New Video of Tesla's Mass-Market Electric Car

Slatterz writes "The Tesla Roadster has almost mythical status among electric car enthusiasts. It's fast, with high torque over a wide RPM range, and can beat a Ferrari in terms of acceleration. Now Tesla has released new video of its upcoming new electric car, called the Model S, which Tesla Motors claims is the world's first mass produced fully-electric vehicle. Unlike the Lotus-Elise based Roadster, the Model S is a traditional sedan of the type millions of commuters might actually drive. Tesla claims it will fit seven people (if two of them are 'children under 10'), and has mounted a rather large 17in LCD in the dash. Key to Telsa's future will be the evolution of lithium-ion battery technology. Tesla Motors claiming the new Model S can travel up to 300 miles on a single charge, but the battery will still take 45 minutes to quick-recharge." (And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.)

Comments

Re:New Video of Tesla's...

[Anonymous Coward]

No he actually designed an electric car before he died. Some professor at MIT found the plans in an archive and started the company based on the original ideas.

Circus car?

[Anonymous Coward]

7 people? Where are the clowns?

Re:Circus car?

[Rei]

More accurately, it's 5+2 seating -- two mini rear-facing seats in the back. Not many believe those will actually make it to the production version, but it's another in a long line of pretty shrewd marketing efforts by Tesla to break all of the EV stereotypes one by one (they're slow, they can't go very far, they're small, etc). They're also shrewdly pushing its after-tax-credit price rather than its before-tax-credit price like many others are doing.

Model S not T

[tie_guy_matt]

At $50,000 do they think it is too expensive to call it the model T? Do they think calling it the model T would be too arrogant? Maybe the next one will be cheaper and then they will go ahead and give it the next name. After all we would all like to see the model T version of the electric car that will get us off of expensive oil.

Re:Model S not T

[couchslug]

"After all we would all like to see the model T version of the electric car that will get us off of expensive oil."

For that to happen, early adopters must drop the cash on much more expensive vehicles, just as they did before Henry Ford produced the Model T. Early adopters will be more likely to forgive faults that buyers of an econobox would not.

At fifty grand for a beta version, I'll be better off letting the rich folks purchase those.

Re:Model S not T

[Kneo24]

Early adopters make economies of scale a realize goal. People who bought the roadster showed that there was continuing interest in a cheaper, more massly produced vehicle. People who buy the model S will do the same. Tesla does want to create a car that they can sell for $20k to $30k. If you have the money why not become an early adopter? Right here is hopefully the future of the automobile industry.

Re:Model S not T

[Delwin]

The Blackstar (Roadster) was the 'infinite money' car. The White Star (Model S) is proof it can be mass produced.

The Bluestar (Model T?) will be the $20K 'car of the masses'.

Re:Model S not T

[wgoodman]

Well, they're also calling something that runs off DC a Tesla. Really, it should somehow be running AC or be called an Edison.

Re:Model S not T

[jamesh]

I traded up to a more fuel efficient car nearly a year or so. This one is using half the fuel (5.5l/100km vs 11) and the fuel is about 10% cheaper (diesel vs petrol). It cost a bit more but it's saving over $50/week, so on the balance it works out around the same, and it's polluting a whole lot less.

I'm not sure what the going price of a sedan is in US$ but if you did a few hundred miles a day would it offset the price enough to make it less of a jump overall? Or maybe $50K is way over the average cost of a petrol sedan of similar size...

Re:Model S not T

[cheesybagel]

AFAIK the engine does not run off DC. The car has an inverter and the engine is a polyphase AC engine (the AC engine was invented by Tesla).

Re:Model S not T

[Sj0]

Every manufacturer test-marketed electric vehicles in the California market, not just GM.

None of them panned out because the cars were ridiculously expensive to build so they had to lease them at a fraction of cost.

GM is bankrupt. How would building yet another unprofitable vehicle help them?

Re:Model S not T

[Sj0]

There's no such thing as either an AC engine or a DC engine.

They're called motors.

Re:Model S not T

[Sj0]

Just FYI, diesel and gasoline price cycles are much different. There have been a number of times in the past few years where diesel was much higher than gasoline, because gasoline prices tend to peak during summer and come down to rational levels while diesel prices tend to move more slowly and peak closer to christmas when lots of freight is being moved around.

More importantly, remember to keep the price of gasoline in perspective. Over 100,000km, you'll pay about 5500 dollars in gasoline or diesel at $1/l(about 3.80/galllon), or 11000 dollars at $2/l(about 7.60/gallon). Considering just how far 100,000km is, that's a pittiance. Gas is something that people notice due to volatility, not due to magnitude. People notice when they spend 40 bucks a month instead of 20, but neither number is terribly large, and shouldn't affect a well-designed budget.

Of course, there are the people who travel a few hours to get to and from work each day, and those people's problem isn't the price of gasoline, but their decision to live hundreds of kilometers from where they work.

Re:Model S not T

[jamesh]

More importantly, remember to keep the price of gasoline in perspective. Over 100,000km, you'll pay about 5500 dollars in gasoline or diesel at $1/l(about 3.80/galllon), or 11000 dollars at $2/l(about 7.60/gallon). Considering just how far 100,000km is, that's a pittiance.

For some more perspective, I usually travel around 700km/week, which was costing around $120 in fuel. In the newer car the cost is around $60/week. Or $520/month vs $260/month.

Of course, there are the people who travel a few hours to get to and from work each day, and those people's problem isn't the price of gasoline, but their decision to live hundreds of kilometers from where they work.

I live 10km from the office, but we have clients that are considerably further.

To say "their decision to live hundreds of kilometers from where they work" is a bit of an oversimplification too. Some people start out living close to work but then work moves, or they lose their job and just cannot afford to move closer to their new workplace, or your workplace just happens to be a long way away from your spouses and so a long commute for one or the other is the only alternative.

It would be nice if people could stop pointing fingers and judging without having at least some understanding of the issues involved.

Re:Model S not T

[Ihmhi]

I think you should watch "Who Killed The Electric Car?"

There was certainly a car that "panned out" - the General Motors EV1.

GM didn't even sell the car. They had a lease-only program throughout which you could never actually buy the car. They put marginal marketing into it and despite a practical cult-like following of its users who loved the car (i.e. the Apple effect), they forced all of them to be returned. They then crushed every single car save for a few saved for educational purposes (universities, museums). The educational vehicles were given under a clause that they could never be in working order.

Why would GM do any of this if they actually wanted them to get on the road? They wouldn't do it because they didn't want these cars on the road.

In the early 90s, California raised a stink about pollution. They wrote up a law that basically said cars in California have to conform to way tighter pollution restrictions. The federal government eventually overruled them.

The EV-1 was a well-designed model that was eaten up by early adopters but never got very far because a few powerful groups (oil companies, auto companies, and the federal government) colluded to do everything they could to make it a failure. It was unethical and criminally negligent.

On the plus side, GM is completely fucked. Had they not sabotaged the EV-1, they would be one of the leading car companies in the world.

Re:Model S not T

[Kenja]

I got my opinion from driving one of the cars. Sorry, guess I didn't subscribe to your news letter to learn that what I was experiencing was wrong.

Re:Model S not T

[drsquare]

A small cult of enthusiasts doesn't support a full-scale manufacturing run. And please quit the conspiracy theories about how 'big oil' or whoever killed the electric car. If they were viable, Japan and Europe would be firing them out no matter what the US government did.

Re:Model S not T

[bogjobber]

The car was unprofitable ten years ago, sure. But to run a successful business you have to, you know, *invest* in some things that are unprofitable for awhile. One of the reasons the Japanese and European companies are killing American car companies is because they actually use their R&D money to make a better product.

GM was doing pretty well in the late 90s and early 00s and definitely could have afforded to put money in developing electric cars. They just didn't see the point. But if they had, they certainly would've had a car that would be profitable and in high demand for the current market. They just didn't have the foresight. They were too busy rolling in beds of money made by selling cheap-to-produce SUV's with fat profit margins, ignoring everything else.

Re:Model S not T

[e4g4]

your workplace just happens to be a long way away from your spouses

Utah is a big place, and if you don't keep all your spouses in one house, I could see that maybe this car isn't for you.

Re:Model S not T

[peas_n_carrots]

There was a Ford Model S (2nd paragraph)
http://wikicars.org/en/Ford_Model_T

Cries for calling the Tesla sedan a Model T instead of S don't make much sense. The T was designed for rock-bottom pricing. The Tesla sedan is a luxury high-tech car.

Re:Model S not T

[Nefarious Wheel]

The ironic part is that GM had a great electric car years ago that they destroyed in favor of things like the Hummer.

Yes, but... I'm convinced they didn't want to sell it. You don't need to be a marketing guru to see that calling it the "Impact" was sending the wrong sort of message on safety. And GM is very aware of marketing messages and how you can subtly alter perceptions by using loaded words.

Re:Model S not T

[jusdisgi]

You don't need to be a marketing guru to see that calling it the "Impact" was sending the wrong sort of message on safety.

Totally. Watching the "how does it go?" ads for the EV1 is pretty mind-blowing; they really, really, really didn't want to sell these things. The ads are black-and white and show weird long shadows of people the whole time, while dark music plays and a sinister voice asks how the EV could ever possibly work. They don't even show the car...much less in bright colors with scantily-clad women, like they show you when they want you to buy something.

Re:Model S not T

[jusdisgi]

It would be nice if people could stop pointing fingers and judging without having at least some understanding of the issues involved.

Just because you can come up with a couple of corner cases where living a long way from work is justified doesn't mean the parent didn't have a firm understanding of the issue. He did. The vast majority of distance commuters freely choose to live in our vast exurbs. And his larger point is even more correct: we Americans are addicted to space, and our absolute unwillingness to control sprawl is the problem, not the cost of the fuel we use to deal with it.

Re:Model S not T

[jamesh]

The vast majority of distance commuters freely choose to live in our vast exurbs.

Okay maybe it's a bit different in the US then, in which case we not even in the same argument here. In Australia, it's so expensive to live in the cities that for most people it's just not possible (i couldn't afford it). And even if I did live in the city, it would be exceedingly unlikely I could stay living close to my workplace unless I packed up and moved every time my assignment changed (and took my family along with me, change the kids schools, etc).

Re:Model S not T

[Cheeko]

I've seen the movie, and while I agree their motives in destroying the cars and fighting the laws belayed their true intentions, the real truth is someplace between your post and the parent post.

GM was still losing huge amounts of money on the EV1. They were rumored to cost upwards of 30k each just to produce them. No matter what price they leased them at they were essentially taking a loss to prove the concept.

The real question that the movie raises is why GM fought to pull them off the road rather than just sell the, cut their losses and be done with the whole mess. I think this is where the slimy corporation part comes into play. With those cars around as a reminded people would constantly be begging the question "Here is where we were, why haven't we moved forward?"

Re:Model S not T

[hazydave]

Actually, the EV-1 was long dead before GM bought the consumer division of AM General to make the Hummers. Within GM, it was the problems with batteries (the fully cycled NiMh batteries in the EV-1 were only expected to last about three years) as much as range (75-100 miles on a charge) that killed the project. There are lots of conspiracies, of course.. there's a film about it, too. I also understand there was a big push by the fuel cell people in GM to cancel the EV as a dead-end... thus funneling that money into FCEVs. That was stupid... any FCEV is probably a hybrid anyway, and definitely an EV... all of that tech would have been jump-started.

There was also the problem that, profitably sold, the EV-1s would have cost over $100,000 at the time. Keep in mind, Stanley Ovshinsky had only recently invented the NiMh cell (the first model of the EV-1 used lead-acid cells, and had a 35-50 mile range)... this was cutting edge stuff, and still very expensive.

Today, it's still the battery. So far, no one's got a commercial battery for these things yet... maybe Real Soon Now, lots of things are in the labs, but not just yet. Even the Chevy Volt is pushing hard on battery technology... their requirements are for about 10x the normal charge/discharge cycles versus the usual Li--ion/Li-poly cells (up to around 500... GM's claiming 4,500 for the Volt's cells). You can cheat on a hybrid... the Prius only cycles over 60% of the capacity of the cell, for example... not practical when you need to squeeze significant range out of it.

Re:Model S not T

[hazydave]

In those days, just the battery pack cost around $30,000 to make. And it was expected to last about three years. That was one big problem.

The film wasn't bad, but there was plenty of religion and myth mixed in with the facts. I had been following this whole thing as it happened (though the press, the regular EE Times, IEEE, and other articles on various bits of technology, etc) and there were very good reasons for not bringing the EV-1 to production in 1996. The problem was that, after all they, they gave in to the FCEV people within GM or whatever, and pretty much just dropped the technology. People forget, this was a technical trial, it wasn't a product, yet. Technical trials are supposed to lead to products, but when they don't, they should lead back to the drawing board and, eventually, another technical trial. That's how you learn.

Unfortunately, GM wasn't a good environment for this in the late 90s, and it got worse in the 2000's. We've all seen the end result this year.

Insane price

[evilviper]

So much for it being affordable...

$49,000 USD AFTER deducting the $7,500 federal tax credit.

Re:Insane price

[selven]

They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in. There's no other good business model that does not require eight digits of initial capital.

Re:Insane price

[torkus]

Affordable is relative. The first product in any area is expensive but that expense is relative. The first cars were not cheap. The first computers were not cheap. The first...and so on. However each item had relative value. Both in utility and 'early adopter' shinyness.

Besides, care to count the number of people driving a $40k lexus, BMW, Infinity...not to mention the 50-60k SUV's...erm..tanks.

50k isn't inexpensive, but it is certainly within the reach of your upper middle class car buyer. Especially when you figure in the lower 'fuel' cost, green ego points, and the cool factor.

Re:Insane price

[netflix]

Tesla is actually recieving a nearly half-billion dollar loan from the DoE, mainly for the development of the Model S. IIRC the company burned through a ton of cash and was looking at bankruptcy before securing the loan from the DoE.

Re:Insane price

[Rei]

It's important to note where the cash burn came from. Initially Tesla was looking at a car that'd only cost $60k to build; they discovered, through an audit partway through development, that it actually cost over $120k to build. They jacked up the price to $109k and have been optimizing it for a while, and finally have it down to where they make about $10k per Roadster -- not a lot for a car that expensive, but not pocket change either. At the same time, as a company, they're still losing money, as they're pumping a lot into Model S development. But they got the loan because they met the DOE's requirement to have a profitable core business (in this case, the Roadster).

Re:Insane price

[ScentCone]

$49,000 USD AFTER deducting the $7,500 federal tax credit.

What you really mean is: after the $7,500 more in taxes that other people, who can't afford this car, will be paying on behalf of the person who can afford it. That's nice. So progressive.

Re:Insane price

[bnenning]

after the $7,500 more in taxes that other people, who can't afford this car, will be paying on behalf of the person who can afford it. That's nice. So progressive.

Hey, middle-upper class welfare is a time-honored tradition in the US. I suppose next you'll come up with some crazy talk about getting rid of tax deductions for buying gigantic houses.

But really, the price isn't unreasonable even ignoring the credit. It's still for rich early adopters, but it's far more accessible than the Roadster.

Re:Insane price

[ScentCone]

I suppose next you'll come up with some crazy talk about getting rid of tax deductions for buying gigantic houses.

Actually, it's the tax break for borrowing money to buy a house that we're really talking about here. And yes, it bugs the hell out of me. Local jurisdictions might want to provide some sort of financial incentive for people to buy property in their area (and some do - with the provision that the buyer occupy the house personall for some period of time), but forcing a taxpayer renting an apartment in Wyoming to help a guy in New Jersey buy a house is ... wrong.

Re:Insane price

[bnenning]

but forcing a taxpayer renting an apartment in Wyoming to help a guy in New Jersey buy a house is ... wrong.

Agreed completely. Of course, any politician who dared question its wisdom would be crucified at the polls.

Re:Insane price

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget $500 billion on "oil" war. These green hippies won't be needing US government to ensure so dramatically the oil availability so that others can get their $3 per gallon gas. Other issue is that CO2 reduction needs to happen someday, giving tax credit now is a good start and saves a lot of money later on. I think the $7500 tax credit is justified and shows how much less collective pressure to secure increasing amounts of oil these electric (or less consuming) cars cause.

Re:Insane price

[Thumper_SVX]

Maybe for some... but for me not so much.

I currently drive an aging BMW 330i... which has done me sterling service, but is really getting long in the tooth and over 100K miles. Sooner or later I'm going to have to replace it and I'm looking possibly at next year. As a result, I'm looking at a new car, and I'm quite set on a nice one... a new one. At the moment I'm looking very seriously at a BMW 335i or Mercedes C350. Believe it or not, Audi priced themselves out of the market because they provide (in my opinion) just not enough car for the money spent.

So what am I looking to spend? Funnily enough... right at $50,000. That equals monthly payments with a modest down payment of about $750 a month, give or take over five years. To me, that's doable.

I'm not trying to brag about my income... I earn a decent income but am by no means rich. My salary hasn't broken the magical six figure mark, and probably won't any time soon, but I still put this Model S in the realms of affordability because the only two things I do on credit are my mortgage and one car payment at a time... never more than that. No credit cards... live on cash.

So, here we have an American-built sedan that's in the $50,000 range... does sub 6-second 0-60, and as a bonus is a real technological tour de force. No, it won't hang with the 335i or C350 in the quarter... in fact it might but it'll run out of charge in an hurry. But still, the Model S becomes an extremely compelling American car... the only one I would really give a serious look (yes, I drove the Cadillac CTS and while it was a good car it didn't fit "me"). I like it... it has that Aston Martin / Maserati Quattroporte look that I love... a panorama roof (see the pics) and to boot is a zero emissions perfect commuting / light touring car. Wow. For $50,000?

All those who complain about range... so what? How often do you really drive more than 200 miles at a sitting? I can honestly say that my AVERAGE per day is about 40 miles... max. Maybe 50, tops on a day I go to lunch with my colleagues. I drive more than 200 miles maybe twice or three times a year to Chicago and / or Peoria. For that... I have my Kawasaki Concours 14 if I feel like running on two wheels and solo... or I can rent a car either one-way or return and not worry about it. Hell, to Chicago I can get the train and sleep during the trip.

I for one wish Tesla the best of luck. If my purchase I plan for next year ends up pushed back to 2011, then a quick trip to California to drive the S might be in the cards instead of my currently planned favourite; the 335i (which is an intoxicating piece of engineering, no mistake, there). The only thing I'd miss is I plan a European Delivery of the Bimmer, with a quick jaunt over the Alps via the Stelvio Pass to spend a week in Northern Italy. But if I end up choosing a Tesla S, then maybe I can still do it by renting a motorcycle instead :) I'd be able to with my gas savings... though my electricity bill will be intriguing. ;)

Re:Insane price

[jusdisgi]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that regressive tax breaks are bad in principle. In this particular case, however, the price of the tax break may well be less than the cost of the negative externalities avoided by purchasing an EV. At least until we get some sort of cap-and-trade (or better, a real carbon tax) putting a new ICE car on the street probably costs the taxpayers quite a bit...it's just a lot harder to see.

Re:Insane price

[labnet]

What you really mean is: after the $7,500 more in taxes that other people, who can't afford this car, will be paying on behalf of the person who can afford it. That's nice. So progressive.

You mean the $7500 printed by the Fed out of thin air and bought by Chinese that actualy make stuff.

Re:Insane price

[TheSync]

The Ford Model T was introduced at $850 in 1908, about $20,000 in 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars.

Re:Insane price

[hazydave]

Tata bough Jaguar and Rover from Ford recently... so you can actually do that with "real" cars, now.

Anyone know the economics on these?

[nine-times]

It's great to see an electric car this cool for so cheap. I mean, $50k isn't cheap, but it's cheap in comparison to their other car, an it seems generally more practical. If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.

I'm wondering, though, does anyone know what kind of profit margin Tesla is getting on these? Is the government subsidizing these at all (for environmental reasons)? Are they in the sort of situation where, as they start selling, Tesla will enjoy economy of scale and prices will go down substantially? Or is this price pretty firm?

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[TheRaven64]

If I were going to buy a car, I might consider this, but I might very well decide that $50k is just too much.

Don't forget that the initial price isn't the total cost of ownership. The site doesn't say what the battery capacity is or the charging efficiency, which means that we can't tell how much it costs to drive for a mile. It has fewer moving parts than a typical ICE vehicle, so maintenance costs are probably lower, with the exception of the cost of replacing the battery every few years (I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years).

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[nine-times]

True, but at this point, there's just no way of knowing how the TCO compares with a conventional car. As you said, there might be lower maintenance costs in general. On the other hand, with a new product that includes a new design, it takes a few years to know how well that design holds up under real use. Battery replacement costs are sure to be expensive, but you'll probably save some money on fuel costs on a day-to-day level. And how will it keep its value if you decide to resell it? It's hard to say ahead of time.

