Saturday, August 29, 2020

EV battery size and cost

Being checking a bit on EVs now that Tesla is hot (I think >$2k/share is a joke, you read it here first :)). Still, the EV (which BTW were not invented by Tesla) are cool. Even Teslas are cool (just the stock price is a joke). Note: I am checking also FCEV (look super cool too). 

Anyhow, quick calculation from the offering on this site (they explain it really well so you just can read it there). A Tesla 5.3kWh (444 batteries as 74p6s) pack costs $1580 ($300/kWh) and is 68 x 28 x 7.5 cm. 10 of these packs would give you about 53kWh which is close to Model 3 smallest battery (50kWh) and can take you (if you believe the BS-EPA rating from Tesla) to 354Km. Would love to see you try that, Tesla fan ;) but still pretty good even if falls short of that (see bottom of this post). Assuming same "marketing" trickery, we can guess we can get about 275 km with that battery pack.

So, to summarize it, it takes about $57 and about 0.5 liter of volume per km of autonomy

Notice though that this is for the full Tesla module. In the same website we can check the price of the individual cells (Panasonic 18650): 200 cells (3Ah/cell, or ~2.3kWh) for $600. This is actually not much cheaper than just buying the Tesla module, about $1330 for the 444 cells on that module and you got everything else with it (cooling, assembly...), done on the Gigafactory.

So, what to do with this stupid battery? ;)

  • Awesome, I repeat, really awesome video of how to make an electric catamaran. Warning: if you watch it, you may not be able to avoid building one. You've been warned...
  • Or how about an eBike? :)
  • Or an eFoil?
  • Or an eWaterBike?
Seriously!

PS.: On the range (what I call BS-EPA), this video measures few cars in a real life scenario. The link should bring you straight into the results part. As summary:

  1. Nissan Leaf: 62kWh, 208 miles in the test, 87% of the EPA promised range (what I call the BS-EPA range).
  2. Jaguar I-Pace: 90kWh, 223, 76%
  3. Mercedes EQ: 80kWh, 194, 75% 
  4. Audi e-tron: 95kWh, 206, 81%
  5. Kia e-Niro: 64kWh, 255, 90%
  6. Tesla model 3 Long range: 75kWh, 270, 78% 

Based on #6, the real range would be 78% of 354km = 276km

Monday, August 10, 2020

Where to invest your money

So we are in August 2020. I am not going to spend time telling you what has happened this year in the world :) But here I just curated the view of different smart people that may give you different perspectives on what they think about putting your money in different places. Some will be right, some will be wrong, but they are all certainly people worth listening to. In no particular order:

  • Where money comes from (I guess one should start there, if in the end, all what you are trying to do is to conserve or grow that): 
  • Stock market returns accounting for inflation. The short story:
    • $1 in 1950 bought you the same as $9.1 in 2010.**
    • $1 invested in S&P in 1950 with dividend reinvestment would be worth ~50 in 2010 if you had reinvested the dividends, once you account for inflation. If you didn't reinvest the dividends it would be only worth about $7. Certainly the gains are much lower than many financial advisors will tell you but still great and a good hedge against inflation. An example would be to look at Jimmy Carter's presidency (1/1977 to 1/1981) with this calculator. The total gain with div reinvested adjusted for inflation in that period was a mere 5%. BUT the inflation was actually 50%! If you left the money under the mattress, you would have lost 50% of its value at the end of his presidency.
  • ** Is inflation what you really care about? For the most part, yes, but the key thing to keep in mind is that you get money and hope to use it on stuff. You would hope that at least when you want to buy something, it will cost the same or less than today. There are products that you can buy today but some you got to wait (can't buy food for 2040). In those, inflation is critical. Nevertheless, what you plan to buy may or may not match what the government considers in the basket of products for inflation. So, watch for those. For instance, the main one is one of your biggest expenses, housing. As it is so big, people usually doesn't miss it/gets fooled by government data. But it is interesting to note why they do not include that (different topic).
  • Is gold a good hedge against inflation? With the last stimulus of 3 trillion dollars, a lot of people says that there will be inflation and that Gold helps offset that. Some articles on the topic:
  • Ray Dalio: highly respected in the investment world, founder of Bridgewater. I am no one to judge his knowledge and way of thinking (which I think it is really good) but I do find his texts not so easy to understand (probably my fault more than his) and a bit repetitive (could include different angles to the same concept):
    • How the economic machine works? 
    • The Changing World Order (a 2020 series of articles on how he sees the US position in the world evolving, the effects on macro-economy, the potential role of other countries like China...). I am just starting to read it so can't really judge yet... 
  • John Hussman. To many what is called a permabear (someone who always thinks the market is going to go down). He got this reputation over the last 10 years as he claimed the market was overbought but kept going up. He admits that although he may be right on the first (market fundamentals), he didn't appreciate the fact that people (psychology) may still keep pumping the market up (market internals). Regardless, I find his analysis sound and you can learn quite a bit reading his monthly notes.
  • Liquidity concept
  • Want to invest on start-ups?
This is work in progress but anyhow hope it helps...

Resources: