Yeah. You can only get a trickle charge off the amount of solar panels you can put on an EV, so there’s no real value to it.
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To help quantify that: based on historical data for my house on an ideal day (sunny, not too hot, late spring/early summer) and factoring in inefficiencies (e.g. resistance, heat), I’ll average about 2kWh per 320W panel per day. So, an ideal day would replenish about 5% of a Nissan Leaf’s battery (39kWh usable capacity) and about 3.5% of a base model Tesla (57.5 kWh).
There are lots of non-ideal days in this part of Texas. Plus you have to park the car in the direct sun which makes the inside hot which needs more A/C to cool which uses more energy. And if you’re actually slapping a rooftop panel on top of a car then the car will be less aerodynamic which also uses more energy.
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Also remember that it took $4.5 billion to find and make the gas you bought, because you set the last batch on fire.
And also, Apple made a profit of $34 billion this for the last quarter. Remember that the next time you visit iTunes.
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Profit is what’s left over after spending on exploration and development.
An iPhone isn’t a globally finite commodity needed by almost every human on the planet to get through the day. Neither is iTunes.
Is this the part where Towlie shows up?
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Ummm…no. The cost to pay the geologist’s salary is an expense, but the land, drilling and production equipment and the cost of putting new production online…99.999% of the cost (cause geologists are woefully underpaid) are capital investments. Historically, between 75-90% of profit has gone back as capital investment. That number has declined a bit in the last few years as debt repayment and dividends for investors have increased. But this idea that Big Oil has a room full of 30 billion gold coins that the executive committee dives into every morning is well…you know.
I would argue that more people can go a day without oil than can go a day without their iPhone.
Don’t get me started on dinosaurs…
If he’s using financial statements for these numbers, those capital investments are depreciated over their life span, so profit would be net of that expense. Which is not to say that it’s not a continual reinvestment, but profit absolutely does factor in R&D for any industry.
It factors in R&D, it doesn’t factor in the billions it costs upfront to design and build the new infrastructure. Finding the new oil is only part of the equation. Oil is a very capital intensive business.
Those are absolutely capitalized, amortized/depreciated costs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but amortization and depreciation go on your income statement for figuring profit/loss, but the capital asset doesn’t. It goes on a balance sheet, and the cost to acquire comes out of the profit. If I borrow $100 to buy 10 widgets, and sell them for $200, my profit on those is $100. When I go to buy more widgets, the cost of those new ones has to come out of my profit or I have to borrow the money. They don’t cancel each other out and my profit is zero. I’m constantly having to acquire more widgets to sell, or I’m liquidating, either by spending my profit from the last ones or borrowing more money.
If there’s one thing that’ll make this baseball season go down easier, it’s finance talk.
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Admittedly I know enough accounting to be dangerous. And I hate myself for knowing that much.
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Here you go. Aptera This will get you 40 miles / day worth of solar charge. First units deliver next year. This is one start-up that’s well managed and has a real chance of success.
Perovskite solar cells are coming in a couple of years with a big increase in efficiency. Probably to about 60 miles / day.
Full disclosure: I am a small-time investor.
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I had looked into this company before I got our Leaf in 2012. Heard they folded, but didn’t know that they had restarted the company. Interesting concept, hope they make it.
Correct!
Correct!
Incorrect. Profit is income less “expenses” - allowed expenses, but not cash outlay. This is why companies have both an income statement and a statement of cash flow - because the two are not the same.
I doubt it’s gold coins, but at 12/31/23, Shell had $38.744 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
And you’d rather do your morning dive into cash rather than coins
I’d forgotten what off days feel like.
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The original incarnation was destroyed by it’s purchasers. The original founders re-acquired the name and IP and restarted.
I invested after they solved one of their biggest manufacturing problems with an injected-molded carbon fiber process that produces big, dimensionally stable, and very strong parts. Most production tooling has been built and major testing, including crash testing, should happen later this year.
Although all EV startups are a dicey proposition, Aptera’s burn rate on investment is miserly and they are very close to general production with a very simple manufacturing model. I give them a little better than a 50-50 chance. If they do make it, it might be big. The use case is perfect for me, and perhaps many others.