Still, I'm glad to see that there is a US car manufacturer who is trying to do something innovative.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[polymeris]

It actually does say: They claim capacity 300 miles, $4 a recharge. Thats 1.35 cent a mile.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[rolfwind]

I don't know the economics of these for the average person, but right now America is consuming a big chunk of the energy the world produces and is way far ahead per capita than most other countries, even other 1st world countries with similiar standards of living (maybe except Canada), something like Germany. Some of it due to our car oriented culture (which no product will fix, but an infrastructure issue - go by a European high school vs American suburban high school and check out ratio of cars to bicycles in the parking lot). Another is just poor construction practices like inadequate insulation or outdated heaters. Etc.

Looking at this car, the profile doesn't seem any more efficient than a regular car, which is way something like the Aptera. It's electric, which is a good start, especially considering the possible modular nature of the energy source, and coupled with a tiny hybrid petroleum engine which only has to produce constant energy instead of big enough for a "peak" performance need.

But it doesn't push air out of the way more efficiently, the other side of the equation. Because electricity isn't "clean" right now, just a bit better. And the chemicals for batteries need to be mined, itself a dirty process, as well as being processed at the end of its life - so it makes a difference if a car can get a 300 mile range on X amount of units instead of 2X or 3X or more.

That's why I woud always support something like the Aptera
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=1104622

This model Tesla looks pretty sexy like it's bigger brother so it will have an easy time selling, but beyond the gas vs electric issue, I wonder really how efficient it truly is.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[dgatwood]

That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh, for a total of over $23 per recharge. If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.

Put another way, assuming a 200,000 mile lifespan of both vehicles, gas would have to average a whopping $12.47 per gallon without electricity prices increasing by a single cent for me to break even with the Tesla, and that's discounting any interest I'd get by putting that extra $40,000 in the bank. Once you factor that in, the Tesla becomes laughable. If gas prices get that high over the lifespan of an automobile bought today, the economy will utterly collapse, and affording electricity or gas will be the least of your worries. You'll have to hire an armed guard to keep people from stealing that car and burning it for warmth.

I love the idea of an electric, but a $10,000 conversion of a standard vehicle (or $2,000 to add batteries to a hybrid) makes a heck of a lot more sense than spending such an insane amount of money for a Tesla. When the Tesla falls below a $20,000 price point for their entry level sedan, I'll stop using the phrase "Cars for people with more money than brains," but for now, it very much applies, IMHO.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[nine-times]

Some of it due to our car oriented culture (which no product will fix, but an infrastructure issue - go by a European high school vs American suburban high school and check out ratio of cars to bicycles in the parking lot). Another is just poor construction practices like inadequate insulation or outdated heaters. Etc.

I'm with you there. Part of the reason I said, "If I were going to buy a car..." was that I don't own a car and ride a bike to work. But if I were going to buy a car, I'd like to be able to buy as efficient and environmentally friendly of a car as I can without breaking the bank, so I'm happy to see someone working on the problem.

As far as the Aptera, sure I'd like to see something like that be successful. Hell, I'd like to see even more radical solutions proposed, e.g. single-person transports for cities, but then you still have to address all the technical and economic problems like cost and recharge time. Then on top of that you have to convince people to accept these new things as "normal". If not "normal", than "cool". It's a tough sell for most people.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Purely on economics, the Fit hybrid or any economy-oriented turbodiesel car will beat out the Tesla Model S, no doubt about it.

But none of those are capable of doing 0-60 in under 6 seconds. The Model S is a luxury sedan meant to compete with the offerings from BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar etc., not with econoboxes.

Your $10,000 vehicle conversion will be nowhere near the same quality nor performance as a Model S, you're being silly.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Rei]

That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh

No, what's absurd is how much PG&E charges for electricity. The US national average is about $0.10/kWh.

If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway

1) It won't. They've stated that they're targeting the mileage of the (disappointing) Insight.
2) The Fit is not a luxury car, so it's a dumb comparison.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Rei]

You actually believe that those two tiny rear-facing seats are actually going to make it to production? Or that the per-vehicle average occupancy will be all that much higher for the Model S than for the 2e? I'd wager that the average occupancy of a 2e will be about 1.4 passengers while the average occupancy of a Model S will be about 1.8 passengers.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jon3k]

"The site doesn't say what the battery capacity is or the charging efficiency, which means that we can't tell how much it costs to drive for a mile."

It says it has a range of 300 miles and costs $4 to fully charge or 1.3 cents per mile. It's on the website, look under the "Technology" button/tab.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jon3k]

That's brutal, I pay somewhere between $0.06 and $0.07/kWh -- or less than 25% of what you pay. Your $23 charge is my $4.83 charge.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Rei]

I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years

The initial for the Roadster was 80% after 5 years. They've updated it based on their latest testing to 80% after 7 years for the average user. They're talking even higher for the Model S.

Of course, that's nothing compared to, say, GM *warrantying* their pack for *10* years.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jo_ham]

I would almost count on a recycle programme for the batteries, where you trade your old and exhausted one for a fresh one. This won't be free by a long chalk, but I'd imagine it's going to be considerably cheaper than buying an entire new battery and dumping the old one in landfill. It will be well worth it to recover and recondition/recycle the batteries.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[anagama]

The Aptera looks totally cool -- I'd love to have it as a second car, but the 100 mile range prevents it from being a good replacement for the common car. I only want one car -- I have no interest in owning two.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Flyer434]

While the Aptera is more efficient than the Tesla, the S uses about 1/2 the energy per mile the Prius does. This is usually compared on a "well to wheel" basis that includes wasted energy in the generation/transportation of the fuel. Tesla has a page on this stat. http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Rei]

In all likelyhood, that 100 mile range is very conservative. They recently nearly doubled its pack capacity without listing an increase in range. They're guaranteeing 100 miles range highway with two passengers and climate control on. That means at slower speeds or other such conditions, it'll be significantly more.

To give an idea, the Mitsubishi MiEV is rated for 100 miles range. It has a 16kWh pack and perhaps about 70% more drag and weight compared to the 2e. Yet the 2e has a 17-23kWh pack.

They're also being extremely conservative with its performance, saying only that it does 0-60 in "under 10 seconds". The version they showed at TED actually did 0-60 in under 8 seconds, and they recently nearly doubled its stated torque figures without stating an increase in 0-60 time.

All of this happened after their new CEO, Paul Wilbur, took over. I think the 2e is going to blow away most people's expectations of it, and I think that's their goal. I think they want to be an overperformer in a field of underperformers.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[dgatwood]

Most folks don't really care about the 0-60 acceleration once it drops below about 7-8 seconds. It's not that interesting a piece of information unless you plan to race it. So for all practical purposes, this is just another sedan. So compare it with a nice sedan. Let's take a Nissan Maxima for the comparison. Comes in at about $17,000 less. 26MPG highway. So again assuming 200,000 miles, at PG&E prices, that's $15,400 in power costs + $17,000 is $32,400. So 7142.86 gallons of gas means gas prices have to average $4.57 over the life of the car. This means if it increased linearly over the life of the car (gross oversimplification), it would still have to significantly exceed $6.00 per gallon by the time you hit 200,000 miles just to break even.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[dgatwood]

My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs, and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.

And your estimate of the performance of a $10k conversion is likely way off. For the $30,000+ price difference, you can get comparable energy consumption and acceleration by converting a Hummer....

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Leebert]

(I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years).

Is that based on charge/discharge cycles and average annual mileage? Or is it really a time-based thing? I have a good sense that someone like me (who drives ~130 round trip for work every day) will find themselves replacing batteries every 2-3 years...

sudo mod me up

TheRaven64 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

I used an electric bike a couple years ago that wasn't high tech in any sense of the word. The batteries were basically UPS batteries in expensive casings. Besides that, the electric parts were basically grafted onto a conventional bike chassis. It reached residental street speeds and did so for distances far longer than I could pedal. The bike cost about $500 CDN.

I think we're trying to solve the wrong problem. We're trying to reinvent the car as a car, when we need to re-invent our concept of a vehicle altogether.

I imagine a good electric vehicle being had for less than 2000 dollars, and being a 3-wheel, 2 seater with a lightweight basket capable of carrying a couple bags of groceries. It would have to be weather-proof, but that could (and should) be accomplished using something cheap and effective like tarp and plexi-glass and aluminium. It'd have a small enough footprint to use bike paths and to store like a bicycle, a long enough distance to use as a commuter(at least 100km on a charge), high enough speeds to use residental streets, and low enough cost that people like me don't need to point out it's uneconomical to own. Such a vehicle would require a fraction of the energy to move, it would require a fraction of the materials to build, and overall could actually be a practical solution that doesn't need a technological deus ex machina to happen.

The tesla motors paradigm is still too inside the box. They're trying to make an electric car in a world where electric cars aren't useful. We need to think outside the box, to what we actually want, so we can escape the limitations of the automobile.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[ZosX]

I've been waiting for someone to do the real math on how much it costs to recharge. $23 a recharge is not an insignificant cost, and while a good deal less than what it would cost for the average car to reach 300 miles, when compared to something more fuel efficient its clear that electric is nowhere near as cheap a fuel source as people believe it to be. People see the electricity as nearly free, but if they racked up a $700 electric bill, they might feel a bit differently about it. Considering that the average gasoline engine is about 20-30% efficient at best and a good electric motor is about 90-95% efficient it would point to gasoline being cheaper per joule than electricity. At 30MPG, it would cost you 10 gallons of gasoline to travel the same distance. At $3 a gallon that would be $30. You only used 30% of that energy (the rest was wasted) so you wasted $20 (in theory). You now pay $23 to run your electric the same distance and you only waste $2.30, however this illustrates the point that you are using 3x the potential energy with gas for $7 less. Maybe I should lay off the crack pipe, but I noticed that electricity is getting fairly expensive, and I remember it being on the much cheaper side back in the day. Also people in different states pay vastly different rates. Like my dad's electric bills are like $30, whereas I would probably pay $100 for the same bill. I live in Pennsylvania, coal rich, and the first or second largest producer and exporter of coal fired electricity. That with a couple of nuclear power plants within 20 miles of my city should mean that electricity should be dirt cheap right? My dad? He lives in Idaho. I believe they probably use more expensive natural gas burners, but they are not energy rich out there by any means anyway. Why do I pay like 3x as much for electricity and at least 2x as much for natural gas as him? (Our winters are pretty similar) Does it all boil down to taxes?

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Al Dimond]

How do you plan to build a three-wheeled vehicle narrow enough to used bike paths and store like a bicycle? Obviously the seating arrangement can't be side-by-side... but I think once you want a third wheel, second seat, and shelter from the elements you're talking about a vehicle that's just too wide and cumbersome to steer to go on a bike path. Bike paths are bad enough when used by the very narrow and nimble vehicles they're intended for; these would be worse than rollerbladers and recomb bikers put together.

Bike paths aren't really a good design target anyway. There aren't that many of them compared to roads, and they're mostly very poorly designed for efficient and safe riding (much less driving!). Instead think about roads. In many places you're going to need to get it out on major roads to get where you're going, which means it either needs to be fast enough to keep up with traffic or narrow enough to be passed. At least until it takes over the world and transportation laws and infrastructure are reformed to fit its requirements.

Ultimately you're basically looking at a motorcycle. Many of them have two seats and luggage space, and if you're wearing the proper clothing for safety you're protected from the elements. Or just pedaling an old-fashioned bike.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

No, protection from the elements is a must. I've done the bike thing for months at a time, and the elements alone were reason enough for me to take my car every day and not have to deal with any of it, and reason enough for me to continue to do so despite the availability of inexpensive electric bikes.

If it's sunny and I'm taking my car, I put on my hat and leather jacket and drive away. If it's raining and I'm taking my car, I put on my hat and leather jacket and drive away. If it's windy and I'm taking my car I put on my hat and leather jacket and drive away. If it rained last night but it's clearing up, I put on my hat and leather jacket and drive away.

If I'm riding my bike, by contrast, I need to have a deep understanding of present and future conditions and I need to plan accordingly. I need sixteen different outfits and I need to plan ahead very much.

For a small-scale EV to be practical, it needs the same degree of seperation from the elements. After 12 hours of work, I don't want to worry about what the weather's like, I want to hop in my vehicle, turn the key, and drive home for some well-deserved rest.

Practicality is why you'd want to make it possible to travel as many places bikes can as possible. It's not supposed to be a car, it's supposed to be a useful little vehicle that can get you, a passenger, and a few groceries from point A to point B with as little fuss as possible.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Mike1024]

I imagine a good electric vehicle being had for less than 2000 dollars, and being a 3-wheel, 2 seater with a lightweight basket capable of carrying a couple bags of groceries. It would have to be weather-proof, but that could (and should) be accomplished using something cheap and effective like tarp and plexi-glass and aluminium.

Sounds a lot like an electric rickshaw.

Seriously, though, there are already lots of more efficient car alternatives, people in the US just don't choose to use them, due to a combination of infrastructure, social, and capability limitations.

If people aren't giving up their cars (in appreciable numbers) for busses, trains, pushbikes, motorbikes, motortrikes, motor scooters, enclosed scooters, electric bikes, european 'city cars', community cars, or car sharing.

What would an electric rickshaw offer that would cause it to be more successful than those?

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[drinkypoo]

My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs,

Stop. Right. There.

This car has superior performance to any other car in its class, period.

and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.

Says you.

The performance level of this vehicle is important to get the early adopters necessary to make it credible. It's also necessary to justify the price on an unproven technology (electric cars are known to work, but this package is so far untested.)

The NEXT vehicle is intended to be a basic sedan with ordinary performance and much more range. This has always been part of the Tesla Motors game plan, so if you are actually interested in this subject you have zero excuse for not knowing this.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[drinkypoo]

That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh, for a total of over $23 per recharge.

From the responses, it looks like you've suckered a lot of people in. You, however, are either a foolish customer, or an incompetent troll, because PG&E will switch you to a time-of-use meter for free. You are then billed different rates for power you consume at different times. Charge your electric car at night, and you get the power at the lowest price possible. If every kWh you add is already billed at this rate, it sounds to me like you need to make this change and invest in some timers.

A meter upgrade is also necessary for selling power back to the grid. If you have significant insolation you should be adding solar to handle your peak load, when PGE will bill you the most on a time-metered system; it sounds to me like you might actually be able to save some money in a reasonable timeframe that way, based on the fact that you're in the peak constantly. The only way I ever managed that (and I live in the part of California that was subjected to those completely bogus rolling blackouts, mind you) was running the A/C and way too many computers 24/7.

When the Tesla falls below a $20,000 price point for their entry level sedan, I'll stop using the phrase "Cars for people with more money than brains," but for now, it very much applies, IMHO.

Actually, it's cars for people with more money than you, you jealous prick. Don't hate, baby. Don't hate.

P.S. The plan all along has been to sell the third vehicle at an affordable price, while the people with more money than you (or me) buy these things as status symbols, defraying the cost of R&D for "the rest of us". If you actually cared about this subject, you would know that, and you would STFU about what these cars cost now. If you want to attack electrics there are plenty of reasonable questions to ask, like what's really going to happen when it comes time to recycle these batteries.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[drinkypoo]

It would have to be weather-proof, but that could (and should) be accomplished using something cheap and effective like tarp and plexi-glass and aluminium.

I disagree with your notion that the protection from the elements should come from an enclosure, whether rigid or flexible. Increasing your surface area without significantly increasing mass gets you into all kinds of problems vis-a-vis wind shear. It makes more sense to own performance clothing that can handle dry or wet conditions. It certainly behooves the pilot of any motorized vehicle of significant speed (e.g. suitable to replace our current transportation systems) to wear a full-face helmet. From there it's a couple of garments to rainproofing. If you're really moving at a good clip you'll want clothing to protect you from a ditch, too. You're hallucinating if you think that people are going to drive enclosed minimal-weight vehicles in any kind of wind without massive failure. I frequently see people blown into other lanes in their big steel coffins, which is to say Stupid Useless Vehicles.

The tesla motors paradigm is still too inside the box. They're trying to make an electric car in a world where electric cars aren't useful.

Yeah, they can only suit the needs of about 99% of the population. Terrible.

I want an electric bicycle, and have plans to build a 2WD model out of a K2 frame, but I still think there's a place for cars, at least for a while. I would like to see interstates replaced entirely with trains, though, onto which lightweight and small-footprint cars could be loaded. Large vehicles would be prevented from engaging in high-speed travel entirely, which would [generally] increase fuel economy and safety; there would still be freeways but only small vehicles would be permitted to move at high speeds. F=MA and all that.

Since neither that nor your desired plan is likely, I tip my hat to Tesla Motors for at least trying to move in the right direction.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[cynyr]

Let me know how that vehicle works for you when you need to store it outside at -20F as the high for the day and -30F at night, for a week. Also let me know how that 30 minute commute at -25F goes for you. Also how well does you trike work in 8+ inches of snow? Most of the ideas I hear about what cars should/could be seem to only over rain(and not even always that) and always fail to do anything for those of us where we get snow/ice/cold(not +40F, but -20F and lower for a week or more at a time) For referance this isn't some notheren extream of Canada or Alaska, this in Minneapolis/ST. Paul MN. I remeber the heat not working in my car for 1 morning at -25F I drove the 30 minutes to work with 0 heat. Try keeping a window defrosted at that. I was wearing mostly appropete winter gear (I would have been fine had I been walking, but sitting in the car was a different matter.) and it took me about 30 minutes to "thaw out" when i got to work. So until you solve the winter problem at least as well my 1994 saturn normally does, you can take your trike with it's tarp and shove it.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[brackishboy]

My mother has a Honda Jazz (the European name for the Fit) and it gets 45mpg (imperial) even if you drive it hard. Drive it with a light right foot and I reckon you'd get 55mpg (or around 45mpg US) no problem.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Al Dimond]

I understand why you want to make it possible to travel as many places as possible. That's precisely why it's dumb to target bike paths instead of, if not freeways, at least major highways. Bike paths, on the whole, don't go anywhere particularly useful and are poorly designed for safety of fast-moving vehicles. They require extremely narrow and nimble vehicles moving fairly slowly to work even as poorly as they do now. The only users bike paths are well-suited for are pedestrians (and, because of the limited routes, mostly recreational ones), but bikes can usually squeeze their way on adequately (on some so-called bike paths they really can't). Anything faster, bulkier, and less maneuverable, as your vehicle would be, would be at best a poor citizen on a bike path.

As a cyclist I ride far more miles on major streets and highways than on bike paths even on recreational rides (this was even true when I lived in Silicon Valley, which has lots of relatively good bike paths along bodies of water and awful traffic) -- for practical rides I almost never use bike paths. I suspect with your vehicle that would be even more true. So instead, optimize for the major roads that you'll need to use if you want this vehicle to be your only one.

This all might look very different if we could rebuild our highway and bikeway systems, but that's just not going to happen. I really think what you're looking at is a two-wheeled motorcycle with enough power to handle major roads. Maybe with some sort of modification to protect you from the elements, although I personally think a set of waterproof clothing folded up in one of the luggage bags would be fine.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[peas_n_carrots]

Agreed. Plenty of people drop $50k on a Lexus/BMW/Mercedes/etc pollution spewer without batting an eyelash. While this price point isn't "cheap", it significantly increases the audience that will consider electric cars.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[crazy_EECS_plus]

I think what you want is a electric http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile But wait this already exists in the http://www.go-one.us/go-one_HumanPoweredVehicle.html And it is likely available in other flavors.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[HungWeiLo]

Idaho buys cheap hydro power from Oregon and Washington, if they don't already have their own hydro plants. I'm in Washington, keep my PC and plasma on quite a bit and get $20/mnth electric bills.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Spoke]

My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh, for a total of over $23 per recharge.

People in California (myself included) pay an extreme premium for exceeding their baseline usage. For example, for my house (SDG&E), the baseline is 330 kwH and billed around 12c/kwH, tier 2 is 101%-%130 at about 14c/kwH, tier 3 is 131%-200% and billed at about 30c/kwH and tier 4 is 201%+ and billed at about 32c/kwH. FWIW, I rarely go into tier 3 territory by any significant amount and that's with a family of 4. We have made a conscious effort to conserve electricity, use all fluorescent bulbs, but still have two computers running 24/7 that I've been too lazy to get running less (they're both low power servers that draw about 50w).

Basically, baseline usage is subsidized by high tier usage - but if you use a significant amount of high tier power, you should seriously considering two things: 1. Figure out where you are using all that electricity. 2. If you can't cut power any more, look at solar power systems.

If you're paying 30c+ kwH, a solar power system will "break even" in 6-7 years with current subsidies, which is a GREAT deal. The 1BOG group is a great way to get an even better price - I co-worker who has a very large salt-water aquarium that consumes a lot of electricity is getting a system through 1BOG - they make it simple.

If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.

After seeing Honda's 2010 Insight, I'm not that impressed with their hybrid systems. You'd think that Honda would have to at least matched the older Honda Civic Hybrid in fuel economy, but the numbers are basically the same (even slightly worse) at 41mpg combined. It even tried to make the car look aerodynamic by using a classic kammback shape, but it's also slightly less aerodynamic than the Civic hybrid (probably why the Civic hybrid does slightly better on the highway in fuel economy at 45 vs 43 mpg).

