Jason Badeaux

Tesla has an in-house construction unit building out its factories. This enables a radically new and optimized manufacturing process. Historical analogy: Amazon built its own distribution centers to reinvent e -commerce logistics.

With the right mechanisms in place, DERs will create a flexible grid by helping supply meet demand in a dynamic system. This represents a very exciting opportunity for electrification, with several software companies already developing solutions to make electricity demand digital and efficient.

Since 2017, Tesla’s capital expenditure per incremental unit of capacity has improved from ~$84,000, when the Model 3 was ramping, to ~$7,700. While these improvements indicate that Tesla could continue to increase margins, the more important takeaway is that capital no longer is a bottleneck limiting its growth. Instead, Tesla should be able to... See more

The core strategy has unique elements at each level of the ecosystem: overturning the core product architecture, positioning themselves in key bottleneck components, and resolving system-level limitations that slow the adoption of the technology. At the same time, they have applied an effective approach to build their innovation capital so they can... See more

Guilt and shame don’t and won’t change anything at scale. There simply aren’t enough people willing to buy more expensive products nor companies on board with overpaying for sustainable materials just because they feel bad. Cheers to consumers and companies that spend a little more to choose options with climate in mind. You’ve undoubtedly helped... See more

When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be real. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you — with your unique talents and experience — can do, then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are the ordained. It is your duty to work on things that only you can do.

An example of Tesla’s manufacturing innovation is its use of giant mechanical presses that can save substantial manufacturing time by forging single car bodies and individual car panels alongside its near-fully automated production with little human handling from beginning to end. Tesla’s different approach to auto manufacturing starts with single... See more

Blockchains are an alternative system for promise enforcement, fundamentally different from any system human history has seen before. Promises in blockchain systems are enforced by miners, who — in reasonably competitive mining markets — have limited ability, and weak incentives, to do anything other than execute others' promises roughly according... See more

Each energy transition has enabled massive improvements to existing materials (wrought iron and later steel made using coal), created entirely new materials (polymers from oil-refined petrochemicals) and/or made low-cost manufacturing viable at scale (aluminum using electricity).