Tesla Motors Announces Prices For Their Upcoming Models

Shivetya writes with a list of prices for upcoming models from Tesla, noting that "they aren't cheap and the prices are listed assuming the $7500 tax credit. A 160-mile range S will set you back $49,900, the 230-mile is at $59,000, and the 300-mile range S will cost $69,000. Battery sizes are 40, 60, and 85kwh respectively. For your money these cars also include a very large seventeen-inch touchscreen. Is this the electric car you've been waiting for or another rich person's toy?"

Comments

Both

[bonch]

Is this the electric car you've been waiting for or another rich person's toy?

Can't it be both? Because right now it's both.

Re:Both

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah anything over $40k is well into the "rich guy toy" range, good deal or not.

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[stanlyb]

what about none of them?

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[lgw]

It's both. I just spent a similar amount on a lowbrid, but I have to say this is the first electric car done right. Plus it looks incredible on the road (my daily commute takes me from one Tesla plant to the other, and just occasionally you'll see a streetable prototype on that route). On looks alone I should have held out for one.

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[Nethemas the Great]

Yes and no. Obviously "rich guy" is a relative term but there are plenty of people who plunk down $40K on full-size pickup trucks and SUVs that are firmly seated in the middle of the middle-class. Is it a wise choice given alternatives? Debatable. But the $50K base model is definitely not a "rich guy toy" just a white-collar guy toy.

I'm a software engineer and not what most people in the Western world would call rich, just "comfortable" in my income. I'm actually giving the car serious consideration for purchase in a few years after the lease expires on the next car I'm getting in a month or two. By then hopefully the bugs will be more or less ironed out and production ramped up so there isn't a year long waiting list like their Roadster--a car for which few people would argue against is a rich-guy toy.

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[Above]

I don't think I'd count a $40k car as being rich man's territory. There are plenty of working class guys who drive F-250's with diesel engines for their work, and those are $40k+. A BMW M3, their best selling car in the US, can approach $45k with all the options.

A $40,000 car, financed for 5 years, at 4% interest with a $5,000 trade is $645 a month. About $7700 per year.

Totally doable on the median household income in the US of $45,000 per year. Wise? A different story, but it's not like you have to be a millionaire to buy one.

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[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably the median cost of an average car in Los Angeles.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. $40k is a lot, not doubt, and the $60k+ ones are even more so, but I remember running the numbers when they announced the Tesla S line and figuring out that based on the price of gas and electricity at the time, I'd save around $2k/year on my commute alone (and that's without even figuring in the ability to use the HOV lanes.)

I think we're still not at the point where the fuel savings will ever completely cover the added cost of the vehicle, but it's still a consideration since the actual cost of ownership difference isn't as much as the difference in purchase price.

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[Dishevel]

First off the cheapest one is $49,900 and that is after a $7500 tax break.
That is a $57,400 car that the tax payers have to pay $7,500 on every time one is sold.
Fuck I hate paying for someones toy.

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[Guspaz]

It's $49.9k *after* the tax credits, so it's not actually $40k. Let's call it $50k to be safer.

The thing is, the Roadster cost $109k, so this is already a huge price drop compared to that. That's been Tesla's strategy all along. The new tech will initially be expensive, so sell it as a premium product and use the revenues from that to develop the tech farther, driving down the cost. They've said that this is a three-phase process, and the model S is the second phase. Even the difference between $109k and $50k is a big one, and it brings the pricing into the affordable range for a much larger number of people, particularly if leasing is considered.

Comparing it to other similar cars, it's not a bad deal either. The Nissan Leaf sells for ~$35k, with a 24 kWh battery. The basic model S sells for ~$50k, with a 40 kWh battery, and is a higher-end vehicle. The range is substantially improved, and there's the (very expensive) option for larger batteries that get it within shouting distance of the range of a gasoline vehicle.

Anyhow, the point was that the model S opens up a much larger market to Tesla, which will give them the revenue and scale to work on the third phase of their plan, an electric car that is cheap enough that it can be afforded by the average person. The Roadster was $109k, the Model S was $50k, and they're planning for their third phase, codenamed BlueStar, to sell for $30k. That's not going to compete with a Toyota Yaris/Vitz, but it could compete favourably with a Camry or Avalon, perhaps. They were originally talking about getting the BlueStar out in 2013-2014, but they're now talking about being able to do it in 2015-2016. I'd imagine that battery pricing/technology is the primary limiting factor at this point.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are plenty of working-class people paying $40k for a car or truck. But, they can justify it because that vehicle is a "real" car, able to do all the things we expect a car to do. Drive 700 miles in a day with just 1 or 2 10-minute stops for fuel. Start up in below-freezing weather and do the same. After a hard day, sit in a driveway or on the street or in a hotel parking lot (i.e. where there is no charger) then be ready for more the next morning.

Until an electric car can be used this way, it is basically a limited-use toy (much like exotic cars or sport-motorcycles), and as such are for the rich, who can afford to buy a "real" car in addition to the "toy" car and use each accordingly.

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[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Just a nit, but a working class guy with a $40k truck that he needs for work isn't buying a toy, it's an investment that brings him an income.

With the exception of 3 work trucks, all of the top 15 best selling vehicles in the US are all under $30k, so the majority of buyers aren't going to be interested in spending at least $10k more for a less capable vehicle than what they're driving now and this car certainly isn't going to replace the F250 type of work trucks.

At this price, it remains a toy for the rich, though you'll probably get some middle class people still insisting on living beyond their means in order to keep up with the joneses.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You are rich, just not 1%-rich.

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[polar red]

for this car, no INSANELY expensive wars have to be fought in the middle east ...

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[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't really be that an expensive car around here since we have no tax on eletric cars, 69000$ would get you something like an Audi A4 with tax
an M3 coupe I think is close to ~250000$

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[HornWumpus]

Afraid of getting flamed for misusing median or average, you use both. Guaranteeing that you will be wrong.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The range is substantially improved, and there's the (very expensive) option for larger batteries that get it within shouting distance of the range of a gasoline vehicle.

True, but you still have to charge it for hours before it regains that capacity, so still not close to the range of a gasoline vehicle, practically speaking.

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[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

One more thing that occured to me, I remember reading that the average income of a Chevy Volt owner is $175k. That would imply that, again, it's a toy for the rich rather than a practical car, especially since YTD, they've only sold around 6,000 of them. Most consumers just aren't interested given the price point and that's with GM taking a loss/breaking even on every sale, depending on what numbers you want to believe.

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[Nethemas the Great]

I did use the "Western world" as a qualifier for a reason. In any case for comparison purposes this car would be shoppable against a BMW 535i or Lexus GS. Fit yourself as you like against that.

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[Anonymous Coward]

$120K was well into the "filthy rich guy toy" range, and the roadster seemed to do well. Cutting the price in half or more means it can appeal to the much larger rich people demographic. If they can sell this, the next step is a car that costs half as much as the Model S, for regular people.

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

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[Guspaz]

45 minutes gets you 80% of capacity. If I wanted to drive from Montreal to Toronto (545KM) with the high-capacity model S (480KM range), you're looking at one single 45 minute refueling stop halfway. So yeah, the trip that takes 6h13m in a gas car now takes 6h58m in the electric car, but that's not a huge difference. And, to be honest, most people stop halfway for lunch when driving to Toronto anyhow, so if you can charge midway while eating, you're potentially not using up any extra time at all.

All this presupposes that there's a recharging station halfway between Montreal and Toronto, although since they're the two largest cities in the country and it's one of the most heavily traveled routes in the country, it's not an unreasonable thing to expect we'll see some recharging stations along that route eventually.

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[SteveFoerster]

I think you're underestimating how poorly off many people in the Western world really are. BMWs and Lexuses are hardly median income transportation, even in Western countries. (That's not meant as a criticism, just an observation.)

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[voltacid]

Good point, war will definitely be much cheaper in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. They don't need their lithium anyway.

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[Yvanhoe]

I doubt that they would have the production capacity to provide millions of cars every year, which would be needed at half that price. They probably just need to sell a few tens of thousands per year to be profitable. Now the world needs a new Ford to bring this to the masses.

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[NatasRevol]

Good point. At 6% for 6 year loan:
$30k car:
$500 payment + $200 gas = $700 per month

$60k car:
$950 payment = $950 per month

Still more, but not by as much as you would initially think.

How much does electric cost to charge the batteries? And can you get it charged at work...

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[Nethemas the Great]

I never suggested they were. But they are also not exclusive to "rich" people unless the definition of "rich" is being scoped at around $75K+/year. There is also a significant number of "median income" people grabbing them on the secondary market and plenty of lower income folks snapping up the 15+ year old models.

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[GNious]

Kinda agree - my current Insignia (GM) comes to €27.000, or at current exchange rate: 35.000 USD. I could probably be talked into adding the difference up to 40K, although, as a techie on lowest salery rung, I'd be hard pressed to locate the additional 10K for this. Mid-tier personnel (lower management) should be able to pony up the full 50K, if they really wanted to.

So, not rich guys territory, but not average-joe either.

Finally, at this stage, we still need technology to improve, production methods to improve, and together bring prices a bit further down - this is what early adopters are for: Investing in the latest and greatest, so it can be commoditized for the rest of us :D

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[Nethemas the Great]

Out of curiosity how would your petrol cost per fill up stack up against a ~$5 battery charge? You might find locating the extra 10K easier than you think.

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[spiffmastercow]

I never suggested they were. But they are also not exclusive to "rich" people unless the definition of "rich" is being scoped at around $75K+/year. There is also a significant number of "median income" people grabbing them on the secondary market and plenty of lower income folks snapping up the 15+ year old models.

I make roughly that much, and I can tell you with absolute certainty I could not afford this car. Hell, I can't even afford a car 1/3 as much.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Just once I would love to see the US after an insanely expensive war in the middle east actually take the oil for repayment of expenses.
The fact is the "Wars for Oil" never get us any fucking oil!

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[icebike]

Kinda agree - my current Insignia (GM) comes to €27.000, or at current exchange rate: 35.000 USD. I could probably be talked into adding the difference up to 40K, although, as a techie on lowest salery rung, I'd be hard pressed to locate the additional 10K for this.

You get that back over 5 years in fuel savings. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/savemoney.shtml

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[Ossifer]

Congrats on being rich (per definition)!

Seriously, I think this car line is a viable competitor to the BMW 5xx/7xx and similar models. A powerful luxury sedan, in the same price range (or cheaper--even with the 300-mile battery)...

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[gurps_npc]

Rich guys start buying toys at $100k. $50k is just a luxury car, not a rich mans toy.

For 100k you get car brands that average people can't buy i.e. toys.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand at all how the tax break works.

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[ShavedOrangutan]

You could afford that much, just finance it for 5+ years. That's $921/month for 5 years. Stop saving for retirement. Put home repairs on the credit card. Give up health insurance. Etc.

People do this.

I just bought a $45,000 Hybrid SUV for $7,500 cash. All I had to do was let someone else drive it for five years. I hope the new car scent was worth the $37,500.

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[mobby_6kl]

The Buick Regal, which is basically the same thing as the Insignia is around 26 grand in the US, so you might need to recalculate that.

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[icebike]

You are correct. With the Regal's dismal city mileage, (18), driving 15000 miles per year the 5 year fuel saving would be closer to $13,500, so the recovery of his postulated $10k would come more quickly.

Of course the Regal is not a $35,000 dollar car, so the comparison would be more apt with an Acura or something approaching $35k.

And of course our gas prices today are rather low. If they go back up to $4, you recover your $10k in three years.

So I still think the lowest price model is right on the cusp of being reasonable for the average commuter who has about a 30 to 60 mile round trip commute in the US.

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[Zcar]

No. Just continued coal mining in Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc. A EV in this part of the country has higher CO2 emissions than a non-plug-in hybrid. Until we really change electricity generation in the US, EVs in the US are generally just shifting emissions around.

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[polar red]

No, they don't.
http://www.evdl.org/docs/powerplant.pdf

EVs recharging from coal-fired plants will reduce CO2 emissions in this country from 17 to 22 percent

basically : burning gas in a normal car is hideously inefficient.

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[HungWeiLo]

?? $7500, and not a salvage title? Tell me more...

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[HungWeiLo]

Not the M3 - but the 3-series.

M3 is close to $60k-$75k with all options. 3-series (328, 335, etc.) is the one that's $45k with all options.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I think I do.
Can you please explain to me how this is not ending up as a cost to US taxpayers?

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[couchslug]

Certainly. Early Adopters pay for a shitload of tech us peons use later.

Computer components come to mind.....

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[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even need to stop to recharge. They make these things called "inverters" that you can plug into your 12V lighter outlet. That gives you an A/C output that you can plug into your car while driving!

I would guess while driving that it wouldn't be able to charge fast enough since the outlet is not high current but it should at least give you a boost so you don't have to stop as often.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I didn't know that the money I earn is actually yours. You are not "paying" for me to drive it, I am just putting less of my money into the govt's coffers.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Which is made up for by those not buying the car.
I am not sure why you think that the government rightfully has the job of giving tax incentives to buy one product over another, or of bailing out a failing company instead of letting the successful companies benefit from the failure.
This is not what the government should be doing. They should be passing budgets on time and balanced. They should be protecting our constitutional rights. The real ones. Not made up crap. One day when you get a little wiser you will understand. Please though. Refrain from voting on important issues until you have understanding.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If they can afford this car then the chances are they are subsidising you more than you're subsidising them.

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[Anonymous Coward]

They are not subsidizing me. I make a decent living and pay a good chunk to the Federal government as well as California state (Money Grubbing Bastards) and local taxes.
I do not collect unemployment, food stamps, welfare, or child credits.
I do not have a mortgage to write off. I have not gotten a bailout.
I could afford to buy this car if I really wanted it.
Make no mistake here. The tax write off costs taxpayers and directly benefits Tesla by reducing the end cost of the vehicle for the buyer.
Making the buying decision much more favorable than it would be without it.
Why should there be tax subsidies?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the cold murdering your battery output.

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[Jeremi]

Until we really change electricity generation in the US, EVs in the US are generally just shifting emissions around.

Ah, the old shell game.

  "Let's move away from coal!"
  "It wouldn't help anyway, all our cars run on gas"

  "Okay, let's move to electric cars!"
  "It wouldn't help anyway, all our electricity comes from coal"

When there are two problems to solve, the proper response is solve them both.

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[BiggerIsBetter]

Yeah anything over $40k is well into the "rich guy toy" range, good deal or not.

Rubbish. Cars are insanely cheap in the US, and $40K USD is typical medium-sized family car price in many places.

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[Anonymous Coward]

...The thing is, the Roadster cost $109k, so this is already a huge price drop compared to that. That's been Tesla's strategy all along.

What!!?? Strategy?? Surely you jest. The price drop is because we (taxpayers) gave them a $465 million "loan":
    http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-through-for-tesla-with-a-465-million-loan-for-its-electric-sedan/
We will be damn lucky if they stay afloat long enough to pay some of it back. As much as we all want a "green revolution", this one is gonna be Solyndra all over again:
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596601891250510.html

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[Anonymous Coward]

Gassing up takes 10-15 minutes too, in general. :-)

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[Zcar]

I was comparing to hybrids, not single mode ICE vehicles. In the Midwest, an EV has higher emissions than a hybrid. And, in some regions, even traditional gasoline cars may produce less greenhouse gasses than an EV. For example, this article suggest my Ford Focus, in which I've averaged about 33.5 MPG over its life thus far, would have lower emissions than a Nissan Leaf in Minnesota.

http://blogs.mnhs.org/node/97

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[Zcar]

More or less what I was pointing out: EVs aren't an emissions solution by themselves.

However, you should note that it would help moving away from coal for power plants even without moving to electric vehicles.

Also, for at least the near future, parts of the Midwest don't have many options for non-fossil fuel power plants other than nuclear. Solar and wind are pretty marginal around here, at least for the present.

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[okle69]

Yes, I am also intrigued as well, too.

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[giorgist]

Now if you where the only person using it, that would be pretty good but if everybody needed to use it on their way to Montreal, that would be a mitey big que.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You get that back over 5 years in fuel savings.

Except it takes 10 years to break even over the initial cost difference.

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[Anonymous Coward]

How are you heating your electric vehicle on the way?

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[Guspaz]

It's difficult to know how much this would reduce the range. The best guess I can say is you should still get about 300KM out of the larger capacity model under cold conditions (based on the Nissan Leaf's EPA testing data), which is still sufficient to get to the destination, but that's cutting it rather close. You may need two refuelling stops along the way instead, which would indeed lengthen your trip. The charge is fast enough to not be a huge issue, though. Just an inconvenience. Again, providing that the refuelling stations are available. Anyhow, it's hard to guess, because the data for the Leaf isn't an apples to apples comparison, and I've no idea how the insulation and heating system efficiency on the Model S would compare to a Leaf.

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[Guspaz]

It should actually also be noted that the Model S supports battery switching, in which an automated station can just completely swap out your battery in about a minute, making refuelling faster than a gasoline car.

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[IrquiM]

You're spoiled! $40k would only get you a small Hyundai here... Tesla S is going to be the cheapest car compared to other family saloons in Norway.

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[arse maker]

Being from Australia, this is what I was thinking while reading all of this.