The only thing they've succeeded in doing is making the Insight cheaper than the Civic, but for only a bit more than the Insight you can get the Prius which for 2010 Toyota has improved fuel economy by nearly 10% to 50mpg combined and given it a significant amount more room.

Sales of the Prius for June (about 13,000) killed Honda's combined Civic Hybrid and Insight sales (about 3,600).

Ford on the other hand has done very well with the new Fusion Hybrid which gets a combined 39mpg which nudges out the Insight in the city and does a bit worse on the highway despite the Fusion weighing about 1000 pounds more!

So frankly, I wouldn't expect the hybrid fit to do any better than low 40s in fuel economy. I'd expect to see a small hybrid from Toyota or Ford that will post some stellar fuel economy numbers especially in the city if they can get their hybrid drivetrains into something that is in the 2600 lb range.

None of that takes away from your original argument that the Tesla is nothing more than a rich person's toy which is absolutely true. Even the Model S at $50k+ will be the same.

When you can buy a real highway capable car capable of seating 4 people with a range of 100 miles for less than $25k, I think we will be close to the point where the car will be viable for a significant portion of the public (considering that most people have two cars in the garage). The closest people to that is Aptera, but they are already way behind schedule and many people don't consider the 3-wheel vehicle to be a "real" car, not to mention it only seats 2.

We probably have at about 3 years before we start seeing cars meeting those specs - I just wish it was sooner!

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[mshurpik]

No, it's not "just another sedan." An internal combustion engine is going to suffer from being raced. Which means that your 7-8 seconds causes additional wear on the vehicle. Under normal commuting conditions, that acceleration is not available to you, unless you are willing to destroy the car.

Now you have an electric car that is basically frictionless, you can do 6 seconds whenever you want. How about at every stoplight on the way home from work? There's no law against acceleration, dude.

Also, get this: Electric cars don't smell like garbage. If you told me you were going to sell a bag of cherries that didn't smell like farts for 2x what fart cherries cost, I'd say you have a viable product.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jusdisgi]

If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway, it will cost less (@$3 per gallon) than this Tesla car to operate and will cost over $40,000 less to buy the car.

Honda is selling a Fit hybrid for under $10k? Awesome!

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jusdisgi]

My point is that this thing has way, way too much acceleration and that as a result, there are gasoline cars that come close to it in terms of ongoing operating costs. The whole point of going electric is to lower your costs, and if it isn't doing that, why not buy a luxury gas-powered car? Give me 0-60 in 7-8 seconds and that's plenty.

Your ICE assumptions are catching up to you. You seem to think that if they decreased the acceleration it would also decrease operating expenses. That sounds reasonable, and it would be true for any ICE vehicle...but it's not at all correct for an EV. There's actually a positive correlation between power and efficiency in electric motors. So if Tesla made it slower, they'd also increase the operating cost.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jusdisgi]

For the Roadster's battery chemistry it really does look like the calendar life is the bigger issue. Both come into play; if you cycle the thing 500 times in the first year you'll have a significant range loss. But so to will you see a significant loss if you just park it for 5 years. The Model S is supposed to have a newer chemistry with dramatic improvements on both fronts.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jusdisgi]

I don't know the economics of these for the average person, but right now America is consuming a big chunk of the energy the world produces and is way far ahead per capita than most other countries...

"Per capita" is the wrong benchmark for energy consumption. Per-GDP is far more appropriate. And since the U.S. currently accounts for nearly a quarter of the world's GDP, we're actually not that inefficient all things considered.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[jusdisgi]

This whole conversation is a great example of why car companies don't have the engineers design the cars.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

I live 2 thousand miles north of you.

Our dealerships don't even bother selling hybrids.

That said, for the months where it's not -50 before windchill, the trike would be a lot more useful than having to have the malibu barbie wardrobe for the massive variety of weather conditions -- frost in the morning, over 100F in the afternoon! Yaaay!

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

Why didn't the EEE PC concept of a less powerful small laptop at a very low cost catch on until Asus released one? How did the netbook become the fastest growth segment of the PC industry?

Because the consumer didn't have any chance to buy one until Asus created it. The table I'm sitting at right now has two, the household I'm in has four, and the market segment didn't exist a few years ago.

Give me a 2000 dollar weatherproof vehicle I can actually buy, and I'll buy it. I can't buy it because it doesn't exist. Insurance differences alone would pay for such a vehicle if I could use it from march to october or november, forget about gas.

I can't buy it, and my hypothetical vehicle needs to be something I can buy.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

A $50,000 vehicle that forces you to take the bus at any point isn't a practical vehicle. Period.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

I can buy an electric bike at the local Canadian Tire. I can't buy any of the things you've linked to. Therefore, they effectively don't exist and I don't give a crap.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[rolfwind]

BMW had a good concept and product years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_C1

Unfortunately, it was too expensive and not enough people went for it. I have a perfectly capable car, but would want such a thing for short trips.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[drinkypoo]

A $50,000 vehicle that forces you to take the bus at any point isn't a practical vehicle. Period.

Repeating a falsehood doesn't make it true. It just makes you more and more irrelevant.

Maybe YOUR lifestyle won't sustain an occasional bus ride. I don't know why that is; maybe you're just too arrogant to get on a bus.

That's fine, but the reality is that in Europe or even in cities in the USA many people own perfectly serviceable cars and still only use them for outings. They don't need them to get to work, or to go shopping, but they still have one.

You are commiting the usual logical fallcy utilized against EVs, that since they won't work for you, they won't work for anyone. Don't be so fucking arrogant and self-centered.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

Really? Arrogance?

After taxes and interest, you'll have a monthly payment of over $1,000 for 5 years to own this car. It's not arrogant to think that paying such a ridiculous amount every month, transportation should be covered. It's simple practicality.

What's arrogant is your shotgun engineering. "These are the specs of your car. If these specs don't work, go fuck yourself."

At the end of the day, the market will prove me right. These cars will be bought by movie stars and other people who want an overpriced status object but don't need to worry about practicality, and regular people will continue to buy regular cars, because even if gas goes to 8 dollars a gallon, it'll still be more economical over 200,000km to buy a nice petroleum car(or even a hybrid) than an EV that for $50,000 will still force you to take the bus.

Better, folks will still pretend they're financing some deus ex machina to save the world trather than buying a status object.

Ironically, electric bikes will continue to expand their market, since they're a more sane application of range-limited zero emission transportation.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[hazydave]

That's conventional Li-ion chemistry for you, sure enough. Anyone with an iPhone and a few months left on their AT&T contract can sympathize.

Unfortunately, last news I have read claims they're using the laptop cells for the "S" as well:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/24/tesla-to-keep-laptop-cells-until-3rd-gen-car-new-roadster-sales/

It's also something like 42kWhr, 160mile range to start with... other battery packs available in time.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[hazydave]

I'm surprised it doesn't do better... the Prius is only about 32% efficient (the new ones.. and the numbers vary a bit...for my 2003, it was claimed to be 26%). That's of course based on the current state of well to pump efficiency being pretty high, and the ICE just sucking rocks on efficiency. I guess it's the opposite with the Tesla... well to plug is not so good, but battery (80%) and motor (90-95%) are great.

Given the great energy density of gasoline and the awful efficiency of gasoline engines (even Atkinson-cycle engines as in the Prius) versus the wonderful efficiency of multi-phase AC electric motors and the horrible energy density of batteries, the Tesla had better use less than half the energy per mile. Of course, this also explains why the Prius goes 500-600 miles on a tank, while the Tesla goes half that at best (and the Model S, half again).

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[hazydave]

I think they've been smart about it... $110K for a SuperCar (at least off the line, if not anything like top-end speed) isn't bad, so they were in the right kind of place with the Roadster. The Model S will be about half of that, and it's aimed at established luxery sedans... if it's close enough, they'll probably sell a bunch of these to rich Californians tied of squeezing into their Prius hybrids. The next one is supposed to use new battery technology and cut the price in half again.. that's more my speed.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[drinkypoo]

What's arrogant is your shotgun engineering. "These are the specs of your car. If these specs don't work, go fuck yourself."

You are attacking a straw man. What I actually said is "These are the specs of this car. If these specs don't work, wait for the car that Tesla motors has always planned to make after making a roadster and a sport luxury touring car, which should cost about half as much and have significantly more range."

Why don't you stop trying to put words in my mouth in order to make yourself look intelligent? It's not working.

This car is obviously purely a status symbol, otherwise it wouldn't need to go so fast.

Have you examined the range on electric bicycles lately? They are far inferior to the Tesla, let alone the Model S... and I'm talking about human hybrids that weigh over fifty pounds for bicycle plus system. I have plans to build one anyway, I want to make a regenerative-braking 2WD unit from a K2 frame... But they won't meet the needs of as much of the population as the Model S will, let alone its planned successor.

Re:Anyone know the economics on these?

[Sj0]

Oh yeah, the deus ex machina everyone thinks is going to make these tesla cars practical. Ain't gonna happen. If you disagree, enjoy your Hydrogen car. Regardless, people won't buy something that they can't use for everything they need. If you get laid off from your job in Winnnipeg but find a job in the next city, you're stuck hiring a tow truck. Nobody will accept that.

Since I've only been making one argument -- this car is expensive and impractical, basically just a status symbol -- it seems like you're wasting your time by arguing against my point if you agree with all the supporting points. You agree that it's expensive. You agree that it's impractical. You agree that it's essentially just a status symbol, but you don't agree with me that it's an impractical expensive status symbol.

The difference between an electric bicycle and a tesla s is twofold: First, the bicycle can be bought by someone making minimum wage with a single paycheque. 500 bucks and you've got powered transportation. If you're trying to sell this as a commuter vehicle, it's best for the vehicle to be practical. Second, the bicycle doesn't need to be the primary source of transportation. It is far better suited to limited range and limited service than a full-size car. I, and many people in cities, live in an apartment and don't have room for two cars, so if I'm going to get a luxury brand car, it'll be a BMW or a porsche -- something I can make it to the next city with (even ignoring that the $50,000 car doesn't have a range of 300 miles, but half of that).

That's why I don't believe in electric cars. I like electric vehicles, but the car is a bulky and expensive form factor to push a limited range vehicle into. I think we should be looking at a much much smaller 1 or 2 person vehicle that'd cost maybe 2000 dollars.

You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Alain Williams]

300 miles will take some 4 hours to drive, you could prob do with at least a 45 min rest ... so this is finally acceptable range for an electric car.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[0100010001010011]

It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.

I'll stick to my Diesel Jetta which can run on Diesel, Biodiesel created from waste oil, crushed soybeans, algae, liquefied natural gas (GTL), or liquefied coal gas (GTL), any one of a number of renewable resources. If I stretch it I can get 800 to a TANK and still refill in 5-10 minutes.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

300 miles will take some 4 hours to drive, you could prob do with at least a 45 min rest ... so this is finally acceptable range for an electric car.

The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[YesIAmAScript]

The battery pack you get for $57.4K (the cheapest model) is a 160 mile pack, not a 300 mile pack.

And you aren't going to be able to fully charge it in 45 minutes. LIons just won't stand for it. You should be able to put 85% of the charge in in 45 minutes, but since it such rapid charging reduces the lifespan of the battery, Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).

Acceptable range is kind of a tricky idea, if you had a charger everywhere, then this might be okay. But instead, you are likely to drive to your range and find there is no place to charge it at your stopover or destination.

Here's an example of how the difficulties in recharging an electric car makes it less useful than a gas car.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog5/?p=68

This guy took a 40 hour trip and spent 8 hours of it waiting for his car to charge. 4 hours walking (twice) around an RV park waiting for his car to charge to 88%.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[nine-times]

It's not for me. 4 hours is nothing in the midwest. I currently live 5 hours from my parents house. When we drove to NYC last year it took 12. 15-20 minutes max for a break, otherwise your journey takes for ever.

Still, that's not too typical for most people's day-to-day routine. And like the previous poster said, I would expect that most people can live with a 45 minute break every 4 hours on long car trips. You stretch your legs and maybe get something to eat, and then you're ready to go.

Actually, the funny thing in my mind is that, given your examples, I would probably be much more frustrated with the 5 hour trip than the 12 hour trip. If you're already taking a 12 hour trip, adding an extra hour or two of rest time doesn't seem that extreme to me. Hell, you might even think of it as a safety feature to help prevent road-hypnosis.

But imagine your battery lasts for 300 miles and you regularly make a trip that's 320 miles long. To have to stop 20 miles short of your destination and recharge for 45 minutes then would be pretty annoying. On the other hand, I would suppose you could just charge for 10 minutes and keep going. If it's like most batteries, it recharges most of the way pretty quickly, and then takes a long time to get that last 10% of charge.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[selven]

Carry two sets of batteries?

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Blakey Rat]

Where in the midwest is 12 hours away from NYC? Maybe my sense of geography is all out-of-whack being from Washington State...

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[RightwingNutjob]

What people don't get is that the point of liquid gasoline or CNG or LNG or whatever is that it takes 5 minutes at most to fill up and off you go. That and range are the two criteria that make electric cars unacceptable to Joe Sixpack at the moment. If you can make an electric car that gets 300 miles per charge and charges up in 5 minutes, then you've got a competitor (except for the problem of not being able to hitchhike down the road to bring back a can of gas in an emergency). Until you bring those two parameters down to the convenience of the gas powered car, the electric vehicle will be confined to things like taxis and delivery vehicles with well-defined operating modes. Normal people aren't going to buy a vehicle that lets them do less than a normal gas-powered car.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[0100010001010011]

Indianapolis. Maybe it's the map projection, but distances aren't as short as they seem.

Indianapolis to Minneapolis is 10 hours.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Dekker3D]

the can of gas thing is easy: one large battery that fills most of the available space, and a small one that can be taken out, carried and put back in for the remainder. some circuitry to balance things out would be needed, but i don't think that'd be too hard. of course, i am not an electrician.. wiring dude? circuit maker?.. thing. IANAEWDCMT, man, don't quote me on this one!

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Anonymous Coward]

The battery pack you get for $57.4K (the cheapest model) is a 160 mile pack, not a 300 mile pack.

And you aren't going to be able to fully charge it in 45 minutes. LIons just won't stand for it. You should be able to put 85% of the charge in in 45 minutes, but since it such rapid charging reduces the lifespan of the battery, Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).

Acceptable range is kind of a tricky idea, if you had a charger everywhere, then this might be okay. But instead, you are likely to drive to your range and find there is no place to charge it at your stopover or destination.

Here's an example of how the difficulties in recharging an electric car makes it less useful than a gas car.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog5/?p=68

This guy took a 40 hour trip and spent 8 hours of it waiting for his car to charge. 4 hours walking (twice) around an RV park waiting for his car to charge to 88%.

And he really enjoyed his trip! The point is for the battery to last for everyday commutes, if you're going to do any kind of distance you can either wait for it to charge and read a book or something (people are so impatient these days) or just rent a car for the trip...

99% of people won't need more than 100 miles a day, and that's the whole point. How often do you actually do more than 300 miles in a day, for me it would be 1-2x a year and i wouldn't mind renting something for those trips.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[__aasqbs9791]

It wasn't 8 hours all at once.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[YesIAmAScript]

Oh, now I'm going to rent a car? So now I don't need a rest?

People are ready to make all kinds of excuses as to why short range cars are okay. Many of them are even accurate. The problem is that consumers don't seem to agree with the arguments. People are using to paying a little and getting more car than they need. Getting them to warm up to the idea of paying a lot and getting less car than they need is going to take a lot f convincing.

In the mean time, turns out 300 miles is not sufficient range, which is the point I refuted.

I think it's hilarious you would just tell someone they have to spend more than 20% of their trip (25% if you subtract out the 8 hours sleeping) waiting for their car to charge. And they should be thankful for it.

I mean, if I wanted to spend 8 hours walking around an RV park, I can do that on a trip I take with my gas car. So there's no advantage to being forced to do it.

This guy took a trip where he never went over 80% of rated range of his car in a day and he still felt he had to stop to recharge it during the day 3 times in two days! If nothing else, range anxiety is a huge issue.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Solandri]

Still, that's [a 5-12 hour drive] not too typical for most people's day-to-day routine.

The thing is, unless they're rich, people don't buy a car based on their day-to-day routine. They buy a car based on how well it can handle all their driving needs. If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip. They're going to eliminate the electric from consideration and buy one car that can handle both needs.

I've proposed that people rent a car for their once-a-year trips, and the common reply is that it'd be a "waste of money" when you "already own a car." Not to mention rental cars would be in short supply with jacked up prices around holidays like Thanksgiving. The fiscal benefit of an electric car for day-to-day travel would have to outweigh the cost of renting for that once-a-year trip. A decent rail system would also fill this need for intermediate trip lengths, but alas the U.S. has sacrificed its rail system for freeways. Plug-in hybrids are also a good solution, since they can fill up at a gas station if need be. But then you're carrying around all that weight of an ICU which is only used a few times a year.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[nine-times]

If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.

But:

1. They might decide to fly or take a train.
2. They could rent a car for that once-a-year trip.
3. It can handle a 12 hour trip. You'll just have to take a few 45 minute breaks along the way.
4. If you're really that strapped for cash, you're not going to spend $50k on a car anyway.

People's needs are really more fluid than they like to admit. I don't think a 45 minute break every 4 hours is going to be a deal breaker for most people. If it is, it might be more psychological than based on real need. There may be some people who really drive around all day and need a better distance per charge ratio, just like there are people who genuinely need a pickup truck, but it's really not that common.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[MichaelSmith]

People like you who do drive four hours at a time will probably be the last to get electric cars. But the normal suburban commuter which spends an hour and a bit going to work and back can just be plugged in at night like a phone. That accounts for 95% of cars out there. Your example is not typical.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Rei]

Exactly! Earlier this year, I needed a cargo van to move a furnace up from Missouri. So I rented one. I need a cargo van about once every year. Does that mean I should buy a cargo van, make it my daily commuter? Nobody would ever suggest that. But then they apply that exact same logic to EVs.

Personally, in terms of range extension, I'm fond of towable generators. Range-extended when you need it, and not when you don't. And it'd be so trivial to set up a genset rental shop once such vehicles are on the market in any relevant numbers. Compared to what they have versus what a rental car has, I imagine it'd cost about $15-$20 a day.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you tone down the nerdrage? I've got a crazy theory: it isn't for you. Maybe it's for the massive amount of people for whom the range is adequate? You realize most families have more than one vehicle as well, right? Wouldn't it be simple to use the other, presumably gas powered, car for other trips? CRAZY! I know.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[SpinyNorman]

There's an article here discussing a new electric car battery that Chrysler will be using that can take an 80% charge in 5 minutes!

http://www.gizmag.com/chrysler-a123-batteries-electric-vehicles/11497/

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[hey!]

Well, if that's a kind of driving you frequently do, then a diesel is probably your best bet. That's the best case scenario driving for in internal combustion engine both in terms efficiency and minimal environmental impact. I doubt many people in Grass Range Montana are going to be buying these.

But for most drivers, most of the time, a three hundred mile range electric car that charges in 45 minutes will be extremely practical. In some ways more practical if you just drive it into your garage at night and plug in; you'll never have to think about finding a gas station.

One thing to consider in the short term is that most households have more than one car. In the short term replacing one of them with a vehicle like this will be very pragmatic. If they ever have the itch to drive over five hundred miles without stopping for more than a few minutes, they can take the gasoline engine.

If we are thinking about a reasonably distant future in which support for ICE vehicles becomes harder to find, batteries will surely be better than they are today. Even if not it isn't hard to imagine schemes to make longer drives possible (e.g. auxiliary power sources in the car or in a trailer).

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[ucblockhead]

It'd work best as a second car in a two car family. Neither my wife or I even remotely get close to 100 miles in a day. We only go longer on vacations, in which case we'd be together.

So yeah...I'd buy one of these and use my wife's gas powered car for long trips.

I'm not sure you can say "consumers don't agree" because consumers haven't really had the opportunity to buy an electric car that performed like a gas one, even ignoring range.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Tempocrew]

4 hours walking (twice) around an RV park waiting for his car to charge to 88%.

At which point he ended up in 1955.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[feepness]

I have 60K miles on my commuter. Probably never more than 100 miles at a time.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[guruevi]

Technically there is already a small benefit for renting a car if you're only doing one trip a year, it's just so small people don't want to put up with it. But if this should increase, the market will take care of it eventually. Rentals in any airport city is already fairly cheap (30-50/day) so you would only have to save $500/year on your car for it to become interesting (2 1 week trips to grandma).

And even if you want, you can keep both types around. It's not like US families only can afford 1 car - most have 2 or 3 already.

Electricity has to go down in price though. We would need to be less reliant on a grid since this is going to add to the already frequent brownouts anywhere in the US and have more widespread, less restricted use of mini-reactors (like Fujitsu's container-sized model) for larger companies (or charging stations) and other sources for 'home and garden'.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[TrekkieGod]

The thing is, unless they're rich, people don't buy a car based on their day-to-day routine...If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's...

