Tesla Megapacks arrive in Hawaii with the state’s last coal shipment as it shifts its grid to renewables supported by energy storage enabled by batteries like the Megapacks.
In the transition to a sustainable energy economy, we take every small victory we can get and this one is significant.
Hawaii aims to reach 100% green energy by 2045 and already has the highest amount of solar capacity deployed per capita. However, in order to handle all that renewable energy, the state needs to balance it with energy storage capacity since the sun doesn’t always shine.
Today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reported that some Megapacks for the projects were delivered at the same time as Hawaii received its last coal shipment:
The port where the coal shipment came is located right next to the Kapolei Energy Storage facility (KES).
You can see on the image shared by Musk that more recently delivered Megapacks are sitting waiting to be installed:
Once completed, the Kapolei Energy Storage facility (KES) will become one of the largest battery systems in the world with a capacity of 185 megawatts/565 megawatt-hours. It is a project in partnership with Plus Power and Hawaiian Electric – the former decided to use Tesla Megapacks to power the system.
In total, it is expected to have 158 Megapacks.
When we last reported on the project in June, it was supposed to be operational by September 2022 when Hawaii’s last remaining coal plant, which is located just down the road from KES, is expected to be retired.
The coal power plant is used to maintain grid frequency – something Tesla’s energy storage products have proven capable of doing – and that’s what KES is aiming to do along with absorbing excess solar power during the day and discharging during the evening.
Now it looks like Tesla and its partners have some pressure to finish the project in time since the coal plant is apparently going to start burning its last shipment of coal.
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The auto research portal says that’s a $50 drop in the monthly payment with $2,050 less required at signing. As a result, the effective cost fell $126, from $547 per month to $421 before taxes & fees.
The Polestar 2 Dual Motor – list price $55,300 – is a much better deal to lease than the Single Motor model – list price $49,900 – because amazingly, they have the same lease price. That’s basically a free upgrade to the Dual Motor model.
The Polestar 2 first made its debut in 2019 as the automaker’s first fully electric car. It launched in mid-2020 and the milestone 150,000th car rolled off the assembly line in August 2023.
The Polestar 2 is expected to be phased out in 2027, and company says the Polestar 7 will succeed it.
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Elon Musk has given an update with an outline for Tesla’s upcoming Full Self-Driving (FSD) software updates.
With FSD v12 and the upcoming launch of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi, there’s a lot of excitement around Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Musk is again in the too-familiar position of predicting that the automaker is close to releasing a true self-driving system, but the path to get there is still far from clear.
Now the CEO is providing some new comments on the upcoming release schedule for FSD:
“12.4 has almost completely retrained models. The final touches are for comfort, as it sometimes accelerates or brakes too fast for most people’s taste.”
Tesla FSD drivers are currently on 12.3.6 and the .4 update is expected to be a bigger step change, which Musk appears to confirm by saying that Tesla “completely retrained” the models.
The CEO recently said that Tesla is no longer constrained by training compute power after bringing more capacity online, giving the FSD team more opportunities to retrain neural nets with increasingly cleaner data.
Musk then continued about Tesla’s upcoming updates:
12.5 and 12.6 are in various stages of testing. We’re getting into rare, complex situations, for example: going down a narrow, one-way road, encountering a road closure and having to reverse out to find a new route. That closure also needs to be communicated to the rest of the fleet, so you don’t get a whole bunch of Teslas stuck down a road.
There’s no timeline for these upcoming updates beyond the fact that they are currently in internal testing, but Musk did say that v12.4 could come to the Tesla fleet as soon next week.
Electrek’s Take
Again, I’ve been impressed with v12.3.3-4. I’ve just got v12.3.6, but I haven’t had time to test it yet. I plan to do that this weekend. Also, I’ve been saying that if I start seeing decent improvements with the upcoming updates, I think I’ll start to see a clearer path to Tesla finally delivering on its promise – or at least a level 4 self-driving system.
However, as usual, when talking about FSD and especially when praising the system, I think it’s important to remind everyone that the keyword in ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ is ‘Supervised.’ Drivers need to remain attentive at all times and ready to take control.
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