There are cheaper cars.. very low end 15k cars however this isn't the same type of car. 30k - 45k is a very typical family car price. Moving towards 65k+ is above average.

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[lexman098]

Buying a car with over 100k miles costs more than just what you pay up front. There's a certain "buy low sell high" benefit in terms of maintenance costs.

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[Guspaz]

It doesn't hurt the range because of the battery being cold, it hurts the range because of the battery warmer keeping the battery from getting cold, and the heating the car itself. You can probably still do something like 300KM in cold weather, although that's tight enough that you may require a second refueling stop. Then again, the Model S also supports battery swapping, so you can go from 0% to 100% charge in under a minute.

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[ShavedOrangutan]

A new car will depreciate every couple of months more than the entire purchase price of my 100k mile used car. Nothing can possibly go wrong that will make it worth buying a new car instead. And it still looks and drives like new.

Also, sales tax, property tax, registration, and insurance are all a fraction of what it would cost for a new car.

I do know people who take their car to the dealer for routine repairs and maintenance. That does cost a fortune, but it's all part of the scam. When they come out and tell you that the leaky power steering pump is going to cost $3500 to fix, they want you to trade it in instead.

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[Anonymous Coward]

That all depends on how you do the math. I burn $400/week in gas at $3.25/gal. When the prices go up it kills me. The payment on a $50000 car would be somewhere around $900/mo. Switching to an electric would save me somewhere around $350/mo. The monthly payments for my current car were $250. So 900-350-250=300. If fuel prices spiral out of control again this could actually save me money. So it's a bit of a premium but not rich toy.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's beautiful! The have one in Meadowpark Mall here in Colorado. Seating for up to 7' gorgeous lines, fit and top notch. It's actually got a higher top end then the Sportscar. I want one badly, gonna sell in my Volvo S60 to get it...

You have to see it, it's really got to be the first truely appealing electric car in a 100 years...

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[lexman098]

I'm not saying a single repair would make you get rid of the thing and go buy a new one, I was just pointing out that the number you gave wasn't the whole picture. Maybe the extra insurance and taxes would offset the extra maintenance, who knows.

As far as the depreciation, the blue-book value does drop pretty fast on new cars, but that's not necessarily what the car would be worth to the person who bought it new. To them it's still new, and they know exactly how it's been used since it rolled off the lot. Looking at used cars with like 10k miles makes you wonder why they're being sold so soon.

A car is one of the most complicated purchases a person can make. There's too much that goes into predicting future costs and relative and subjective value to give such a simple comparison of prices is all I'm saying.

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[GNious]

:)

Some notes:

The Insignia is €22K for the base-model, which is still a bit more than 26K USD - seems the cars are cheaper in the US, although I've never seen a US car as well-built as my Insignia ;)

Electricity is ca 21 euro-cent (26 us-cent) per KWh daytime, 11 euro-cent night-time, over here, but can vary a lot.

Fuel (diesel) was 1.2 euro average per litre in 2010, but tomorrow is given as 1.48 euro per litre, with mine (98KW) rated at 42.2 MPG combined

By my calculations, at 15K miles/year, that comes to ca 2000 euro in diesel pro anno.
Someone elsewhere mentioned 4 miles per KWh, which should be charged during night-time: €412.5 (€767,5 daytime)
So saving, on fuel, is ca €1587,5 pro anno best case.

If price-difference from my current €27K to 50K USD holds as 15K USD, then break-even (everything else ignored...) is at 10 years, by which time I may need a new batterypack, at 10K USD.

So, I agree, it is right on the cusp of reasonable, but still in the territory of buying-because-you-want-tesla/electrical-car ... which is also reasonable ;)

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[GNious]

I made a reply to IceBike below, trying to calculate the difference, but basically:

5 USD, or €3,759, would buy me either 2,64 litre of diesel or 34 KWh of electricity (17,9 KWh daytime).

Someone said 4 miles per KWh elsewhere, so either 136,70 miles on electricity, or 111,72 miles on diesel*.

The total price-difference seems to be that the Tesla will remain more expensive over its lifetime, but not so much it couldn't be justified emotionally.

*: Opel/GM claims 42,2 MPG combined

Re:Both

[toddestan]

The crazy thing about it is that out of the other side of their mouth they say they need to implement a per-mile tax complete with GPS tracking because electric vehicles don't pay the fuel tax. Well, if they don't think electric vehicles owners pay their fair share in, the first thing they need to do is cut the damn tax subsidy. Most gasoline-powered vehicles aren't going to get anywhere near $7,500 worth of gas tax in their lifetime.

No

[ArchieBunker]

Short of a Mr. Fusion style device I won't be buying one. Can it be refueled from empty to full in 2 minutes like a gasoline engine? What is the battery lifespan? How much will they cost to be replaced?

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Good username/post combo.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options

Nathan

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

With the top of the range model, I think that they have a no quibble, lifetime, battery replacement service, if your batteries conk out. They also have a battery swap service that is being rolled out across america, where at petrol stations, they will swap out your depleted batteries for a fully charged set. I think this takes about 5 minutes, so is a bit longer than normal petrol refilling. But to be fair, EV's are meant for the everyday commuter, who would just recharge overnight.

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Battery swapping is going to seem like a laughably silly idea 10 years from now. I think it's silly right now myself.

EV makers should stop trying to appease the "range anxiety" crowd, they can't be appeased. Have battery swap stations at every corner and cars with a 500 mile range and they'll be "anxious" about getting a dud battery and breaking down in the desert they drive through every morning.

I mean the high-end model goes 300 miles. There are only two reasons to have a problem with that range: You actually drive further than that regularly, in which case you have no business driving an electric car right now anyways, or you've got some kind of "range survivalist syndrome" where you're always worried about "what if I run out of juice and then ZOMBIES ATTACK!?"

Re:No

[Crudely_Indecent]

I wonder when electric vehicles will use standardized batteries which can be replaced quickly.

When that happens, it might be possible to pull into a "Battery Exchange" station where your dead/low batteries can be quickly pulled and replaced with freshly conditioned and charged batteries in under two minutes. Your dead/low batteries then go onto the conditioner/charger to be used by the next shmo who pulls in.

Along the same line as propane tank exchanges. You buy the tank once, then keep trading it in for full tanks - only paying for the propane and the exchange fee.

Until battery electric vehicles become popular, stations like this won't be ubiquitous in the same way gas stations are.

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

From memory (which is based on older info and might not be 100%):

1. There is an option for a 5-minute battery swap-out at properly equipped service stations and there's a quick charge option where proper charging equipment can bring the battery from 0% to 80% in 45 minutes. You would likely be more interested in the 5 minute swap in terms of a gas station replacement for long trips, but the vast majority of refills would be resolved with nightly charging, giving the advantage to this car as you can't fill your gasoline vehicle with fuel every night at home - you have to make a special stop once or twice a week and pay out a bunch of money. How often does anyone take a >160/300 mile trip? If it's all the time for you, this isn't the car for you until there are enough service stations doing the 5-minute swap to make it convenient. If you're like the 99% of people in the US and Europe who drive far less than that 99% of the time, this works just fine.

2. Expected lifespan (defined as >80% of brand-new capacity) is 8 - 10 years.

3. The batteries cost $10,000 to replace today. Their cost in 8 - 10 years is extremely difficult to anticipate, but assuming that the materials involved aren't massively more expensive, the technology will certainly be significantly cheaper and should push those prices down.

Re:No

[CastrTroy]

It's not the same as a gasoline engine. Also, everyone also mentions battery replacement costs, but doesn't think about how much maintenance could be saved over a standard internal combustion engine. No oil changes, no exhaust system problems, possibly increased brake life because stopping energy can be recycled into electricity (not sure if Tesla cars implement this, but future electric cars will). There's a whole bunch of regular maintenance that just disappears once you move to full electric cars. Also, they are much simpler machines, so many less things to break. Do they even have a transmission? I'm not sure how current it is but the wikipedia article states

There is minimal maintenance required of an electric vehicle. Because there is no internal combustion engine, there are no routine oil changes. Transmission, brake, and cooling system fluid changes will be required roughly every five to seven years or as needed. Tesla is the only automaker to offer "house calls" in which mobile service technicians perform routine software upgrades or annual inspections

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. The cost of replacing the batteries (no doubt with much better batteries) a few years down the road could easily be offset by much cheaper ongoing operating costs.

Re:No

[RugRat]

Perhaps the most important question is what is the all-in cost per mile of operation and how many miles to I need to operate it annually for it to make financial sense. For a SWAG: Assume $0.10/kWh, 3 miles/kWh, or $0.033/mile for electricity, vs. 25 MPG, $3.50/gallon, $0.14/mile for gasoline. Effective difference of $0.10/mile. At a US average annual distance of 12,000 miles, the fuel cost difference is $1,200. Electric vehicle advocates also suggest that you save another $200/yr on oil changes, oil filters, etc.. If you assume an average ownership period of 10 years, that's a $14,000 savings in OpEx. Of course, currently the car is more expensive, you're limited (slightly) in range, and there are (currently) limited number of places where you can fast-charge (15-20 minutes full charge).

Since when do Slashdot readers bet against technology?

Re:No

[SimplyGeek]

"or you've got some kind of "range survivalist syndrome" where you're always worried about "what if I run out of juice and then ZOMBIES ATTACK!?""

I see nothing wrong with that concern. In the colder parts of the US, you certainly wouldn't want to get stuck far from home during a snow storm.

Re:No

[Animats]

Battery swapping is going to seem like a laughably silly idea 10 years from now. I think it's silly right now myself.

I agree. It was successful about a century ago. Today, it's just hype from Shai Agassi of Better Place. (I've met him. He's all hat and no cattle. After five years of hype, all they've installed are a couple of demo sites and a 3 taxicab demo in Tokyo.)

Re:No

[Nethemas the Great]

80% quick charges for EVs generally are down in the 10-15 minute range. No, that's not 2 minutes (what the hell do you drive anyway and 40+ gallon tank SUV?) but you might wish to look at it from a slightly different angle. 10-15 minutes and less than $5 for off the grid power, or 2 minutes and $3.50+ per gallon for gas/diesel. It's a habit changes certainly, but not many people value the 10 or so minutes saved at $100.

Re:No

[LandDolphin]

EV makers should stop trying to appease the "range anxiety" crowd, they can't be appeased.

While this is true, it is nice for the "every man" that they do. If they focused on the average persons needs, the cars would only go 60 or so miles. As they push into the realm of 300 m.p.c. and beyond they start to make a car that is on par with a gasoline car fro the "everyman".

Re:No

[von_rick]

Can it be refueled from empty to full in 2 minutes like a gasoline engine? What is the battery lifespan? How much will they cost to be replaced?

Planning ahead is something thats needed no matter what you drive. No one embarks on a 300 mile roadtrip with the gas gauge blinking red. This one will have the "large LCD display" reminding you to recharge. The battery lifespan is usually in the excess of 100,000 miles, with typical NiMH batteries giving between 130,000-150,000 mile range. At this point, the batteries are expensive, but if you consider the amount of saving in fuel costs, oil changes, all sorts of filters and pumps, etc. over the course of 130k miles - you'd have saved up enough for a battery pack. Another interesting thing is that the cost of fossil based fuels is on the rise, whereas batteries are becoming less expensive over years.

The moral of the story is, if you can afford to spare $50K for starters, you can save quite a bit eventually.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually much of the info on range is intentionally misleading. Nothing other ad guys don't do for companies. The very worst of it has been standardized by gov't regulation for regular internal combustion cars.

Range, they list is for 55 mph most likely constant speed. Totally unrealistic for most uses. If you do all the calculations, for electrics 12 kwh's is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline. So the 85 kwh model would have range of a regular car holding about 7 gallons of gasoline. A car like that in that size and weight might get 30 mpg so range might be 210 miles per charge. I think probably more like 175 miles is closer to the truth. Still a quite useful range and rarely a problem. But this is a pretty expensive car. I do hope the gov't will force these cars to advertise range on the EPA city/highway cycles. Those might be a bit optimistic, but would at least be somewhat consistent and allow a genuine comparison with what you could really expect.

That said I wish them well. If they were affordable with the ranges available in these cars I very much would like to own one. As it is I have trouble seeing the battery pricing ever be good enough to allow that.

Re:No

[PortHaven]

Solution...

Enter into a partnership with Cracker Barrel offer free installation of high speed chargers.

Then everyone will just eat and charge at Cracker Barrel.

Win-Win Scenario....now that's CAPITALISM!!!

Re:No

[s2jcpete]

Wouldn't that be an argument for a AWD vehicle, and not one of these anyway?

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

It's not a life-threatening problem unless you live in the remote hills of North Dakota or something. 300 miles is like a 30MPG car with a 10-gallon tank. For the person who suddenly needed to exceed their car's capabilities and can't wait for a half-hour quick charge at the nearest station, there's always the option of calling a tow truck. Not the end of the world.

Re:No

[scharkalvin]

The did state an 8 year warranty on the battery, with no mileage limit.

Re:No

[dirk]

I mean the high-end model goes 300 miles. There are only two reasons to have a problem with that range: You actually drive further than that regularly, in which case you have no business driving an electric car right now anyways, or you've got some kind of "range survivalist syndrome" where you're always worried about "what if I run out of juice and then ZOMBIES ATTACK!?"

Or the other logical reason is that sometimes you drive farther than that. I would love to get an electric car, and it would handle 98% of my driving. But I'm single and it would be my only car, so the times I do need to drive farther I would be out of luck. I sometime (maybe bimonthly) travel between 150 and 300 miles to regional cities for concerts. Even a 300 mile range is risky since I can't guarantee that I will be able to charge it where I am going.

EVs are great as a secondary car. They make perfect sense and are wonderful. But as the only car someone has, they won't cut it until I can be sure I can find a charging station as easily as I can find a gas station in a different city. I'm just not willing to rent a car every time I want to take a weekend road trip.

Re:No

[PortHaven]

My 2002 Prius is 10 years old now (remember, 2012's come out in 2011).

Battery is still working. And it's not even as fancy as the new ones.

Re:No

[Nadaka]

I live in a hurricane zone and know what it is like to not be able to refuel anywhere in a 200 mile radius with a gas vehicle. And yes, the hordes pouring out of New Orleans as the city floods can seem very zombie like.

Re:No

[harl]

Don't forget that most electricity comes from fossil fuels so the car neither green nor sustainable nor renewable.

Re:No

[0123456]

I mean the high-end model goes 300 miles.

Yeah, and? Our Honda Civic costs less than half as much, goes at least 50% further, and takes a fraction of the time to 'recharge'. We can just manage to drive to my girlfriend's parents house on one tank, whereas if we bought this 'luxury sedan' we'd have to stop for a few hours half-way to charge up... except there's nowhere to do so.

Why would you want a 'luxury sedan' that can't make long journeys, or requires you to hang around waiting for hours on the few routes where you can?

Re:No

[Nadaka]

I live in a hurricane zone and know what it is like to not be able to refuel anywhere in a 200 mile radius with a gas vehicle.

Re:No

[elrous0]

With the top of the range model, I think that they have a no quibble, lifetime, battery replacement service*

*Assuming that Tesla doesn't go belly-up at some point, that is.

Re:No

[0123456]

No one embarks on a 300 mile roadtrip with the gas gauge blinking red.

Why not? There'll be a gas station in five miles and I can 'recharge' in under five minutes.

Re:No

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, but when you go driving in a snow storm, make sure you are prepared. I'm from Canada, so this is common sense to us. Whenever driving in the winter you should have a survival kit with you, complete with blankets, food, shovel, first aid kit, chemical heat packs, matches, emergency candles, etc.... Even if you don't run out of gas or electricity, what happens if you go off the road, or a belt on your car breaks?

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Well for bimonthly I'd say an EV doesn't make sense right now, but for those who only do it once or twice a year it might be worth it to just rent an ICE car for those trips. I wouldn't be surprised if it paid off in gas savings.

Re:No

[BStroms]

Don't forget that electricity isn't free. I think you'd be hard pressed to end up in the black as far as simple dollars went even if it's only $10k less. Still, it's nearing the price point where I'd be interested if it weren't for one critical point. I live in a condo and park in the parking lot outside. There's simply no place for me to plug it in there. For the many people who live in apartments/condos, this is a deal breaker.

It can become a bit of a catch 22 as well. The apartment owner/association isn't going to pay to wire up the parking lots unless there's a lot of demand for it from those living there. There won't be demand for it from those living there unless a lot of them own electric cars. And very few people are going to buy an electric car if they can't plug it in overnight.

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

possibly increased brake life because stopping energy can be recycled into electricity (not sure if Tesla cars implement this, but future electric cars will).

I'd be shocked if it didn't, that's been a standard feature on even low-end EVs for many years now.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

"what if I run out of juice and then ZOMBIES ATTACK!?"

As long as it has ample trunk space to store my arsenal of chainsaws, shotguns, and RPGs I am good.

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Don't make me link the study showing that even an electric car running on a dirty coal plant is much cleaner than a gasoline car AGAIN. And don't make me point out that making cars energy-source-agnostic makes it possible to make whole regions cleaner just by changing the power source AGAIN.

