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Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars
jamie found the news that Tesla Motors is delivering roadsters in California. (We've been following developments on the Tesla front for a couple of years now.) According to a letter from the CEO, "9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week... In fact, currently there are 27 Roadsters in various stages of assembly." The early owners must be proud, but there could be complications.
About those alleged "Complications" ... well yes sure, if you run out of stored power then you're in trouble. However, this isn't exclusive to electric cars, but applies similarly to liquid-fueled vehicles. If you set out on a voyage of 500 miles with only 200 miles of gasoline and you can't find anywhere to refuel, then you're in trouble too. Fortunately, most people understand power and refueling constraints and know how to plan ahead.
Admittedly, electrical recharging infrastructure is almost non-existent at the moment. However, this isn't a total disaster nor an unforseen "Complication". It's thoroughly forseen, so any early adopter who can add and subtract won't be travelling further than the stored energy allows, minus a safety margin since nobody likes getting stuck. In many cases, it'll be a second car anyway, mainly for short hops around the local area and short office commutes.
But let's look at the worst case scenario as well. When the power runs out in between recharge points, will it be a total disaster? Well, it certainly will be a big annoyance, but that's where the recovery services come in. All it takes is a phone call and some waiting in the comfort of your car while you sulk at your arithmetic incompetence, but soon your vehicle will be sitting snugly on the back of the recovery truck, and remedial transport sorted out. This is normal today in the event of breakdowns, and it will be just as normal when cars go electric, both for breakdowns and for recharging mishaps. (The vehicle recovery industry will certainly boom for a few decades, until vehicle recharging infrastructure is widespread.)
So while "Complications" will exist in the short term, they're not exceptional ones. We already have similar issues today, and solutions to them as well. It's just a matter of degree. For the next few years, trips in EVs will have to be a fair bit shorter on average. We can cope with that.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They did occasionally but as long as petrol was cheap, there was not very much demand. Also, the car industry is a very conservative one which rarely tries something dramatically new. Most of them would rather wait for the competition to take the risk, and then copy the idea if it worked.
The last such attempt was Toyota releasing the Prius, which was a success. Now, various car makes have released hybrids or are working on them (which confirms the wait and copy attitude).
On the positive side, I think introducing hybrid technology is a breakthrough because it allows the industry to make progress in its traditional way of little steps. The "plug-in hybrid" is one of those: ;-)
Make the batteries larger and add a charger - nothing spectacular and risky here
C - the footgun of programming languages
Patents are public informsation...
Find 5 patents that would have led to ultra efficient cars and aren't being used.
If "Big Oil" has been buying up patents for 50 years than we have at least 30 years of inventions no longer under patent protection...where are those inventions?
The reality is that while Oil companies probably have tried to squash some tech, the basic laws of thermodynamics suggest that internal combustion engines are about as efficient as they are going to get.
Battery tech is also progressing very quickly (Microsoft, IBM etc are pushing for better batteries and can compete with oil companies) however most of the really efficient and high power batteries are due to nano-type materials, ultra pure processing and extremely fine manufacturing controls. Until very recently these techniques were impossible to test and those that were testable were prohibitively expensive to produce.
If you want to claim a conspiracy, you must offer some proof.
Guess what? I knew someone that bought an electric car back in I think 72!
Don't blame the car makers blame physics and customers.
The reason that liquid hydrocarbon fuels have been so popular for cars is because they are a great solution for powering cars.
Build an electric car that can take four people and luggage 300 miles on charge. Oh and the recharge time has to be five minutes, battery life has to be 150,000 miles and the cost? Under $20,000. That is what it would take to be a better car then a Mazda 3.
The real problem has nothing to do with the auto companies. It has everything to do with us.
People bought giant SUVs and Pickups just for style and the fact they felt safer. Everybody thought I was nuts because I actually like smaller cars. I don't have kids yet and I think smaller cars are more fun to drive.
Companies work on the premise that you should give the customer what they want. We wanted big SUVs and trucks and not small cars and minivans.
Now customers want more fuel efficient vehicles. It takes a while to make the change.
Now what I find funny is that back in 84 a car that went 0-60 under 10 seconds was quick.
Now that is considered slow.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
While I do believe that there is some truth to this. I think a lot of it has to do with how inexpensive gasoline has been in the past. Even now, at near $5 a gallon, Hybrids don't really save you money. So a Hybrid, when gasoline was $1 a gallon would have not been economically viable to the consumer.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Inherently safer designs like pebble bed reactors and molten salt reactors are not being used, rather the same old Three Mile Island design is proposed for new plants.
Now of course, there are people who are against any sort of nuclear power, regardless. But I think that's largely because the past "Nuclear Power is perfectly safe" propaganda has made them untrusting of any statements about nuclear safety and/or dangers.
I grew up 13 miles downriver from Three Mile Island. So I know a lot of people with an axe to grind about nuclear safety; and most of them are not really "Greenies". Many of them still believe they haven't been told the whole truth about the accident there, much the way folks in the wider US population of a given age don't neccesarily believe they've been told the whole truth about the Kennedy assassination... So I think to win those folks over, you need a demonstrably safer design, and you need to really explain the details.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
A lot of the comments here resemble the same kind of skeptical remarks that were made when the first automobiles came out. They were outrageously expensive. They got flat tires constantly. You almost needed to keep a team of horses on retainer to drag the thing home after one of the innumerable breakdowns. Et cetera. Et cetera.
No new technology leaps full-blown into existence without glitches, screw-ups and mistakes (yes, I know about the 100-year-old electrics, but a lot has changed). They're part of the territory, especially where a complete changeover in something as basic as personal transportation is concerned. What's needed is the vision and will to change, and the guts to persevere through inevitable problems to something that works. That's what seems to be missing these days.
I wonder what the smog situation would look like in a city where most two-car families included an electric for local jaunts and basic running around, and a regular car for longer trips? I recall seeing many parking lots with electrical outlets available at each space for block heaters, back when cold weather presented a starting problem for regular cars. Perhaps they might appear again to serve next-generation electrics. I have no idea what shape the actual solutions will take, but I'm quite confident that solutions would be found, once a decision is made to move away from gasoline-powered vehicles.
I'm certain of one thing: as long as those with a vested interest in the status quo are allowed to present every mistake as a disaster, every bump in the road as an insurmountable mountain, nothing will be accomplished.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.