Tesla home battery pack and DPV battery pack Technology

[Wookie]

Why would anyone ask someone else where their profit comes from, or what a wholesaler charges for an item? How incredibly rude, as well as stupid. You want the wholesale cost, offer to buy a thousand of the item and resell it. I'm sure that if you offer to buy a thousand of the batteries, you will get Tobin's attention, and once he verifies your bonafides, you'll know exactly what he wholesales the batteries for.

If he won't give you an answer, threaten to put him out of business. I get that one a lot too.

 

[kwinter]

Keep poking the Tobin bear. It's really great fun. And I'm not sure what Wookie's problem is with Tobin's politics. He's only slightly right of the Kaiser.

 

[cool_hardware52]

The comment you made about buying ½ M of machines and spot welding and find out the split… well I don’t think you did…I think you just walked next door to Night sun and used their equipment.

Ah, well, wrong again. We are incorporated as Nightsun, and have a DBA as DeepSeaSupply. Very common in the real world. It simply allows us to have a checking account in the name DeepSeaSupply. No one with the slightest understanding of the real world would find this surprising.

Do you actually believe that because DeepSeaSupply is a DBA that it is some sort of charity operated by Nightsun? Really?

When Nightsun / DeepSeaSupply (same corporation) needs an asset it takes real money. The CNC fairy didn't deliver any of these assets for free.

Same for Utilities and taxes and insurance etc.

Last time;

After you have designed, tooled up, prototyped, tested, and supported the sale of few hundred DPV packs you will understand just how pointless and meaningless your quest for a cost breakdown is.

Sorry, but is how the real world works.


Tobin

---------- Post added May 4th, 2015 at 07:55 AM ----------

I think subsidiaries are for start up companies or bring out a new product are ok. A subsidiary as a long-term income is bad businesses.

Can you provide a short list of the companies you "started"? Just the first 2-3 would be fine. Perhaps you could add a few words on the difference between a "subsidiary" and a simple "DBA"

With all the lean 6 sigma, training and events that I have been part of, one of the key points to all of it is to find the constraint in the manufacturing process and improve it, to drive down cost or find the number one costly item per unit and find a way to drive down the cost.

What??!! Manufacturing is subject to constraints? OMG! OMG! OMG! If only I had known this sooner. Can I take a class too?

You really don't get it. DPV's are a near cottage industry. All of them. Li-Ion batteries are a subset of that. *Every* small manufacturer is already "lean" or they would cease to exist.

Don’t get confused about me “whining about cost” to “identify a problem and trying to fix it”

I started this forum because me and my DPV dive buddies complain about the cost of the battery packs. And I wanted to see if anyone else is out there feels the same way.

The guy who complains and needs to find others who "feel" the same isn't whinning? Ya, OK

Have you seen “shark tank” Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, Kevin O'Leary, Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner all talk about finding ways to cut costs and bring the product to a larger demographic.

Please. Once again your ignorance is on display. The size of the *entire* DPV market wouldn't interest any of these people.

I deal with pilots that fly 100 million dollar aircraft all day.

I weep for them.

“One more thing” I have never heard anyone say that DPV batteries are at reasonable price. Even eelnoraa talked about to achieve 1KWH… “isn't cheap”

Ah, you do understand eelnora was speaking to the cost per KWH for the Tesla Power Wall product, you know the same one you cited as evidence that DPV packs are "too expensive"?

Personally I "feel" that Lamborghinis are unreasonably expensive, guess I need to start a thread to see if others "feel" the same way….




I expect Lith-Ion DPV packs will drop a bit in price over time. Cells may become less expensive, but the real driver will be the disappearance of high capacity NiMh cells. It's already happened for cordless power tools.

Once Lith-Ion is the only choice, not the premium choice, volumes will rise a bit and more $$ will be spent on integration. All of this assumes a solution for shipping is found.

It won't happen because somebody "feels" the current price is too high.


Tobin

 

[swansoncp]

whats the split

 

[cool_hardware52]

whats the split

99/1

If you want something else please provide a detailed breakdown of what costs I should and shouldn't include. You know things like ROI on the machine tools I "just walked next door" and borrowed for free. Shouldn't bee too difficult for somebody trained in "lean 6 sigma"


BTW last I checked the steel and aluminum and rubber and glass that they build a Ford GT40 from is pretty much the same as the steel and aluminum and rubber and glass they build a Ford Fusion from.

