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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.
Erm, the title has an error.
America, Home of the Brave.
..until it's ion-propelled, RADAR navigated, coming complete with a charged particle beam and a death ray as standard safety features against enemy vehicles (eg: anyone who dares to race you at the traffic lights).
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
now sergey and larry and elon have some toys to play with
What do you mean? I've seen that guy posting all the way back in 1997.
Despite any flaws, I think they're an absolute breakthrough and a sign of things to come in the next decade.
Not only do they have performance, but they also go the distance and I believe they're also astoundingly cheap. If I had a spare $100,000 laying around and they were shipping to Australia, I'd buy one in a heartbeat!
The price of carbon fibre is declining faster than predicted and battery production is ramping up in line with Toyota's ramp-up of hybrid powertain cars and GM's announcement to mass-produce an electric car so hopefully the price of batteries will come down a lot as well.
Things are definitely looking good. Now we just need to start building a bunch of nuclear power plants so they'll be ready in time for when the plug-in hybrids and pure-electric vehicles hit critical mass.
I'll believe it when they ship... wait this isn't how vaporware is supposed to work.
Next thing you know they'll be telling me that these solar panel thingys are real too.
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
don't blame them. Blame GM, Ford, VW, BMW, PSA, Toyota. I don't find it surprising that, all of a sudden, various car-makers are developping electric cars and fuel-cell cars, ... why couldn't they do that 10 years ago? I am waiting for those a long time now.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It looks like the thing that has largely fixed the EV issue is the laptop computer/mobile phone - which has justified the research effort into lithium batteries.
From a volume point of view in the short term the manufacturer to watch is Mitsubishi: they have a joint venture factory with Yuasa, and last week they delivered a test sample EV to a Japanese police force (they already have them with Tokyo utilities.) The Miev may not be as large and fast as the Tesla, but it is likely actually to be affordable. $100000 will only appeal to the rich who want a status symbol, as the payback compared to (say) a Mercedes Bluemotion clean Diesel will be forever. But a $30000 commuter vehicle may well make economic sense. I could justify one right now if oil reaches $200/barrel.
In fact, there are reports that sales of the EVs currently available are very poor, presumably because people who might have bought one as a third car are spending the money on new, efficient vehicles which will show a real cost saving in a sensible payback period.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I've always wondered (and not really seen stated anywhere) how an electric vehicle's performance varies from the point of being fully charged to fully flat. i.e. does the performance (speed, acceleration, etc.) gradually get worse as the car's charge dwindles or does it suddenly just stop when the batteries are exhausted? A petrol or diesel car performs just as well (if not better due to less weight) when the tank is almost empty. Does a Tesla that has only 5 miles worth of charge left perform like a milk-float?
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
In fact they don't like any form of power generation.
nuclear = [insert glowing green fluffy sheep horror stories]
fossil = [insert global meltdown story]
wind power = [insert migrating insert birds killed by blades sob fest] or [blot on lovely landscape rant]
tidal power = [insert moan about marsh habitat of less spotted wading snot gobler flooded]
Solar power = [insert some fucking rare tortoise issue]
hydro = [insert whinge about flooded valleys/woodlands/displace peasents etc etc]
You just can't win with this brainless hippies.
Because sometimes when they try something new and exciting they get the Edsel
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Prove it. Find 5 patents that are owned by "Big Oil". Also, define "Big Oil".
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
Didn't Boeing say they won't be testing carbon fiber wings to the point of failure because they'd need to call in the hazmat team? Is this the same type of problem we'll see when carbon fiber vehicles crash? I'm just asking.
This can easily be proven, since one of the companies has even gone so far as to name themselves Shell.
This guy's the limit!
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.
You must be new here? On /. there are three rules about postings.
1. You do NOT have to RTFA to know what it says.
2. It's all GWBs fault.
3. There is always a conspiracy to screw us out of something if the topic involves BigOi, the U.S. Government or the Military.
BS... just last week I was reading an analysis on new tech being developed by Nissan along with Ford and a few others, a Variable Compression Ratio (VCR) system.
This tech would would dramatically improve the performance of turbo charged engines not just in terms of power output but also in terms of fuel effective, and it would make the engine run much much smoother.
I guess I don't understand how combustion engines are supposedly tapped out. Keep in mind that most of the engine's performance characteristics are still very much mechanical and are basically "hard coded" for a good median of power output and fuel economy since they don't have the technology to dynamically change the characteristics when one is needed over the other.
Even Variable Valve Timing is in it's infancy and the current methods for that are crude at best, there are alternative methods under development that could theoretically give you a Corvette when you stuff your foot into it and a Prius when you're just cruising on the highway or around town.
Even the engineering techniques are just starting to get interesting... engines developed completely new in the last decade mark the first engines completely prototyped in a virtual environment as opposed to the old method of just building something similar to what's been done before and making slight improvements through real world testing. Chevy's LS series motor (found in the late 90s Camaro, Firebird, and Corvettes) marks one of the first of such motors and with a 6-speed sees an impressive 31MPG with 330HP. And even over the last decade they've been able to make small tweaks to that power plant in terms of both power output and fuel economy. And there's still a world of possibilities that can be done to improve things still.