Really? You choose the car you drive based on it being to handle your annual 12 hour trip instead of how well it handles your drive around the city every single day?

Rentals aren't that expensive. At $4 per charge, instead of the $30 to fill up the tank you can save enough over a year to rent a car for that trip to Grandma's. Not to mention that I'm not anywhere near rich, but I start looking at airplane tickets once travel time gets to be that long.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[ZorbaTHut]

Or people could buy a cheap used car for things like this. I actually own two cars, neither of which cost me over $1500, just because it's real convenient when one's in the shop for an oil change or for maintenance. (My mechanic loves me - I tell him "here ya go, I want it back within a month, take your time.")

If one of my cars were a Tesla Model S, I'd still have a cheap gas car to take cross-country.

Keeping two cars is really not a significant extra cost. It's ridiculously convenient.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Sj0]

It's an 8 hour straight drive to the next city from where I live. I'd need to stop 3 times with this vehicle.

Turning my 8 hour trip into an 11 hour trip is a big deal. Turning my 12 hour trip to visit my parents in the next province into a couple days is a very big deal, costing me hundreds of dollars to deal with.

It's all fine and good to sit in your little design booth and say "They'll just have to deal with the inconvenience", but we don't have to deal with the inconvenience. Unless convenient petroleum-based vehicles are legislated away, electric cars are going to have to deal with the existing standards of convenience.

Frankly, that's why I think we need to look at electric vehicles in a different light: Create something closer to an all weather electric tricycle that you can buy for a couple grand or less, and suddenly people can justify the purchase by offsetting a year's gasoline purchases. It stops being a car altogether, which means it can play by it's own rules.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[nine-times]

Turning my 8 hour trip into an 11 hour trip is a big deal.

First, it wouldn't turn your 8 hour trip into an 11 hour trip. If the Tesla car only needs to be charged every 4 hours, then you only have to stop once to recharge to go 8 hours. So that's 8:45. Plus, there's a good chance your 8-hour trip already includes one stop or more for gas, a couple bathroom breaks, and a stop for a snack, so you extend any one of those stops by a few minutes and charge your car a little more, and you're not necessarily losing much time at all.

But anyway, adding an hour or two to an 8 hour trip really isn't that big a deal. Quit your whining. Go back in time 100 years, and that 8 hour trip would have taken a week, and the world didn't stop spinning. Yeah, sometimes creating a better world requires accepting some mild inconveniences. If you really can't handle an extra 45 minutes on an 8 hour trip, then fly.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Sj0]

You never know when the town you intended to gas up at was shut down, or the gas station isn't open anymore, or there's a detour due to construction that adds to your trip, or some other issue happens. I've driven about 7500km during the past few weeks on vacation, and I never let the range remaining in my fuel tank fall below 200km. This saved me countless times.

And let me get this straight: You want to spend $50,000 on a car that forces you to go back to 1909 standards of travel? "At least we didn't catch polio on our journey! You have to be thankful for that!"

Know what? I'll spend half as much on a fully loaded petroleum-fueled vehicle and arrive hours earlier. Why fly when you can drive?

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[westlake]

If a car that suits their day-to-day driving needs can't handle an annual 12 hour drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving, they're not going to buy a second car just for that one trip.

It isn't just about that once-a-year vacation.

It is about every run that doesn't quite fit into a family's daily routine.

It isn't just about mileage either. It's about passenger space, cargo capacity and so on. You might have a boat or trailer that needs towing.

've proposed that people rent a car for their once-a-year trips. A decent rail system would also fill this need for intermediate trip lengths, but alas the U.S. has sacrificed its rail system for freeways.

Rail passenger traffic was in decline long before the interstates. It is hard to beat the convenience of portal to portal service. You can bring your kids, your pets and all the cargo you could ever want to carry - at almost no additional expense.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 - at least two decades before most drivers were likely to be carrying a credit card - and without an instant and trusted line of credit renting a car isn't a particularly realistic option.

New York to Chicago on the Twentieth Century Limited was a grand experience for those who could afford it.

Albany to New York by coach was a very different experience.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[blindseer]

For some reason your post induced a flashback to Oregon Trail...

You have died from dysentery.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[RaymondKurzweil]

But anyway, adding an hour or two to an 8 hour trip really isn't that big a deal. Quit your whining. Go back in time 100 years, and that 8 hour trip would have taken a week, and the world didn't stop spinning. Yeah, sometimes creating a better world requires accepting some mild inconveniences. If you really can't handle an extra 45 minutes on an 8 hour trip, then fly.

Are you stupid? We don't live 100 years ago. Even just 100 years ago, a great number in the US of people (like more than 25% of all deaths) were children under 5. In the US, women couldn't vote, many people would have only been so happy to welcome a modern AIDS epidemic in place of their contemporary ways to die from disease. Just don't go down this line of argument ever again, unless you like sounding like an idiot to everyone you encounter.

Also why don't you study what opportunity costs are, and not come back until you fucking understand.

People will never accept a cost that isn't suitably offset. You are simply arrogant to think that your concept of a "better world" (the benefit) is interpreted by all people (or even most people).

Also, you allude to the difference between things being "psychological" and "real" costs. This is really utter bullshit. Many "psychological" things are REAL COSTS. Unless you are a machine and not a human, psychological burden is a real burden. My sitting around waiting with my thumb up my ass for 45 minutes is painful and therefore costly. It is in all senses a legitimate and real cost. A bit of a simplification but generally true: If someone has money that they earned, and they offer to *pay you* to do something that only helps them psychologically, then whatever that was, was a REAL COST to them. Almost all waiting in our modern world is a "convenience" issue. The "convenience" is simply abstract to you, because it just so happens to be something that isn't personally inconvenient to you. I guarantee a little twinkle toe shit like you will be the first one bitching when they have to wait 5 more seconds to download some goat porn mpgs.

Would you give up your broadband connection for a dial-up line? If not, then, really, just STFU.

At an extreme, you may say that torture and a 45-minute wait aren't the same thing, but then where exactly do you draw the line for a "psychological" and "real" cost in a way that is accurate for all humans and isn't amorphous?

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Anonymous Coward]

But some people do exactly this "second car" thing. The commuting breadwinner has one car and the other spouse has a SUV to haul the kids around in. SUV for long trips, other car for daily work trips.

I see this as working out just fine for a lot of families.

Of course, I can see where a lot of Slashdotters probably forgot to think about anyone but a single person.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[hattig]

8 hours is what? 500 miles? This vehicle has a range of 300, so you'd only need a single recharge en-route, and there's no way any responsible person would drive 8 hours straight without at least 2 breaks for toilet, food and refueling anyway, so I really do doubt that you would extend your journey that much. There's really no need to exaggerate the effect to ridiculous levels (11 hours indeed!) because it ruins any argument you might have had.

In addition it is likely that petrol stations will introduce fast charge stations for electric cars as they get more popular. OTOH I'm sure the price per unit would be a lot higher than it is for home supplies. Drive into the service station, drop $5 into the machine and plug it up, then pop in for a coffee, sammich and piss, and come out rested later and the car's ready to go.

If you live in hogbutt creek, middle of fuckallnowhere, then maybe an electric car won't become an option for ten to twenty years, but that's an entirely different issue.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[ceoyoyo]

The price of a rental car for a week might very well work out to half of someone's annual fuel costs, or more. My car, with my usage, eats about $1500 worth of gas a year. That includes several 2000-3000 km trips. Renting a car for one week (ie one long trip) costs somewhere in the $500 range by the time you're actually finished.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[cynyr]

I would imagine that a small ~1L(probably gould get away with .5L) 2 cylinder turbo diesel hooked up to nothing but a matched generator that could provide at least enough power to spin the wheels would solve the range problem. Let me plug it in as well to charge, disabling the use of the ICE to charge while it is plugged in would seem to be a win-win. I'm betting you can get some crazy effeciencties (as far as the use of an ICE goes) using something like that. Say turn the ICE on at 10% charge left and run it until you turn on the low gas light, charge the batteries to 100% or the car gets plugged in. Quad in hub wheel motors, use the 2 rear ones at speed, all four for accelleration/electronic stability control/improved cornering. No need for a differental then, complex transmissions huge huge battery packs. As far as maximum torque that as simple as deciding what your maximum acceration needs to be and designing the motor for that + slippage. The reason I like the vlot is that it has no complex transmission that directly hooks two power sources to the same set of wheels, seemed like it was going to optional plugin, and was mainly an electric car.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[toddestan]

This guy took a trip where he never went over 80% of rated range of his car in a day and he still felt he had to stop to recharge it during the day 3 times in two days! If nothing else, range anxiety is a huge issue.

I can kind of see why. Run out of power and you can't just have someone bring some electricity over in a can and be on your merry way. You're pretty much looking at having to call a tow truck and being towed to the nearest charging station.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[nine-times]

You want to spend $50,000 on a car that forces you to go back to 1909 standards of travel?

No, my point was that everyone bitches and moans about how something might cost them an extra minute here and there like adding 5 minutes to their trip is going to be the end of the world. But society functioned fine when trips took 20 times as long, so adding a tiny little bit of time isn't going to be the end of the world.

It's like those retards who speed and weave in and out of traffic in the hopes of cutting 30 seconds off of a 20 minute trip. The actual benefit to them is minor and the risk to themselves and everyone else is huge, but they do it anyway because, psychologically, those 30 seconds make a huge difference in making them feel better.

Hell, in the long term, you'll save a lot more time then you'll lose on those once-a-year trips, since you won't have to stop at gas stations.

Why fly when you can drive?

Well, if the whole point is that you want to take a 12 hour trip and you can't handle it taking 12 hours and 1 minute, then you might want to look into a means of transportation that will get you there much faster.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[Blakey Rat]

Ok, then maybe I'm a total 'tard, but I thought the midwest started at the Mississippi River? Isn't Indianapolis in the great lakes? If you live in Indianapolis, do you consider yourself as being in the midwest?

Like I said, maybe I'm all skewed for being born and raised on the west coast, but you're completely challenging my entire notion of "the midwest."

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[peas_n_carrots]

That's why the only force that will drive EV acceptance is another surge in gas prices. The average person lives in a bubble, caring not for the consequences of h(is,er) actions. Only when it hits their pocketbook do they sit up and take notice. Those poo-pooing fast charging are not up on the current state of the art in battery charging. There are extremely fast charging technologies that are safe and available now (60 Ah in a matter of minutes).

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[The Iso]

So you spend most of your time on the road driving...75 miles per hour? Including all stops?

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[SaDan]

I like this idea. This is basically what GM wanted to do with the Volt, except incorporate the genset into the automobile.

If you remove the genset from the chassis, and make it something you can tow when needed, you solve the problem for the .5% of folks who think they can't live without the range for long drives. Detach it and store it in a garage (maybe it doubles as a genset for your house during power outages?), hook it up for long trips.

I suppose if you are going to tow a genset, you might as well add some additional storage capacity (locking trunk kind of thing), so you not only gain range for the longer trips, but you gain luggage space as well.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[jusdisgi]

Tesla doesn't recommend you charge it in 45 minutes (at least they don't recommend it for the Roadster, this has a similar pack so I presume this is the same).

The Roadster can't charge in 45 minutes. And the details of when the Model S will be able to aren't clear, but seem to involve a 480V charger (!) which would be much heavier-duty than the Roadster's unit. But most importantly, your assumption that the pack will be similar is contrary to Tesla's statements. The new pack will have a different chemistry, and though they haven't discussed it in detail yet, the characteristics (cycle life and charge time in particular) sound a lot like a LiFEPO4 or other nano-Li chemistry. In which case 45 minutes to full might actually be doable.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[0100010001010011]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit and Indianapolis. Chicagoâ"Napervilleâ"Joliet is the largest metropolitan statistical area, followed by Detroitâ"Warrenâ"Livonia, Minneapolisâ"St. Paulâ"Bloomington, and Greater St. Louis.[2] Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is the oldest city in the region, having been founded by French missionaries and explorers in 1668.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[jusdisgi]

That's going to be one hell of a heavy gas can.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[jusdisgi]

I think you guys underestimate the size and expense of a generator powerful enough for this.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[jusdisgi]

As most posters here seem to realize, the battery isn't the limiting factor here. The problem is getting enough power to it.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[BoothbyTCD]

This was my thought too. I don't know what kind of death march no bathroom break driving people do, but when I drive long distances I occasionally stop for meals and to stretch my legs. I think the people who are complaining are the same people who make their kids pee in a bottle rather then pull over at a rest stop.

Re:You prob want a rest after 300 miles

[SaDan]

You mean like the one incorporated in the Volt?

Re:New Video of Tesla's...

[TheRaven64]

I, too, enjoy watching AC induction motors going round, and round, and round, and round, and...

Re:How about better range?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving it a usefully long range

Why would you assume they can trade battery life for low end torque? One property of electrical engines is they allow for faster acceleration on the low end. It's not like they can somehow get rid of this acceleration while still having an electrical motor with the same top speed and I don't see how they can get more battery life out of the same either.

Right hand drive is overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Ireland, drive a left-hand drive and it has never caused me any problems. The odd time I can't overtake because I cant see but other than that I actually prefer the left hand drive. i started off in a right hand drive but never really liked it. I never had to get used to the left hand drive and if i go back to a right hand drive now it will take me ages to get used to it.

Re:Right hand drive is overrated

[dafing]

as a New Zealander (drive on the left, Right Hand Drive car) it makes sense for right handed people, you know, the vast majority of people?

Re:How about better range?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about the torque. Those electric motors have full torque when they start moving, unlike the internal combustion types that need to spin up to a certain RPM to maximize torque. The transmission tries to even this out, but with an electric, you just have more acceleration from a stop by the nature of the design. I'm more interested in how fast they can go from 60-100 mph, like when you need to pass someone. In theory it would be similar, but not better.

If I had the money, it would be a no-brainer for me. Since I don't have the money, it's still a no-brainer, but on the side of "no".

Re:How about better range?

[John Hasler]

> Instead of wasting energy making it accelerate unnecessarily quickly, how about giving
> it a usefully long range?

This is electric, not gas. That isn't a tradeoff. Any electric motor capable of acceptable performance at highway speeds will accelerate very well: it's the way electric motors are. If you put in a feeble motor barely able to go 65mph on the level you would only gain a little range, and nobody would buy it. And it could still lay rubber.

Europe

[fenring]

$50.000 ~ 35.000 euros Tesla model S looks like a luxury sedan. The same money would buy you a low end Mercedes or BMW in Europe, but with nowhere near the performance of 0-60mph in 5 seconds. For that kind of performance you would probably have to go with a turbo-charged compact, but the fuel economy is gone and you won't have the same interior space. If the numbers they advertise are true, it's quite a cheap car to buy, all things considered.

Re:Europe

[GooberToo]

+1 Insightful

I must say that's an interesting take on things and I can't find fault with your position. Which of course raises the question, how did you find your way to slashdot? ;)

Re:Europe

[Plutonite]

Can you guys quit the high-fiving and general atmosphere of butt-massage therapy so we can get back to businness and have a decent f*cking flamewar? What the hell are you people doing on slashdot? Were you not told it was mean to ruin the fun for everyone else? Jesus H Christ in a Tesla. We're trrying to have a having automobile piss contest here. WTF?

And happy independence day, doo-doo heads.

Re:Europe

[__aasqbs9791]

Can someone just put this into a car analogy for me? I'm not really sure what this Model S is supposed to do. What is it used for?

Re:Europe

[ptudor]

Wow, you get it. The people that think the sedan model is expensive aren't the market for a 5-series or M-class car from BMW either. And those who call the Aptera expensive at $25k-$30k probably wouldn't have chosen the GTI that I did either. But when I or any other consumer am already willing to spend that amount, and one considers the Free Fuel (at a penny a mile, close enough) and the money you don't have to spend on oil ($10/quart or so for Syntec) and the absence of those damn O2 sensors that fail... I look forward to the day Tesla purchases GM as a proper memorial to the EV1.

Re:Europe

[mobby_6kl]

Except that's not how it's going to work, instead, $50 000 will turn into E55 000 once higher costs and taxes are taken into account, and you'll be looking at something completely different.

Re:Europe

[budgenator]

just don't piss on the batteries or you'll find out what the phrase"great blue balls of fire" really means.

Re:Europe

[Dare nMc]

Free fuel doesn't matter to those spending 50k+ for a car (which it is, at best 1/2 price, not free). My truck gets 20 mpg and over 10 years and 300k miles that I plan to own it, I will pay less the 30k for fuel. Thats 3k per year for heavy driving. people spending that much for new car don't usually keep them more than 2 years. This is not for those making a "economic" choice, this is for those making a "image" choice.

Re:Europe

[Sj0]

The greenest car on the market appears to be the Geo Metro. Very little energy to make, gets fuel economy comparable to a prius.

Nobody wants to drive a Geo Metro because it's not a cool car.

Therefore, the prediction created by your theory, that fuel efficient but uncool cars would be less popular than fuel efficient yet cool cars that are much more expensive, appears correct.

Re:Europe

[bakes]

It's like a car.

Re:Europe

[feepness]

That prompted me to run the numbers. I drive about 11K miles per year commuting and get around 23 mpg (lead foot). 11K miles/23 mpg = 479 gallons. Gas is already $3.20 a gallon again here so let's call it $3 average to account for the "penny a mile". $3/gallon * 479 gallons/year = $1,437/year. I keep cars for ten years so that's $14,370 over the life of the car, and that's if gas doesn't go any higher (yeah, right).

Adding in four oil changes a year at $40/each and that's $160/yr or $1600 lifetime. No smog checks is another $60 every two years or $300. Not to mention ZERO time spent filling up or waiting for oil changes/smogs. So savings of $16,270 takes $49,000 down to $32,730. My last car was purchased in 2003 so I can buy a used 2011 in 2013 (I always buy slightly used anyway) for probably $40K or so max. No time at filling stations or smog checks is worth another $3K to me as well. I'm not going to even mention stuff like no fuel filter, fuel injector cleaning, all that crap. We'll assume some irritating yearly maintenance is required for this as well.

I am purely pragmatic when it comes to car costs and going green, but if this thing turns out to be reliable -- which wouldn't surprise me given they have experience and pure electric is far simpler than internal combustion -- I'll be on this like white on rice.

Re:Europe

[Dare nMc]

my bank says 50k loan for 4 years would be $1300/month ($500/month would just cover interest.) Include insurance at $300 a month. It may not be insignificant at $200 for fuel, but if you start to look for places to save money, I wouldn't say this car is part of a economic savings plan.

Re:Europe

[moon3]

Things are not that rosy. The battery pack costs $10000 and lasts only about 200 charges then things go the failing battery laptop way. This is the single pivotal reason why Detroit and other major manufacturers are not mass-producing these cars.

When the battery problem is resolved then ALL manufacturers will switch to electric.

Re:Europe

[DrXym]

I wouldn't say its exactly cheap but it is a very desirable looking car. I think in its price range that it may well sell to the same crowds as BMW & Mercedes because its very sexy looking.

Personally I think Tesla are couldn't pull off a true "people's car" because they don't have the manufacturing capacity. No country has the infrastructure. And besides it would be a huge financial risk. Maybe someone like Tata should come in as a partner. Modify their Nano with an electric drive train and its entirely possible they could mass produce something which is not only affordable but cheap by comparison to other vehicles.

Re:Europe

[levicivita]

$50.000 ~ 35.000 euros Tesla model S looks like a luxury sedan. The same money would buy you a low end Mercedes or BMW in Europe, but with nowhere near the performance of 0-60mph in 5 seconds. For that kind of performance you would probably have to go with a turbo-charged compact, but the fuel economy is gone and you won't have the same interior space. If the numbers they advertise are true, it's quite a cheap car to buy, all things considered.

Unfortunately for your math, take any car sold in America and convert its price into Euro, and it will seem dirt cheap. The rule of thumb is that the price tends to be the same in both EUR and USD in the respective markets. I actually looked into arbing the spread by buying cars in the US and shipping them to Europe, but found that car manufacturers go out of their way to make the American and European models incompatible. Specifically servicing an American made car in Europe is very hard and expensive.

Re:Europe

[ceoyoyo]

You can't just take the US price and convert it to Euros. Advertised prices in the US on low end BMWs are in the $30,000 - $35,000 range.

Re:Europe

[ceoyoyo]

Zero time spent at filling stations? You still have to charge the thing. It'll take a good workday to fill it at a regular outlet. You might just be able to do it for your daily commute, but if you ever do have to stop at a filling station it's going to be a 45 minute to 8 hour stop, depending on whether they're set up for electric cars.

You also have to count in the cost of electricity. "Penny a mile" isn't a very good estimate.

Electric cars have maintenance issues of their own. Are those batteries going to last the twelve years you're counting on? If they do, will the car have any resale value after twelve years, with those old batteries?

Tesla is starting to get into realistic price ranges, but it seems this car is still going to be a rich person's toy rather than the beginning of the future.

Re:Europe

[jfanning]

American's have a totally unrealistic view of car prices.

In Finland 35,000 EUR will get you a something nice in the range of a 2.0L Ford Mondeo or a little BMW 318, or perhaps a Honda Accord. A medium SUV from Hyundai or Kia is about 45,000 EUR, and even low end luxury cars are over 60,000 EUR.

If the Model S would be in the price range of a Honda Accord here they will sell more than they could ever produce...

Re:Europe

[Thumper_SVX]

What's wrong with an "image" choice?

My choice to buy a BMW 335i is as much driven by image as it is my passion for driving fast family saloons. I could buy an Honda Accord for half the money and still get within a second or two 1/4 mile... but where the hell would the fun be in that? It's boring... it's got numb handling and a respectable but unremarkable V6 engine. It could haul my family around just as well as the 335i, but I am going to choose the 335i or one of its competitors because I like the way it drives... but also because I love the way it looks (with the M sport package, anyway). I also love the fact that (from an image perspective) it's a twin-turbo six-cylinder 300hp monster in stock form, and can be modified with $1500 of electronics to do ~430hp.

YMMV... and this is all IMNSHO :)

Re:Europe

[feepness]

I assume it would be charged overnight at my house. In the six years I've had my current car I've driven it further than 200 miles from my house exactly once. I don't even get to 100 miles in a day really.

For electricity, I am looking at installing solar as I live in Southern California and it's break even in about eight years. Add this in and it's a no-brainer.

As far as maintenance issues, I didn't calculate any major maintenance costs for either this or internal combustion as I specifically stated: "I'm not going to even mention stuff like no fuel filter, fuel injector cleaning, all that crap. We'll assume some irritating yearly maintenance is required for this as well." The Tesla website says every 12 months or 12K miles.

Battery life is definitely something to consider, and if it can't maintain 50% after ten years (I really could care less whether it's 300 miles or 150 personally.) then that cost would have to be figured in. From what I've read though, that shouldn't be an issue. You lose 20-30% in five years and then it begins degrading much slower.

So yeah, overall, $40K - $16.5K = $23.5K is very doable for me and not in the toy realm at all. My last car was $17K used and my wife's car was $12K (bought this year during the automotive crash). The utility of next to no service or fillups and silent operation is worth at least $3K over the life of the car so that puts it at around $20K for me. That is far from the realm of "rich person's toy".

Re:Europe

[jusdisgi]

The battery pack costs $10000 and lasts only about 200 charges...

Source?

Tesla has made lots of statements suggesting the Model S pack will be one of the new nano-Li chemistries which routinely get thousands of charges with minimal degradation. Even the Roadster's fairly ordinary pack gets more than twice your figure.

Re:Europe

[Mindcontrolled]

Personally I think Tesla are couldn't pull off a true "people's car" because they don't have the manufacturing capacity. No country has the infrastructure. And besides it would be a huge financial risk. Maybe someone like Tata should come in as a partner.

Daimler already came in as a partner at a 10% share. They sure are interested and will probably provide a lot of mass manufacturing knowledge in exchange for the electric engineering know-how from Tesla.

Re:Europe

[hazydave]

The Roadster's packs are based on off-the-shelf laptop cells... at least they were. That's 300-500 charges, depending on just where you draw the line (usually it's "dead" when it only holds 80% of the original charge)... quite a bit better than 200 charges, but still, that's an expensive replacement. Also, with standard Li-ion cells, you also have aging.. they don't last terribly long, even with light use... 3-5 years, that's about it. Most folks know this... particularly iPhone users, who are lucky if their Li-poly cells outlast their AT&T contracts.

But there are definitiely many new technologies in the lab now, and many have been Coming Real Soon Now for several years. GM's claiming the cells used in the Volt (CPI/LG Chem 16kWhr Li-Mn) will be good for about 4,500 charges... proof is yet to come, I rekon, but they did a big trial with new tech batteries from several vendors tested. They're also taking the usual NiMh hybrid route and only partially cycling the battery, using only 55% of the range... not practical in a BEV. The first pre-production Volts, with all the right stuff in the all the right places, came off the line a week or two ago, and they're no going out to prove it all works.

With all that said, on the subject of the Model S, this is the last I read on it:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/24/tesla-to-keep-laptop-cells-until-3rd-gen-car-new-roadster-sales/

Basically, they're sticking with the laptop cells, which means, replace the whole battery pack in about three years. Also, the stock Model S is supposed to have only a 42-kWh battery pack, which should deliver a 160-mile range (however they specifically measure it). They plan to offer optional, larger capacity packs as future options/add-ins.

How useful in hot climates?

[RNLockwood]

It's just under 300 miles from Banning, CA, to Phoenix, AZ. Wonder what the mileage would be for that drive leaving Banning around 10 am the first week of September and using the air-conditioner. Probably wouldn't get to Blyth which is about half way. The electric and hybrid car ads and news stories never talk about the added burden of the air-conditioner and its power requirements.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[Tubal-Cain]

With something like this I wonder if it isn't worth dropping the weight of the conventional AC and using the old-fashioned 4/70 AC*.

*4 windows/70 mph

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[rothic]

That probably wouldn't do any wonders for its drag coefficient.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[chinakow]

You do realize that all the established car companies talk about 0-60 times and fuel economy in the same brochures right?

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[socsoc]

If I left from Banning, no matter the time of year, I'd be happy with however far any vehicle can deliver me from there.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[RNLockwood]

You're in transit from Santa Barbara and stopped there for 45 minutes to eat and get charged. Took longer than expected to find an unattended electrical socket.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[socsoc]

Perhaps the socket too longer, but it sure didn't take my lone to find a quick (poor) service restaurant. I remember seeing eight buses full of high school kids pull up once, that town is fast food alley.

Personally, I'd charge up at the casino

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[ceoyoyo]

Better than in cold climates. The winter here kills batteries.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[toddestan]

In the Arizona desert, you'll be fine. There is almost no humidity, so the body's evaporative cooling system is pretty effective, just be sure to bring some extra water. Though the sun beaming through all that glass might present another problem.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[jusdisgi]

Are you on drugs or something? You think the A/C is going to cut the range in half? I mean, sure, A/C takes some juice....but I really don't think it's comparable to the motive force for the whole vehicle. I'm thinking maybe 10% range reduction, tops.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[jusdisgi]

Thank you! It's starting to get really annoying hearing people point out these common little conceits as though they were unique to Tesla.

Re:How useful in hot climates?

[RNLockwood]

Half the milage was not meant to be accurate as I don't know the magnitude. But vehicles are not well insulated, hot air will flow across them transferring heat, the A/C compressor needs to compress the working fluid to be quite bit hotter than the air that cools it, and the front and rear windows let in a lot sunlight. I think that the penalty must be more than 10 percent. If it's only a 10% hit why don't the manufacturers discuss it?

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[DaHat]

There is a bigger issue with regards to the batteries... where do we get all of the lithium for them?

While it's certainly a noble effort to try to reduce/end our dependency on foreign oil, few realize that the major supplies of lithium are outside of the USA... effectively meaning we replace one addiction/dependency for another.

Right-hand drive?

[Tubal-Cain]

And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.

Where it matters? Do some countries have laws dictating that sort of thing? AFAIK, that sort of thing of more de facto than de jure. I, personally, would love to have a right-hand drive car here in the US. Because otherwise when you park on the street the most-used seat/door is exposed to traffic.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[RightwingNutjob]

Its safer to make a left turn when the driver is sitting on the left and gets a better view of oncoming traffic. I imagine that people in countries that drive on the wrong side of the road would take that safety feature very seriously when deciding to buy any car.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[jonbryce]

It Britain you can drive a left hand drive car, but it is probably going to be more expensive to insure it. Insurance companies ask if it is a right hand drive car. I'm not sure what happens if you say it isn't.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[Tony Hoyle]

You can drive it as an import but can't register it in the UK, so it'll have foreign plates. Insurance would be insane on something like a Tesla, given that there are approximately zero garages that know how to fix them and no parts availablility, plus with that 0-60 it's going to be classed as sports.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[asquithea]

Not true. An imported car must be registered with the DVLA, and must meet certain standards. LHD cars are perfectly legal, and relatively common -- especially with sought-after vehicles, such as the early Smarts.

See: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/BuyingAndSellingAVehicle/ImportingAndExportingAVehicle/DG_4022583

Re:Right-hand drive?

[cbhacking]

Cars around most (though not all) of the world are specificlaly designed so that the driver is as close to the middle of the road as possible. This is a safety feature; it makes it easier to control where you are relative to oncoming traffic. After a few years of driving you probably don't even notice anymore (I don't) but new drivers have a real tendency to try and put themselves toward the middle of the lane. On a left-hand drive (in the US) this means they end up taking a bit of the shoulder, or lane going to same direction. Right-hand drive would put them over the center divider.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[MichaelSmith]

And for those in countries where it matters, this article mentions that it should also be available in right-hand drive.

Where it matters? Do some countries have laws dictating that sort of thing? AFAIK, that sort of thing of more de facto than de jure. I, personally, would love to have a right-hand drive car here in the US. Because otherwise when you park on the street the most-used seat/door is exposed to traffic.

Its strictly illegal in Australia to drive a car with the driver on the left. There are a few minor exceptions:

• Imported classic cars. Say you have a Ford Mustang which you imported. You only want to drive it on Sundays and with the car club. You can get a permit for that
• Test cars, usually imported by Ford or GM. Sometimes new models can be seen driving around with the driver on the left
• Street cleaners and garbage trucks. These drivers need good visibility on the left. Many of them have dual control.

In all but the first case they have to display a prominent sign saying LEFT HAND DRIVE.

Its different in Europe. People drive around all the time in the wrong sort of car which (frankly) gives me the creeping horrors. In 1975 my family drove around Europe in a English camper van. Several times my Dad started driving on the left purely by reflex. I would find it hard enough to adapt in a left drive car. But at least then having the controls reversed would give me a continuous reminder of what side of the road I was supposed to be on.

Re:Right-hand drive?

[jusdisgi]

I noticed an odd commonwealth-centric line in TFA:

"Now a new version of the Tesla - the Roadster Sport version has been clocked accelerating from 0-60mph faster than a Ferrari F40 - is being built with a right-hand drive configuration, meaning new prospects for the car to be seen gliding somewhat quietly on roads outside the United States."

Uh...right hand drive gives it new prospects for roads outside the United States? Hey assholes, you fuckers are the ones on the wrong side of the road. Try not to make it sound like the US is the only place on Earth that drives on the right.

Recharge time error

[ookabooka]

Summary says it takes 45 minutes for a quick charge while the article states: "Batteries that last for 289,000 km have been demonstrated, as well as the ability to 'quick charge' batteries to 80% in less than 10 minutes. " Perhaps it's 45 minutes for a full charge?

Re:Recharge time error

[John Hasler]

> Perhaps it's 45 minutes for a full charge?

That's 45 minutes when plugged into an "ordinary" 480V outlet. For the ten minute charge you'll need 480V 3 phase (at least).

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[RightwingNutjob]

True, but lithium from old batteries is more recyclable than the CO2 that comes out of a normal tail pipe. The supply/recycling thing might work even better if instead of relying primarily on recharging, a network of battery swapping stations is built up, where you'd lease the battery, and the manufacturer would necessarily get it back at the end of life for refurbishment. That said, I still think the future is synthetic gasoline that runs in a normal engine. Less of a pain in the rear to implement and no additional infrastructure to build up during the phase where petroleum-based gas and whatever new thing is are both in use.

Re:Memory Effect

[Philip K Dickhead]

Well, I don't know if I can wait til 2011!

$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars? :-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.

Oh, well. The Maserati Quattroporte is available today, and the 5l, V-12 Aston Martin Rapide will be out momentarily. Along with Jaguar's recent XF and 2010 redesign for the XJ, these seem to be the flag-carriers that Tesla seems to be following in the style and design department.

Rapide: Girls NOT included, but driving this car? They will likely show up of their own accord.
http://randomepics.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/aston_martin_rapide_067.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFta44S_JFs

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[0100010001010011]

I don't know. Plants seem to be pretty damn efficient at recycling CO2.

The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes.

[YesIAmAScript]

The article is optimistic in my opinion.

Let's assume they're talking about the same pack as in the Roadster (even though the pack you get for $57.4K is lesser capacity). That means you're putting in 45kWh in 10 minutes. That's a charge rate of more than 270kW. That will require 440V power (3-phase) at 600A! And that's assuming 100% efficiency!

There's going to be a lot of places where you can't get that much power. And even if you can, the amount of waste heat giving off by the charger, and in the pack will be very difficult to manage. Also, the charging cable would be a bit of a hassle to wrestle because it's going to be very thick.

Re:Memory Effect

[Philip K Dickhead]

And what's up with the interior, Tesla?

Ugh. Were the Mitsubishi plants in Normal, IL shutting down, and offering a bargain on Eclipse fittings?

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imported oil is consumed by driving... maybe at an average rate on about one tank full of gasoline per week.

Imported lithium for replacement electric batteries will be consumed at maybe an average rate of one battery pack replacement per 10 years, with probably some recycling ability of the lithium from a used battery pack.

I think we are talking about drastically different scales of foreign import dependence.

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[nurb432]

Since not many will buy them, i don't think it will be a huge problem.

I also assume that you can recycle used lithium?

Re:New Video of Tesla's...

[John Hasler]

That's cool, but film of his broadcast power transmitter in action would be just a bit more exciting (just before it crashed the power plant).

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[jonbryce]

I guess you would fill it up at a gas station, just like you do with your existing car.

I could see buying one

[UttBuggly]

I like the looks, the center "iCar" console screen, and it's unlikely I'll ever drive anywhere further than 300 miles. For any significant distance, I'm on a plane.

The price doesn't seem that bad, but I bet it's closer to $60K by launch. Even then, I will probably take a look at one.

Re:I could see buying one

[Batzerto]

I like the looks, the center "iCar" console screen, and it's unlikely I'll ever drive anywhere further than 300 miles. For any significant distance, I'm on a plane.

The price doesn't seem that bad, but I bet it's closer to $60K by launch. Even then, I will probably take a look at one.

I personally don't like the big video screen being used for controls. In my "analog" car I can change the radio station, adjust the temperature, and turn on the AC with convenient knobs and buttons that I know where to find without even looking and I get good tactile response. My in-law's Lexus has a smaller screen to do this and it was always in the wrong mode and difficult for the driver to quickly change the temperature or radio due to having to change modes. That said, the screen would be nice for watching videos, but please, not to control the car's functions.

Re:I could see buying one

[Colourspace]

BMW iDrive is a nightmare. Seemed like a good idea when I got it as an option.... But very distracting if you want to do anything when you are actually moving. Fortnuantely, the roads are so bad here in the UK, it's not a problem.

Re:I could see buying one

[dsyu]

I personally don't like the big video screen being used for controls. In my "analog" car I can change the radio station, adjust the temperature, and turn on the AC with convenient knobs and buttons that I know where to find without even looking and I get good tactile response. My in-law's Lexus has a smaller screen to do this and it was always in the wrong mode and difficult for the driver to quickly change the temperature or radio due to having to change modes.

That said, the screen would be nice for watching videos, but please, not to control the car's functions.

I completely agree. The touch-screen panel reminds me of the BMW iDrive system -- it's technically neat, but flawed in practice. I'd rather not be touching buttons on a touch screen or dialing around to navigate menus while driving for my own (and others') safety.

Re:7 People? NOT!

[Kufat]

I believe the two child seats fold out into the trunk area...the rear-facing kids' bench used to be common on station wagons, but it is quite unusual for a large sedan. Interior pictures would be nice.

Re:Memory Effect

[russotto]

$49K USD? Is that in 2009 dollars, or 2011 dollars? :-) If there is a massive period of dollar hyper-inflation in the next year, I think Tesla can stand to make a lot of money on promises no one can afford to keep.

Fictional dollars. The price of the roadster went up significantly between pre-order and release; no reason the S will be any different. And as with the Roadster, I think we'll see the specs change for the worse as well. (45-minute charge? As has been pointed out, the math doesn't add up, and the chemistry doesn't work either)

Top Gear found...

[Skuld-Chan]

That the car only went about 50 miles or so with an 18 hour charge time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG3bMKR5eXk

Re:Top Gear found...

[wildsurf]

Top Gear is full of it. I own a Tesla Roadster and regularly get 180-200 mile range with ordinary driving, and the car recharges empty to full in 3.5 hours on the fast charger.

Re:Top Gear found...

[__aasqbs9791]

That was a great video, thanks for the link. But is it the same car? They mentioned a much higher price, so I'm wondering if it was a different model. Perhaps some of the kinks they mentioned were worked out (I'd hope, some of those are pretty bad)? In it they also mention something about battery based cars going bye-bye, but the clip ends before they say why. Any idea what they were talking about?

Re:Top Gear found...

[Spatial]

Hello? Top Gear is for entertainment not facts. They lied for laughs.

Re:Top Gear found...

[stanchion7]

I don't know what you're talking about. I base my whole life around what Top Gear teaches me. :-)

Re:Top Gear found...

[Skuld-Chan]

Article never says they lied - just says Tesla says the battery never went below 20% - so its just a he said/she said situation.

Re:Top Gear found...

[jusdisgi]

Uh, did you watch the program(me)? Because they absolutely acted like the thing ran out of juice on the track. They showed people pushing it off the track to a garage for Christ's sake.

Re:Memory Effect

[Zantetsuken]

You seem to be missing the entire point - the Rapide is gas, Tesla's are all electric and still get great performance/torque/etc

Wikipedia: The Roadster's 0-60 mph (0-97 km/h) acceleration time is 3.9 seconds for the Standard Model and 3.7 seconds for the 2009 Sport Model.
Aston Martin Rapdide: 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph): 4.7 seconds
Model S: 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds
Nissan Sentra (2007+): 6.4 seconds. (for comparison)

So the Tesla Roadster actually has better acceleration than the Rapide, and considering Wikipedia quotes the Rapide at $240k USD compared to the $110~120k USD for the 2009 Roadster, I'd say the roadster wins on bang for buck there. The Model S in tfa is set to cost ~$49k USD and is still one helluva luxury car. And more than just the initial price, the Model S (supposedly according to Tesla marketing anyway) will cost only $4 dollars to fully recharge from empty.

I could probably rant all day, but the point is, the offerings from Tesla Motors puts an electric car with performance as high as the gas equivalent in the price range of mere mortals and doesn't require you to be an Apple stock millionaire or sell your ocean front property just to buy the damned car...

Battery swap stations

[acheron12]

The easy solution is to replace gas stations with battery swap stations.

You trade in your current battery for a full battery and maybe get some credit for the 10% energy you had left. They then add your battery to the ranks of charging batteries waiting for the next customer.

Re:Battery swap stations

[__aasqbs9791]

Any idea if this car is designed for the battery to be replaced that easily?

Re:Battery swap stations

[m3000]

Which is essentially what Better Place has planned.

Re:Battery swap stations

[MachDelta]

According to Wikipedia, the batteries can be swapped out in "less than 5 minutes". Personally I find that a little hard to believe, as even changing a regular car battery can take more than five minutes, depending on its location... but hey, as long as swaps are under an hour its enough to impress me.

Re:Battery swap stations

[__aasqbs9791]

I also wonder how much they weigh, are they set up in a single unit, or multiple smaller units? Also, for the swap stations to work we'd need some kind of standards, the fewer the better I'd think. If everyone had their own incompatible system it'd be a nightmare, obviously. Any idea if this is the case?

Re:Battery swap stations

[jusdisgi]

I understand the Model S has a single "pan" under the vehicle for the whole battery. Assuming the right equipment (special dolly, air-tools, fast service staff) 5 minutes is just barely believable. No word on standards yet...but since Tesla is kind of the only game in town right now it's hard to fault them for that.

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[Tony Hoyle]

I'd be surprised if they even let electric cars drive into a gas station, let alone let them fill up... the risk of sparks leading to fire/explosion is way too great. These will have to be purpose built electric stations.

At a 45 minute fill up time they'll have to be *big* to accomodate all the waiting cars, too.. and provide refereshments/food.

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[Zantetsuken]

Actually its set to have swappable batteries also...

Re:Taxes

[mark_hill97]

Troll, that's a loan. Loans typically have to get paid back with interest.
Also, according to wolfram alpha, there are approximately 115.2M people employed in the United States. The loan was for $465M. This averages out to $4.04 per taxpayer. Not a whole lot to take off now is it?

Lord, won't you by me a Tesla Model S

[NoBozo99]

My friends are drivin Prius
I'm feelin depressed
Worked hard all my lifetime, I need to impress
So, Lord won't you by me a Tesla Model S

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[Cyberax]

STOP THAT NONSENSE! Lithium is CHEAP. You can extract it from the saltwater for $50-70 per kg. if all else fails, but right now it's just easier to buy it for $20 per kg. in Bolivia.

