botty_throwaway

Sure, oil is subsidized. But it's disingenuous to claim Tesla doesn't play the regulation arbitrage game either.

Not only is demand for Tesla's cars _partially_ sustained through consumer tax rebates, but Tesla's _profitability_ has historically relied on selling ZEV credits. Both of these factors may be cut short by the changing political tides now that the [federal] executive, legislative, and (soon) judicial branches will be majority led by a party that has a rough consensus on switching priorities from the past decade or so.

I'm not trying to antagonize against Tesla specifically, nor prop up the virtues of a truly ecologically-damaging industry that plays by a similar rulebook, but anytime a company's business model relies on a certain political climate rather than _solely_ on efficiency gains through technological innovation, the door swings both ways given a long enough time scale.

Cue discussion about how innovative R&D is not possible without initial government investment, especially against already subsidized industries that don't have to factor in tremendous externalities... but that's a more politically subjective debate compared to just stating how I don't agree with the claim of Tesla being 'unsubsidized.'

Regarding professional installation, those costs are not factored into the base price. It's an additional cost to both parent's DIY method and the Powerwall.

As for reputable warranties against breakdowns, please check out the fine print of the Powerwall warranty terms and conditions. It's a '10 year warranty' with some very special legalese baked inside that may make you reconsider the cost premium commanded by guarantees provided by a company very adept at lawyering up and navigating regulation.

The warranty (at least in North America) has provisions for voiding warranty claims in off-grid scenarios: during the entire period from installation to claim you must have constant access to the Internet for remote updates. If Tesla detects you go offline, they reserve the right to deny your claim.

In addition, if you use the Powerwall for additional applications besides self-consumption of solar power, you're capped at 18 MWh aggregate throughput before the claim is denied. Consider a 6 KWh solar installation for 5 hours daily charging, with the purpose of selling back energy to the grid (not classified as self-consumption). Now also realize that since this is aggregate throughput, all the charging, smoothing, and then discharging to the grid takes 2x the throughput. How many days warranty do you end up getting from this '10 year warranty'? 18 MWh / (6 KWh * 5 * 2) = _300 days_.

Finally, the warranty specifically says how they may choose your compensation. Could be an outdated refurbished model, but could also be cash market value of a similar system at the date of claim. Given the exponential rate of dwindling costs for energy storage, that's a gamble that in a few years your warranty may just pay out a tiny fraction of what you originally invested in you were sold a lemon.

Tying the luxury price premium to guarantees feels very reminiscent of smartphone insurance... which is almost never a good buy. I'm with parent, let's just be honest here: you're paying for luxury markup -- sexy compact design and a good story.

Risk versus technological change is a dynamical system, yet many of the sky-is-falling estimates for the insurance industry myopically forecast assuming an invariant risk set-point.

For an alternate perspective of a potential (lucrative) future for insurance, see my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12245312

The common wisdom of autonomous transportation being lucrative for auto insurance companies may be correct, albeit for some not-so-common reasons.

As an analog to Wirth's law I'd suggest that in the transportation industry, technological advances in mitigating damage risk are offset by increased risk tolerance in seeking higher throughput / lower latency in the transport of goods and people.

So while the absolute accident rate will go down and the number of meatbag casualties will be reduced by automation removing human error, the _severity_ of catastrophic failure damaging _property_ will increase due to the incentives to push more autos through the pipes in less time: extreme tailgating, hyper-dense cargo, excessive velocity, and bountiful heterogeneity.

Really this is about a transition from (mainly) insuring against loss-of-life to (mainly) insuring against destruction-of-property. Of course, humans will still die even in 'negligible' quantities. But an actuary's loss-of-life liability assessment doesn't need to discriminate between fatal blunt trauma and fatal atomization.