In short... If you're just looking at the explosion in the chamber and the resulting torque then yes, combustion engines are already "pretty good" in terms of effency. However that neglects the fact that conditions change mili-second to mili-second in terms of air-pressure, air-temperature, load on the engine, and numerous other things. Engines aren't dynamic enough to work as good as they could in every possible scenario so they're built for a best average across the board.
Collector's Edition
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.
The battery makers...While people who didn't have to buy them LOVED them, anyone who was forced to pay for them balked (with a very low percentage of exceptions).
The batteries were to expensive and gas was too cheap. Plus the range was still low.
Now things are much different...batteries are MUCH cheaper, gas is Much more expensive and the range is getting comparable.
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
Prove it. Find 5 patents that are owned by "Big Oil". Also, define "Big Oil".
Okay, Big Oil should be pretty easy. From this wikipedia page, you'll get ExxonMobile, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Total S.A. And they don't register these patents under their own names- they use subsidiaries. For example, Chevron owns Cobasys, a NiMH battery maker.
5 Patents? Hell, I can find you at least 40.
Do I get a cookie?
Sigs are for losers
I can give you 125 examples.
According to Wikipedia, Cobasys and ECD Ovonics hold 125 patents for battery technology, particularly NiMH battery technology. They produced the batteries that powered the ill fated EV1. In 2001, Texaco (now Chevron) bought Cobasys. Since then, they have refused to sell automotive batteries or license the technology to smaller players. Since the big players were not interested in electric cars (perhaps because of influence from Big Oil), this effectively killed electric cars.
They have also actively used their patents to prevent others from selling NiMH batteries for automotive purposes in the US. In 2001, same year as they were bought by Texaco, they sued Panasonic EV Energy for patent infringement. The results were that Panasonic is restricted from selling commercial quantities of some batteries in the North American market until 2010.
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.
I cant name 5 patents but I CAN name one very important one. Try making and selling Nickel Metal Hydride batteries suitable for electric cars and see how far you get. You will likely be sued by a company you haven't heard of called Cobasys for violation of their patent on NiMH battery tech. What the lawyers probably WONT tell you is that Cobasys (and the NiMH battery patent) is actually controlled by Chevron (not the largest oil company but big enough).
Chevron makes a lot of noise about how they aren't just an oil company any more, they are an "energy company" but all the work they are doing is just replacing one fuel source (crude oil) with another fuel source (hydrogen, tar sands, oil shale, coal liquefaction/gasification, gas-to-liquids etc)
Big Oil doesn't care if its gasoline, diesel, LPG, natural gas, corn ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, liquid coal or whatever else. They just care that the worlds cars continue to run on fuel of some kind (fuel that they can continue to sell from their station forecourts). Plug-in vehicles threaten that monopoly as the provider of the source of energy for our cars.
cant name 5 patents but I CAN name one very important one. Try making and selling Nickel Metal Hydride batteries suitable for electric cars and see how far you get.
You mean like the large-format NiMHs in the Vectrix scooters?
You will likely be sued by a company you haven't heard of called Cobasys for violation of their patent on NiMH battery tech.
Cobasys has repeatedly made it clear that they will deal in large orders for large format NiMH, but not small orders. There haven't exactly been people lining up around the block wanting large orders of large-format NiMHs, however. It's old tech, inferior in about a dozen different ways to the modern automotive li-ions.
FYI, Cobasys only holds the patent rights on said large format NiMHs in the US, not internationally. Oh, and they've cross-licensed their patent portfolios with PEVE (who they initially sued for making NiMHs for sale in the US without paying them); PEVE now has the right to make large format NiMHs for sale in the US. The fact that they haven't should speak volumes for the demand of said batteries.
NiMH was top of the line tech back during the original CARB ZEV mandate. It no longer is.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Exactly. GM was busily working to undermine and kill off the CARB mandate as fast as they could. The fact that they sold off their battery rights should speak volumes to how much they actually wanted to be in the business of building EVs. They had already shut down the lines at that point.
GM never wanted to be building EVs, and was all to happy to ditch the program and shuttle it down into the memory hole, only bringing it up in passing to spin it as a "failure" so that they wouldn't be pushed into doing it again. Their timing was impeccable... impeccably bad. Whether it's fears of global warming, fears of "running out of oil", high gas prices, a distaste for shipping oil overseas, a strengthening green movement, rapidly advancing battery tech, or just outright trends, virtually everything has been moving in the direction of EVs and PHEVs. And with hybrids reaching US shores from Japanese automakers, GM ensured that they had the worst image possible as they steadily lost market share from falling SUV sales.
Such horrible management.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
I just did, and I did not find 2-3 months. I found this:
Honda Civic Hybrid, 4.8 years, $2,803 premium over Civic LX;
Mercury Mariner Hybrid, 6.4 years, $4,904 premium over standard Mariner;
Lexus' V-6 powered RX 400h hybrid SUV, 6.4 years, $4,407 premium over conventional V-6
powered RX350;
Saturn Vue Greenline, 7.1 years, $4,770 over Vue XE;
Ford Escape Hybrid, 7.3 years, $4,161 over Escape XLT;
V-6 Lexus GS450h, 7.7 years, $2,722 over V-8 powered GS460
http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2008/05/soaring-gas-prices-shrink-hybrid-payback-period-boost-small-car-sales-and-sink-big-trucks.html
,br> Maybe you could do me a favor and point to a source that says 2 to 3 months?
Granted, I did not take into account the Tax Credits,
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