Re:No

[jon3k]

I think its easier to make it almost a "luxury" item and drive it down market than the opposite. Harder to make a super cheap low end electric car and then convince upper-middle class and beyond to buy in to the "cheap electric cars". Not to mention the high relative cost to produce electric vehicles initially can be shouldered mostly by higher income individuals.

Re:No

[jon3k]

My average speed according to my car's computer is 30.2 mph.

Re:No

[0123456]

Don't forget that most electricity comes from fossil fuels so the car neither green nor sustainable nor renewable.

Nonsense. I've seen Logan's Run, I know you can run an electric car from the number of solar cells you can fit on the roof.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean the high-end model goes 300 miles. There are only two reasons to have a problem with that range: You actually drive further than that regularly, in which case you have no business driving an electric car right now anyways, or you've got some kind of "range survivalist syndrome" where you're always worried about "what if I run out of juice and then ZOMBIES ATTACK!?"

Who needs zombies when you have earthquakes, high winds, floods, etc. that can cut your home's electrical power for days or weeks (recent high winds in Pasadena left some homes without power for over 2 weeks)? As long as the streets are clear your non-electric car has no problem getting you out and about. Your electric car will lose significant charge just sitting in your garage.

Re:No

[0123456]

Yeah, but when you go driving in a snow storm, make sure you are prepared.

That basically means: don't drive an electric car. Particularly when the temperature is forty below zero.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be pessimistic, but the "10-15 minutes and less than $5 off the grid power" will never occur. Ever.

It will be "10-15 minutes and about 10 cents less than what gas would cost for the same distance power".

Like bloody hell the energy companies will let you 'refuel' your vehicle cheaply. They're blatantly obviously colluding on prices as is, what makes you think they won't be doing price fixing with electricity stations? They will charge exactly what the market will bear, and not a penny less.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think he meant stuck somewhere where more traction would get you out. I think he was referring to stuck, as in, without juice to get home.

Re:No

[jbengt]

I'm just not willing to rent a car every time I want to take a weekend road trip.

Renting a car for a weekend road trip every couple of months would be far cheaper than owning two cars, though.

Re:No

[fnj]

Assume $0.10/kWh, 3 miles/kWh, or $0.033/mile for electricity, vs. 25 MPG, $3.50/gallon, $0.14/mile for gasoline.

You can assume that if you want, but I won't, thank you. Electricity where I am costs $0.18/kWh, and my existing car gets 45 mpg, not 25. And anybody who spends $200 every 12,000 miles on oil changes is an idiot. It's less than half that, even using the finest synthetic oil.

Sure changes the bottom line, eh.

Re:No

[drussell]

3. The batteries cost $10,000 to replace today. Their cost in 8 - 10 years is extremely difficult to anticipate, but assuming that the materials involved aren't massively more expensive, the technology will certainly be significantly cheaper and should push those prices down.

If the difference in price from the base model to highest range model is $20,000 and the only difference is the double batteries, doesn't that mean there's supposedly about $40,000 of battery in there in total?

Re:No

[fnj]

OK, I won't. Because it's W-R-O-N-G.

Re:No

[rsborg]

I mean the high-end model goes 300 miles.

Yeah, and? Our Honda Civic costs less than half as much, goes at least 50% further, and takes a fraction of the time to 'recharge'.

You're comparing a Model S with a Civic? Hell, the old Prius vs. Carolla comparison was silly, but this is ludicruous. These cars serve different markets, not unlike the netbook vs. iPad vs. Corei7 Alienware, the only thing you acheive by making the apple-oranges comparison is showing your ignorance.

Here is a short incomplete list of differentiating factors that might show you why the Model S is worth it's price: {prestige, driver interface, handling, comfort, road noise, looks...} if you don't think those are worth paying for, then go about happy with your Civic (which is a decent car). If you really consider those to be important you might feel like the limited range and cost are worth the gains.

Re:No

[Synn]

Energy companies don't have a choice in how their electricity is used.

If quick charging becomes the norm(big if), it'll happen at dealerships first. And yeah, it'll be cheap because they want to sell the cars, not the juice.

Other places will then pop up and likely focus on selling you other crap during your 10-15 min wait. Starbucks would be a natural client for this.

Re:No

[rsborg]

My 2002 Prius is 10 years old now (remember, 2012's come out in 2011).

Battery is still working. And it's not even as fancy as the new ones.

And the replacement cost (if you ever need one) has dropped from the initial $8000 or so down to about $1500. My 6 year old Prius still gets 53+ MPG on a commute.

Re:No

[The Mister Purple]

I'm curious: can you put that link up? I have a small wager with a coworker that I need to resolve.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it would. However, the poster is saying that having one car that can go a "virtually unlimited" range as your only car is cheaper than having one car for commuting and finding a secondary mode of transportation (rent for example) when you want to travel. I am with the poster on this: I mainly commute, but sometimes (once or twice a month) I take a trip that can be anywhere from 150 miles to 300 miles in one direction with the usual being around 160-180 miles.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear God, the last thing I want is the EPA trying to rate the range of these..

Not one car I've ever owned has the EPA correctly rated my mileage. The EPA ratings are constantly low. My current car frequently averages (for 3/4 tank) 28mpg... an even 50/50 mix local/highway driving.. It was highway rated at 26mpg... The EPA ratings are f'in USELESS!

Re:No

[Mashiki]

Do you live in the US or Canada? Then driving more than 300mi on average is pretty common. Actually I drive 300mi to go see my neurologist very 1-3mo, I live in Canada, in the most densely populated part of the country(Southern Ontario). I have no "range survivalist syndrome" or "what if I run out of juice and the zombi-apocolypse strikes." My sister, works in Northern Alberta, she works for the federal government. She drive 300mi every month to get her groceries, she drives 300mi 3-5 times a week for prisoner transfers sometimes she needs to leave her vehicle in one location and drive something else. Two of my friends from college also work for the federal government, and also do the same thing. They live in this area called the "northern exclusion zone" where normal life stops being normal. And it gets cold, very cold. Where diesel vehicles stop working normally, and if you don't keep them idling at night, you won't start them in the morning.

Now I realize this is hard to believe, but outside of a bunch of small packed together countries that you can drive across in a short span, where cities are packed ass and cheek together, this isn't an issue. Pretty much everywhere else, or where the infrastructure doesn't exist? Gas and diesel is still king, and for good reason.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to sound like s grumpy old man, but it seems that many of the electronics I bought early in the last decade are still working (my original PS2 is among them) but many of my newer toys are much less durable...

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

heck, it takes 45min just to get the waitress to take my order at Cracker Barrel! ;-)

Ok, not really, but 15min from door to placing an order seems common on my trips.. about 45min to take a break, stretch legs, get a bite, seems like it'd work great..

Partnerships with a few chain restaurants seems like it'd be a great idea really.. Add a few at rest stops as well.. Maybe even at HoJos..

Re:No

[Adriax]

If I assume only 2/3rd of the driving I've done with my car in the 3 years I've had it has been trips within the 300mile range, that driving has cost nearly 500 gallons of gas a year, with local prices putting that at $1700.
The same amount of driving with the 300 mile range tesla, 35 recharges a year. At local electricity prices, that's $300.

In 10 years when I would have to replace the batteries on that thing, it would net me a $4000 savings in fuel costs alone. Adding in other maintenance costs just makes it better.
If I were looking for a new car in that price range, you bet I'd go for the tesla.

The only reason I can't assume 90-95% of my driving in is the range is because I have to make monthly 600mile round trips in a state where "electric car" translates to "UnAmerican Commie Terroristmobile", finding a charging station within range is a lesson in futility.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The EPA ratings are for very specific usage, as the above poster says, say, a flat 55mph. I have an argument for the flip side of mileage in that if I drive entirely in the City, my mileage comes out lower than rated because of the constant start-stop nature of driving. EPA cannot predict the individual driver's patterns - hard or light drivers, traffic patterns, terrain (55mph straight vs 55mph on a windy steep road).

Re:No

[SteveFoerster]

Judging by the three hour lines at the gas stations I saw after Hurricane Wilma hit Fort Lauderdale, even people who live in hurricane zones don't think very clearly about this ahead of time.

Fortunately, I had a Geo Metro, and filled its tank the night before Wilma hit. I was fine until everything was back to normal. Beep beep!

Re:No

[Silfax]

Until battery electric vehicles become popular, stations like this won't be ubiquitous in the same way gas stations are.

Chicken & Egg syndrome here - long range electric vehicles won't become popular until there are stop & swap battery stations available.

Re:No

[SteveFoerster]

Venn diagram of people who eat at Cracker Barrel and people who want to drive electric cars: O O

Re:No

[Widowwolf]

And when power is out, so are Gas pumps

Re:No

[BStroms]

Don't forget that most electricity comes from fossil fuels so the car neither green nor sustainable nor renewable.

Forgive me if I'm being a bit presumptuous about your own beliefs, however, I feel the need to rant a bit here. I am simply sick and tired of people seemingly determined to attack or attempt to discredit anything related to green policies. I find it ridiculous that so many climate skeptics want to turn it into an 'us versus them' game where you have to tear down everything the other side supports.

I'm a climate skeptic myself. I'm skeptical that man has as much to do with climate change as many seem to believe they do. I'm skeptical of their models for the future. I'm skeptical that climate change will be as damaging to the world as they predict if it does continue unabated. I'm skeptical that policies such as carbon taxes will have a significant impact on preventing climate change even if all their models are right, much less enough to outweigh their economic cost.

Even with all of that said, you seem to be putting down the buying of electric cards. Okay you could go after the tax credit, but that's not the fault of the person buying it. No matter what happens to be true regarding climate change, it's hard to argue against reduced pollution and less dependence on foreign oil. If the market can support electric cars, then that's great!

Just because you're a skeptic, and against government intervention on the climate change front, doesn't mean you can't support a green personal lifestyle and try to promote such behavior in others. If anything, you should be more inclined to do so. That way, at least you'll have something to assuage your guilt over being obstructionist with climate policies in the case it turns out you were dead wrong.

Re:No

[Widowwolf]

Then don't buy it..The car is not built for you

Re:No

[bobcat7677]

Additionally, 8-10 years is the typical expected life span of regular gas burning cars today. While you *might* get by with extending a gas burning car's lifetime by rebuilding the engine for less than the cost of a replacement battery pack in a tesla car, it really is probably going to be a wash once you include the other maint costs...maybe even a win for the Tesla car. I really think the Tesla car is on par with it's gas counterparts both in terms of operating costs, range and features. The only fault is it's highish price tag, but it deserves the price tag given that it's a pioneer for technology innovation. They can't be expected to have competitive prices until they have competitors. And nobody else has a vehicle that even comes close. The Volt, leaf, ect are jokes compared to this car's capabilities.

Re:No

[element-o.p.]

It's not a life-threatening problem unless you live in the remote hills of North Dakota or something.

Or Alaska, like me. I've seen as much as 246 miles on a single tank of gas on my motorcycle, although 200 miles is more typical. However, there are trips I've planned where range was a concern -- for example, riding the Haul Road to Deadhorse, a trip I'd like to make some time in the next couple of years, and for which I will probably rig up some way to carry an extra gallon or two of gas.

On the eastern seaboard, where I spent my teenage years, you can walk five minutes and cross through three different municipalities. However, where I live now, there are roads where you stop to fill up with gas at every opportunity whether you need it or not, because the next gas station might not be open and if don't top off now, you might not be able to reach the one after that ;)

Re:No

[Crudely_Indecent]

not necessarily. If charging stations appear, or gas stations offer that as a service, then electric vehicles may become more popular. Once it becomes convenient(er), then we may start seeing other options like stop & swap (I like that name)

Re:No

[Widowwolf]

45 MPG- So you already have a hybrid..You do know most of the world is not driving hybrids right, Oil changes are generally between 30-50 dollars for every 3000 miles so you are looking at estimates for oil changes at $120 - $200.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Not where I live. State has mandated that all gas stations must have backup generators to power the pumps.

Re:No

[PerfectionLost]

beyond they start to make a car that is on par with a gasoline car fro the "everyman".

No enjoyment. Seriously.

Re:No

[PerfectionLost]

The Tesla has a standard batter that can be swapped out. There are a couple swapping stations in california already (or maybe its a couple companies). Tesla is also putting in recharging stations between LA and San Fransisco... not much for us on the east coast at the moment but its a start.

Re:No

[element-o.p.]

As they push into the realm of 300 m.p.c.

Miles per Coulomb?

Re:No

[element-o.p.]

Because most of your driving time is commuting around town, and you (or your spouse) has a second car for those few trips where the EV won't cut it?

My ideal scenario would be an electric motorcycle for commuting in the summer, something like a Tesla or equivalent for my wife to commute in, and then one of our current ICE-powered trucks (probably my wife's -- it's got full sized rear seats for our daughter or other passengers, whereas mine is a king cab, suitable only for small children or double amputees) for making longer trips. Having said that, I won't be swapping out my existing motorcycle or truck until the price on EV's drops significantly.

Re:No

[CrimsonAvenger]

Additionally, 8-10 years is the typical expected life span of regular gas burning cars today. While you *might* get by with extending a gas burning car's lifetime by rebuilding the engine for less than the cost of a replacement battery pack in a tesla car, it really is probably going to be a wash once you include the other maint costs.

My newest car is more than ten years old.

None of my cars have required an engine rebuild yet.

I think you are badly underestimating the lifespan of a modern gasoline car.

Re:No

[CrimsonAvenger]

No one embarks on a 300 mile roadtrip with the gas gauge blinking red.

Last time I headed home, I did exactly that - forgot to fill up the day before, noticed I was running on empty when I hit the highway, got off at the next exit, gassed up, was back on the highway in five minutes.

If I'd been driving an electric, I'd have had to go home and put the trip off by a day....

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

Until battery electric vehicles become popular, stations like this won't be ubiquitous in the same way gas stations are.

Actually, gas stations with service areas on site would be the ideal places to do this work. You just throw the car up on the lift (or whatever they use), do the swap, and send them on their way. Your point is taken regarding the availability of properly equipped places right now, but they don't really need to have them all over the place immediately. We're still on the mentality of gasoline cars where you have no choice but to take the car to a special place to refill its fuel supply every so often. This car is refilled every night at home and most people (>90%) don't drive enough during nearly all of their typical driving days to worry about draining one of these cars to the point that they'd need to worry about a mid-day refill. Unlike gasoline engine vehicles, drivers of these cars will unplug their car in the morning, drive to work/school/the store/etc, then drive it home and plug it in. That'll be their daily routine for everything except long driving vacations (which may require some extra planning in the early years, depending on distance).

What you need at the start are a small number of swap-equipped gas stations easily accessible from high-traffic interstate highways in regions of high sales densities (LA, NYC, etc) and quick charge stations at similarly accessible places where people typically stop for >45 minutes (such as restaurants). The easy selling point there would be to install the quick charge stations for free at chain restaurants where white collar and upper middle class purchasers of the Model S would normally go. That then gives you some infrastructure of quick-swap stations when you just want to keep moving and quick charge stations when you want to stop for something to eat. Their next step would be to license (cheaply) the quick-swap and quick-charge technologies to other electric car makers so their way becomes the standard. The worst thing that could happen to all-electric cars would be a slew of incompatible standards wherein nobody knows which stations can actually perform a swap for your particular vehicle.

Re:No

[w_dragon]

Why not?

Re:No

[element-o.p.]

I'm skeptical that a "Battery Exchange" solution will catch on. How many batteries does it take to power the Model S? Are they easily accessible? How difficult is it to replace them? Is this something that the owner will be able to do, or do you have to wait for the "Battery Exchange" attendant to service your car?

While any moron with even half a brain can top off the gas tank on a conventional car, working with high current batteries is considerably riskier. I once shorted the positive lead on a 24V airplane battery to the frame of the aircraft with a Leatherman...I still have a blob of molten metal on the front of the parka I was wearing at the time (note to self: ALWAYS disconnect the negative terminal before attempting to disconnect the positive terminal!!!). I also once watched a guy try to jump start his car by connecting the negative lead on a set of booster cables to the positive terminal on the battery and the positive lead on the booster cables to a metal bracket on the engine. Neither one of us caught the mistake until the metal bracket started glowing red...in full daylight. That was impressive ;) Trust me, you don't want Joe Average swapping out batteries himself.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Frank, get your ass back to work! Stop using company time to discredit electric cars, we already pay that team of astroturfers to do it and they're cheaper per hour than you are.

Re:No

[RugRat]

You clearly would not be a candidate for this car then. This is a luxury sports sedan. Generally luxury sports sedans get well below 25 MPG.

I'd also suspect, if your electricity is $0.18, then your gas is likely higher than $3.50.

It also appears that the Tesla roadster gets 4 miles / kWh and some super-efficient electric cars are above 10 miles per kWh. So yes, the calculations are very sensitive to the inputs.

As a matter of policy, I'd prefer to see the (US) government get out of the business of subsidizing oil and picking winners and let the market produce whatever the consumer demands. I think we'd see a lot more people (in the US) driving cars like yours -- 45 MPG.

