Tesla Wants to Power Wal-Mart

As reported by Bloomberg Business: Tesla Motors Inc. is signing up big customers like Wal-Mart and Cargill, accelerating efforts to become a leader in energy storage -- a new market that’s poised to boost sales and profit at the electric vehicle pioneer.

Next week, Tesla will make a deeper push beyond the car business when it unveils batteries for homes and utilities.

A review of California’s Self Generation Incentive Program, or SGIP, shows Tesla has ambitions to sell batteries for a range of commercial uses, from powering its factories to reducing electric bills at schools and wineries. Tesla is on track to reap as much as $65 million in SGIP rebates, which are designed to encourage investment in alternative energy.

“Tesla has been able to install more than 100 projects, really without anyone noticing,” said Andrea James, an analyst with Dougherty & Co. She said Tesla’s energy storage business could be worth as much as $70 to Tesla’s stock. The shares rose 5.3 percent to $220.45 at 2:44 p.m. New York time after climbing as much as 6 percent for the biggest intraday gain in more than two weeks.

As a builder of electric cars, the company has a vested interest in making the electric grid as clean as possible. Customers typically buy the batteries to store energy from solar panels, using them when electricity from the grid is most expensive or the sun isn’t shining. With Tesla’s gigafactory for battery production under construction in Nevada, storage products could serve as a secondary revenue stream for the company, which is looking to diversify its product lineup.

As part of a pilot program with sister company SolarCity, Tesla has installed batteries at about 300 California homes equipped with solar panels. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has a relationship with SolarCity, has Tesla batteries installed at 11 California stores; Cargill Inc. plans a one-megawatt system for its animal-processing plant in Fresno.

Home Battery
The SGIP database provides a snapshot of Tesla’s activities in its home state and is by no means a complete picture of the company’s storage ambitions.

But Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been dropping hints for weeks, and yesterday the company told investors and analysts in an e-mail that Tesla will announce the home battery and a “very large” utility-scale battery on April 30. In the e-mail, Jeffrey Evanson, Tesla’s chief of investor relations, said the company “will explain the advantages of our solutions and why past battery options were not compelling.”

Tesla spokeswoman Khobi Brooklyn said the company would share more information next week.

Thanks to state incentives and advances in battery chemistry, storage is a hot industry. By 2019, total U.S. sales will reach $1.5 billion, about 11 times as much as in 2014, according to a March report from GTM Research.

Renewable Grid
“Energy storage on the grid will grow rapidly in combination with renewables,” Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel said last month at the Vail Global Energy Forum. “Eventually you’re going to have a 100 percent battery electric vehicle fleet, working in tandem with an almost 100 percent renewable electric utility grid full of solar and wind.”

For companies looking to break into California’s storage market, the first stop is SGIP. Founded during an energy crisis in 2001 and funded by ratepayers, the program has a budget of $83 million and covers as much as 60 percent of a project’s costs. All proposals go through a technical review and are supposed to be connected to the grid within two years. Applicants collect rebates once projects are completed.

Wine Battery
While companies like Coda Energy, Green Charge Networks and Stem have also applied for SGIP funds, Tesla accounts for almost half of all storage applications, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in an April 2 report published for clients. BNEF also said Tesla accounts for about 70 percent of SGIP storage projects connected to California’s grid.

Jackson Family Wines, based in Santa Rosa, has a new partnership with Tesla involving battery storage and several vehicle charging stations, according to the February issue of Wine Business Monthly. The winery declined to comment.

Mack Wycoff, Wal-Mart’s senior manager for renewable energy and emissions, said the company is intrigued by energy storage. “Instead of pulling electricity from the grid, you discharge it from the battery,” he said. “Ideally you know when your period of peak demand is, and you discharge it then.”

Mike Martin, Cargill’s director of communications, declined to provide details about how the company plans to use Tesla batteries at the Fresno plant. The 200,000-square-foot facility, one of the largest of its type in California, produces nearly 400 million pounds of beef each year.

