivaling Tesla’s brand loyalty.
Elon Musk has set out to electrify the world’s transportation system – a far loftier goal than anything Soichiro Honda thought about doing. But as Honda’s story illustrates, those who would change the world need to ground their dreams in reality. Hopefully, the continuing rollout of Model 3 will demonstrate that innovative ideas combined with a healthy respect for the practical aspects of manufacturing and consumer behavior add up to a winning formula.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
Source: The Globe and Mail
Tesla Energy has become the undisputed dark horse of the electric vehicle maker. This was highlighted by Tesla Energy’s growing role in the company’s overall operations in the past quarters.
And as per Tesla’s year-end milestone posts on X, Tesla Energy had a blockbuster 2024.
Tesla Energy’s 2024 milestones:
- As per Tesla on its official social media account on X, the company has hit over 800,000 Powerwalls installed worldwide.
- From this number, over 100,000 Powerwall batteries have been enrolled in virtual power plant (VPP) programs.
- The Powerwall 3 has officially been launched in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand.
- The Tesla Megapack hit over 22 GWh in operation across more than 60 countries across the globe.
- The Lathrop Megafactory, which produces the Megapack, has been ramped to 40 GWh per year.
- The Lathrop Megafactory has also produced its 10,000th Megapack battery.
- The Shanghai Megafactory was completed in just seven months, and it is ready to start Megapack production in Q1 2025.
Hit 800k Powerwalls installed worldwide
— Tesla (@Tesla) December 31, 2024
Also:
– Over 100k Powerwalls are now enrolled in VPP programs
– Launched Powerwall 3 in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, UK, Germany, Italy, Australia & New Zealand
– Megapack hit 22+ GWh in operation across 60+ countries
– Ramped… pic.twitter.com/bE88DpeyTg
Powerwall owners’ 2024 impact:
- As per Tesla Energy, Powerwall owners generated a total of 4.5 TWh of solar energy globally in 2024. This was equivalent to powering a Model 3 for more than 17 billion miles.
- A total of 1.1 TWh of energy was stored in Powerwalls in 2024. This protected homes from over 5.8 million outages during the year.
- Tesla’s Storm Watch feature for Powerwall batteries covered 2.8 million severe weather events over the year.
- Powerwall owners saw collective savings of over $800 million on utility bills.
- Virtual Power Plants contributed over 2.2 GWh of power to the grid. This reduced the need for 2,200 metric tons of fossil fuel peaker plant emissions.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Utah-based rPlus Energies recently held the groundbreaking ceremony for the Green River Energy Center, a 400 MW solar PV and 400 MW/1,600 MWh battery storage project in Eastern Utah. Tesla Megapacks will be used as the upcoming facility’s battery storage solution.
At 400 MW/1,600 MWh, the Green River Energy Center is expected to become one of the largest solar-plus-storage projects under development in the United States. Once operational, the facility would supply power to PacifiCorp under a power purchase agreement, as noted in a press release.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shared his excitement for the project during the Green River Energy Center’s groundbreaking event. As per the Utah Governor, the solar and battery storage system represents a notable step forward for the state’s sustainable energy efforts.
NEWS: rPlus Energy has just broken ground on a new $362 million @Tesla Megapack battery energy storage system in Utah.
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 24, 2024
This 400 MW solar PV and 400 MW/1,600 MWh battery storage project is one of the largest solar-plus-storage projects under construction in the nation. The entire… pic.twitter.com/ubPOUnPWEf
“This project is being built in rural Utah, by rural Utahns, and for all of Utah. When rural Utah thrives, the entire state prospers. Today, we’re not just breaking ground—we’re building a future of affordable, abundant energy in Utah,” the official noted.
The Green River Energy Center secured over $1 billion in construction debt financing earlier this year. The facility is also expected to create about 500 jobs, many of which will be filled by local workers. With this in mind, the solar and battery farm would likely prove to be a boost to Emery County’s economy, enhancing tax revenue, strengthening public services, and offering long-term employment opportunities for the area’s residents.
Sundt Construction will serve as the project’s contractor, EliTe Solar will supply the solar modules, and Tesla will provide the battery storage system for the project. Luigi Resta, President and CEO of rPlus Energies, noted that the Green River Energy Center is special because of the entities that have worked together to make the facility a reality.
“It’s the partners that make this project special, that have made this monumental project possible. From our equipment providers to the onsite talent, and the support of the local and regional community, we owe this project’s success to each of you,” he stated.
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Tesla Energy is losing a director who brought Autobidder, a real-time trading and control platform that provides value-based asset management and portfolio optimization, to the company.
Rohan Ma, who has been at Tesla for just under eight years, announced he would depart the company on LinkedIn, aiming to take on a new opportunity elsewhere.
Ma posted:
“After eight years at Tesla, this will be my last week. It was a ride of a lifetime! Today, Tesla Energy is thriving and I can confidently say it’s in the best position it has ever been in to drive impact toward the original mission I signed up for. I’m proud to have contributed over the years to where it is now, and will be cheering the team on from the sidelines as they carry the torch forward and continue to relentlessly solve problems at the frontier of the energy transition.”
Ma started as the Senior Manager of Energy Optimization at Tesla back in November 2016. After four-and-a-half years at the position, he then moved on to a new role as the Director of Energy and Software Optimization. He has been in that role for over three years.
The exit of Ma is the latest in Tesla’s tough year in terms of losing high-level employees.
Earlier this year, as a part of widespread layoffs, Tesla eliminated up to 20 percent of its workforce and people like Rebecca Tinucci, who was the company’s Senior Director of EV Charging.
Tesla also lost Rohan Patel, Vice President of Global Public Policy and Business Development, and Martin Viecha, who was Head of Investor Relations, are just a few notables to depart.
Autobidder
Tesla’s Autobidder platform helps owners and operators make money by autonomously monetizing battery assets. It is a real-time trading and control platform that maximizes revenue according to business objectives and risk preferences.
Tesla Megapack, Autobidder to be deployed in big battery project in Queensland
Autobidder already has hundreds of megawatt-hours under management and continues to scale. It is hosted on Tesla’s secure cloud infrastructure that is engineered to handle large and complex computations.
Without Ma’s expertise, Autobidder would likely not be involved in Tesla’s Energy division at all, and although it is not frequently discussed, it is still a major part of the business’s growth over the past several years.
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