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

There are a few and they all deal with plug-in hybrids, and it turns out it's not so simple for EVs. Non-plug-in hybrids are cleaner on 100% dirty coal but PHEVs and pure EVs aren't because it turns out 100% dirty coal is actually worse than gasoline:

http://web.mit.edu/mitei/docs/.../electrification-transportation-system.pdf

This article calculates the efficiency of a pure EV running on 100% dirty coal and confirms that it's worse than gasoline, using a real-world worst-case scenario (Wyoming) an EV's emissions are roughly on par with a 25MPG gasoline car:

http://www.carbonlighthouse.com/2011/08/the-coal-powered-electric-car-part-iii/

So an EV running on 100% dirty coal or close to it is worse than a gasoline car, but there are few places where you could find such filthy sources of energy so in practice it should still be much cleaner.

Re:No

[bobcat7677]

I did not estimate anything. 8-10 years is the expected lifespan of the average car made today as designed (also known as the design lifespan). This is based on a "typical" usage of 20K miles per year (which of course is a lot more miles than many people drive, but less than others). Of course many vehicles last longer then that and many shorter then that. It all depends on how you use them. Likewise, you can expect some of the Tesla vehicles to last more or less years also depending on how they are abused or taken care of.

Re:No

[Mashiki]

Obviously. However with him prattling on about battery range, I'm pointing out the obvious. The average person does indeed drive more than 300mi regularly. Hell most people I know commute more than 700km/week.

Re:No

[digitalsolo]

Most modern cars and oils need oil changes at closer to 5000-7500 miles, depending on driving style, FWIW.

Re:No

[Firethorn]

3. The batteries cost $10,000 to replace today. Their cost in 8 - 10 years is extremely difficult to anticipate, but assuming that the materials involved aren't massively more expensive, the technology will certainly be significantly cheaper and should push those prices down.

Lithium is actually a pretty common element, and I remember seeing a report(years ago now) that said that the theoretical cost of LiIon technology is actually lower than NiMH cells.

Re:No

[rjstanford]

Obviously. However with him prattling on about battery range, I'm pointing out the obvious. The average person does indeed drive more than 300mi regularly. Hell most people I know commute more than 700km/week.

Which is ~435 miles / week, or 85 miles a day (which is long in the places where most people live (not in "most of the country" by volume)), which is totally and utterly reasonable in a car that starts off every single day with 160 miles of range.

Re:No

[foniksonik]

Those items are affordable. These batteries cost thousands. Can't just pick up a spare at the local auto supply.

I suppose you could bring a generator and some gas/diesel.

Re:No

[harl]

Those are your words not mine. I never claimed to be a "climate skeptic." I never stated anything in the one sentence that could be construed in that way. I merely listed a true fact.

Just as you are sick and tired of "climate skeptics" the thing I am sick and tired of is people who think electricity is some magical clean power source.

Re:No

[harl]

Less dirty is not clean.

Everything I said is true.

Re:No

[keckbug]

"Fortunately, I had a Geo Metro" The first, and last, time that someone has said that...

Re:No

[AmberBlackCat]

By the way, my car is approximately a 30-mpg car with a 10-gallon tank. It costs about $55000 less than the Tesla. But I must admit, I don't have a 17-inch touchscreen built into the car.

Re:No

[Widowwolf]

Ok lets just say the average mileage per year is 12,000-15000 so lets go off the estimate of 13,500. 13,500/52 = 260.00 a week = and even if you said well with that 260 a week, we don't drive on weekends, that is still 52 miles a day...Still well within the range for this guy.. For my wife, she has a 15 mile commute to work( and no feasible public transportation available) so this would be completely feasible. We also use her car on the weekends and still do less then 10,000 miles per year..This isn't gonna be one of those i have to go 400 miles just to get supplies cars..This is for suburb to city commuters.

Re:No

[Crudely_Indecent]

I was thinking something more along the lines of a laptop battery (larger, of course), which have one-way keys to prevent incorrect insertion.

Pull up, release the retention bracket, slide out old battery, slide in new battery, re-engage retention bracket, laugh at the "male enhancement" drugs on sale at the counter, pay the attendant, continue driving to starbucks.

Re:No

[Ossifer]

All that's really needed to appease the range anxiety crowd is to increase capacity (and/or efficiency, though surely more on the capacity side) up to the number of miles one can reasonably drive in a single day. Say 600 miles? Yes I know some curmudgeons will say they regularly drive much longer distances in a day--both this is about obtaining access to a reasonably large potential market.

Right now you can order one for 300 miles. And given the specified 10-year time frame, don't you think we can improve battery life economically to double that in 10 years?

Re:No

[SteveFoerster]

I've owned two of them at various points, and I said that every time I thought about how much I wasn't paying for gas. They're not so good for drag racing, though, I'll admit!

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

People always propose RENT A CAR! as an option. This is really a stupid option. One, car rentals are expensive. Two, if I am buying a Tesla model S for 50,000 do I really want to drive around in a shitty kia on long roadtrips? No, I want to take my 50,000 car, because that is why I bought it.

Re:No

[Miseph]

Are trains and buses unavailable in your area?

Re:No

[BStroms]

Well, if I was wrong, at least I already apologized for it in my first post and all my yous after the first paragraph were universal yous anyway. As I said, I mostly wanted to rant. Anyway, I won't go in to much detail, because others have already done so in reply to you. But I will summarize that, while the source your electricity may vary by region, electric cars are at least, on average, significantly greener than gasoline cars. They also have the potential to become even greener as, presumably, more renewable power sources are going to be added to the grid.

Re:No

[Miseph]

Such stations will not appear unless and until they have a reason to do so. The only reason that works is because they can profit from it. They cannot profit from it until there is a critical mass of EVs with compatible batteries on the road.

Chicken and egg.

If the government wanted to do something useful, they could actually mandate a standard battery interface and physical dimensions. Doing so would force competing manufacturers to use compatible parts, prevent the use of proprietary interfaces for the sole purpose of generating spurious revenues (a la printer cartridges) and create an ecosystem where competition actually means something. Of course people would bitch about it, call it socialism, call it fascism and rail against "Big Government interference in the Free Market" but the fact is it would be the right thing to do. Also, they already did that with gasoline pumps, and nobody seems to care.

Re:No

[jafac]

bottom line is: some people can just be dumbasses, and abuse their batteries.

If they know they can swap it out, and make it someone else's problem, they WILL do it.

I do not want to pull into a service station, and trade in my GOOD battery, that I've babied, and treated nice, and not drained down to dead, for a piece of crap that is damaged by some moron who has no impulse control or foresight or capability to plan and discipline themselves, and runs their battery until empty thus burning out a $30,000 battery pack.

This is a huge problem, and battery-swaps will NOT solve it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a large majority of people don't make long trips like that on a regular basis. Maybe once or twice a year.

We're still in the early adopter phase, so there's a large price premium, but consider five years down the road, perhaps they'll be at price parity. You could rent a gasoline car (or better, a turbodiesel) for the long road trips with the money you save on gasoline the rest of the year and still come out ahead. Or, families typically have two cars anyway, you could have one electric and one gas and use the one that makes the most sense for the trip.

Re:No

[Ossifer]

No--curie.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, batteries work poorly in the cold!

Re:No

[Ossifer]

Some people have two cars. My family does. The Prius I've driven to work for the past 1½ years has never been outside the Bay Area since I bought it. Our bigger "fambly" vehicle is great for road trips...

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Well then nothing is clean.

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

Wrong, because:

A) You likely would have developed the routine of plugging in your electric car when you got home, which would mean a fully fueled vehicle each time you leave

and

B) Assuming you completely forgot to plug in your car, an 80% charge in the Tesla Model S requires about 45 minutes with the quick charge gear and they have a 5-minute battery swap at properly equipped stations. So you'd either go to the nearest swap station or you'd put your trip on hold for 45 minutes because you forgot to plug in your car.

Scenario A is far more likely. The only reason you don't think it is is because you're still thinking like a gas engine car owner. If you live on either coast, it's extremely likely that the time between trips of >150 miles is measured in months, if not years. 150 miles in a populated region is one heck of a long ways away. On the East coast, 150 will invariably take you past/through a number of very large towns and major cities.

Re:No

[Ossifer]

Have you ever considered what backup generators generate?

Re:No

[lupine]

You are correct. I have a reservation for a leaf and the last time I went to cracker barrel was over 10 years ago.

Re:No

[LandDolphin]

Miles per charge

Re:No

[LandDolphin]

Guess you weren't the you I was speaking to. :-)

Re:No

[element-o.p.]

Ahh...that makes sense. Thanks!

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Not enough electricity to charge an EV.

Re:No

[haruchai]

If you're leasing the battery ( the hallmark of the Better Place plan ) then you wouldn't care - it's not your battery, not your warranty. If you get a bad one, you call it in, go back through the switch station ( or a different one) and that's it. In the end, we want batteries to be a commodity; leasing them is probably the quickest route to that goal.

Re:No

[Jeremi]

Still, it's nearing the price point where I'd be interested if it weren't for one critical point. I live in a condo and park in the parking lot outside.

C'mon, how hard is it to run an extension cord from your parking spot to your neighbor's patio outlet? ;^)

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

As they push into the realm of 300 m.p.c.

Miles per Coulomb?

Miles per Charge

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

Power plants are vastly more efficient animals than your average fuel combustion engine. Your typical car wastes massive amounts of fuel on heat loss, friction of moving engine parts, and all the various things that have to be powered by the engine to keep the engine going (fuel injectors, fuel pump, air cooling, water pump, battery charging, etc), to say nothing of the straight fuel waste. Above and beyond that, you have to consider all the oil going into the car (oil changes every 3 - 5k miles), and the energy cost of manufacturing all those moving parts unique to a fuel combustion engine which wear out over time.

Even if every watt of power for your brand new Model S came from a coal fire power plant (which, statistically, it isn't), you still come out massively ahead of gasoline engine vehicle owners in terms of environmental impact. More realistically, some of the power will be coming from natural gas power plants, nuclear power plants, hydro, and even a bit of "renewable" power.

Quite honestly, if we - as a people - wanted to look at an investment that would revolutionize how we affect our environment (just speaking from a local, observable environmental impact that nobody questions) and establish real energy security (no more sending troops to die in foreign deserts - YAY!), we'd work out a 10-year plan for shutdown and replacement of all coal, oil, and natural gas power plants with nuclear power plants (with on-site fuel reprocessing, likely using the latest CANDU plants) and ramp up Tesla's (and anyone else who actually has competitive technologies) infrastructure and Bluestar technology and manufacturing. The goal would be to have electric cars with 300+ mile ranges and 5-minute swappable batteries selling for under $20k, a >75% move to these new cars across the population, properly equipped gas stations around the country strategically placed to perform the swaps as needed, quick charge stations around the country at hotels, offices, and restaurants, and a grid supplying these vehicles with power using modern nuclear plants running at peak efficiency within 10-12 years. The up-front investment would be enormous and it's virtually impossible to get the kind of solidarity required to pull off such a huge structural change in today's world, but we'd be in an absolutely incredible position moving forward in terms of our environment and our energy security.

Just for giggles, I worked out the capital costs of building sufficient ACR-1000 reactors to provide all necessary electricity in the United States (411 1200MWe reactors at estimated capital costs - including interest during build time - of $11.218 Billion each) at $4.61 Trillion US. That would replace all existing power plants, including existing nuclear power plants, with brand new ACR-1000 reactor powered plants, providing funding from design to full operation, including initial fuel and hiring/training costs. This would be a WWII level project which would put the entire nation to work and would result in massive growth both during and after completion. It would also propel the United States to the forefront of the world, technologically, and give us a whole new area of high tech manufacturing and services to export across the globe as others watch the incredible benefits unfold. We'd be the world's experts on how to make the transition out of the fossil fuel age.

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

Oops. That should be $4.52 Trillion US. I forgot to convert from Canadian dollars.

Re:No

[arse maker]

Then don't buy an EV. Seems like a perfectly reasonable reason to avoid it.

You could argue as to why you are stuck so far from home when the battery was never going to get you home anyhow, snow storm or not *shrugs*

Re:No

[arse maker]

Then the car isn't right for you.
It's not a problem for most people however.

Re:No

[arse maker]

I doubt they will ever be very common. Unless trucks or vans that make constant long range routes use EV's.

Its not a common requirement for people and the people who need to travel long distances wont buy EV's so I doubt that market will ever arrise.

EV makers will probably try to create some stations on high traffic routes to help sell them, but I dont think a natural market will evolve for them any time soon.

Re:No

[Shadow99_1]

As an FYI, the Tesla's use rather large battery casings that would will most of the space under the hood of my current car. These casings contain over 3000 cylindrical li-ion battery cells.

Re:No

[harl]

It's not clean. It's not renewable. It's not sustainable.

Re:No

[harl]

Then every single usage of clean, renewable, or sustainable is a lie.

Re:No

[GameboyRMH]

Only if you deal in absolutes.

Re:No

[benhattman]

My guess is you are just waiting for charging stations to be rolled out in sufficient quantity. I'm already noticing them at local parks. If you drive 60 mph and have 300 mile range, that's 5 hours of driving. With the exception of road trips and heading off to college, that's probably about as far as anyone really wants to drive in a single day. If you can quick charge to 80% battery (240 mile range) in 45 minutes and if you know the restaurant you stop at for lunch/dinner is likely to have a charging station, then it probably covers the vast majority of use cases.

There will always be situations like teenage road trips or long-haul trucking where you plan on going over 1000 miles a day, where EVs might not work. And, even where they do work, they might alter the way people behave (e.g. going into a restaurant to eat, while the car charges instead of getting drive-thru). But at this point, I think it's just a matter of time until reasonable cases like yours are sufficiently supported.

Re:No

[harl]

The fact that big power plants are more efficient is irrelevant because the total consumption and production of power only goes up. Every year we burn more fossil fuels than the previous.

More efficient burning of fossil fuels doesn't mean green or sustainable or renewable. It just means more people can exist at the status quo.

Now I don't want to come across as anti tech or progress. I'm the opposite. I want us to finally have some progress. I think the green movement is inhibiting progress.

The whole green movement only assuages conscience. It doesn't actually fix anything. Especially hybrid and electric cars. They're still fossil fuel powered. Batteries are some of the most toxic items to produce and dispose of on the planet. Most importantly they reinforce the current mentality, sprawl, consume, trash. At our current tech level anything other than reduce or reuse is a net loss. While we need to keep working on solutions, researching recycling and power tech, it annoys me that people think options we have now are solutions. It's impossible for me to offset the 10 gallons of gasoline I burn a week through any "green" methods let alone the electricity my house uses.

Not buying useless crap, fixing broken things, and giving things away rather than throwing them away do more good than anything the "green" industry will sell you.

Plus TEPCO's fuck up at fukushima sent us back decades but that's a different rant.

Humans are natural animals and even though we like to think of ourselves as better than other animals we're not. None of this is going to change until we have a mass die off. It's the natural cycle with any animal and resources.

Re:No

[harl]

The "green" movement has not reduced fossil fuel usage. Fossil fuel usage has continued to raise every year. Increased usage of a finite resource is not renewable nor sustainable.

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

It's as clean and safe as anything we've yet developed or even imagined. Per TWh generated, it's the safest electricity generation technology ever used on any sizable scale (including solar and wind).

Nothing is "renewable". All electricity generation requires construction of things which are not fully recyclable and which are not completely environmentally neutral.

Nuclear power requires a ridiculously small amount of fuel and we have massive amounts of it located across the globe. Even if you only look at Uranium, there's tons of it everywhere. If you look at Thorium, the idea of sustainability of it becomes an absolute joke (in the realm of us having millions of years of fuel available even if current electricity usage continue to increase without end).

Re:No

[The Mister Purple]

Thank you, and know that I didn't have to pay for my sandwich.

Re:No

[harl]

This is all pointless. Electric cars are fossil fuel powered so they do nothing to help except with guilt.

Nothing will help until we change behavior.

Re:No

[toddestan]

I see nothing wrong with that concern. In the colder parts of the US, you certainly wouldn't want to get stuck far from home during a snow storm.

Why not? You could safely leave the heat on without worrying about killing yourself with carbon monoxide like you do in a gasoline vehicle when the exhaust gets buried under the snow. Without the motor running, the battery should run the climate control and lights for a long time.

Re:No

[toddestan]

They aren't bad cars. They are simple enough that not much can go wrong with them, and they weren't actually built by GM so they weren't total shit. Their biggest downfall was that they were so cheap people considered them almost disposable so a lot of the used ones are in really terrible shape.

Re:No

[Loki_1929]

A) They're not just fossil fuel powered. They're powered by a variety of sources, including clean nuclear power, hydro, and (to a much smaller extent) "renewables". See here for US sources of electricty: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Electricity_Production_the_USA.svg and recognize that in other places (like France and Canada), the majority of electricity on the power grid is from clean sources. Those countries benefit even more from moving to electric vehicles.

B) A large central fossil fuel power plant is vastly more efficient the fuel combustion engine in any car, which results in vastly less overall pollution.

C) Electric vehicles have a lot less wear and tear, which means less replacement parts need to be manufactured for them, which reduces their overall energy use.

Re:No

[Narnie]

Venn diagram should be more like this: 8
because the GP is the one and only person who eats at Cracker Barrel and wants to drive an electric car.

Not this one

[drinkypoo]

They've claimed all along (or close to it anyway) that the plan was to sell the rest of us a car on the third iteration.