Janet Dixon is director of facilities at the Temecula Valley Unified School District in southern California, which plans to install solar panels at 20 of its 28 schools this summer. Dixon said that SolarCity is the solar provider, and five of the facilities will have Tesla batteries.

“We spend roughly $3 million a year on electricity, and most of that is lighting and air conditioning,” said Dixon. “We are going solar to reduce our overall costs and the battery storage should help us manage our peak demand.”

SpaceX Targets May 5th for Dragon Pad-Abort Test

As reported by Florida Today: SpaceX as soon as May 5 will shoot a Dragon capsule from a Cape Canaveral in a test of a key safety system needed for astronaut launches in the next two or three years.

The so-called "pad abort" test will launch a prototype crew spacecraft from a stand at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, simulating a launch pad emergency.

The Dragon will fire SuperDraco thrusters designed to enable the capsule and its crew to escape from a rocket failing on the pad or during flight.

"The ability to abort from a launch or pad emergency and safely carry crew members out of harm's way is a critical element for NASA's next generation of crew spacecraft," NASA said in a statement.

The brief test plans to loft the unmanned capsule upward until it deploys parachutes and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the test. NASA TV also will air a media briefing previewing the test with SpaceX and NASA representatives. 

The ability to abort from a launch or pad emergency and safely carry crew members out of harm's way is a critical element for NASA's next generation of crew spacecraft. SpaceX will perform the test under its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement with NASA, but can use the data gathered during the development flight as it continues on the path to certification. Under a separate Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, NASA's Commercial Crew Program will certify SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Falcon 9 rocket, ground and mission operations systems to fly crews to and from the International Space Station.

The Dragon capsule test unit will fire SuperDraco thrusters to blast off from a truss mimicking a Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad, then deploy three main parachutes and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean approximately one mile offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
The test rig includes a capsule with hundreds of sensors to measure pressures, loads, temperatures and other data during the flight test, which is expected to last about one minute.

SpaceX officials have said a crash test dummy is inside the capsule for the pad abort flight.

The human-rated Dragon capsule — a redesigned version of of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft — will ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station beginning in 2017. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to $2.6 billion in September to complete development of the Crew Dragon spaceship and fly up to six operational crew rotation missions to the space station.

NASA also tapped Boeing to finish testing of its CST-100 space capsule, giving the space agency redundant means to transport astronauts into low Earth orbit and end U.S. reliance on Russian Soyuz capsules for the job.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft’s eight side-mounted SuperDraco thrusters each generate about 16,000 pounds of thrust to carry crews away from danger during launch. SpaceX says the engines can also slow down the capsule during landing, eventually allowing the craft to accomplish propulsive pinpoint touchdowns like a helicopter.

Dragon Opens for Business with New Science

From NASA blogs: NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Scott Kelly opened the hatches and floated into the new SpaceX Dragon space freighter Saturday morning, beginning five weeks of cargo transfers. The sixth Dragon cargo mission for NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract delivered a wide variety of crew supplies and science gear to support dozens of new and ongoing microgravity experiments.

The crew unloaded new Rodent Research gear that will allow scientists to study the effects of microgravity on biological mechanisms in mice. Results may promote the development of new drugs tackling the effects of aging and disease on Earth.

A pair of new POLAR science freezers were unloaded from Dragon. The freezers store science samples at -80° C and allow the transport of those samples back to Earth.

Blood pressure checks and vision testing were on the schedule Monday as part of the Ocular Health study which observes the effects of long-term spaceflight on crew members. A trio of cosmonauts looked at cardiac activity in space and studied the radiation emitted from Russian spacecraft propulsion systems.