There is of course a bit of a difference in the volumes of each auto produced.

Gotta wonder if that has some impact on the cost..........

Tobin

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Reading all this, I'm amazed Tobin has time to build any DPV packs at all.

 

[JohnN]

Kalifornia math?

My guess would be forward pricing (a bit like build it and they will come). This was done very successfully in semi-conductors by the Japanese. You set the current price based on where you believe the price will be in 3 years (arbitrary number). When 3 years comes around, your competitors are gone and you obtain dominant market position.

Works as long as demand continues to grow and economies manufacturing grow even faster

 

[Drin]

Hey Tobin? I want to start mass producing some technical dive gear. I'm going to show up in Pasadena and walk into your facility and start using your machinery, ok?

Thanks.

-Adrian

 

[Wookie]

My guess would be forward pricing (a bit like build it and they will come). This was done very successfully in semi-conductors by the Japanese. You set the current price based on where you believe the price will be in 3 years (arbitrary number). When 3 years comes around, your competitors are gone and you obtain dominant market position.

Works as long as demand continues to grow and economies manufacturing grow even faster

This is the dive business. We buy equipment on it's longevity and usefulness. I own a number of Sierra's, but I don't own any of Tobin's batteries, not because of the price, but because I don't need a scooter with a burn time of 3 hours. If I needed a 3 hour scooter, I would weigh carefully the price of Tobin's batteries, versus the price of a SS or a whatever else is available, I'd check into the reliability of any of them, and I'd make a decision based on price and quality for something that meets my needs. What I wouldn't do is complain about the price, I make my own NiMH battery packs for my Sierra using the Rabbit Tool cases and buying cells online.

Point is, it's hard to assign forward pricing to an item that you may make 100 or even 200 of, and sell 2 a month. No one in real manufacturing deals with that kind of volume. As Tobin suggested, it's like comparing a Veyron to a Fiesta. Both use the same materials of construction, although I imagine the Veyron has more leather than a Fiesta. We can all drive a Fiesta for less than $20k. Only 200 people can drive a Veyron at any price, so the fine folks at Bugatti can basically price it anywhere they want.

So I guess my advice is, if you don't want to spend the money on a Li-Ion battery pack, don't, unless you need the burn time. If you need the burn time, no price is too much to buy the tool you have to have to get the job done. There is no reason not to buy the cells for NiMH and rebuild your own batteries like I do.

 

[JohnN]

This is the dive business. We buy equipment on it's longevity and usefulness. I own a number of Sierra's, but I don't own any of Tobin's batteries, not because of the price, but because I don't need a scooter with a burn time of 3 hours. If I needed a 3 hour scooter, I would weigh carefully the price of Tobin's batteries, versus the price of a SS or a whatever else is available, I'd check into the reliability of any of them, and I'd make a decision based on price and quality for something that meets my needs. What I wouldn't do is complain about the price, I make my own NiMH battery packs for my Sierra using the Rabbit Tool cases and buying cells online.

Point is, it's hard to assign forward pricing to an item that you may make 100 or even 200 of, and sell 2 a month. No one in real manufacturing deals with that kind of volume. As Tobin suggested, it's like comparing a Veyron to a Fiesta. Both use the same materials of construction, although I imagine the Veyron has more leather than a Fiesta. We can all drive a Fiesta for less than $20k. Only 200 people can drive a Veyron at any price, so the fine folks at Bugatti can basically price it anywhere they want.

So I guess my advice is, if you don't want to spend the money on a Li-Ion battery pack, don't, unless you need the burn time. If you need the burn time, no price is too much to buy the tool you have to have to get the job done. There is no reason not to buy the cells for NiMH and rebuild your own batteries like I do.

I was referring to Mr. Musk and his battery packs (as were you in your reference to Kalifornia math). Of course it doesn't make any sense for low volume "specialty" products, my guess is that the high kWh battery business is going to prove very lucrative. And I'll beg for forgiveness for using price one to refer to what you sell it for, and also for the COGS.