Lithium so far is SO CHEAP that it makes no sense to make geological surveys specially for it.

Also, it's almost perfectly recyclable.

Tesla Roadster test drive report

[thrillseeker]

A (wealthy) friend had his delivered recently. Here's my twisty road test report.

Executive Summary: Oh. My. God.

Systems Lacking: 4-point harnesses, sufficient handholds for passenger, automated system to maintain directional control during GLOC on launch, earplugs to block whimpering sounds from passenger seat

Re:Tesla Roadster test drive report

[macshit]

A (wealthy) friend had his delivered recently. Here's my twisty road test report.

Executive Summary: Oh. My. God.

Systems Lacking: 4-point harnesses, sufficient handholds for passenger, automated system to maintain directional control during GLOC on launch, earplugs to block whimpering sounds from passenger seat

Soooo.... what you're saying is that your (wealthy) friend is an extremely bad driver...?

(hope he doesn't read slashdot!)

Re:Memory Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

45-minute charge? As has been pointed out, the math doesn't add up, and the chemistry doesn't work either

The math does work out, provided you can supply the required current. However, it probably requires the 480v-3phase to do so. They say it costs $4 to fully charge, so I'll go with the low cost of $0.10/kwh, giving 40kwh total required. A 480v-3phase connector can supply >30amps/phase, which does work out to about 45 min for a full charge.

Also, the lithium chemistry does support charging that quickly.

I'm no electrical engineer but I wonder

[erroneus]

I know there has been some research into using capacitors instead of batteries because they charge nearly instantly and then using some complex circuitry to discharge slowly as a battery would. I wonder if that research was a failure or if it is still ongoing?

Another thought is that what if a large capacitor were used to charge the batteries? Would it then be possible to quick charge the capacitor and then let the capacitor charge the battery? I wonder how efficient it all might be.

Re:I'm no electrical engineer but I wonder

[Sj0]

Capacitors wouldn't work.

The problem is energy density. A certain weight of capacitors would hold only a small fraction of the energy the same weight of batteries could hold.

Gelcaps/ultracaps/goldcaps or whatever trade name you use are better, but nowhere near what a battery can do.

Some independent projects have used ultracaps as a buffer between the charger and drive and the battery pack, but never as a main supply because the capacity is so low and the cost so high. Ignoring weight, replacing batteries in a project with ultracaps would turn the car into a million dollar investment.

Re:Recycling plants

[Ironsides]

What crops do I plant that take in CO2 and output gasoline?

see here

Another option

[zogger]

The Better Place project They are developing the entire EV stack, the car, the charging stations, battery pack swapout, etc. Nissan/Renault are building the cars. They are talking that in some circumstances, the upfront costs will be less, as they are going to follow something like a cellphone plan,get the ride for cheaper up front, then pay them for the juice to run it. Private charging stations for at home, then at various places out on the road for fast charging or battery swapout, so you can do trips as well. It is a *very* ambitious project, but several nations and states and some cities inside the US have signed into the deal so far.

  With that said, same as every other electric gadget out there, my bet would be some Chinese manufacturers will be the first to get really cheap/affordable electric cars on the mass market. Chery and BYD seem to be the ones to watch.

It doesn't take long for markets to change, or for the big names to fall. I remember when seeing a Japanese car was not happening at all, to then it got to ultra rare and guys said they would never catch on to now they have superior marques and cred and have a huge international market. So who knows, the transportation sector is going through more changes than ever today. And we ARE going to be getting quite a bit more choice than what we had previously, prices, drivetrains, fuel source, all of it.

Here's an interesting new electric truck that is soon to hit the market the IDEA. A city delivery truck.

Tell ya the one I would want, a mild hybrid, diesel electric, extended cab, 4wd work truck. For short range around the farm, electric only, need to go further, the diesel kicks the generator on. Stationary it would be a whole house electric backup system/job site generator. Haven't seen any proposed yet, but if someone builds one, I bet they would sell, there's a lot of guys out there who want/need trucks, just would be nicer if they had better mileage and that diesel genny option built in would be *sweet*. With some plugin battery capacity, even if it is just say 10 miles, pure gravy. Being a truck, they could even make that an option, say 10 came standard, then you could pay more for each additional battery pack to give ten more miles on the charge up to some reasonable limit, say 50 miles maybe (you wouldn't want to lose all your cargo capacity in other words, but have options to suit each guy's needs).

The other idea I really like is a pure electric ride, then an attachable generator trailer for long trips. Best of both worlds that way, the electric modular hybrid. You wouldn't even need to buy the generator trailer unless you wanted to, the dealers (or whomever...) could have them for rent for the times you need to travel long distance, and that could be for both cars and trucks.

Re:More affordable alternatives

[socsoc]

If the Volt ever makes it to market with the bankruptcy. They claim to still have it lined up, but we'll see...

Parent post is precisely correct

[cpu_fusion]

I live in the midwest. I have a lot of family over the range of this vehicle. However, for day to day operation, I wouldn't need more than 100 miles in range. A vehicle like this would be my car for driving to work and driving home.

For driving long distances, I'd just use a gas-based vehicle. I'd keep my old car around for that. Probably would need it half a dozen times during the year at most.

There will be some folks who will find the range of this car to be limiting. But how many compared to those who won't?

I think the real issue here is the calendar life of the battery. How long until I have to replace the batteries? That's what makes it easier for me to compare, apples to apples, the cost of the car vs. using gas.

Based on the info I read here: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=39 .... I'm not too impressed with the thought of 50,000 life on the batteries.
Of course, hopefully whatever the battery replacement would be in 5 years of advancing battery technology would make the replacement battery a smart replacement for other reasons ...

Re:Parent post is precisely correct

[Sj0]

The idea of compromising with a $50,000 car is ridiculous to me. The idea of maintaining and insuring a second vehicle because your $50,000 car can't pull off what a car needs to do is insane.

I just bought a fully loaded car for about half of that price. It's an excellent vehicle, and it works for any distance I need -- I drove 21 hours half way across the country to pick up my brother a couple weeks ago. With this car, you're paying twice as much for much less car. That's insane from where I'm standing.

Re:7 People? NOT!

[markdavis]

OK, that would make sense... I think. Hard to picture, though.

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[knappe duivel]

I don't know. Plants seem to be pretty damn efficient at recycling CO2.

So stop eating them, you insensitive clod

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[Rei]

Lithium scarcity is one of those myths that just won't die. It's based on a few misguided notions: 1) that lithium makes up most of a lithium-ion battery (it doesn't); 2) it's its most expensive element in a lithium-ion battery (it isn't); and 3) a gross misunderstanding of how reserve figures work.

In reference to the latter case, everyone needs to get in their heads that reserve figures are based on A) what's been found, at B) the current price, and C) current technology. In reference to lithium, A) people haven't really been looking for it because it's so cheap; B) it's dirt cheap; and C) the tech to produce it cheaper hasn't really been needed so it hasn't been worked on.

Even with current tech, a figure of li-ion EVs could easily be sustained through seawater extraction indefinitely. Isn't that the beginning and end of the issue right there?

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[MachDelta]

Um, they let the Toyota Prius into gas stations, whats wrong with a fully electric car?
People are way too scared of gasoline. But its probably for the better.

Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[Colin Smith]

A relative of mine puts 100,0000 miles on a car in a year. That's a lot of fuel.

Re:Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[JorDan Clock]

A relative of mine puts 100,0000 miles on a car in a year. That's a lot of fuel.

I hope they don't lease.

Re:Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[ScentCone]

A relative of mine puts 100,0000 miles on a car in a year. That's a lot of fuel.

And it's still going to be a lot of fuel, burned somewhere else to make this car's electricity. We need nukes, since the wind and solar things will never put a dent in a massive shift to cars like this.

Re:Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[Saysys]

That's also about the usable life of a vehicle and, in comparison to the price of the gas, a savings of 14k a year. even if they are super-high-quality and hit the 200k mark the car still costs 21k relative to a 25mi per gallon car.. so being as how you can get a car with better millage with the same capacity for a taxicab at about 14k paying 50% more doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

add to that that your relative, if he works only 250 days a year (standard 50 work weeks a year with 2 weeks off) then he drives an average of 400mi a day.. which is a full 1/3rd more than the car has capacity.

If it was just a little better, would run 400mi a day city driving, say the batteries cost only 4k to replace every 100k miles and the rest of the hardware kept going 500k then the gas savings would pay for the full price of the car and revolutionize not just the taxy-cab biz but how we all drive and utilize our vehicles.

If people that the gimped "only 400mi a charge" car I had would pay for itself completely over the course of its lifetime they would all get this as a commuter car, without question... but that day is another two or three generations off.

Re:Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[SwabTheDeck]

And it's still going to be a lot of fuel, burned somewhere else to make this car's electricity. We need nukes, since the wind and solar things will never put a dent in a massive shift to cars like this.

Logistically, solar and wind are perfect for an application like an electric car since the energy can be stored in the car's batteries. The biggest drawback to solar and wind is that they're not "always on", but the car can be charged during times where solar and wind are at peak output and hold that energy for later use. I'm not ragging on nuclear (I think it's great and we should be trading coal for nuclear, in the very short term), but I think you're being a little naive by thinking that wind and solar can't generate electricity at utility scale. They're already doing it in many places. You don't want to be the guy who says something will "never" happen, only to be proved wrong.

Re:Insane price... For taxis a no brainer.

[jusdisgi]

Please spare us the "long tailpipe" crap. The grid generation to run a Tesla Roadster causes about 1/10 the pollution per-mile of an ICE car.

Re:How about better range?

[Rei]

The top speed is the issue, not the acceleration. A high top speed requires a certain engine power and electric motors of that caliber provide quick acceleration.

That's not how it works. Your typical electric vehicle has no transmission. This means you have to strike a balance between torque and max RPM. Max RPM is limited by wear on the motor increasing significantly at very high RPMs. There's a simple solution to this tradeoff: a multi-gear transmission.

The range of electric vehicles pretty much limits them to city and commute driving

You commute hundreds of miles?

Re:How about better range?

[Rei]

That's not how it works at all. It works that way with PbA due to Peukert's Law, but not with li-ion. Physics itself doesn't care how fast you accelerate; what matters is the efficiency of your powertrain under those conditions. And electric motors have no particularly inefficient conditions except at very low RPM.

They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Ferretman]

Great Odin! They want $50K+ for that thing? It's a nice car but not that nice...sorry.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Wizard Drongo]

It's a luxury sedan. Try looking up the price for a new mercedes or 5 -series BMW. Then come back and realise this has better performance than either and STILL has that great feature of costing sod-all practically to run since you get all kinds of nifty tax breaks and it just sucks up your electricity. You could even fuel it from the sun (if you like a house with solar panels and live in Califonia I suppose)...

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Sj0]

sod-all except for the second car you need to own because this one won't get you to the next town, right?

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Wizard Drongo]

300 km is pretty good for one charge. Admittedly if you're needing to go further than that you'd need to take a 45minute pitstop, although 5 minute mega-charging will be here "soon". That said, a 45 minute break every 300km is a good idea anyway, so meh.
As for your facetious argument about the "next town", even in the Highlands here in Scotland the next town is never more than 5-60 miles away.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[ceoyoyo]

Uh, bad example. I think my school division growing up was about as big as all of Scotland.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Wizard Drongo]

My advice would be to stop building houses so far apart. Centralisation of resources is much more efficient for economic & environmental purposes. Or stop moaning when it takes you longer to get places once oil runs out/gets unfeasibly expensive (ie when we stop burning it and start using it for the manufacture of plastic etc.)

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[ceoyoyo]

I hate to tell you, but we also produce a goodly chunk of the world's food and lumber.

The reason the houses are so far apart is because there's rather a lot of land in between that either grows trees or food.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[ambrosen]

I've got a feeling that they won't be putting it on the market in the school district you grew up in, in that case.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[ceoyoyo]

I hope not. The winter would do bad things to the batteries.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[sshir]

Here's the news for you.

The houses are so far apart because of Thomas Jefferson's 1785 "Land Ordinance Act".

That's because subdividing land using square, mile by mile plots was easier...

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Sj0]

Canada has half the population of the UK and the land mass of Europe, so you're just being ignorant -- Congratulations, not the entire world is the UK.

Travelling to the next town for me means spending 4 hours looking at trees passing by. The next city is another 2 hours.

Sure, you want everyone to live in cozy little cities, but guess what? My city is situated next to natural resources. Either we burn megatonnes of fossil fuels transporting every load of trees across a thousand kilometers of praerie so the paper mill can be in a city, or we put the town way up north where the trees are.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[Sj0]

It's pretty hard to take the European style of design seriously when Europe doesn't have any natural resources left. From an environmental standpoint, urban sprawl limits population density.

There are three types of people in the world: Gatherers, who mine or cut down, or plow; Builders, who make the mined or cut down or plowed resources into something useful; And Consumers, who take what the gatherers and builders produce and consume it, contributing nothing.

The human race requires builders and gatherers to survive, but consumers simply increase the resources the other two groups require to keep the standard of living for everyone at an acceptable level.

Cities are basically filled with consumers. There are no factories. There are no mines. there are no farms. You've got stores, and banks, and exchanges, and advertising agencies.

The solution to our environmental troubles, therefore, isn't building cities closer together, quite the opposite. The solution is genocide for consumers.

So before you get too smug, you should ask yourself: What exactly do you contribute to the human race? How is your existence justified? Why aren't you just a drain on the planet's resources?

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[ceoyoyo]

Thomas Jefferson really got around, but I think the King would have taken exception to him trying to pass acts that applied in British North America. In fact, I think there was an attempt at something along those lines a while later, around 1812. Some white houses got burned and it was just messy.

Seriously, I don't know about the US, but the average farm was quite a bit smaller back when it was usually run by a single family using hand tools. With modern GPS-guided combines etc., farms and ranches are usually much larger. Land here is usually divided into quarter sections, with a section being a mile to a side. In general you can't support yourself growing grain or ranching on a single quarter section.

So you're certainly wrong about where I was talking about, and I think you're probably wrong about the US as well.

Re:They Call THAT Affordable?!?

[sshir]

Oh shit, you were talking about Scotland... My bad. Sorry.

But US thing is true (I even bothered to recheck with Wikipedia). And indeed it was subdivided into quarters and quarter-quarters.

Nice car.

[sproketboy]

Gave me a boner.

looks promising

[toxygen01]

finally a car which will make me apply for driving license

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[MichaelSmith]

Along most typical highways there are electricity transmission lines. You could build a standard box which attaches to the transmission line. It contains a data interface which can be used for billing. It would be a bit like a USB interface where the consumer has to negotiate with a server to get the full power supply switched on.

If EVs become common you could attach one of these to a power pylon every kilometre or so. Anybody who needs to stop and charge could do so.

Re:How about better range?

[jon3k]

The average daily commute distance is about 24 minutes over a distance of 16 miles in the United States (probably much higher than other countries, urban sprawl and all). The Model S has a range of 300 miles, which is very good. Assuming that it's even possible to trade range for power, I think they've struck an excellent balance between distance and power.

Re:Memory Effect

[anagama]

I wonder how much extra it will cost to have the blue LEDs stripped off the outside, the blue lights removed from the inside and replaced with dull red (because I like to be able to see at night), and the 17" touchscreen ripped out and replaced with knobs and dials you can operate by feel rather than sight (because looking at the road is good)?

Re:Will anybody really save money with this car?

[Thantik]

But your Toyota Corolla can't do 0-60 in 5 seconds can it....

Re:How about better range?

[Rei]

You commute two hours each way to and from work?

If so, you're in the top, what, 3% or so of commuters?

The rear view mirror

[westlake]

They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in.

Henry Ford's production cars were mass market from Day 1. That distinguished them from almost everything else on the road.

Oldsmobile had pioneered the idea - but the Olds was an toy-like gas buggy:

Now when they go for a spin, you know,
She tries to learn the auto, so
He lets her steer, while he gets her ear
And whispers soft and low...
  In My Merry Oldsmobile

Ford didn't wait for economies of scale to kick in. His engineers designed economies of scale into the car - into the production line.

Ford was relentless in his drive to eliminate skilled craft work. His four cylinder engine was cast as a single block - a first, I believe.

The Ford Model A and Model T were tough and versatile - mass market sales meant that Ford had real money to spend on R&D.

But Ford did enter the business as a young man. He was very slow in adopting later innovations like the electric starter.

The emphasis on color, style and comfort that marked the entry of the Chevy.

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[Shivani1141]

Three Phase 440v is already Installed in most Gas/Service stations thanks to the rooftop HVAC requiring three-phase and the base install for three-phase being 3phase 600v.

Bury a line over to a new "Pump", add a billing interface and cosmetic and functional concerns, such as a price/unit window akin to a classic pump, cable and cable management (let's face it, aside from being probably 3x as heavy, a cable capable of handling the power isnt going to be much thicker than a 1 1/4" hose, which is what we use for gas pumps.) Add a Heatsink, Probably possible to use the gasoline and diesel storage tanks as a heatsink, and You're done. Compared to the enviromental hurdles jumped in order to put in a common gas pump, or maintain them, And it'd be a no-brainer for any one Gas station franchise trying to get a leg-up over its competitors. Assuming the cars are on the road and the companies can agree on a common charging interface.

Re:More affordable alternatives

[Overzeetop]

I don't know, the aptera seats 2 (3 if one is an infant), goes 120miles on a charge and runs 30k for the electric model. The model S seats 5 (7 if you put two dead 10 year olds in the trunk), has a 300 mile range, and runs $60k. If you had to take 4 people on trips regularly, the model S is a better deal. It's also more likely to be accepted at you local country club, where people tend to have 30k+ to drop on a second car.

The Volt is dead on arrival, imho, as a real "alternative" vehicle. 40 miles on a charge? You'd think they could do better than Elon's hobby business.

No, Mafia car.

[hey!]

No engine under the hood means you can fit two in there.

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[YesIAmAScript]

A/C does not require 3-phase, how ridiculous. There are plenty of gas stations in my area (California!) that have a smaller building than my house, they don't need 3-phase to cool that.

The total wire area should be over 1 1/4" for 600A, but either way, the hoses we use for gas are much much lighter than a the cables are.

Using gas or Diesel tanks for a heat sink is ridiculous. It's supposed to be safe, but if anything goes wrong, your liability would be enormous.

Either way, that's not going to fix the heat problem in the battery pack itself. The pack isn't going to heat up any less when being charged in 10 minutes than it would being discharged in 10 minutes, and on the Tesla roadster it reduces performance after a few minutes of max effort to reduce the heat, and that's only a discharge rate which would empty it in a bit over 20 minutes!

Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

notice the 45 minute quick charge.

I don't think it's possible that you could get 300 miles on a 45 minute charge off of a regular household power line.

my estimate:

to push a honda accord shaped object at 55 mph through the air takes over 30KW of energy. that would take 5.4 hours. to to recharge that would take 220 KW of power assuming no conversion loss.

if you used a 220 volt line that would be 1000 amps for 45 minutes. There's no way they would use a 480 volt line since those are catastrophically unsafe for consumers.

I don't have a 1000 amp service at my house!

So I don't think the 45 minute quick charge can be used int he same sentence as the 300 miles. But if its some lesser milage then the whole 45 minute statment seems weirdly arbitrary. Why not say it has a 5 minute quick charge?

Since the tesla folks are not stupid and have delivered in the past, I'm perplexed what is going on. Are there going to be special kilo amp charging stations. or did I bork my own math?

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[PrescriptionWarning]

They mentioned in the article (or another linked one) that batters that in the proof of concept stage can do a 10 minute quick charge to 80%. Though obviously its not the batteries used yet by Tesla.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

Another interesting point: My current vehicle can travel almost double that distance on a tank of gasoline, and takes seconds to refill. This is important because it's almost 500 miles to the next city from where I live -- I can travel to the next city with one tank of gas, but I'd need to refill the battery 3 times to comfortably make it by electric car, since I'm not going to let my batteries run to 0%.

Will the 8 hour drive to the next town become a multiple day journey? Will I need to start planning to visit hotels where now I can just ignore the towns? Will we see a re-emergence of small refueling towns, as we saw in the age of coal-based rail, thanks to the significantly reduced range of our vehicles?

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[madcat2c]

Perhaps the "charge" unit at the house will be some sort of capacitor that can quickly discharge its stored power (from the whole day) into the car at your 1000 amp calculation.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[TrekkieGod]

Another interesting point: My current vehicle can travel almost double that distance on a tank of gasoline, and takes seconds to refill. This is important because it's almost 500 miles to the next city from where I live -- I can travel to the next city with one tank of gas, but I'd need to refill the battery 3 times to comfortably make it by electric car, since I'm not going to let my batteries run to 0%.

Will the 8 hour drive to the next town become a multiple day journey? Will I need to start planning to visit hotels where now I can just ignore the towns? Will we see a re-emergence of small refueling towns, as we saw in the age of coal-based rail, thanks to the significantly reduced range of our vehicles?