Chevrolet FNR Autonomous Car Concept

As reported by Cool Material: The automotive concept allows for considerable interpretation. Some concepts are only a short time away from production and some are much more. The Chevrolet FNR Concept is definitely the latter—it’s an imaginative hypothesis of what future vehicles could be. Making its grand introduction at Auto Shanghai, the FNR was also designed to commemorate Chevrolet’s ten year anniversary in China. The self-driving or autonomous FNR features “dragon-fly” doors, 180-degree swiveling front seats, and iris recognition for the driver. Turning each wheel is a magnetic and hubless electric motor, but don’t worry about plugging it in as wireless charging is standard.

Pilot: US Government Claims Of Plane Wi-Fi Hacking Wrong And Irresponsible

As reported by Forbes: The US government released a report yesterday warning of security threats facing modern aircraft, leading to stories from major publications claiming in-flght Wi-Fi could be hacked to take control of a passenger plane. But according to Dr Phil Polstra, a qualified pilot and professor of digital forensics at Bloomsburg University, the report contained much erroneous information.

Polstra believes the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report was put together by people who didn’t understand how modern aircraft actually work. He took umbrage with the claims that as airplanes are increasingly connected to the internet, the control systems on planes are in danger of being remotely compromised. He told FORBES over email that the avionics networks, which deal with flight controls and coordination, were simply not connected to the internet like Wi-Fi services. “To imply this is irresponsible.”

Whilst modern aircraft do use standardised internet connections over ethernet and IP addresses sending data to one another, there is no real threat to passenger safety from sky-high Wi-Fi hacks. “To imply that because IP is used for in-flight WiFi and also on the avionics networks means that you can automatically take over the avionics network makes about as much sense as saying you can take over the jet engines because they breath air like the passengers and there is no air gap between passengers who touch the plane and the engines which are attached to the plane,” Polstra said.

The GAO report, based largely on interviews with security experts , also indicated “if the cabin systems connect to the cockpit avionics systems (e.g., share the same physical wiring harness or router) and use the same networking platform, in this case IP, a user could subvert the firewall and access the cockpit avionics system from the cabin”. Polstra said that’s a big “if” and isn’t how current in-flight networks actually work.

“The information passed on to the inflight entertainment system is via something called a NED (Network Extension Device). This device is not a router. This is a device that must be programmed to pass certain information to the entertainment system (aircraft position, etc.).
“This is a one-way communication. Even if someone were able to send information back toward the avionics, they aren’t listening for information from the in-flight entertainment systems… Since the computer doesn’t try and read information on those wires it is not likely to be useful to an attacker.”

The GAO was “deceptive” in its depictions of airliner networks, such as in the image above, he added. “Just because the cabin has wireless and ground communication is also wireless doesn’t mean the systems are ‘connected’.”

The media reports warning of Wi-Fi attacks were also odd – there was no clear mention of anything related to Wi-Fi in the whole GAO document.

There have been some cases, however, where networks have not been properly segmented, potentially leaving open vulnerabilities. Seven years ago, it emerged the flight control and infotainment networks on Boeing 787 aircraft were connected, with only a firewall blocking malicious traffic between the two. If that’s still the case, then there’s at least something to worry about.

Elon Musk Nearly Sold Tesla to Google Two Years Ago

As reported by The Verge: In March of 2013, Tesla was in a dire situation: the company was nearly bankrupt, its electric vehicles failing to connect with buyers. But according to a new report from Bloomberg today, Elon Musk had a contingency plan: cash out with Google.

MUSK WANTED EIGHT MORE YEARS WITH THE COMPANY

As Tesla was on the downward slope, Elon Musk turned to his friend Larry Page, suggesting Google buy the company, plus $5 billion in factory expenses. It's unclear what the exact offer was, but as Bloomberg points out, Tesla was worth $6 billion at the time. Musk also reportedly asked Page to guarantee him either another eight years running the company, or enough time to produce a third-generation, mainstream electric car.

The talks, according to Bloomberg, were far along.  Page reportedly "accepted the overall proposal and shook on the deal."  Lawyers spent the next few weeks hammering out details, but it never quite closed.

As we know, the deal never went anywhere. Tesla turned around from the edge of bankruptcy. The company ended up posting a profit in the next few weeks, and even paid back its debts to the Department of Energy. Musk reportedly broke off the deal with Google soon after.