The one I'm really interested in is the cheaper sports car, which could be the fourth or fifth model. More range, less performance, enough room for groceries but not for golf clubs.

Re:Not this one

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might be better off converting a Miata to an electric drive. You can do that today. http://www.evmiata.com/

Re:Not this one

[sci-ku]

Sort of.
They've modified that plan slightly, and the 3rd iteration is already underway as more of a licensing type relationship with Mercedes for Smart and Toyota for Rav4.


The Roadster is due to return in I think 7 years. Don't know if it will be priced like an M3 or like an Eclipse, though.

Re:Not this one

[AmberBlackCat]

Are you sure? All I've ever heard was the sports car will be the expensive one so the family car will be affordable. But I didn't hear that from "official" sources. I heard it from that guy I'm with, and people posting in Slashdot like you.

Re:Not this one

[drinkypoo]

Probably true. If I could get a donor for essentially nothing then I might consider it, I may be able to get cells to build lithium batteries for nothing.

Re:Not this one

[drinkypoo]

I haven't heard anything about a cheaper sports car, but it's a logical assumption that it will follow along behind the cheaper road car... eventually. Since they probably won't do a pickup (I hope not, because it would be stupid anyway, pickups want diesels) it makes the most sense to do a hatch next, then a people carrier, and finally a sport coupe, and somewhere along the line a performance-, feature- and cost-reduced version of the Model S to fit in between the hatch and the Model S.

How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[Anonymous Coward]

[[cars also include a very large seventeen-inch touchscreen]]

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[mr1911]

How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

About 17 inches.

The "very large seventeen-inch touchscreen" referenced in the summary is a metric touchscreen. Typical noob mistake.

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[elrous0]

There is also an option for an abnormal 17" screen. It's pear-shaped.

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[oodaloop]

Posting to undo moderation. Dammit.

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just curious why 17", wouldn't 12 be perfectly fine and could be more energy efficient? What is the impact on the range if not used at all?

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[amorsen]

It's square, unlike typical 17" screens with an aspect ratio of 16:3.

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could not make it Apple shaped or they would have got sued!

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[arse maker]

Well the top battery capacity is 85kw/h. The monitor probably uses 30watts.. so for a full day of being on it is 30*24 720w/h or 0.72kw/h.

So its >1% of a full charge if it was on for 24 hours straight which it would never be.

Re:How large is a normal 17-inch touchscreen?

[Flere Imsaho]

The "very large seventeen-inch touchscreen" referenced in the summary is a metric touchscreen. Typical noob mistake.

Typical NASA mistake - FTFY

CNG is the Future

[GeneralTurgidson]

Until they figure out solar, natural gas is the next big thing. Easy to retrofit, no batteries. Cheap (at least in the US).

Re:CNG is the Future

[OzPeter]

Until they figure out solar, natural gas is the next big thing. Easy to retrofit, no batteries. Cheap (at least in the US).

Next big thing??? Its been a standard thing in many other places in the world for a long long time. Its probably only slow to take off in the US because (compared globally) the US has very cheap gas prices.

Re:CNG is the Future

[spiffmastercow]

Until they figure out solar, natural gas is the next big thing. Easy to retrofit, no batteries. Cheap (at least in the US).

Yeah, if you completely forget about supply and demand. How cheap do you think that natural gas is going to be once it's a common fuel for cars? Hint: look at the price and prevalence of diesel from 1980 to now.

Re:CNG is the Future

[lgw]

Isn't the US a net exporter of natural gas right now? There's somehting to be said for a fuel source that doesn't require armies stationed in foreign deserts, even if it's a bit pricey.

Re:CNG is the Future

[Andy Dodd]

Let's not forget the significant negative environmental impacts of drilling for gas.

It may burn clean, but it sure as hell doesn't extract clean. Take a trip to Dimock, PA for a good example.

Re:CNG is the Future

[neonKow]

Actually, you're probably the one forgetting about supply and demand. There's ridiculous supply available. You're only talking demand.

Re:CNG is the Future

[spiffmastercow]

Actually, you're probably the one forgetting about supply and demand. There's ridiculous supply available. You're only talking demand.

Arg.. Okay, time for today's math lesson.
If you increase demand, you increase the price. If you increase the demand by 200 million cars (roughly the number of working vehicles in the country, assuming the average adult has 1 car), then you increased demand by a metric shit-ton. You really think the prices will stay the same?

Re:CNG is the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

As the owner of an electric Nissan LEAF, a hybrid Toyota Prius, and a CNG Honda Civic GX I can tell you the car I'm getting rid of right now. Hint: it's the one with the limited range, limited fueling infrastructure, fuel storage method expiration date of 15 years or less, no trunk space, and limited amenities.

If you guess the LEAF or Prius you'd be wrong. We've enjoyed our Civic GX, and it's proven to be a reliable car, but cost and convenience wise it can't hold a candle to the LEAF now that we've taken delivery and been driving the car for 6 months.

Plugging in the LEAF is significantly more convenient than driving to the nearest CNG station (6 miles away) and hoping their pump is operating. If it's not then it's a 12 mile drive to the next CNG station which usually has a queue of buses, garbage trucks, or taxis lined up meaning a 30 minute wait. The CNG cylinder has a legally mandated expiration date of 15 years and would cost more than the value of the rest of the car to replace when that time is up. Maintenance for the car is very costly, requiring special CNG fuel line filters changed every other service (about $800 when we go to the Civic GX friendly dealer in the desert, closer to $1500 at the regular Honda dealer in town) as well as cylinder inspections and certifications, and all that doesn't even get you out of having to do a smog check in California.

The LEAF by comparison plugs in anywhere from public quick-charge DC stations (20-30 minute charge) to home 240V and 120V connections. It also requires no regular maintenance beyond topping up windshield washer fluid and having the tires rotated. The energy cost is about half of what we pay at the CNG station, and a quarter of what we pay to fuel the Prius. The trunk is huge and the back seats fold down for even more room. The car is fast, quiet, and comfortable and makes the Prius feel quaint and old fashioned. The Civic GX feels like a horse drawn buggy by comparison - it's sluggish (the CNG version has about 30HP less than the petrol version of the Civic and it has a heavy CNG cylinder to lug around), has no trunk space, and has all the noise and shaking you get with ICE cars.

But hey, if you're interested in a nice clean Civic GX with a little over 100,000 miles then ignore all that, I've got a car to sell you!

Re:CNG is the Future

[Nethemas the Great]

There are supply issues (no infrastructure both on the source and dispense), there are range issues--similar to a Tesla style EV and more like a battery only Volt or Leaf on a retrofit), there are horse-power issues, cold weather starting issues, and there are no consumer safe fill the tank solutions. Further, any kind of compressed/liquified gas solution would require strict and frequent inspection to remain safe. CNG/LP was probably the best alternative back in the 1970's when we were hit with the so-called gas crisis but it isn't the only nor best (out of the box) alternative today.

Re:CNG is the Future

[GameboyRMH]

And even though it releases relatively little carbon, it's still a fossil fuel...with electric cars you just change the power source to something carbon-neutral and all cars in the region are suddenly carbon-neutral.

Re:CNG is the Future

[GameboyRMH]

Wow, can't get a more well-informed comparison than that.

Re:CNG is the Future

[blueg3]

That's not math, that's economics. It's not even very good economics.

Re:CNG is the Future

[spiffmastercow]

Okay, let's put it in math terms then (not going to debate the supply and demand model, as that's an entirely different conversation):
price ~= demand / supply.
as demand -> infinity, price -> infinity
Now let's make this a bit more complicated. Supply is constantly depleted, so for a given time span we can say that:
price(t) ~= demand(t) / (supply - (demand(1) .. demand(t))
and thus as demand -> infinity OR supply -> 0, price -> infinity.
Sorry, I don't know the shortcut keys to the math symbols, nor do I have the inclination to look for them.

Re:CNG is the Future

[The Mister Purple]

Barring calling it "math" when it should be "economics", what about that statement is bad? Increasing demand doesn't always mean increasing supply, despite what the Church of Eternal Growth would tell you.

Re:CNG is the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Elastic Pricing. It's easy to switch other things that use natural gas to other fuels dramatically dropping demand, so if the price goes up, it only goes up a little.

Re:CNG is the Future

[The Mister Purple]

Agreed.

Re:CNG is the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out where our gas comes from. Hint: it's not the Persian Gulf (well, they supply 13% of our gas according to that link). The GP is right: the fact that we have enough natural gas for what we use it for now for the foreseeable future does not mean we can support using it as transportation fuel for any significant proportion of our transportation.

Re:CNG is the Future

[blueg3]

Increasing demand doesn't always mean increasing supply

It doesn't always, certainly, but sometimes it does. Original statement said (indirectly) that increased demand must necessarily result in increased prices, which is overly simplistic and often not true.

Re:CNG is the Future

[spiffmastercow]

Increasing demand doesn't always mean increasing supply

It doesn't always, certainly, but sometimes it does. Original statement said (indirectly) that increased demand must necessarily result in increased prices, which is overly simplistic and often not true.

No, I said (indirectly) that increased demand and fixed supply result in higher prices. Debates on the supply and demand model applies here are a little more muddied since you have possibilities of new sources of supply, government intervention, gouging, etc., but it would be very hard to argue that its not the most correct model to apply in this situation.

Re:CNG is the Future

[jafac]

well - I used to think that about diesel too - and, in fact, I do have a diesel, and it does suck.

I think that the "next big thing", actually, is unemployment keeps going up, so that only really wealthy people can drive, and most of us walk, and pretty much fucking eat eachother or starve to death.

Re:CNG is the Future

[jafac]

I have to say that the Leaf is about the ugliest car I've ever seen. The only thing close, is the Prius. Civic is pretty butt-ugly too. Damn. Poor dude.

Re:CNG is the Future

[Pirulo]

15 years ago I retrofitted my car in Argentina and drove it for about 3 years. Only lost about 10% power compared to oil gas. Kept the engine cleaner. Was way cheaper and less polluting. But for the retrofit you need to occupy your trunk or cargo with a big tank that takes most space, and with that tank you get about 30% of what you'll do with a full oil gas tank. As a bonus you could switch back and forth from one fuel to the other.

But as with all technology

[goldcd]

We need the rich guys to buy it first, so the rest of us can pick them up when they get mass market - if there is a mass market (which personally I think there is)
The first "motorized carriages" were quite definitely impractical toys for the rich. See also the first airplanes and pretty much "the first anythings"

Re:But as with all technology

[GameboyRMH]

True. I wouldn't even call this impractical at all, just too expensive for the everyman. They look like decent deals if you have the money.

Re:But as with all technology

[cayenne8]

I'm not interested in an electric car at all...until they can bring back the sports car version, and price it in the Corvette range.

Who actually 'lusts' after a freakin' family car...?

Re:But as with all technology

[yurtinus]

People that buy Cadillac Escallades...

Re:But as with all technology

[GameboyRMH]

I think that if they can build a 4-door luxury car with these specs for $50k they can build a 2-door sports car with similar power for less... :D

Although if they base it on the next-gen Elise you might want to walk into the car backwards...talk about fugly x_x

Re:But as with all technology

[0123456]

True. I wouldn't even call this impractical at all, just too expensive for the everyman. They look like decent deals if you have the money.

So rich people don't like to drive more than 160 miles without stopping for several hours to recharge?

Re:But as with all technology

[GameboyRMH]

Not only rich people, *most* people. The average American drives 40 miles per day.

Re:But as with all technology

[sheehaje]

My first tuna sandwich was half eaten by a rich guy.

Re:But as with all technology

[trum4n]

The main problem i have is that electric cars are old tech. They shouldn't be niche items anymore. Hell, i got so sick of waiting, i built my own. For under $3,000.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that. Where a friend of mine lives, his HOA only allows Escalades as the only pickup truck or SUV type of vehicle to be owned in the neighborhood. Any other model of truck gets towed, and a $300 "eyesore" fee gets assessed against the owner.

Re:But as with all technology

[SteveFoerster]

I don't have any mod points, but if you reply with links on how to do this I'll think of you as an informative person.

Re:But as with all technology

[westlake]

need the rich guys to buy it first, so the rest of us can pick them up when they get mass market

Henry Ford did it the other way around.

What he saw were limited production run cars built for the luxury market and almost useless beyond the city limits because the infrastructure wasn't there to support them.

What he saw was that mass market sales would generate enormous funds for R&D.

The Ford could cruise comfortably at 35-45 miles an hour over the worst roads imaginable at a cost of a penny a mile. Portal to portal service for a family of four and their dog and cat for twenty percent of the price of a single streetcar ticket.

"Modding" the Ford body became something of a national obsession.

Pick-uo truck, delivery van, lunch wagon, camper, you name it. "You could afford a Ford."

Re:But as with all technology

[Widowwolf]

And this is why i will never live in a HOA..Thank you for proving my point

Re:But as with all technology

[ackthpt]

The main problem i have is that electric cars are old tech. They shouldn't be niche items anymore. Hell, i got so sick of waiting, i built my own. For under $3,000.

This is where we need a Hearth Kit like company - send you a bunch of boxes and you build it yourself in your garage (do not build it in your cellar!) The aftermarket for tweaking these things should be becoming awesome, soon.

Re:But as with all technology

[ari_j]

The problem with that statement is that it is an average. Probably close to zero Americans actually drive 40 miles per day. The point is this: Only rich people can afford a $60,000 car that is worthless other than for everyday commuting along with a second vehicle for longer trips where stopping for several hours after every 2 hours of driving is impractical. The average American may drive 40 miles per day, but the average American probably does make a one-way driving trip of over 160 miles at least a couple times a year (twice per major traveling holiday).

Re:But as with all technology

[skids]

If I were still a teenage prankster, I'd sure have a lot of fun taking magnetic "woody wagon" panels and sticking them on escallades, then filming the victim when they get out of the mall.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, HOAs suck. Having neighbors that park multiple jacked up Dodge 2500's in the street suck worse though.

Re:But as with all technology

[SvnLyrBrto]

If I recall my history correctly though, Henry Ford deliberately priced the Model T and such below what the market would bear AND overpaid his own workers so as to make sure they had enough disposable income to buy one and to drive up average wages in general so other companies' employees did as well.

Tesla makes cool toys, no doubt. But are they engaging in the economy-as-a-whole building exercises that Ford did?

Re:But as with all technology

[mosb1000]

But what's the longest trip the "average" driver expects to make in their car? Much more than 150 miles. Much more than 300 miles even. Electric cars won't be adequate for the average user until they can be recharged in a reasonable amount of time during a road-trip.

Re:But as with all technology

[rsun]

And that's what a rental car is for....

Re:But as with all technology

[rjstanford]

The problem with that statement is that it is an average. Probably close to zero Americans actually drive 40 miles per day. The point is this: Only rich people can afford a $60,000 car that is worthless other than for everyday commuting along with a second vehicle for longer trips where stopping for several hours after every 2 hours of driving is impractical. The average American may drive 40 miles per day, but the average American probably does make a one-way driving trip of over 160 miles at least a couple times a year (twice per major traveling holiday).

The average American, in your case, can rent a car twice a year. In fact, they frequently do so after getting in an airplane and travelling many miles. Plenty of people never drive their personal car over 250 miles (the larger range offered) in a single day ... ever.

Re:But as with all technology

[rjstanford]

There are tons of those companies. The trouble is that when you add in all the actual costs (not assuming that you get a great deal on a wrecked EV to start with (which doesn't scale)) and if you want to end up with a "normal"-driving highway-capable vehicle with a reasonable (~75 mile) daily range, it costs more like $10-12K just to get in the game.

Re:But as with all technology

[trum4n]

diyelectriccar.com is the main source for me. I used off the shelf contactor and controller. Used forklift motor set me back 100$ shipped on ebay. 00 wire is about as small as you should consider in my book. After using the forum to determine how easy it was, i didn't even read the manuals that came with the parts. It's harder to hook up a surround sound system(more wires). These wires are just bigger. Oh, and mounting the motor to the transmission is only as hard as you make it. I welded a pulley to a piece of the original clutch.(google electriclemon for more info on this part.) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.109683400126.117327.665000126&type=1&l=0a028722c1 i have photos up there.

Re:But as with all technology

[trum4n]

If you start with a used 1996 Saturn that you already own, it costs about $3000 to get around 95mi of range. Considering this car can easily be had for under 4 grand running, i don't think 10K is an accurate number. Do not underestimate Walmart Marine batteries. They do a fine job.

Re:But as with all technology

[SteveFoerster]

+1, Informative

Re:But as with all technology

[icebike]

Ah, guys, this isn't legal anywhere. Can't you tell a whoosh when you hear it going over your head?

Re:But as with all technology

[russotto]

Ah, guys, this isn't legal anywhere. Can't you tell a whoosh when you hear it going over your head?

Homeowners associations are like creationists in that they follow Poe's Law. There's no silly rule you can attribute to them that some percentage of reasonable people won't take seriously.

Re:But as with all technology

[Ossifer]

Who actually 'lusts' after a freakin' family car...?

You make it sound like a minivan or station wagon... This "family car" goes 0-60 in 5.6 seconds...

Re:But as with all technology

[icebike]

By the same token, there is hardly any place with an HOA that does not attract lawyers as residents.
Having been in a few HOAs, I've found that lawyers are the least likely to adhere to the rules, and most
likely to get on the governing board.

