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Tesla Roadster Runs For 241 Miles In E-Rally
N!NJA writes with the mention of a recent alternative energies rally where the Tesla Roadster managed to cover 241 miles on a single charge, with another 38 miles of juice still left in the battery. "That would give the Roadster a theoretical maximum touring range of nearly 280 miles — 36 miles more than Tesla itself reckons the car will cover on a charge. If the numbers stand up to official scrutiny, Tesla will hold the world record for the longest distance traveled by a production electric car on a single charge. Of course, it should be pointed out that the Tesla was driven by a company staffer doubtless practiced in eking out every last mile from a charge, and that the speeds averaged on the run were hardly blistering — 90kph (56mph) on the motorways, 60kph (37mph) on trunk roads and 30kph (19) in the mountain roads. Tesla reckon the average speed for the entire journey was 45kph (28mph)."
The cells are independently isolated. They've done a lot of tests forcing catastrophic failure of individual cells to make sure that the failure of one wouldn't cascade to others.
Note that this is really only applicable to Tesla; they're one of the only (if not the only) EV makers who use traditional laptop cells. Pretty much all of their competitors are using "automotive" li-ion chemistry variants that sacrifice energy density for faster charge capability, greater longevity, and fire resistance.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
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Please see: EV1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 It's not that they're "unable" but rather they're unwilling.
Have you been offworld the past year or so? The Tesla is probably a *lot* faster than what you drive now.
Caveat Utilitor
Results vary. I have a Golf TDI, regularly go over 600 miles without coming close to empty, with my best fillup 781 miles. And that's with an automatic transmission.
Nevertheless I love what Tesla is doing.
Maybe you were attempting a joke, but this is a pure electric car. There's no fuel to be efficient with. Besides, no car has its "sweet spot" at 28 MPH, and if you read the summary you'd see that they drove at several different speeds over the course of the journey, which just happened to *average* 28MPH. They never actually drove any length of time at that speed.
You are aware that this is a car that could easily blow away almost all other cars on the road in terms of performance, right? It took this long because it was going *through narrow mountain roads in the Alps*. Are you going to drive 80mph on roads like this?
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
They're essentially not, essentially, yes, no. The phosphates and spinels most other auto makers are using, even moreso.
I'm not sure what you think is in li-ion batteries that you're picturing is so toxic. These aren't lead-acid or nickel-cadmium here. Want to know what goes into a lithium phosphate battery? Lithium salts (like you find in mineral water -- in fact, they're actually produced from salt flats where mineral waters evaporated), iron powder, phosphoric acid, sugar (for a carbon binding), porous polyethylene (separator), graphite or amorphous carbon (anode), any one of a variety corrosive but generally nontoxic electrolytes, casing, wiring, and so forth. You'll find worse stuff in a lot of bulk steels than you will in LFP cells.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Now, see what sort of mileage you get when you try hypermiling that van through the Alps. This is the Monte Carlo route we're talking about here.
The Roadster's 241 mile range (Powertrain 1.5) is based on their official MPGe rating from the EPA, which means the same drivecycle that all other cars go through. Now, in practice, you're not going to want to run your car down to empty; in fact, when you hop in to drive it, the Roadster won't even show you all of the charge (part of it is kept in an "emergency reserve").
Note that they're only using 160Wh/kg li-ion cells. You can get notably higher nowadays. Which would explain the longer range of the big-pack Model S.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Acceleration is a damn good reason to go electric. Electric motors produce consistent torque independent of RPM, and the torque is applied instantaneously. The result is instant acceleration regardless of current speed, and is also why the newer Tesla only need one gear. Such acceleration is useful in many day-to-day driving situations.
Tesla, I believe, will be a luxury sports car brand in the spirit of Ferrari.
I beg to differ. They're already working on a car that has more than two seats and will sell for 1/2 the price of the roadster. I'd say that's quite a jump in affordability. The Model S is nowhere near economy car prices, but it's a large step closer.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
they measure them under ideal conditions which are hardly reflective of reality
You're right, 390km of winding mountain roads is hardly the reality most people will drive in.
Good luck getting anywhere near 24mpg in those conditions.
A Tesla wouldn't be affordable even if it wasn't electric. It's a Lotus Elise with the engine replaced.
