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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)."
Now make it affordable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> Imagine a gigantic cell phone or laptop battery blowing up. Yikes!
Imagine twenty gallons of gasoline blowing up. Yikes!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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You can give just about *any* car dramatic improvements in fuel economy if you know how to drive them correctly. See HyperMilingA.
Just to see if it worked, I tried it with an ageing GMC Van (big, full sized, full of people) and measured an increase in fuel economy from about 20 MPG to over 30! Of course, there's something about driving on a freeway at 45 MPH and coasting to a stop from a half mile away that annoys the bajeezus out of other drivers.... I must have been flipped off half a dozen times!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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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As long as their they don't get batteries from Sony, I think we'll be fine.
If I accelerate to 97 km/h in 3.7 seconds, I most likely will hit the car in front of me and/or get a ticket for reckless driving.
If I go at 201 km/h, I'll also get a ticket for speeding.
Even though I'd like my next car to be an electric one, acceleration and top speed aren't the reasons for it.
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.
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.
Actually they are not, which is why they may succeed.
They are trying to make a kick-ass car. People don't want to drive a large golf cart just to "save the planet", or at least not enough of those people exist to form a market.
With the singular exception of battery life / recharge time electric vehicles are superior in every way to internal combustion engine vehicles. They have better torque characteristics, less moving parts and simpler maintenance. Once battery technology advances enough that the range is acceptable, electric cars will take over from combustion engine cars because they are simply better vehicles.
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.
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.
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.
We love Tesla because they are doing something. The research and investment will lead to future electric cars that really are affordable. See the Model S for a big step in that direction.
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