Or, much more logically, will we see people using their electric cars for the daily everyday travel and simply use other options for long-range travel? I don't get the emphasis people are placing on these over 200 miles trips. How often do you drive that much? If the answer is 2 or 3 times a year, then the electric car should suit you just fine the vast majority of the time. If the answer is, "very often" then the electric car isn't for you, but it still is perfect for 99.5% of the driving population. It's not like gas cars are going to disappear overnight because kickass electric cars are finally here.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

That's a good thought. though it adds another layer to the efficiency problem, it makes up for it by off-peak loads. all those hydro electric damns and nuc power plants can smooth out their loads.

Even better if every onehad one, you even power your house off it when your car did not need it, and pay night rates for daytime electricity.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Toonol]

That's not how people weigh choices. They will wonder "Will I ever need to travel more than 200 miles? Yes? Ok, that rules out the Tesla."

That would basically be my thought process. Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[TrekkieGod]

That's not how people weigh choices. They will wonder "Will I ever need to travel more than 200 miles? Yes? Ok, that rules out the Tesla." That would basically be my thought process. Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.

It's your money, and you can use whatever thought process you want as to how to spend it, but that doesn't make it logical. If you only need to make a few over 200 mile trips a year, the money you'll save on gas will pay for the car rental. So the only thing that makes sense to ask is, "is this a better car for the majority of my driving needs and is there an alternative I can easily take for those exceptions where this car just isn't suitable?"

For me, the answer is yes on both counts. The only thing preventing me from buying the car is that I'm not in the market for a new car, much less a $50,000 one. The range isn't an issue at all.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

Bang on. Why would anyone buy a $50,000 car then take the bus?

I could see a city vehicle being created that'd cost a couple grand and would have more in common with a bicycle than a car. If I could drive around the city virtually for free I'd consider taking the bus. If I'm paying as much for a car as a small house, it'd better do what I need it to do.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[SlashWombat]

A 1000 Amp 220 volt output at your house would be neat, plenty of capacity to run that new microwave oven. (Or gigawatt fusion facility if you like.) While this does seem a bit out of the range for the average household, it would seem ideal for "Service Stations". (Although, to wait 45 minutes, I hope they have good coffee!) Even extending to 10 hours of charge means 22 kW per hour, or 100 amps given 220 volts, exceeding the supply capacity to most houses anyway.

Warning, thick cables carrying 1000's of amps tend to jump about in the earths magnetic field, so stand back as the power is applied, or removed. (Or just ramp the current up/down slowly ...)

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[FireFury03]

22 kW per hour

Umm... KW per hour makes no sense - watts are joules per second, "22,000 joules per second per hour" is a bit meaningless in this context.

Warning, thick cables carrying 1000's of amps tend to jump about in the earths magnetic field, so stand back as the power is applied, or removed. (Or just ramp the current up/down slowly ...)

I imagine that won't be much of a problem compared to the problems associated with turning off a DC current of thousands of amps (back-EMF is a bitch at those sorts of currents - I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when the power is cut).

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Frnknstn]

Electricity is not my thing, but can you please go explain one step to me: how do you get '220KW' from 30KW and 5.4 hours?

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[hattig]

I think that Tesla would be far better off selling this in Europe than the USA first, simply due to the range limitation not being a massive issue here.

For example, you're meant to stop every two hours for a break, definitely every three hours. That's about 150 - 220 miles driving distance. A quick ten minute recharge is therefore quite viable, as long as petrol stations could create enough recharging bays (effectively a large amount of the service station car park would have powered bays, in the long run, you drop in a few coins and get charged for the next 200 miles). In the UK service stations are every 20 to 50 miles, and most cities are well within 300 miles of each other.

I'd also like to see how they safely fit SEVEN people in that car.

Also a small house in the UK is £150k, and this car is around £40k, so that's quite a difference compared to your analogy.

On the other hand the cost savings from operating an electric car would have to be vast to make up for a car that costs double an equivalent petrol car, and has the downside of no existing recharging infrastructure (is there even a standard recharge socket design yet?).

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[ceoyoyo]

If you try to charge batteries too fast they tend to explode. So the 45 minute quick charge figure means you can charge the battery to 90% capacity or something, if you have the power outlet to do it. You probably don't - that would require some sort of service station.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[bogjobber]

I know the 99.5% was just pulled out of your ass, but I would like to emphasize how terribly wrong that number is. 20% of the US live in rural areas. For them, a trip to "the city" happens maybe once a month more or less. Assuming the 200 mile range, that would be be maybe 80 miles there and back plus more for running around town. Also take into consideration that most small towns don't even have a car rental place, so the feasibility of owning this in a rural town is pretty small.

Then you think of people that regularly travel that kind of distance for business, trips to see family, friends, etc. and you are probably talking about 30-40% of the population that simply won't accept a 200 mile limit under any circumstances. If you add in the people who *rationally* would be in the market for electric, but who won't buy it simply because of the inconvenience of renting a car when they have to go further than 200 miles (which I believe would be a *much* larger percentage of the population than you expect), I'd say that the majority of the population would not buy an electric car with that small of a range.

I know that Tesla hasn't really targeted the common consumer yet, but this is a very real problem that becomes even more important as they move down the chain into economy cars.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Xabraxas]

What kind of car do you have that can travel 500 miles on a single tank? That's not very common but 300 miles per tank is common. The charge time is probably the biggest obstacle but 300 miles on a single charge isn't bad at all and is comparable to the range of most vehicles on the road today.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[bogjobber]

You and a lot of slashdot, maybe. But rule #1 about marketing is that most people don't behave rationally, particularly with something like a car. Just look at SUV's. Most people that buy (bought?) them are actually experiencing a downgrade in functionality and an increase in price, but they do it anyway. People often buy cars that perform poorly or are functionally crippled for what they need just because of some strange perception of what the car *represents*.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Anynomous Coward]

Multiply 30KW by 5.4h, divide by 162 Vh and multiply by 220V. That's how. Now we only need to know where the 162 Vh comes from...

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[FussionMan]

Why not just rent a car for the occasion, should be much cheaper than buying a second car.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[toddestan]

Unless there is some huge benefit to driving a Tesla, it would simply not even be worth considering; if I bought one, I would then have to turn around and buy a second 'real' car.

Most families in the US have more than one car anyway. And for most of these families, only one of these vehicles ever goes on long trips, and the rest are just driven around town and to and from work. Of course, this kind of makes the Model S kind of odd - as a large luxury sedan it looks like it is being positioned as the "family car" that you would take on trips, except that it is not well suited for that role. Telsa might have more luck trying to build the commuter-type small car instead, where a 150 mile range would be plenty sufficient.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

Somehow my typing got garbled so I left out one phrase that confused you.
the point is if you are going to replace 5.4 hours worth of energy in 45 minutes you need to have 5.4/0.75 times more power. since the minimum power required for the 5.4 hours is 30KW, you need 220KW to recharge it in 45 minutes. the 5.4 hours is just the time it takes to travel to cruising range at 55mph. That is the battery has a capacity of 30KW x 5.4 hours. If there inefficiencies in the recharging itself then you need even more power.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[brasselv]

Which is precisely why Tesla is doing a good job in making these toys cool.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[peas_n_carrots]

Are you basing your energy calculations on the amount of gasoline used to drive a certain distance/speed? Gasoline, while very dense in energy, is used very inefficiently by small ICE engines (e.g. cars). It's on the order of 20% efficiency (give or take 5%, depending on how old the car is and how well it's maintained). Assuming that's your assumptions, your calculations are off by a factor of 5.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

no. the amount of energy it takes to maintain a honda accord sized car at 55mph is about 30KW. (one can argue over streamlines, tire and gear train losses, but it's going to be around 30KW no matter what the energy source)

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[jusdisgi]

I know the 99.5% was just pulled out of your ass, but I would like to...

...pull numbers out of your own ass?

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[jusdisgi]

I've seen some of the electric drag-racing nuts have put together "dump chargers" like this: generally just a huge stack of lead-acid batteries. Thing is, your home isn't likely where you want that capability; usually when you get home you'll be there a while. Sure, maybe a lunch break here and there, or whatever...but what you really want dump-charging for is a "gas station" kind of model. And unfortunately I'm not sure it's meant to be; there's a problem with demand. Basically, if 90%+ of drivers don't need more than the single-charge range, that leaves less than 10% of people who need to quick-charge at your station. Which might not be a big enough market to support the density of stations we'd need to feel comfortable.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[jusdisgi]

no. the amount of energy it takes to maintain a honda accord sized car at 55mph is about 30KW.

It is? I would love to know where you came up with that. Let me do some back-of-napkin stuff:

The Tesla Roadster goes 244 miles on a 53kWhr pack. That's 217Whr/mile.

217Whr/mile * 55 miles/1hr = 11.935kW

Sure, an Accord is somewhat bigger and less aerodynamic than the Roadster...but does it really take more than twice as much energy? Also, from what I've read the Model S is expected to achieve similar Whr/mi to the Roadster...so I guess ultimately we don't much care how much juice an Accord takes.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

You don't get supplies if people like me move to cities. I actually work to produce something useful.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

Maybe if you drive a 25 year old SUV it's not common, but most new cars will easily get 500 highway miles on a tank of gas.

Really, you're looking at maybe 40 litres of gasoline for an efficient vehicle, which is less than the capacity of most cars.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

The Tesla Roadster goes 244 miles on a 53kWhr pack.

not at 55mph it wont. maybe at 10mph on a test track. drag goes up as velocity squared.

if your going to claim 300 miles it needs to be at 55 mph. who's driving 300 miles in the city? and if you were then it would be stop-and-go, and even if they have regenerative systems they are not going to get the full milage. so if you are going to quote 300 miles then it needs to be comparable driving conditions to a regular car.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[hazydave]

My 2003 Prius does. It only hold 11.7 gallons, but does pretty well on mileage :-) My record is actually just over 600 miles, but that was a very good day, and not at my usual highway speeds. I don't think most new cars get 500 miles, but in general, they're ranging farther than they once did. That's been a trend... in college, I had a 1961 Thunderbird... it did about 200 miles on a tank (10mpg and 20 gallons of tank).

The advantage of all-electric... I could do most of my driving on 100% renewable energy, since I'm getting 100% renewable electricity these days (in Jersey, you can choose your power source... I think that's spreading across the country, too). I keep a truck (Toyota Tacoma) for my tree farm work, and my wife has a newish Camry (about 350-400 miles on a tank of gas), so this would be totally practical.

In fact, I'm likely to replace the Prius with either an all-electric or a plug-in hybrid, depending on how things go with this new technology. The main concern I have with BEVs is that, when they're fully cycled, current battery technologies don't last that long. The Prius battery is only cycled over 40% of its capacity (60% in the 2004+ models), that's what keeps it going for a few hundred-thousand miles. There's been a great deal of lab work on micro/nano-engineering anode/cathode materials to prevent battery demise, but until that's proven in the field, the BEV is an expensive proposition. The current Tesla sports car, using off-the-shelf laptop batteries, has an expected battery life of 3-5 years, last I read.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[hazydave]

Most NiMh cells can be charged at C*4 (four times the rated capacity) without exploding, as long as they're thermally monitored. So, if you can provide enough current, that's a fastest-possible time of 15 minutes, whatever the capacity. Most Li-ions support less than half of that, which is just about what they're suggesting here.

Some of the new battery technologies are working to change this... new anode and cathode materials in the lab are promising Li-ion based cells that can fully charge in a few minutes, and survive thousands of charge/discharge cycles without much loss in capacity. None of that easily solved how in the world you'd get that much power into a full BEV battery, even if it's ok to do so. But that kind of long life is ultimately the thing that's needed to make BEVs practical. Without that, the secondary sticker shock, when everyone's 3-5 year old battery cars need new cells, will kill the market before it really catches on.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[hazydave]

Only the turbulent component of drag goes up as the square of velocity. That's very dependent on vehicle aerodynamics. The laminar component is linear with velocity.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Millenniumman]

I don't think Tesla's offerings are targeted towards rural areas at all. Their locations are all near or in major cities.

I don't think the range is necessarily a real roadblock for most of the target market, but this kind of fundemental limitation is certainly quite unappealling, especially on something expensive and not at all designed as a city car.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

Logic never comes into it, because this vehicle isn't logical to own.

This car is twice the price of most fully-loaded sedans, and the price difference is equal to the total lifetime fuel cost for a conventional vehicle.

Even ignoring that, the range is substantially less than a conventional vehicle.

Even ignoring that, there are no dedicated charging stations anywhere so it'll take a substantial amount of time(hours) to charge assuming you find an outlet you can use, which is unlikely at the moment.

Even ignoring that, a dedicated charging station takes ten times the time a petroleum car takes to fuel.

What does this car have going for it? Well, logically the reduced emissions by replacing your car won't affect the global climate appreciably, so you're buying it because of the warm fuzzy feeling you get by buying the latest "green" fad, and the warm fuzzy feeling that you might be helping to pay for the next technological deus ex machina.

This car, and this company, aren't logical. The only reasons to buy this horribly expensive car are wholly emotional.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[TrekkieGod]

This car is twice the price of most fully-loaded sedans, and the price difference is equal to the total lifetime fuel cost for a conventional vehicle.

The car is a luxury sedan, with a lot of power and tons of extras like large LCD screens and handles that retract. It's price is on par with other luxury sedans, cheaper than many of them. As I've stated, the reason I'm not buying it is because I'm not in the market for a $50,000 car, any $50,000 car, but it's not like this is the only $50,000 car out there. If you're going to buy one of those, the Tesla is looking good.

Even ignoring that, the range is substantially less than a conventional vehicle.

Which, as I've stated, is completely irrelevant.

Even ignoring that, there are no dedicated charging stations anywhere so it'll take a substantial amount of time(hours) to charge assuming you find an outlet you can use, which is unlikely at the moment.

Which is also completely irrelevant, unless you plan on not sleeping. Get home in the evening, plug car in, it'll be fully charged in the morning when you leave again. It's actually more convenient than a gas car in that sense. You never need to stop by a gas station and it's going to parked in your garage every night anyway.

Even ignoring that, a dedicated charging station takes ten times the time a petroleum car takes to fuel.

and it's still more convenient to charge for 10 hours at home while you sleep than 10 minutes at a gas station. Seriously, it's not like you have to be there holding a pump for 10 hours.

What does this car have going for it?

It's a nice-looking luxury car with tons of luxury features, lots of space to fit things in (the front hood is also a luggage compartment, the engine is below the car), that has tons of power, is almost completely silent, requires no oil changes...

Well, logically the reduced emissions by replacing your car won't affect the global climate appreciably

...it's way more efficient than gas cars (apparently over 90% efficiency), so I doubt that. I'm not part of the "green" fad, if it's a choice between the environment and my convenience, I'll take my convenience every time but this is an awesome car and the only drawbacks you can name really aren't drawbacks at all for me. Again, I'm not going to buy it at that price, but it's the car that I would buy if I could afford cars of that price.

This car, and this company, aren't logical. The only reasons to buy this horribly expensive car are wholly emotional.

If your price range for your car is half that of the model S, then no, this isn't the logical car for you. The company is logical as hell, though. They're offering a kickass vehicle for people who have the money to spend on a kickass vehicle. Economies of scale kick in, and the cheaper cars come later. Their first model was a much worse car (it had only enough space in the trunk for a golf club, everything else was being taken up by batteries and engines, wtf) at twice the price. They're selling pretty much all the cars they can afford to produce, and even though the profit margin is low, it apparently is there. Seems to me like the company is perfectly logical.

Look, like I said to the other guy, it's your money, and you choose how best to spend it when you buy a car. All I said is that it's not logical to favor another car because it has more range, when the range of this car should be suitable for most people the vast majority of the time, and it's incredibly easy to find alternative transportation for the rare occasions you need to travel a lot. I never said it's priced for the average joe, and I never even said it was good for the environment until you brought it up claiming that it wasn't all that much better (but offering no evidence to back that up. The efficiency of electric vs combustion motors alone should make it a lot better).

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[goombah99]

so? all cars are in the turbulent regime.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

So, when did "kickass" become a logical argument?

When did a hand wave ignoring the range entirely become logical?

When did a hand wave ignoring the lack of recharging stations become logical?

None of your arguments are logical. They remind me of the arguments I made to justify staying with a girlfriend once. "I love her, so I'll work around the problems!" -- not very logical. I ended up leaving her.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[TrekkieGod]

So, when did "kickass" become a logical argument?

At the same time people started paying the same amount of cash for gasoline luxury cars. If you want to argue that ALL $50,000 cars are illogical because you can buy cheaper ones that will take you from A to B, than I'll accept your argument against the Tesla. Otherwise, the Tesla is a very good car when competing of other cars in the same price range because it has the same "kickass" features and more.

When did a hand wave ignoring the range entirely become logical?

I fully explained in detail the reasons why range doesn't matter. It's not my fault that you either can't read or you can't argue against the points I've made.

When did a hand wave ignoring the lack of recharging stations become logical?

Again, it wasn't a "hand wave." I was explained why they're not needed and why it's perfectly convenient to charge a car overnight while it's sitting in the garage doing nothing anyway. Do you have a reason why that's inconvenient?

None of your arguments are logical. They remind me of the arguments I made to justify staying with a girlfriend once. "I love her, so I'll work around the problems!" -- not very logical. I ended up leaving her.

So let me understand your arguments. "I won't buy a car regardless of how good it is for 11 months out of the 12 because I can't drive it on a long trip for the remaining 30 days of the year. I want a car that I can refuel in 10 minutes at a gas station instead of not having to go to a gas station at all, because when my car is sitting on a garage all night, I don't want a plug connected to it. I'm going to ignore all of the arguments made against my point of view and claim the guy making them is illogical. I won't offer any counter-argument to his points, but if I say "illogical" enough times, it'll sound true.

As for your girlfriend, given that there are no perfect people out there, if you're not willing to work around problems, you're going to be very, very alone. So, without knowing more than what you've told me, it could be even more illogical for you to have left her depending on exactly what the "problems" were. Then again, I don't want to know and I don't care about your personal life, just pointing out that, again, you don't supply arguments, you just say, "I believe this is logical and that is illogical" and think it's an argument.

Re:Reality check can't be cashed

[Sj0]

The day I take relationship advice from TrekkieGod is the day I slit my wrists and let the light take me.

Regarding the rest, your hand waving isn't going away just because you wave your hands harder. "It's not important! This is the car you're looking for!"

I mean, if you lose your job you're going to need to buy a tow truck to get your car to the next city. That's fucked.

Re:How about better range?

[uvajed_ekil]

I have to agree that the range issue it not that much of an issue at all here. 300 miles is pretty darned good. I live in a US suburb and very rarely drive more than 70 miles a day, and only once or twice a year more than 300 miles at a time. Of course, I would have to rent or borrow another vehicle to visit my sister 450 miles away or drive cross-country, but those are rarities. So a 300 mile range is probably good enough for 95% of Americans 95% of the time, and the car is genuinely worth considering. $50k is still too high for me, but not out of this world for many folks, especially considering the potentially lower operating costs and "cool factor"/conversation value. It appears much more usable and compelling than say, the Smart Fortwo.

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[rdoger6424]

The last time I saw a major Bolivian export being priced on a per-kilogram basis, I had the DEA on my tail!

Re:How about better range?

[uvajed_ekil]

I take it back: the 300-mile car is too expensive. For that range, you are looking at $65k, before tax credit. The $50k model will only get around 150 miles per charge, which is pushing the lower limits of practicality. Plus you need a 480 volt outlet for the 45-minute quick charge? So much for being able to drive until you need a recharge and plug in to the nearest outlet. The technology is getting there - close enough to practical for us to discuss it, but not good/cheap enough yet for the average person.

Re:Recycling plants

[WindBourne]

Algae. They expect by 2020 to have 5-10% of the American market JUST BY THEMSELVES.

Re:How about better range?

[Dare nMc]

not sure where you get that from. Tesla roadster made that trade off, instead of putting in a high speed electric, they put in a high torque (lower torque from 1000rpm -3000 rpm than any of my ICE vehicles though) and thus had to have a shifting gearbox and much stiffer gearing. Electric motors need high currents to generate high torque, or high voltages to generate high speeds. Until super-conductors can be used, that means if you design a electric for high torque, you need bigger wires, and/or more windings (more wires.) if you build it for high speeds, then you need more insulation between wires, or you get flash over. The higher the max torque, the less efficient the motor, and the heaver it will be. Similar with batterys, they hate to generate high currents, they are lossy at high currents, and you need huge wires to go any distance at high currents. Their are definitely many reasons all cost feasible electrics are slow as dogs.
Doing huge gearing reductions is the the trade-off for electric, make a high speed, low torque electric for size/weight/efficiency is the usual path, then do as high of voltage as you can.

what will happen in a storm flood?

[vaporland]

this thing has high voltage components, so what happens if you try to drive it through two or three feet of water, like you see during flash flooding? granted, you are not supposed to drive through rushing water in a car, but the first time someone does, they will die, the rescue squad will die and everyone else who touches it before the batteries die, will die...