The Elise is expensive because it is a low production sports car, not because it is a Lotus. If everybody wanted one Lotus would mass produce them in China for a fraction of the current price.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I don't know about you, but *I've* seen the smoldering wreckage of a burnt-out car sitting on the side of the highway before. I have no clue whether the occupants escaped alive, but car fires absolutely do still kill people.
And as I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread, FYI, the Roadster's cells are individually isolated and the packs are tested with multiple cell failures to make sure that fires are contained. And Tesla is near-unique in using laptop cells rather than the "automotive" li-ions which use different chemistries and don't have the fire risk. Oh, sure, the electrolyte in them is flammable, but that's no different from gas in a gas tank.; the big difference is that you can abuse the automotive variants to heck and back and not cause a fire. They pay for their safety in terms of an energy density hit, mind you.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
No, they really are traditional commodity laptop cells. They're LiCoO2+graphite 18650s purchased in bulk from the same companies that sell those cells to laptop pack manufacturers. They did that because they wanted cells that were already in mass production so as to keep costs down.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Because it's dirt cheap, perhaps?
The Roadster uses about 200Wh/mi driving (about 250Wh/mi wall to wheels because of their pack cooling needs because of their unusual choice of cells; most wall to wheels numbers for li-ion EVs are much closer to the pack to wheels). US average household electricity rates are about a dime per kilowatt hour. 0.2kWh/mi * $0.10/kWh = $0.02/mi = 50mi/dollar. For an average running gas price of... oh, let's say $2.50/gal, that's the energy-cost-equivalent of 125mpg.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
I think you missed the many times that Sony's batteries were the cause of problems. That wasn't a single isolated case.
A Tesla wouldn't be affordable even if it wasn't electric. It's a Lotus Elise with the engine replaced.
In addition to the parent to my post, this isn't true. According to this post the two share few parts, such as the windshield and the softtop.
It depends on what you plug it into (comments above indicate that the batteries can take power a whole lot faster than standard home electric service can give it). The home recharge is something like 4 hours.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I think I'll stick with/change to Hydrogen
Hahahahaa.... oh, that's rich.
FYI: large li-ion battery packs like the Roadster's cost in the low *five* figures. Fuel cell** stacks sufficient to run a car cost in the low *six* figures. And the Roadster's pack is rated for 7 years, while fuel cell manufacturers are still going for that 5-year goal. And that's just Tesla's pack, which is based on babied laptop cells (chilled, individually isolated, lower DoD, etc). The more stable li-ion variants can last*** far longer. GM is looking at a 10 year warranty on the Volt's pack, for example. LG Chem thinks their packs can last up to 40 years. AltairNano titanate cell testing is up into the *tens of thousands* of full cycles. And so on down the line.
** -- By fuel cell, I mean PEMFC, obviously, since that's what's used in H2 cars.
*** -- In general, a pack is considered "bad" when it goes down to below 80% of its rated capacity.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Electricity is everywhere. Once electric cars start reaching significant numbers, you'll start seeing charging stations in parking lots, on streets, everywhere. They'll work like modern parking meters. Slide your credit card or drop in a few bucks and charge away.
If you need to charge quickly (less than 30 minutes), there are battery chemistries which can do that, too.
For people who are able to park their cars and charge them over night - essentially eliminating the need to stop and "fill up your tank" periodically, is a huge gain in convenience.
Hydrogen is a decent energy carrier which many people like because switching to it wouldn't require a significant change in behaviour. It also has the drawback of either requiring a significant amount of electricity (if using electrolysis) or natural gas to produce. Not to mention that all hydrogen fuel tanks leak a significant amount of their fuel within weeks. It's more efficient to use that electricity to charge batteries for electric cars, or if using natural gas, simply use the natural gas in a regular combustion engine.
I assume you know that Top Gear *admitted* to faking the ep -- not that this is something new for them. They're an entertainment show. They never ran out of electricity and were never without a working car. The only thing that actually did go wrong was with the brakes -- but it was merely a blown fuse from the abusive track duty they put it through, and the replacement was a nothing task. Their charge time statements were horribly misleading, too.
Clarkson stated that even if the Roadster had performed flawlessly, he still would have been hard on it because he believes that hydrogen is the future.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Electric outlets might be in a lot of places, but wiring for high power is not as ubiquitous as you'd like to think. The US power grid is already stretched pretty thin and widespread adoption of plugin vehicles would necessitate major infrastructure upgrades. The average home or even parking lot is certainly not going to be wired to refill a vehicle in 30-minutes.