Re:But as with all technology

[rjstanford]

A halfway-decent motor and controller will run you $3K all by themselves. Here's one breakdown estimate that I randomly pulled up that's basically in line with the other ones I'd worked out when I was considering doing so: http://www.evmiata.com/estimates.html . I am curious - how does that $3K break down, and what would it get you (range/performance/etc)?

Re:But as with all technology

[trum4n]

Paul and Sabrina's DIY DC controller is far cheaper, and can be made INCREDIBLY powerful. I used an all-trax AXE 450amp controller, and run at 72 volts. It's no rocket, but since the car only had 100hp new, its not a big deal. I also reduced the weight of the car nearly 200lbs. I have 6, 99$ batteries in series. I ended up spending nearly 200$ on wire. ( the good stuff aint cheap!) 70$ for a contactor(tyco/kilovac brand) In that 3000$, include paying for some work to be done. I did all the work myself, and ended up building my own controller(as my EE college senior project) Honestly, I'm still under 2000$. My car has about 25 mi range, and goes 50mph. Dumping that other 1000$ on batteries of the same type will raise the voltage drastically, raising the power output, and lowing losses(lowers the cruising amps!) 80miles will be easy with that pack. Still, the only non-standard tool i needed was a welder. Which i had.(120$ from amazon, works great!)

Re:But as with all technology

[jafac]

Plenty of people, and I mean PLENTY, drive their personal car, over 500 miles, several times a year.

The airline industry, the train and bus industry, simply do NOT cut it.
And the rental-car industry sucks-ass.

I'm about as big an "electric-car" fan as you'll find anywhere.

I have a 10-mile commute to work.
But until the electric car can satisfy my occasional use-case of the "over 500 mile car trip" - I ain't buying one. (and I would happily have a second, electric car for daily commute, with a gasser for long trips: but again. . . I'm not THAT wealthy)

Re:But as with all technology

[cayenne8]

You make it sound like a minivan or station wagon... This "family car" goes 0-60 in 5.6 seconds...

Yes....it has more that 2 seats. It is a family truckster by definition.

A sports car is a two seater!

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

So was mine.

Re:But as with all technology

[gurudyne]

Tell that to Morgan Motor.

http://www.morgan-motor.co.uk/carpages/4seater/4seater.html

Re:But as with all technology

[green1]

The average family owns more than one car, and why do they need BOTH of them to be capable of satisfying the rare long highway trip?

Re:But as with all technology

[green1]

Ford was also by no means the first car. There were many rich people running around in their horseless cariages long before Ford got in to the game, and without them, it's hard to say if Ford would have been able to do what he did.

Re:But as with all technology

[haruchai]

Agreed. You absolutely shouldn't ever buy one until it fits your personal circumstances. But there are tens of millions who would be well served by EVs with 100 - 160 mile range. No need for them to wait until you're satisfied.

Re:But as with all technology

[haruchai]

Google the following, please: battery switch, quickdrop, Renault Fluence EV, Better Place, Shai Agassi

Re:But as with all technology

[brentrad]

How many "average American" families only own one car though? Most families have more than one car. For example, I have a compact car that I drive every day to work (15 miles round trip), and we almost never take my car on trips. I would love to replace my car with a full electric, I would never exceed the maximum driving distance. My wife has a Mazda 5 minivan which we take on all our family trips. So I don't see what the problem is.

Re:But as with all technology

[SuperQ]

Yea, and the average family has 2 cars. And when they do a trip of over XXX miles they only take one of them.

Re:But as with all technology

[SuperQ]

Yup, you're exactly the target market for the Nissan Leaf. It's 35k before tax rebates, so it should be under 30k after. If you only put 5000 miles on the 2nd car and it gets 28mpg you have about $500/year in fuel costs. I figure you save about $3000 in operating costs over 5 years. Probably still more expensive TCO than a mazda 2 or 3 compact-ish cars. But it's getting there.

Re:But as with all technology

[cavreader]

Cell phones started out costing around $800 not counting the service plan when first released. There is no reason the cost of battery technology can not decrease as demand grows.

Re:But as with all technology

[Jeremi]

Henry Ford did it the other way around. [...]"You could afford a Ford."

That method worked for Henry Ford because the only competition at the time was very expensive hand-built automobiles that most people couldn't afford. Since Ford's mass-produced products were the only game in town for the non-rich, of course that's what everybody bought.

If today's electric car manufacturer wants to compete in the low-end market, OTOH, he has to compete with $15,000 Hyundais and Civics that work great. Not easy to do when you don't have the economies of scale that the traditional car makers enjoy.

Re:But as with all technology

[mhajicek]

Last time I drove more than 160 miles in a day must be years ago. I currently drive 55 miles per day commuting, and sometimes 10to 40 on top of that for other stuff. The cost is a far larger concern. I picked up an '89 Mitsubishi for $650, put around $250 into it, and it gets 30 mpg. It would take a LOT of miles to make a Tesla economic as an alternative.

Re:But as with all technology

[Belial6]

The funny part of that is that I had a 2 seater Geo Metro. Some insurance companies wanted to rate it as a sports car.

Re:But as with all technology

[Belial6]

No, the premise is that rich people can have other spare cars for when they want to drive more.

Re:But as with all technology

[Belial6]

That's why they need to build them so that you can tow a generator to charge while you drive. Electric for day to day, and for the long trip, you hook up the trailer and gas up.

Re:But as with all technology

[brentrad]

Yep, I'm planning my next car to be a full electric. Considering that I don't plan on buying another car for at least 3-4 years, should be plenty of time for electric car tech to mature. Plus I live in the Portland Oregon area, and there's a huge push here to put charging stations all over the place (I've already seen them in several locations on the west metro area), and Nissan and several other manufacturers are having pilot EV programs here.

Re:But as with all technology

[Altus]

Why doesn't anyone make a decent electric commuter car. I would buy a car with a 150 mi range but I'm not going to buy something crazy just to drive back and forth to work and run errands. Something compact, say golf sized, maybe with a with 2 or 4 doors and without all the crazy bells and whistles of this car. I would think something like that would sell well.

Re:But as with all technology

[Sri Ramkrishna]

The way to combat that is to make yourself look dirty. Color your hair, your kids hair, have tatoos (temporariliy) and basically look as 3rd class citizen as possible. It'll fuck those people up, because really an HOA cannot control what you wear.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

"What he saw were limited production run cars built for the luxury market and almost useless beyond the city limits because the infrastructure wasn't there to support them."

+4 Insightful for a response for post you didn't read, WTF? (lazy-ass mods)

Re:But as with all technology

[mick_S3]

You forgot most likely to be complete douchebags.

Re:But as with all technology

[Thing 1]

Probably close to zero Americans actually drive 40 miles per day.

Driving commuter here, 37 miles between work and home. I drive almost twice the average. On weekdays.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

The average American will happily pour $4,000 a year worth of gas into his car but tell offer him a car that costs $10,000 more and doesn't use any gas and he's not interested because he's bad at math. The average US driver would come out ahead after just 4 years. Put in terms of a savings account, that would be a 25% return.

The same is true for coal plants. They get built at $2 a watt and then run at $1 a watt per year while the solar plant costs $4 a watt to build but almost nothing to run, turning a net profit after just 5 years. Put in terms of a savings account, that would be a 20% return.

Or, we could keep sending oil terrorists $40B per month and then spend $15B per month fighting them.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU are making a mistake.

That your particular use case represents the majority, and that anyone ELSE should just suck it up and do whatever you dictate as "reasonable" to promote your point.

Such as with this.

Let them eat cake, and rent a car. Right. And you probably also expect they should pay $50K for a car!

Re:But as with all technology

[benhattman]

You've got it completely wrong. The first Tesla was aimed at the high-end sports car market (Lamborghini, Ferrari). This second round is aimed at the upscale market (Lexus, Acura, etc). The Lexus GS starts at $47,000 and the LS starts at $67,000. Both are sedans. These Tesla cars are right within that price range, except if you are going for attention you will probably get more from the Tesla than from the Lexus.

We have a Tesla showroom in our local mall (it's an upscale one) and they definitely do look like sleek cars when you see them. Anyone who's already in the market for a $40,000-$60,000 sedan will want to consider these cars. And, that market is significantly larger than the one for $100,000 sports cars. Tesla is doing something very good and very smart here, regardless of whether or not you can afford it or would want if even if you could.

Re:But as with all technology

[toddestan]

I call bull. Name the city and the neighborhood.

Even if they were to have some crazy rule like that, they don't allow SUVs from Lincoln, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, Porsche, etc?

Re:But as with all technology

[WorBlux]

Your math is off. With solar you still need to build a few coal plants anyway for when the sun isn't shinning, or build energy storage systems, which are far from free. In addition you put stress on rare materials that are hard to find pushing the price of solar cells up as they becomes more widely adopted. Also solar cells degrade over time.

Re:But as with all technology

[WorBlux]

Ford payed higher wages to reduce turnover. He was also fairly picky in who he hired. Average turnover in a factory job then was what it is for fast food today. Ford's biggest contribution was the assembly line, not the automobile, the productivity of which allowed him to do both of the things you mentioned.

Re:But as with all technology

[Anonymous Coward]

The average American family does own more than one car, with a total cost of ownership still less than one Tesla vehicle.

rich person's toy

[buddyglass]

It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 and has other luxury features. Ergo it's a rich person's toy. That said, given the performance, the prices seem competitive, even ignoring fuel costs. From a cursory glance at the Porsche website, a new 911 costs around $80k in the U.S. with an estimated range of ~300 miles. Had to use fuel economy estimates for previous years since 2011 is an entirely new platform and the corporate site doesn't publish fuel economy numbers. My issue with the all-electrics is battery replacement. Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.

Re:rich person's toy

[lgw]

From a cursory glance at the Porsche website, a new 911 costs around $80k in the U.S./quote
Porche uses a nickle-and-dime-you to death pricing model, so equipped as you'd expect a luxury coupe, they're closer to 100K (for the base engine, of course, you can pay arbitratily much for more power).

Battery replacement is a real concern, but cars in this price range aren't cheap to maintain in the first place at that age. When my last luxury car hit 8-9 years old I was planning $3k/year for maintenance (including tires), and that's at the low end - a V12 Mercedes is a dependable $6K/year for the repairman.

Re:rich person's toy

[Fned]

Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.

Compare that, though, to all the maintenance you won't need to do on the car during that 8 years.

Re:rich person's toy

[yurtinus]

The Roadster would compare with the 911... This guy you'd want to compare with their four door (Panamera or some other such silly name). In any case, it is surprisingly price competitive for the luxury sedan market.

Re:rich person's toy

[webheaded]

What, because it's electric it won't need ANY maintenance? What planet do you hail from where electric devices don't break down? You realize that a lot of the basic components of a car will probably still exist and require maintenance. Yeah, you won't need oil changes, but stuff is still going to break.

Re:rich person's toy

[GameboyRMH]

There's really not much to break. Engine maintenance will be almost zero. You have the change the brakes and tires, keep the cooling system topped up, and keep some bearings greased but that's about it. No more engine seals, ignition system, fuel system, oil system, gearbox (nothing so complicated anyways), belt-driven engine accessories...and clutches, turbos and intercoolers are right out.

Re:rich person's toy

[vadim_t]

It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 and has other luxury features. Ergo it's a rich person's toy.

No, it accelerates like that because it's electric. It's not an optional "luxury feature" that was included, but an inherent characteristic of an electric motor. They have near their maximum torque when starting.

Re:rich person's toy

[Spoke]

Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.

Compare that, though, to all the maintenance you won't need to do on the car during that 8 years.

Not to mention all the money you'll save on gas. Equivalent gas car will get at best 30 mpg. At $3.50 / gallon that's 12c / mile. Average price of electricity is about $0.12 / kWh and the Telsa Model S will probably go about 3 miles on a kWh. Let's assume worst case and it only goes 2 miles / kWh - that's $0.06 / mile or half the cost of the gas car.

Over 100,000 miles you're saving $0.06 / mile or $6,000. And that's being conservative in my back-of-the-envelope numbers.

Re:rich person's toy

[fnj]

Well, it sure as hell won't be needing any valve jobs, timing belts, alternators, starters, radiator and hoses, or clutches either, and those ain't cheap these days.

Obviously once you get beyond the engine (and the transmission is also simpler), the other stuff doesn't change. Wheel bearings, steering rack, tie rods, shocks, electric locks and windows, rust damage, etc.

The net saving is probably going to be just about balanced by the hugely expensive battery you'll wear out.

Re:rich person's toy

[rsborg]

What, because it's electric it won't need ANY maintenance? What planet do you hail from where electric devices don't break down? You realize that a lot of the basic components of a car will probably still exist and require maintenance. Yeah, you won't need oil changes, but stuff is still going to break.

My 6-year old Prius has had the following maintenance (note: this is still a hybrid not fully electric, so it has both electric and gas componentry - but no transmission): routine service, oil changes, wipers, filter changes, tires/alignment, brake lights, 12v battery replaced.

Here's what I haven't done (and have had to do one of these with every other car I owned more than 5 years): Engine resurfacing, transmission replacement, brakes/pads (yes, original brake pads on my Prius are less than 50% worn), rotors/boots, headlamp bulbs.

This car will likely last 12-15 years and still get 45+MPG with that old of a HV battery. If battery is the only long-term replacement cost, that's quite low.

Re:rich person's toy

[demonbug]

It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 and has other luxury features. Ergo it's a rich person's toy. That said, given the performance, the prices seem competitive, even ignoring fuel costs. From a cursory glance at the Porsche website, a new 911 costs around $80k in the U.S. with an estimated range of ~300 miles. Had to use fuel economy estimates for previous years since 2011 is an entirely new platform and the corporate site doesn't publish fuel economy numbers. My issue with the all-electrics is battery replacement. Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.

Fueleconomy.gov is your friend. Looks like a 2012 Porsche Carrera gets about 18/25 to 19/27 (22 combined) depending on options, for an average range of about 350 miles (400+ on the highway).

Re:rich person's toy

[drussell]

Not to mention all the money you'll save on gas. Equivalent gas car will get at best 30 mpg. At $3.50 / gallon that's 12c / mile. Average price of electricity is about $0.12 / kWh and the Telsa Model S will probably go about 3 miles on...

Most of the gasoline cost is tax. Once they start raising an equivalent tax on the electricity to power your car to pay for roads, etc. it becomes far more expensive. (And right now in most areas electric is far more polluting at the source of the electricity generation, has inefficient transport, etc. Electric cars are not really "green" without a real true green source and low losses)

As a side-note, It would be far less expensive for most of our homes to generate our own electricity with a small natural gas turbine than it is to make large quantities of electricity far away and transport it... gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently... electricity over long copper wires, transformers, etc... Very Not-So-Much!! :)

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

The prius very much has a transmission. In fact it is a more complicated one than a usual automatic transmission. The reason it hasn't failed is becuase Toyota generally makes reliable long lasting cars and the Prius is no exception. What kind of cars have you owned that required transmission replacement after 5 years??

P.S., other nonsense in your post: rotors/boots (boots? wtf are you talking about). Engine resurfacing?? Um what?

If you owned a 6 year old Toyota Corolla you would have had the same (lack of) maintenance required.

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric drive trains are remarkably simple compared to a modern (or even old) internal combustion engine. There are very few moving parts. This model, like most of the electric vehicles I've seen, doesn't even have a transmission. There's really no need. You get max torque at short and it's not hard to get a high-torque AND high rev'ing electric motor. I assume it's using a pulse controller for the motor.

Maintenance under the hood, compared to a typical car, is nearly non-existent.

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

2012 Porsche 911 Carrera 2
0-60: 4.6 seconds
1/4 Mile: 13.3 seconds
Top Speed: 179 MPH
60-0: 104 ft.
Curb Weight: 3,200 Lbs
Range: ~400-500 miles (28.3/22.2 MPG, 18 G tank)

It does not accelerate faster than a 911. It does not stop faster than a 911. It does not go faster than a 911. It does not handle like a 911. And it will net get you as far as a 911.

That said, it's not competing with a 911. BMW M5 is more in it's territory.

Re:rich person's toy

[jafac]

I can verify via anaecdotes from other prius owners (I do not own one myself) - that the regenerative braking that most electric/hybrid cars have, does, indeed, extend brake life far beyond what we expect in normal gas cars.

Then again, so does a manual transmission, and intelligent downshifting technique - lol!

Re:rich person's toy

[Pirulo]

Which one gets you more (or any) girls? the Porsche or the Tesla?

Re:rich person's toy

[rsborg]

Then again, so does a manual transmission, and intelligent downshifting technique - lol!

Sure, you trade a brakepad life for a reduced transmission/clutch lifespan.

I've owned about 3 manual transmission cars (great fun on a switchback, but annoying on stop/go commutes). Until I owned my Prius, I wouldn't dream of giving up that manual control. However, the software drive-by-wire on the Prius really is awesome, and far more responsive, efficient and powerful than an automatic transmission and completely less leg-work than a manual.

Re:rich person's toy

[Type44Q]

Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.