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[jo_ham]

Ever heard of a breaker? In the event of an incident the batteries (which are low voltage DC, high current) will be isolated.

Also, the people inside the giant faraday cage on wheels are safe from electric shocks (ever seen a car hit by lightning?)

I'm also pretty certain the kinks of that particular scenario have been worked out and dismissed. The fundamentals of high current batteries and inverters with large step up voltages are well understood, as are the safety issues surrounding them.

No worse than the 60 odd litres of highly flammable liquid you carry around in your petrol powered car that can leak out and burn.

No one is going to die if you drive your electric car through 3 feet of water. It may even come out of the other side totally unaffected - with the right covering and protection for the motors (the car has to drive in the rain and in heavy spray after all) I'd wager it would survive better than the average petrol car in the same water. Water is not a particularly conductive liquid (gets better as you dissolve more crap in it, but in general). Drive your low-slung petrol car through there and get any water ingested into the air intake and it can be pretty terminal. Water into petrol engines is not a good combo.

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[cheros]

what happens if you try to drive it through two or three feet of water

You generate energy for other cars by producing oxygen and hydrogen. No problem :-)

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[vaporland]

I've heard of a breaker, which is great when the source of power is breaker-protected wire coming from a distantly located coal fueled power plant. I believe that things might be a little different when I'm carrying the source of power with me and I'm partially submerged in water.

Ok, so take it one step further - you are in a collision on a bridge and plummet into the water below. The integrity of the battery casings have been compromised by the collision, and you can't roll down the windows or unlock the doors to get out.

I'm sure that Tesla will do everything possible, or at least required by law, to make their cars safer, but I would certainly be more concerned when driving an electric car through three feet of water than when driving a gasoline powered one through the same conditions. I have driven a gasoline powered car unscathed through three feet of water during a hurricane - no harm to me or the car...

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[jo_ham]

Go hold a 12 volt car battery under water with you. Nothing will happen, except maybe that battery will short itself and rapidly discharge. It won't electrocute you unless you physically connect it up to yourself.

How exactly do you think the current is going to get to you? Unless you're making a lower resistance circuit than the rest of the car's electrical systems (you won't be) or you're somehow part of the ground circuit for the HT side (which you won't be, since you're inside the car).

There will obviously be warnings about the HT parts of the system (just like there are in modern petrol cars that maintain a multi-thousand volt coil to fire the spark plugs, although at lower current than is used in the Tesla - not that it matters, since when you're talking about very high voltages, very small currents can kill you).

The battery pack will be designed for crash resistance, and will be impervious to water. The master terminals will be well insulated from water entry. I think you're expecting some sort of school project style job where exposed metal terminals are 2 inches apart, with about 3 inches of exposed flex leading off to the rest of the car. Even if you break it open and sink it, you could be in the water with it and not be electrocuted unless you go to great lengths to grab both terminals after exposing the contacts.

We already have many electric cars on the market, all featuring large DC battery packs with high current, and then either DC motors or a rectifier+AC motor combo for traction. The systems and ideas are well understood and have been proven to be safe. Again, as safe as driving a vehicle can sensibly be - ie, no better or worse than driving a petrol car.

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[The Iso]

There will obviously be warnings about the HT parts of the system (just like there are in modern petrol cars that maintain a multi-thousand volt coil to fire the spark plugs, although at lower current than is used in the Tesla - not that it matters, since when you're talking about very high voltages, very small currents can kill you).

At high voltages, small currents can kill you?

Ohm's Law: Voltage = Current * Resistance

Voltage is inversely proportional to current. It's the current, not the voltage, that kills you. A current of about 100 mA through a person's body is fatal.

Re:what will happen in a storm flood?

[jo_ham]

That is exactly what I said, that at high voltages, small currents kill. I wrote it that way to compare it to a low voltage, high current source such as a lead acid battery, which can also clearly kill. The voltage doesn't matter, as long as the energy in the "jolt" you receive is high enough (so something on the order of 100 mA at 1 volt is unlikely to kill you since your body's internal resistance will protect you, unless you take extra measures to reduce resistance, like breaking the skin, or having contact points very close to the heart).

Re:Memory Effect

[mrchaotica]

I wonder how much extra it will cost to have the blue LEDs stripped off the outside...

Don't worry; the blue exterior lights aren't street-legal anyway.

Quick battery change stations

[spineboy]

I can see these popping up, or else just taking a little break for 15 min. Honestly, 200 miles takes about 3 hours to drive in a car. A 10 minute quick charge is no big deal to wait.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[goombah99]

so if you drive a car for 5 hours at 30KW then want to recharge it in 10 minutes that means you need 900KW of power. it also means the wires in the car need to be able to handle 30 times the typical driving load.

if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.

you'll be able to degauss your hard drive while you wait!

Re:Quick battery change stations

[miro f]

the electric car is not for you, get over it.

there are plenty of people like me who barely ever travel more than 100km in a day and for us an electric car is perfect. No one is trying to sell one to you. Go and troll some other article.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[tompaulco]

At the cost of electricity in California, that is about $22.50 worth of electricity. Depending on the size of your tank, a typical fillup for a midsize sedan is about $40 and will get you about 25% further. So in reality we are looking at about $30 for a gas car to go the same distance. Still a pretty good savings, until everyone has one of these and the cost of electricity doubles. Too bad the greens don't want us building any more power plants.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[jusdisgi]

900KW of power....if the connector was a 208V connector then that's about 4000 DC amps for ten minutes.

If it was a 208V single-phase connector, you'd be right. But I don't know of any such beast; the common 208 three-phase tap would require 1442A to provide that wattage. Or you could use a 480V source (which Tesla claims will be an option) at 625A. Or you could get more realistic about your pack size...I don't know where you came up with the idea of a 150kWhr pack, but that's kind of a pipe dream at the moment.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[Spoke]

Too bad the greens don't want us building any more power plants.

The "greens" are paying you plenty to put a power plant right on your own roof.

If fact, they are subsidizing it so much that it cuts the price of a solar power system in California just about in half.

30% Federal tax credit.

$1.50-$2.00 tax credit per watt of installed power generating capability depending on your utility and how much solar power has already been installed.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[Sj0]

It's not perfect, you're living in a dream world.

You don't own a Tesla, and you won't own one. You won't spend 50k on a vehicle that'll force you to take the bus. No sane person would. It's ridiculous to do so.

Why not sell your e-meters somewhere that people don't actually deal with reality for a living?

Re:Quick battery change stations

[goombah99]

Youre right about the 3-phase correction, I was just keepingit simple. As for the watt hours, that's just because they say it will go 300 miles. 300 miles on the highway takes about 150KW-hr. You could get by with less if you were driving slower but still on a highway (i.e. without braking or acceleration) but then it would hardly be fair to call it a 300 mile tank in comparison to a standard car.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

[...] Still a pretty good savings, until everyone has one of these and the cost of electricity doubles. Too bad the greens don't want us building any more power plants.

Some Cap-and-Trade type legislation will probably double the cost of electricity long before everyone has one of these; at present, you can't really make any reliable long-term ROI calculations having energy costs as a large variable. Too bad, too... this is one delicious car, and the first non-conventional powertrain I'd actually consider buying. Great job by Tesla; they hit just about every note I personally want in a full-size sedan (an unfortunately neglected market segment for green-power/clean-power vehicles). To commit to a vehicle like this though, I'd need a world with long-term, ubiquitous, relatively cheap electricity (clean would be nice too), and with all the political incentives right now favoring scarce, dirty electricity (politicians and bureaucrats can print currency around and profit better from that commodity), I'm a little too risk-averse to make such a gamble.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[Sj0]

The other issue being, this is a car that exists now. These hypothetical charging stations don't exist.

Right now, you can travel about 200 miles before hopefully finding a receptical so you can charge for 8 hours. With that kind of distance on a trip, you might as well just hop on your bicycle.

Re:Quick battery change stations

[miro f]

You're living in a crazy world where everyone has the same requirements as you. I could perfectly own a Model S and never have to take any form of public transport. The car I currently have has a 300km range. I have not once driven 300km in one day since I was legally permitted to drive 8 years ago. I take a plane for journeys longer than that (it's cheaper)

Stick with your ICE car, I don't care, it's clear you're never going to be happy with an electric. But you're an idiot if you think that your driving needs are the same as everyone elses. You've failed to explain how this car is not perfect for my needs. If I could afford $50k I'd buy one.

Calculations??

[spineboy]

If you plan on driving your truck for 300k miles@ 20 MPG, then that's 15,000 gallons of fuel - which is pretty good for a "truck". You are really paying less than $2 per gallon? Gas seems to average around $2.75 and to be fair, it will probably only increase in price. So I'll call it an even $3/gallon, which will make fuel coasts around $45,000 for 300K if you were to buy your truck now. Unless your truck is a diesel, then some major engine repair/ maintenance costs would be probably fair to also add in, as well as transmission repairs/replacements.

Powerline costs on an electric car will be changing the battery at 100,000 miles and will cost $12,000 , so 300k miles would have operating costs around $24,000 +$3,000(electricity). Not too bad. The electric motor/transmission should not need ANY repairs during that time. I imagine significant R&D and economy of scale will tend to drive this price down significantly by then.

Re:Calculations??

[Dare nMc]

(we are comparing a car to truck, but thats the cost I know, haven't owned a car) It is a diesel with a manual transmission, at 40k miles I do a full synthetic oil change out of diff+trans that was $90 of oil for 200k miles. With amsoil synthetic engine oil, its a single oil change per year at $60. No other pre-planed maintaince. When not towing I do get 22-23 mpg, I was figuring the price for fuel, not the cost for taxes to maintain roads, etc. that you are also currently avoiding with electric. Currently no batteries exist that are going to get you maint free. Current plan @Tesla that you get a $30k battery change at 100k miles. But also in 1 year time frame all current batteries lose 40% of capacity, every year of use, your going to be working hard to get the last of the 100k miles in (short trips), before the battery change (60% capacity at 1 year, 36% @ 2 years, 20% at 3.) But at that point most will recycle the car for a few grand and start over, rather than spend 60% of value to revive a old car, at that point the rectifiers and other controls will be at the limit anyway. Since the gear box's are a big deal with Tesla... Maybe in 5 or 10 years we will have a equal cost for electric, maybe.

Re:Calculations??

[Dare nMc]

I didn't finish reading all your post, FYI the battery currently costs $36k, but if you pay $12k now, Tesla will promise (if still in business) that will cover the cost of a battery within 5 years. they only guarantee a battery for a year, and think it will last 5year 200k miles. so really the battery currently costs
$118k for 300k miles, at 2-4* the cost of gas for a car.

Re:Calculations??

[jusdisgi]

I was figuring the price for fuel, not the cost for taxes to maintain roads, etc. that you are also currently avoiding with electric.

Most states charge you extra at the DMV for your EV registration to offset the gas taxes they miss out on.

Current plan @Tesla that you get a $30k battery change at 100k miles.

No, the current offer from Tesla is to pre-pay $12k just like the parent said. And by the time these things really need to be replaced they'll be cheaper still; we're looking at a remarkably steady 9% annual improvement in price/Whr for Li batteries.

But also in 1 year time frame all current batteries lose 40% of capacity, every year of use...

WHAT!?!? Where on God's green Earth did you hear that? Tesla says that after 5 years and 100k miles the pack should hold 80% original capacity. If you have other ideas we'll need some data.

Since the gear box's are a big deal with Tesla...

The gearbox was a big deal, until they scrapped it for a single speed. The new setup should be maintenance free and damn reliable.

Why do we bother with quick recharge?

[hughbar]

Of course, we can standardise the batteries and built exchange stations like miniature versions of those container ports (think of the batteries as containers).

But I suspect, each manufacturer will patent the form factor of their battery (even if it delivers within the same parameters) for maximum lock-in.

Re:Lithium Ion battery safety?

[mdielmann]

Not to mention all the stuff other people have said about availability, etc., but there's also the fact that it's not a consumable. So you don't go to the well every time you use your car, you just go there every time you make a car (or specifically, make more batteries than what has been recycled). The dependence is therefore much lower, if you can call something so small compared to oil an actual dependence.

Children under 10'?

[Fritzed]

I hope they make a version that fits my 11' tall children.

Re:New Video of Tesla's...

[Tuidjy]

Dude, check your sarcasm detector. It does not seem to be working.

Re:How about better range?

[Gordonjcp]

Plus you need a 480 volt outlet for the 45-minute quick charge?

Once you've given it a 45-minute quick charge you've only got an incredibly short range.

This is the insurmountable problem with electric cars. You physically cannot stuff enough electricity into the battery quickly enough to make recharging as fast as refuelling a conventional car. I can "recharge" the 18-gallon tank in my car with around 750kWh of energy in about five minutes. Now, assuming that an electric car is about four times as efficient (15-20% efficiency for a petrol car, and 75-80% efficiency for an electric - and that's being generous to the electric) I'd need to stick about 190kWh, taking around 60 hours to charge the battery from a conventional 13A socket. You could charge from a three-phase supply in probably about 18 hours, but that's still hardly "overnight".

If you want to drive until the "tank" is empty, fuel up and then continue, you're stuck. You can't do it.

Please do not add noise..

[cheros]

I hope they don't get this stupid idea of adding noise to it.

What I don't like: handles that disappear - that has no decent failure recover (what if the power fails? How do emergency services gain access?)

What I like: a dash I may be able to hack. The ultimate "pimp my ride" for any geek. Caveat: this should be isolated from the driver and control electronics because that is safety. You don't mess with safety (IMHO).

I like the idea overall. Heck, I may even invest in covering my roof with solar power - I want to bet that generating your own power will be taxed very soon - if cars like this become common there is a lot of fuel revenue the governments are going to miss out on..

PG&E

[TheLink]

How many kWh do you need to use to hit the top tier rate of $0.33/kWh?

$0.33/kWh is almost like running your own generator.

See: http://www.generatorjoe.net/page.asp?id=61

Power companies should be using stuff that's far more efficient.

What in the world are they burning to produce your electricity? Extra virgin olive oil?

Re:PG&E

[dgatwood]

A mere 816 kWh.

Tier 1: 361 kWh @ $0.11591
Tier 2: 108 kWh @ $0.13109
Tier 3: 253 kWh @ $0.25974
Tier 4: 94 kWh @ $0.37866

So it's actually worse now. My top tier is almost 38 cents per kWh. At the national average (just shy of 10 cents per kWh), my power bill would be approximately half what it is here. Needless to say, I'm flipping off PG&E and going solar for my next home.

Re:New Video of Tesla's...

[miro f]

he didn't base it off Tesla's design...

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[ceoyoyo]

With 600A 440V you'd better have close to 100% efficiency or it's going to be time to break out the marshmallows.

Overkill

[torok]

I don't understand the current thinking that only a full-sized electric car will help us. Small three-wheeler electric vehicles for commuters, that are *affordable*, would help immensely. The only ones I've seen cost more than a civic hybrid (e.g. http://www.flytheroad.com/)

Do the batteries wear out?

[Bifster]

300 miles of range? What about after 1 year of daily use? After 2 years?

How much does it cost to replace the worn out Li-Ion battery pack?

The Dell Laptops we have at work seem to consistently wear down to about 1 hour of capacity after one year of use... That is down from 5 hours capacity when the packs were new.

So I figure maybe the batteries need to be replaced every year on a commuting vehicle... Anyone care to provide a credible estimate of how that impacts cost of ownership for this vehicle?

Re:More affordable alternatives

[SaDan]

The Volt goes 40 miles per charge, which gets 95% of commuters to work and back every day, without a drop of gas. It's not stupid, it's almost perfect. It also means smaller battery pack, which is cheaper to replace.

Plus, not only do you get the pure EV functionality for your daily commute, you also get built-in range extending with the genset incorporated in the Volt. It's also supposed to be cheaper than the Model S, which honestly makes is slightly less "dead on arrival" than you'd think.

Yeah, GM's going through financial hell, but with the government looking to get a return on their (and tax payers) investment, if it makes sense we'll get to see it hit the showroom floor. Personally, I like both the Model S and the Volt, but I'd buy the Volt over the Model S as everything stands right now. Down the road, I'd consider trading the Volt for the Model S if battery range improves a tad (300 miles is about how far my parents live, and the furthest I'd drive non-stop).

At any rate, it's great to see full EV and better hybrid/EV choices on the horizon. Soon we'll all be driving one or another.

Re:Memory Effect

[MikeBabcock]

Feeling for a digital touch button to adjust volume instead of a knob in the winter with my mitts on seems a little moronic.

Give me knobs I can feel any day.

Re:How about better range?

[jusdisgi]

If I had the money, it would be a no-brainer for me. Since I don't have the money, it's still a no-brainer, but on the side of "no".

HA! Yeah, count me in on that one...

Re:How about better range?

[jusdisgi]

Your argument looks great...but you try to prove that up is down. There is a clear positive correlation between an electric motor's power and its efficiency. I'm not interested in a convoluted argument that's contrary to fact.

Re:How about better range?

[jusdisgi]

This is the insurmountable problem with electric cars. You physically cannot stuff enough electricity into the battery quickly enough to make recharging as fast as refuelling a conventional car.

"This is the insurmountable problem with going to the moon. You physically cannot stuff enough energy into a rocket to get there."

In 1960, that statement would have been just as true as yours. Sounds silly now that it's been done, doesn't it?

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[jusdisgi]

Problems with this line of thought:

.

1)Where in TFA did it say 80% in 10 minutes?

2)You use the Roadster pack for your calculations even while admitting the pack we're really talking about is smaller. Obviously it takes fewer watts to charge a smaller pack.

3)Where do you get 440V? Hint: your wall jack isn't really "one-ten."

4)You calculated the amperage as though it was a single-phase source even while you specified three-phase.

.

Leaving the first two alone and using your assumptions, the correct current for a 480V three-phase source would be 187.5A. Which is well within the grid's capabilities.

Re:The article says 80% charge in under 10 minutes

[jusdisgi]

Funny, I've driven my EV into many gas stations, and have never had anyone give me trouble about it. Actually, that whole concept is downright laughable. What, they're going to have some guy running around checking for tailpipes?

Re:Taxes

[jusdisgi]

Take your flat-tax shit someplace else. The difficulty in earning each marginal dollar is vastly more progressive than the tax code.

Re:How about better range?

[Dare nMc]

this is what 12 years of working with electric motors, last 10 working as QA engineer on electric drive vehicles. Not sure what part you want proven, but the higher the load, the lower the efficiency of battery powered systems is a simple search. If you can build a high speed + high torque motor that is light and efficient across a wide range, you will be very wealthy person (requires super conductor, and better insulation: simple right?)
a google search talks about just the motor, they have a sweet spot, change the rpm or load outside that sweet spot you lose efficiency.
http://www.fastelectrics.com/elecmotorbasics.htm

Re:How about better range?

[Gordonjcp]

In 1960, that statement would have been just as true as yours. Sounds silly now that it's been done, doesn't it?

Not really. There's not really a lot you can do to get around Ohm's Law. Getting a rocket to the Moon is a simple case of packing as much fuel into as efficient a rocket as it takes.

There is not going to be some magic technological breakthrough that allows you to charge a 1kWh battery in an hour without either using 1 volt at 1000 amps, or 1000 volts at one amp. If you want to move that much power, you need either a high voltage or a high current.

If you've got a great idea for a connector that can be used to plug in a 25kV 100A charging lead, there are probably some electric vehicle designers who'd love to talk to you.

Re:Recycling plants

[badkarmadayaccount]

He said gasoline. As in, fuel appropriate for an Otto cycle motor. For the same compression, the Otto is better, but requires much higher quality fuel. When dealing with synthetic fuel sources, you can set up the fuel produced to be of much higher quality than could be conceived of otherwise. Ethanol is practically racing fuel, for instance. And it could be useful, just not with current methods. We need GM crops with cellulose degrading enzymes stored in vacuoles. Crush, ferment, distill, and you've got a fuckton of fuel. Technique could be reused with algae. Also, I'd say we really need a variable combustion chamber volume engine. Throttling kills efficiency.

Re:Memory Effect

[badkarmadayaccount]

Seriously? Why?

Re:Memory Effect

[mrchaotica]

Presumably because it makes people mistake your vehicle for a police car. Red lights (except on the rear, like brake lights) are illegal too, since they're used by firetrucks and ambulances.

That's the theory, anyway: you could also cynically argue that the real reason they (along with dark/reflective/colored window tint) are illegal is because the authorities want an extra excuse to hassle the sort of people who use these lights (e.g. the import street-racing crowd with their underbody neons, etc.).

Pulling some poor sap over for illegal tint/illegal lights/etc. gives the officer an extra chance to go on a fishing expedition for more profitable offenses, such as DUI or drug possession (especially if he can trick the driver into consenting to a search).

Note, by the way, that this sort of law varies considerably by jurisdiction in terms of what colors are illegal, where (on the car) and how many lights are allowed, etc.

Re:Memory Effect

[badkarmadayaccount]

I think your sig is strangely appropriate.