Lets throw in a little basic energy math to show exactly how bad the situation is, eh? A gallon of gas is about 125 MJ or about 35 kilowatts*hours of power. Charging at a rate of "1-gallon-gas/hour" equates to 35 kilowatts (about 30 hairdryers all running at once for the blonds out there). Thus to put in "2-gallons" worth of electricity in 30 minutes requires delivering 140 kilowatts, or 583 amps on a 240 volt circuit. For comparison, pumping 4 gallons/minute at the gas station is just over 8-megawatts.
Plug-in at home vehicles are pointless if there isn't enough power available at the homes and/or enough hours in the day to get a significant charge into the vehicle.
They are using the high end market to drive the technology until it's cheap enough to work for everyday cars. This is a much better approach than the EV1 that started cheap.
I agree Tesla is taking a better approach than GM did with the EV1. However GM didn't sell the EV1, it was available only for lease and only in California, Arizona, and Georgia for employees of GM.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Tesla cells are kept at a much saner temperature level through the use of a coolant/heating system in the battery pack itself. This is something you couldn't afford to put onto your laptop.... and I dare say that a typical laptop will subject the batteries to much higher (and lower) temperatures and operating environments that cause much of the damage to laptop batteries.
Read the PDF file in the link above with the GP post. It covers all of this information and much more, including expected lifetime (which is on the order of about 7-10 years).
The only real problem I've heard about the Roadster is the issue with the battery pack not shutting down the coolant system when the vehicle is parked.... which causes a power drain on the battery and sucks power from the recharging unit even if you haven't driven it for awhile.
No; Tesla babies the heck out of them. In addition to careful load balancing and charge controlling, they have a smaller depth of discharge and are highly climate controlled (some might say too much; some owners have complained that when they're not driving the car often, it can spend as much on refrigerating the pack as on driving!). Also, each cell effectively functions individually, unlike the cells in your laptop, where if one goes bad, the whole pack goes bad. Lastly, the inverter is less voltage sensitive than your laptop. It's sort of like how rechargeable NiMH batteries last for so much longer than normal alkaline AAs in a digital camera but not in a flashlight. It's not that they hold vastly more power; it's that the voltage stays higher longer. If you use normal alkaline AAs in many digital cameras, the voltage will quickly drop below what the camera can tolerate.
That battery replacement will not be neither cheap nor trivial I would assume?
Tesla offers a future replacement Roadster pack for $12,000 upfront. That's based on projected future pricing of cells, of course. For the Model S, that number is to be "well under $5,000".
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
Tesla decided to dump the multi-speed transmission, as the manufacturer of the tranny couldn't meet the torque and RPM specifications in the production vehicles. All sorts of finger pointing went with the issue, and it nearly took the whole company (Tesla) down with the lack of a quality transmission.
Oh, a two-speed transmission was built, but it only got a couple thousand miles on it before it had to be replaced. This blog entry goes into details on how the problem was finally "fixed", with what was a single-speed transmission.
Except the company is runing on fumes. It is using the deposits to fund its operations. If Tesla does not get either the $250 or $400 million federal loans, it will need to enter bankruptacy.
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What might be a stupid maneuver in a low performance car, is often NOT a reckless one in a performance car with someone that knows the power and limitations of it.
If you're in a Yugo on a two lane highway, you have a lot of trouble passing people, and have to wait till there is a LONG stretch of clear road you can see. In a performance car, you can often easily pass multiple people in a shorter distance and get back over safely with a lot of room to spare.
If you are in a car that can move faster and stop quicker, you can safely do things other cars cannot do.
An unsafe idiot can drive stupidly in either car, but, a good driver knows his and the vehicles limitations...and can quite safely drive accordingly.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That's misinformation. Lithium-polymer cells are optimized for high power output, not energy density. Their energy density is generally in the range of 180 Wh/kg, never above 190 Wh/kg. Panasonic, by contrast, sells a 2900 mAh 18650 size lithium-ion cell with an energy density greater than 230 Wh/kg. Similarly, the lithium-iron-phosphate cells sold by companies such as A123 are optimized for safety and high power output, and suffer in energy density.