Slide decks hide can shallow thinking. Narratively structured memos are harder to write because they require better thinking. It’s worth it.

A system is self-sustaining if it would continue to function normally in the indefinite absence of its creators.

Tesla’s innovation strategy — which focuses on transforming the auto industry as a whole — offers enduring lessons for any innovator, especially in terms of how to win support for an idea and how to bring new technologies to market.

A system is a public utility if it is permissionless, rent-free, and does something useful.

In 2019, Bloomberg surveyed 5,000 Tesla Model 3 owners. The survey revealed that 99% of Tesla owners would recommend the car to a friend, and 98% would buy the same Model 3 vehicle again. The results of this survey suggest that every customer an ICE manufacturer loses to Tesla is unlikely to return to their brand (at least until they can produce a ... See more

History is littered with examples of incumbent leaders who do not adapt to shifts in innovation from its competitors. Nokia’s failure to respond to Apple’s smart phone technology is an example.

The key to the value of DERs is that they make electricity demand more controllable. With energy generation and storage scattered throughout distribution grids, grid operators have a way to move energy around, both geographically and temporally, without firing up more power plants. They can absorb extra energy if there’s a dip in demand or produce ... See more

By bringing demand more under grid operators’ control, DERs virtually eliminate curtailment, or discarding of renewable energy due to temporary oversupply, through 2045. Just as they allow transmission to be used more effectively, they allow us to consume more of the energy generated by existing utility-scale renewables.

Tesla’s vision is simply batteries everywhere, for everything, all the time. And that means Tesla is going to need to produce a lot of batteries.