Considering the rate at which LiPo and LiFePO4 batteries have been dropping in price (I just ordered some 2S 7.4v 1700mah packs for nine bucks apiece with shipping included), I'd venture to guess that not only should you be able to replace your battery for a fraction of that in 8 years time but that it will have far more capacity as well (of course, this presupposes that China's manufacturing tendencies continue on on their current course, which is certainly debatable...).

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

battery replacement in the prius is 2k$ and many have functioned for 200,000 miles without replacement or other issues.

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

What, because it's electric it won't need ANY maintenance? What planet do you hail from where electric devices don't break down? You realize that a lot of the basic components of a car will probably still exist and require maintenance. Yeah, you won't need oil changes, but stuff is still going to break.

Here's what I haven't done (and have had to do one of these with every other car I owned more than 5 years): .... transmission replacement>

Here's my brief car history:

'81 car (automatic), owned from '89 to '94
'87 car (manual), owned from '94 to '03
'98 car (manual), owned from '03 to present

All had the original transmission when I bought it, and I've never had
to replace a transmission.

What on earth are you doing to your cars that causes you to always
have to replace transmissions within 5 years?

Re:rich person's toy

[Jeremi]

The net saving is probably going to be just about balanced by the hugely expensive battery you'll wear out.

The battery's expensive now, but its replacement (8 years from now) won't be so expensive. Tech marches on...

Re:rich person's toy

[Jeremi]

Once they start raising an equivalent tax on the electricity to power your car to pay for roads, etc. it becomes far more expensive

And when do you expect that will happen? I don't think anyone will bother until electric cars are common enough to provide a significant tax base, which realistically means not for another 10 to 20 years. So unless you are planning to keep your new Tesla running for decades, it's not an issue for you.

And of course if you are a proper greenie and get a big solar array along with your electric car, then you won't get taxed much on the electricity because you won't have bought the electricity, you'll have made it yourself.

gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently...

Very true. It's so efficient that it even makes sense to transport it all the way from Saudi Arabia. But being the best thing since sliced bread won't make help you much when there's no longer enough of it to go around.

Re:rich person's toy

[Jeremi]

Which one gets you more (or any) girls? the Porsche or the Tesla?

Don't forget to specify what kind of girls you are looking to attract. They aren't 100% fungible.

Re:rich person's toy

[buddyglass]

You missed my point. Nobody needs a car that accelerates like a Porsche 911 or has all the luxury they've apparently built into the Tesla S. So it's a rich person's toy. Or at least an upper-middle-class person's toy.

Re:rich person's toy

[buddyglass]

The article quoted 0-60 in 4.4 for the Tesla. That's what they were referencing. On that single metric, at least, it does seem to outperform the Porsche.

Re:rich person's toy

[SpinyNorman]

More than $10K at current prices.

The base model has 160mi range then you pay $10K for 70mi more (230mi range), or $20K for 140mi more (300mi).

So... at $10K per 70mi range of battery even the base 160mi range battery is $20K, and the 300mi one is $40K!

That's a damn expensive battery!

Re:rich person's toy

[drussell]

And when do you expect that will happen? I don't think anyone will bother until electric cars are common enough to provide a significant tax base, which realistically means not for another 10 to 20 years. So unless you are planning to keep your new Tesla running for decades, it's not an issue for you.

No, perhaps not for the early adopters, just simply an observation... Something usually overlooked those who somehow believe the electric car is "THE" magical answer...

And of course if you are a proper greenie and get a big solar array along with your electric car, then you won't get taxed much on the electricity because you won't have bought the electricity, you'll have made it yourself.

Ah, yes, as soon as a large enough solar array can be efficient enough to do the job... We're nowhere close for most applications. Micro-generation of all sorts is key, though....

gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently...

Very true. It's so efficient that it even makes sense to transport it all the way from Saudi Arabia. But being the best thing since sliced bread won't make help you much when there's no longer enough of it to go around.

Also very true, but currently we inefficiently burn fossil fuels and transport the energy to power the electric car which makes no sense (from a physics standpoint)... and it won't make economic sense either when things balance out, unfortunately....

Re:rich person's toy

[Anonymous Coward]

What about 60-70 time?

Re:rich person's toy

[vadim_t]

And you again missed mine.

Even if it cost $10K, it'd still accelerate like a Porsche. In my understanding, it's hard to make an electric car with a crappy acceleration, because that would mean that you're getting near the limits of the motor's torque by just accelerating a car with only yourself in it. A car like that full of people and loaded with stuff for a trip might not even be able to move.

Electric motors have such excellent characteristics that it's possible to make an electric car without a transmission, connecting the motor directly to the wheel. Also, the acceleration just depends on the motor, which is a cheap part of the car. The expensive thing is the battery.

So it's a rich person's toy. Or at least an upper-middle-class person's toy.

I'm very amazed by the amount of this kind of criticism in the US, because I had the impression that in the US, cars are a Big Deal, and most americans would find something as utilitarian as a Smart ridiculous. Most talk I've seen seems to indicate that in the US a car is almost a second home and must provide a substantial amount of comfort, safety, and bragging rights. But here that's somehow a bad thing. Weird.

Re:rich person's toy

[buddyglass]

Nissan Leaf does 0-60 in 7.0 seconds. Chevy Volt does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds. Tesla made a conscious decision to build some performance acceleration into their car. It fits into the "sports luxury sedan" niche. That's a niche marketed toward people of means, hence my description of it as a rich person's toy. It's not a car one would buy for purely practical reasons.

Re:rich person's toy

[buddyglass]

No idea. Likely the Porche outperforms the Tesla. Did I imply anything to the contrary?

Re:rich person's toy

[Spoke]

Most of the gasoline cost is tax. Once they start raising an equivalent tax on the electricity to power your car to pay for roads, etc. it becomes far more expensive.

No, most of the gasoline cost is in the cost of crude with about 15% of the cost coming from taxes (in the USA)

As a side-note, It would be far less expensive for most of our homes to generate our own electricity with a small natural gas turbine than it is to make large quantities of electricity far away and transport it... gas is actually an easy way to transport energy quite efficiently... electricity over long copper wires, transformers, etc... Very Not-So-Much!! :)

No, the grid is much more efficient than you think. Only about 6.5% of the electricity generated at central plants is lost on the way to your plug. Quite amazing, really! I understand that pumping gas along pipelines might only lose a couple percent of energy along the way, but small gas turbines are definitely NOT the way to go.

A typical small gas turbine will only be about 30% efficient. Modern large combined cycle gas turbine plants are over 60% efficient. Do the math and it's pretty easy to see what's more efficient.

Better than small gas turbines are fuel cells - you can buy a 5 kW unit around 40-50% efficient today, but it's not cheap. And they don't like to quickly change production levels like a turbine can.

Interesting after credit prices

[poity]

Seems like they jack up just so they end in nice looking retail figure after rebate. Of course we shouldn't be surprised.

Re:Interesting after credit prices

[khallow]

That's basic supply and demand. A portion of any discount ends up split between buyer and seller. In a market with limited supply, most of it is going to end up in the hands of the seller.

Re:Tesla

[Overzeetop]

I'll give you a call as soon as I have a day when I actually need the towing capacity of diesel truck on a daily basis.

(ever wonder if maybe you weren't the target market?)

the electric vehicle

[nimbius]

i was waiting for picked me up this morning, didnt need to find parking, and costs less than a cup of coffee. the only people still masturbating furiously over Tesla motors and electric cars in general are people who dont understand that the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose. If you dont believe me, try getting from long beach to downtown LA at 7:30 am.

Re:the electric vehicle

[yurtinus]

Maybe it's not the automobile, but Los Angeles that is unsustainable...

Re:the electric vehicle

[elrous0]

the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable

That's why I'm putting all my money into unicycles. My wife, parents, and the doctors at the center all tell me this is crazy. But, mark my words, THEY'LL SEE!

Re:the electric vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

i was waiting for picked me up this morning, didnt need to find parking, and costs less than a cup of coffee. the only people still masturbating furiously over Tesla motors and electric cars in general are people who dont understand that the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose. If you dont believe me, try getting from long beach to downtown LA at 7:30 am.

Try taking that same mode of transport from Sidney IL to Urbana IL (20-ish min drive) at 7:30 am. Just because your solution fits you doesn't mean others can't be excited about the prospects of an electric vehicle for their situation.

Re:the electric vehicle

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, and I ride my bike to work whenever weather permits (only time it doesn't permit is snow and ice, rain is no problem). Currently my ride is only 7 KM which is nice and short, but even when my ride was 25 KM, it only took an hour, which was really only 10-15 minutes longer than it took in a car, sometimes faster on a bike, depending on traffic. Cars while nice when you want to travel, aren't something that 80% of people should be using every day to get to work in a major city. It definitely isn't sustainable. In the next 50 years, I think there are going to be some hard changes that just have to be made.

Re:the electric vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

i was waiting for picked me up this morning, didnt need to find parking, and costs less than a cup of coffee. the only people still masturbating furiously over Tesla motors and electric cars in general are people who dont understand that the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose. If you dont believe me, try getting from long beach to downtown LA at 7:30 am.

Try living outside a super large urban center. I can't get to my job without a car, and even if public transportation was available, I wouldn't have the convenience of going from my garage to my work-building parking lot, thus adding at least an extra 30 minutes in the commute each way (conservatively speaking) as I walk to and from bus stops, assuming I time my arrival perfectly with the bus schedule such that I don't have to wait.

I've lived in places where public transportation was my main commuting method. It sucks, and driving is much more convenient. So the solution to your problem is not living in a city like LA.

Re:the electric vehicle

[CanHasDIY]

i was waiting for picked me up this morning, didnt need to find parking, and costs less than a cup of coffee. the only people still masturbating furiously over Tesla motors and electric cars in general are people who dont understand that the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose. If you dont believe me, try getting from long beach to downtown LA at 7:30 am.

I'm sure this is a difficult concept for coastal dwelling Luddites to understand, but not everyone lives in a dense population center in which every aspect of your meager existence is within a 5-mile radius (and yet it still takes 2 hours to get anywhere).

Here in what you smog-breathers often refer to as 'flyover country,' it's not uncommon for an individual to drive over 150 miles daily to and from work, schools, shopping, etc. When I was a young man working in a factory in St. Louis, I drove 300 miles a day round trip, as the cost to do so was a pittance compared to real estate prices closer to my work; and that doesn't include any side trips. Today my commute is significantly shorter, but still far to long to even consider whatever ridiculous mode of transport you seem to be espousing the glories of.

I won't even mention the friggin' weather.

Re:the electric vehicle

[DerekLyons]

the only people still masturbating furiously over Tesla motors and electric cars in general are people who dont understand that the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose. If you dont believe me, try getting from long beach to downtown LA at 7:30 am.

For the 99.99% percent of US citizens who don't live in LA, and the 90% of us who don't live in huge megalopoli, that's pretty much a useless metric.

Re:the electric vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: not everyone lives in a major city. Nor does everyone have a workplace that will offer them showers after riding to work in 80 degree temperatures, nor are physically able to work 10 hour shifts after bicycling 30 minutes to or from work. Not many people will even be in a condition to work if they have to bicycle an hour to it unless they are very fit 20 year olds. And of course, during a cold day or under light rainfall or snow bicycling quickly becomes miserable. Especially if you live in areas where it does such most of the year. Without the congestion of city traffic, the differrence is noticeable, too: it takes 5 minutes to drive a 15 minute or more bike ride.

The reason why a lot of tech companies and ideas fail is because they design solely for the urban crowd and fail to get any transaction outside of them. The EV is a big example of this. It's fantastic for typical urban vehicle usage, horrible for suburb and rural use.

Re:the electric vehicle

[CastrTroy]

Protip: pack a change of clothes, and change when you get to work, and a shower isn't necessary. Sweat doesn't stink. Day old sweat stinks because the bacteria have had a long time to grow. Wipe yourself off after a bike ride with baby wipes, and change into fresh clothes, and you won't smell any worse than the guy who sweated it out on the bus, or the out of shape guy who had to walk 400 meters across the parking lot. Also you say that not everyone is in shape enough to do this, but that's only for the first couple of months. Ride your bike daily, and you'll quickly be in shape enough that it won't even effect you. With some of the right clothing and equipment, even biking in the rain isn't that much of a problem. Sure it doesn't work for absolutely everybody, but a very large percentage of people it would be completely feasible.

Also, you can make a product that is solely marketed at the urban crowd. GM has 53 models of cars (based on what they said in a recent commercial) There's enough room in that line-up for specific models for very specific uses. A half tonne pickup isn't perfect for everyone either, but they still sell them. There's 7 billion people on the planet. Even if your product only appeals to 0.1% of the population, that's still 7 million potential customers. Plenty big enough for niche products.

Re:the electric vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do to "fix" LA is close the water pipeline they are sucking up from the Colorado. LA becomes the desert it should be. Problem solved.

Re:the electric vehicle

[slashgrim]

Maybe it's not the automobile, but Los Angeles that is unsustainable...

You're only saying that because LA has a 70 year backlog of sidewalk repairs http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/local/la-me-sidewalks-20111128 and is looking to borrow $1.6billion (with a B) for repairs while teetering on bankruptcy http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/villaraigosa-warns-of-bankruptcy-if-la-council-blocks-power-rate-hike.html ...

Re:the electric vehicle

[Dripdry]

Maybe some of us value our time more than money?
It doesn't take 2 hours to get where I want to go here in Chicago. I walk 2 blocks to the grocery store, 3 to public transit that gets me pretty much anywhere in the cityu I want to go (35 minute ride max, no traffic), and as far as schools go? yeah, 1 block away if I had kids (and pretty decent place from what I understand).
Prices are a bit high, but I don't waste 2.5-3 hours every day commuting, it's time I get to spend with the people I love and doing things that are fulfilling to me.

So please, stop trying to paint it like we're idiots for living in the city. Some people are (L.A. Yeah, you people ARE lead-headed dumbasses for that commute. You better be able to retire in a golden castle.) but many of us enjoy the convenience as well as the additional choices we have in a city: Bike to work, go to the farmer's market to get incredibly delicious, chemical-free foods/meats as opposed to Wal-Mart, and delicious dining experiences that I have never, ever been able to find outside of a city (and yes I've travelled the "flyover" states by car and seen my share). I have the opposite problem: I look at the suburbs and the country and think,"You people are missing out on a wonderful lifestyle... why would you drive 150 miles one way to work? Are you insane?" To each their own, I guess.

Re:the electric vehicle

[CanHasDIY]

You've got me all wrong, Mac. I was specifically responding to OP's sentence, "the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose," stated as though it were a universal truth. I've got nothing against city living (OK, well, maybe a little), and if I lived in a place where it wasn't necessary to own a car, I probably wouldn't. I merely resent the implication that everyone lives in a location where automobile ownership is 'unsustainable,' when that is obviously far from reality.

FYI, from what I understand, Chi-Town is also in what is considered flyover country, save for the fact they have a major airport where many flights connect; otherwise, to coastal elitists, you might as well be living in a cornfield in Iowa.

but many of us enjoy the convenience as well as the additional choices we have in a city: Bike to work, go to the farmer's market to get incredibly delicious, chemical-free foods/meats as opposed to Wal-Mart, and delicious dining experiences that I have never, ever been able to find outside of a city

Farmer's markets are awesome, but you can't top buying your produce, dairy, and meats from the farmer himself... what can I say, I like to look my food in the EYE before it hits my plate, mwa ha ha.
I have to ask: where does this concept that Wal-Marx is the only store in every small town in America come from? Sitcoms, I presume? Anyway, nothing could be farther from the truth, at least where I live. Yea, there's about 30 Wally-worlds within a 100-mile radius (which I assume is a result of the fact their corporate headquarters is within said radius), but that is by no means the only option for supplies (thank GOD for that). Truth be told, I haven't set foot in a Wal-Marx in damn near a decade, and I intend to keep it that way.

I have the opposite problem: I look at the suburbs and the country and think,"You people are missing out on a wonderful lifestyle... why would you drive 150 miles one way to work? Are you insane?"

Well, you said you like to shop at farmer's markets, right? OK, how many farmers do you know who live in city limits?

Farmers excluded, a lot of us country folk prefer the freedom and open spaces that you just can't get in a city. Property is often far cheaper in the country; for what I paid for my in-town, 1400 sq. ft. house on less than 1/4 acre, I could have purchased 20-30 acres with a similarly sized house in the nearby countryside. Some other perks (I consider them perks, YMMV) include being able to own horses, plenty of space to add outbuildings as needed, private hunting grounds, and my personal favorite, the ability to step out of my house and unload a few magazines into the nearest backstop. Not the favored lifestyle for everyone, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

As for driving 150 miles to work - regardless of the fact that was a temporary situation, look up rental prices in Fredricktown, MO, vs rental prices in St. Louis, and you'll see my point.. oh yea, also factor in the facts that I was paid quite well and gas was cheap in those days... we're talking '99 prices.

Re:the electric vehicle

[Anonymous Coward]

But we aren't talking about a niche product, we are talking about people saying adapt or die. And these people really have no clue about what bicycling to work entails for the rest of us, or even electric vehicles. As someone who has done so long-term in the suburbs, it's nowhere near as rosy or as possible to do long-term for a majority of people. Sometimes it's not even possible at all-a 15 minute car ride can be a 3 hour bike ride due to the inability to use highways. And you need to often have 30 minute + rides via those highways to get to your job. When it's not more.