Apple was also rumored to be interested in buying Tesla last year, a deal with a very different tenor than the reported Google buyout. With the news that Apple is working on a car, that speculation has intensified, with investors suggesting Apple would have to pay $75 billion for the car maker.

Here’s What Happens When Your Tesla is Smarter Than You

As reported by The Verge: Dragging your feet through the parched gravel along the side of Nevada's Route 93, relentless sun burning your face, empty gas canister in hand. It's every driver's nightmare: getting stranded somewhere. On electric vehicles, that fear is amplified by the fact that you are no longer reliant on gas stations, which are just about everywhere, but on charging stations. And there just aren't as many of those — at least not yet. Electric car owners knew this was the deal when they signed up. They also knew that driving the kinds of distances they were used to with multiple tanks of gas would require a little more work on something with batteries.

Tesla had an ambitious plan to solve this problem on its cars by swapping depleted batteries from its Model S sedan out with charged ones in just one minute. That's a good idea, but one that's still being tested. A tweet from Tesla co-founder Elon Musk last month also suggested that the feature might be more for commercial drivers than civilians:

So in the meantime the company has attempted to combat the range anxiety problem with software that both keeps you from being stupid, and — more importantly — does not require you to be smart.

A new update that started going out to Model S owners at the end of March has two features designed to figure out how far you can go before your battery is drained. The first is a simple warning that will let you know when you're headed outside the range of known charging stations. The other is a trip planner that will strategically route you through Tesla's network of Superchargers. I came away impressed with how well the trip planner worked, but I also got an interesting lesson in how much extra driving can be involved if you want to stay inside Tesla's charger network. (I couldn't test the range warning because I was working with a full battery in the heart of San Francisco, a place rich with charging stations.)For fun, I plugged in a route to Walt Disney World in Florida, a multi-day trip from my starting point in Northern California. The Model S's navigation system took a few seconds to churn through the trip before serving up a route that would have had me driving through 27 different charging stations and venturing as far north as Wisconsin (more than 1,000 miles north of my destination). Plotting the same course into Google Maps (which Tesla uses), the same trip in a gasoline vehicle would normally take me through the Texas panhandle. Assume I planned to follow the Supercharger route, and stop for about half an hour to top up at each of those stations, and we're talking an extra 1,500 or so miles, which easily adds up to an extra full day of driving.

THIS ISN'T JUST FOR WORST-CASE SCENARIOS

But that same route and others like it are destined to change as time goes on. In the US, Tesla has 419 charging stations with 2,305 Superchargers, with plans to open up more both domestically and abroad in the next two years. This year alone may change the California to Florida scenario with charging stations set to open in New Mexico, Texas, and Mississippi. You can already see the difference just a few more stations make when plotting a journey from San Francisco to New York, which resembles less of a wild tour of America, and more of what you'd do in a car running off gasoline.This new tool isn't just for my worst-case scenario road trip, though; it's also for shorter weekend trips and basic commuting with a car that may not be fully charged. Meanwhile, the range assurance feature has you covered when you haven't set a destination in the navigation system, which is more likely on shorter, impromptu trips. It alerts you when you're about to go too far from a known charging location, which helps you decide whether to keep pushing ahead (if you're going to a house where you can plug in, for instance) or turn around.

There's also the inevitability that these types of features — the ones that keep humans from making mistakes — could end up as nothing more than a brief footnote along the path to autonomous cars, which Tesla is feverishly working on. Taking the thinking out of driving in return for safety and convenience is the main goal of that project, and Tesla has already promised the first taste of that in an update coming to its vehicles this summer that will effectively self-park in selected spots and drive for you on highways. The step beyond that — the one where you can take a nap on your way to work or enjoy a movie with your kids — is Tesla's future, as long as Elon Musk gets his way. In the meantime, the company may have already turned dead batteries into a thing of the past.