A lot of this conversation on adapting or becoming eco-friendly in transportation is dominated by urban elites who really wont suffer from it, and whose lifestyle is a natural fit for it. For it to work, you need to make solutions that work for a 35 year old laramie wyoming resident pulling a 12 hour shift as well as a 30 year old tech worker in NYC.

Re:the electric vehicle

[Loki_1929]

Tell you what, move out of the immediate downtown area of a major US city and then let me know how well that works out for you.

The US does not have the population density in most places to make public transportation feasible. I'm not going to walk a mile to get picked up. I'm not going to stand there waiting 10 - 15 minutes (assuming the intended vehicle ever arrives) to get picked up. I'm not going to travel to a bunch of places I don't want to go which aren't on the path between where I started and where I want to go. I'm not going to step out to a transfer station to do more walking around and waiting. I'm not going to get dropped off 4 miles from my destination because no public transportation actually takes me where I need to be. I'm not going to let a 20 minute car ride turn into a 2 hour public transportation fiasco. And I'm not going to plan my entire day around the schedules of the local public transportation.

Cars aren't sustainable? They're about the only thing that is sustainable outside of NYC, DC, LA, and a few other select places in the US. Even if you have a lot of buses running around, you just can't get everywhere using them in your average suburban area and you certainly can't just go right from your start to your destination. That's not how they work. So yes; in a small number of places with very high population densities, public transportation can make more sense than cars in certain situations. In most places? It's a joke. Not even a funny joke.

Example: let's say I need to get from Frederick, MD (pretty populated place) to Ashburn, VA (VERY populated place, particularly with high tech). This is a 32.3 mile journey. By car, Google estimates it will take 45 minutes. Would you like to take a guess how long it takes on public transportation? An hour? Not a chance. Two? Not in your wildest dreams. No, after multiple changes with buses and subway lines, your 45 minute trip takes 4 hours and 57 minutes. That isn't moving between a couple cornfields across a state; that's going from one city to another in a densely populated region on the east coast of the US. 4 hours and 57 minutes. Want to know how much of a joke that is? It's faster on a bicycle! (3 hours 9 minutes). It's only a little over double the speed of walking. (10 hours 53 minutes)

the automobile as a means of personal conveyance is unsustainable no matter what you fuel you choose.

Too funny.

Re:the electric vehicle

[CastrTroy]

Exactly as I said way up at the top. In the next 50 years things are going to change quite a bit. Living 50-100km from work simply won't be an option. The "niche" you are talking about are really just the early adopters. People who realize that everybody driving a personal car halfway across the city is entirely unsustainable.

Re:Tesla

[von_rick]

Don't think you will be getting a shout out anytime soon.These cars are for daily commute, and some occasional long distance trips. People hauling heavy cargo over long distances isn't the target demographics.

New technology.

[MaWeiTao]

I don't understand why people are complaining that these cars are expensive. That's the nature of technological progress. Early cars were also luxury items but now most people in the developed world can afford one.

Technology can't be forced into being inexpensive. Progress takes time.

Re:New technology.

[Shadow99_1]

The problem is we have been told for at least a decade now that we need to be 'green', but doing so for the average person (where I live, not in LA or NYC, where our yearly income is typically below 30k) these 'green technologies' people say we have to buy aren't affordable! Claims that 'we' need to go green don't say "Anyone who isn't poor needs to go green!". So yes, lots of us will bitch that these things still aren't in our price range, because we'd like to go green as much as the richer ones.

Tesla S is revolutionary

[rcotran]

As far as I'm concerned, the Tesla S is a revolutionary vehicle that will set the bar for future electric vehicles. And I agree with Elon Musk that all future cars will be electrically powered. Tesla is proving that electric vehicles can 1) be practical, 2) have extended range, 3) not be exorbitantly expensive, 4) be friggin' sexy!! This is only their second car and they are already hitting a home run. Imagine what the fourth and fifth generation of vehicles will be able to do... I'm surprised more /.ers aren't impressed with this car... it's a geek's dream!

Re:Tesla S is revolutionary

[Bardwick]

I'm with you, I'm totally stoked. Let's just hope we don't crash our republic before subsidize it enough :)

Re:Tesla S is revolutionary

[ScentCone]

I'm surprised more /.ers aren't impressed with this car...

I'd be more impressed if the car was sellable as-is without collecting $1.5 billion from fellow Americans who won't be able to afford these toys in order to make the price more attractive via subsidies to people for whom the green faux prestige is more important than money anyway. Absurd.

Re:Tesla S is revolutionary

[rcotran]

First of all, let me say that I think the car is worth it even at the $57,500 price point. Also, the $7,500 isn't Tesla's "fault", it's the government's for having created such a program. And it's debatable as to whether the program should exist or not. And I'm not sure it's true that only people who care about faux green prestige will be interested in this car. I don't care if people think I'm green or not, but as a techno-geek, I love the idea of the Tesla and what the company stands for. I also appreciate Musk's philosophy that car technology always feels dated and it's time to bring it forward into the 21st century. Furthermore, although I can barely afford a car at this price point, if I had to compare to other cars at the same price, it would be a no-brainer for me. To say that the car only appeals to rich faux environmentalists is a stretch methinks...

Re:Tesla S is revolutionary

[arse maker]

Well dump all oil subsidies and dump the EV subsidy and see how it works out.

Re:Tesla S is revolutionary

[benhattman]

Where's the eye-roll smiley in this editor?

$1.5B is what, about 2 days worth of spending on the Iraqi war? And we all know we were only there because we need to keep the flow of oil secure. EVs are quite literally a national security initiative, and if $1.5B in subsidies would be enough for EVs to build up enough economies of scale that they can replace a significant portion of all automobiles without subsidies in the future, then it's a bargain.

Re:Tesla

[lgw]

When the electric toy soda can vehicles can tow the load of my diesel truck with a range of 350 miles, you give me a shout-out.

That will come when hybrids mature - there's a reason most locomotives are hybrids these days (and rail frieght takes a tiny fraction of the energy-per-ton of road frieght).

Bait and switch pricing .. lol

[OzPeter]

The prices are NOT $49,900, $59,000 and $69,000. That is the price after you redeem your government coupon (Plug-In Electric Vehicle Credit (IRC 30 and IRC 30D)). You will still have to front the full price and then wait until your next tax filing in order to claim your maximum tax credit of $7500. The credit itself will be phased out after 200,000 qualifying vehicles have been sold.

Re:Bait and switch pricing .. lol

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not bait-and-switch, you moron. They say quite plainly that these are post-rebate prices.

Re:Bait and switch pricing .. lol

[Dynedain]

Wow, clearly you didn't even read the summary where they said the exact same thing.

Re:Bait and switch pricing .. lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep in mind the performance specs people keep quoting are for the $80,000 (after rebate) performance model, not the $50,000 (after rebate) base model.

Re:Bait and switch pricing .. lol

[benhattman]

For most buyer's that's even better. Finance your car at 4% over 3-5 years (or whatever ridiculously low rate it is now), and get a cash rebate only 6 mos (on average) later for 12%-15% of the purchase price. You literally get the money before you need to make the payment, and if well invested you could lower the actual price of your car even more.

Screen looks tacky

[Kagato]

I don't care for the oversized screen. It seems like a good idea, but I'd prefer a smaller screen above large hard buttons. In particular for common functions like climate control.

Re:Screen looks tacky

[GameboyRMH]

Agreed, touchscreens in vehicles are a very attractive idea - get rid of all that fixed mechanical clutter for one multipurpose control - or at least it seems that way until you realize you now have to look down to find each control since you can't feel for it anymore.

Chevy Volts setting taxpayers back $250K per vehic

[Karjach]

Ok, so I bet the Chevy Volt is shit compared to Teslas, and Tesla is at least honest about what it currently costs to make their cars, and why, and is worth it (you know, If you're going to drive a car at all). And that cost? It comes in considerably below the Volt's total of $250K plus sales. http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16192

and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Model T

[xeno]

I can't help but think that the folks over at Ural motorcycles/IMZ America have a better sense of the market right now. They've just introduced a new "Model T" at the low end of their range, bringing the basic Ural 2-wheel drive sidecar motorcycle to the US for under $10k. Irbit Motorworks (IMZ) is Russian, the design is sourced from midcentury BMW, and the last decade+ of updates (e.g. new cylinders/heads with modern compression, better mpg/reliability, etc) have been pushed by enthusiasts in the US and EU. It intersect with the Tesla in the "sheer fun to drive" category, and my guess is that with an economy just holding on, there's gonna be a lot more of these on the road.

In another post I muttered about T-Mo staying on as the value carrier in the US: "T-Mo isn't making money hand over fist, but they're doing _ok_, and that's good. In these times, in this economy, I want to give my money to an org that's doing _ok_: neither going out of business, nor robbing me. You hear that, T-Mo? "Ok" and "staying in business without f__king your customers" is the new black. So keep on keeping on."

Same goes for Ural/IMZ versus Tesla. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Tesla business model is too "lean on the rich to get thru hard times" which all too often degenerates to "ran outta high-end customers, so try to screw the next class for as much as we need to stay afloat..." You wanna impress me Tesla? Go buy the tooling for the Corbin Merlin or Sparrow and start turning out fun electric 1-seaters for $15k -- price-competitive with the Fiat 500, Smartcar, and Scion iQ.

Subsidized

[SimplyGeek]

I'm so glad the government takes money out of my paycheck each week so they can hand it over to people buying electric cars. This way, with income redistribution, the Feds can make sure to punish those who live their lives differently, and reward those who live the lives the Feds approve of.

Re:Subsidized

[amicusNYCL]

You think you're being different by not driving an electric vehicle? Where do you live?

Re:Subsidized

[PortHaven]

Wait, you mean take our tax money and give the select few who can afford fancy EV cars our tax money. :-/

Re:Subsidized

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, agreed! Cause the Good Lord knows that the federal government has NEVER offered subsidies of any kind to any other type of business.

Re:Subsidized

[Anonymous Coward]

Different from the fed approved way to live, not different from the general population.

Re:I can't wait

[CaptainLard]

I'd much rather my tax dollars went to electric vehicle manufacturers trying to get off the ground and make waves in the system than to companies that have been recording record profits the past few years in a row (looking at you Exxon...).

Impressive specs

[dofidum]

A very large seventeen-inch touchscreen beats a very small seventeen-inch touchscreen any day.

Re:Impressive specs

[rwise2112]

Yeah! By a whole 0 inches!

Why isn't tax credit included in the price?

[Bardwick]

It's not like I have the option to pay it or not...

200 miles

[Iamthecheese]

In my state you can go 200 miles on some roads between gas stations. I wouldn't want a car with lower range than that.

Re:200 miles

[0123456]

In my state you can go 200 miles on some roads between gas stations. I wouldn't want a car with lower range than that.

But just think how many new jobs there'll be for tow truck drivers collecting all the fancy electric cars that ran out of power in the middle of nowhere.

Re:200 miles

[bussdriver]

I had a ford that couldn't go 200 miles without needing a refill. I got about 35mpg from it but most people these days would probably get 25 (its best speed was 58, 65 lowered millage by about 10 and people seem to drive at 70 a lot...)

Re:200 miles

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there is a quick-charge vehicle Nissan has been working on. It has a huge diesel generator and can come charge up your car for about 10 or 15 minutes, which will give you an extra 30 miles or so. That way you can get where you were going without having to be towed. Of course, I don't expect to see any higher percentage of EV's on the side of the road than I do gasoline cars that are out of gas. Its the same level of stupidity that would cause a person to run out of fuel on the road, doesn't matter what type of fuel it is.

Re:200 miles

[Anonymous Coward]

But didn't you read tfs? It's an ELECTRIC car. No need for gas stations!

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were going to hop on a MC I'd buy a local used bike for less than half that. A lot of boomers will be getting off their bikes as they get older. Unfortunately, a lot of those are big fat hogs; but it might depress the market for bikes in general. If you like Harley cruisers and you're a young man, the next 2 decades will be paradise.

Anyway, I digress. I would have liked to see Aptera be something other than vapor. I'm glad I didn't put down my $500 deposit before I got layed off. Will they *ever* produce a car?

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is it with this asinine assumption that anybody who buys unconventional cars (hybrid, electric, CNG, etc.) is automatically a smug bastard? For that matter, why are so many people technophobic when it comes to cars? You'd think technological exploration and progress in a field that involves just about everybody in the world would be more warmly received than this.

Well...

[mordejai]

Is this the electric car you've been waiting for or another rich person's toy?

Considering my current car costs about 14K, and the most expensive cars I'd consider buying are all below 35K, I'd say the latter.

Re:Well...

[GameboyRMH]

My cars are less than $14k put together. You could even fit the street value of the old POS Daewoo I used to have in there as well.

Re:Well...

[SimplyGeek]

If your lifestyle allows, buy a used motorcycle for a couple thousand dollars. Then enjoy the benefits of 70 MPG mileage while at the same time getting stares from chicks. All the while eschewing a quite electric engine in favor of a real hair raising powerhouse.

Re:Well...

[mordejai]

Thanks for the advice, but I don't think my wife or my 2-year-old twins would really appreciate it :-)

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[misexistentialist]

Those things get like 30mpg

before deriding them too much...

[emagery]

....keep in mind that ALL brand new techs had to start out as playthings of the rich to help fund the perfection of the tech and the technique such that reproduction could be affordable enough for all. And before YET ANOTHER PERSON starts signing about chestnuts over a volt/tesla fire, keep in mind that thousands of combustion engine vehicles are catching fire every year.

Re:before deriding them too much...

[0123456]

....keep in mind that ALL brand new techs had to start out as playthings of the rich

Except electric cars are not 'playthings of the rich'; they've been around since the late 1800s, but we dumped them when the internal combustion engine came along for all the same reasons that they're a dumb idea today.

Re:before deriding them too much...

[0123456]

Except electric cars are not 'playthings of the rich';

Duh, I meant 'brand new tech', teach me not to cut-and-paste-and-post without proofreading.

Re:before deriding them too much...

[Attila Dimedici]

That would be a great point, if electric vehicles were a brand new tech, but considering that electric vehicles were first developed in the 1800s (only a decade or so after internal combustion vehicles), they aren't new tech.

Re:before deriding them too much...

[GameboyRMH]

Because gas is really fucking cheap? We don't all live in Venezuela you know...

Re:before deriding them too much...

[CanHasDIY]

Because gas is really fucking cheap? We don't all live in Venezuela you know...

Hmm, that thought does conjure an important question: What's the cost-per-mile of operation (or rather, the formula for determining such in an EV)?

For example, the 2012 Jetta TDI I just bought my wife gets about 45 MPG, and diesel is $3.55 a gallon right now, making the CPM of her car a little less than $0.08.

Can any of the Tesla models (or any EV, for that matter) beat those numbers?

Re:before deriding them too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Average cost per KWh for electricity in the states is about $.12. The Tesla S gets about 3 mi/KWh. That puts it at $0.06/mi. So, the answer to your question is "Yes, easily, even though you drive a very efficient vehicle." (One that's about 30-60% more efficient than the cars sold in the same class and price range as the Tesla S, as a matter of fact.)

Re:before deriding them too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

(Anonymous since I've already modded.) Nissan Leaf: $0.10/kwh in western WA, 24kwh battery pack, 100 mile range (yes, I've confirmed it will do it, or more)==$0.024/mile. I don't feel like looking up the numbers for a Tesla and doing the math, but a Leaf will handily beat the TDI. TDIs seem to be great cars, but beating an EV on cost/mile would require triple digit MPG.

Re:before deriding them too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no... we dumped them because oil was CONVENIENT and, for a while, stupidly cheap to get. That's not the case anymore and we've since discovered some really awful side-effects to using the stuff. At the same time, electric storage technology is making leaps and bounds to the point where evening using oil will not remain relevant (to say nothing of appropriate) for long. Since electric transportation is feasible NOW, I'm all for a few rich farts tooling around showing it off so that enough people ALSO want it that the market pressure makes supplying that demand cost effective.

No the car is not more expensive...

[PortHaven]

What are you comparing it to? A Chevy Cruze, a Ford Focus?

Different class of vehicle. This is a luxury vehicle with leather interior and a 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. It competes with BMW, Mercedes and Porshe.

How much does a full featured BMW or Porsche go for? $50,000 no longer looks over priced for it's class.

In fact, it might look pretty damn cheap. I just looked at the base pricing MSRP for a Porsche Panerama (or whatever it was, there 4 door sedan). The low end model does 0-60 in 6 seconds. Higher end models go faster.

Suggested MSRP was $75,000.

Base price of 328 BMW, lower end car was around $37,000. Mind you, that's base low end model. And no where near a 4.4, 0-60 car. The S is definitely not that, especially with a 17" flat panel.

So for the class and caliber of car. The Tesla S is actually a very economical deal. You have a sports car / sedan / EV all for less than most performance luxury models.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[0123456]

It competes with BMW, Mercedes and Porshe.

Not if you actually use it to drive anywhere. Which is kind of the point of a 'luxury sedan'.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[Algae_94]

What is with all the flippant negative comments in this thread? What do you mean by this statement? Are you thinking this isn't really a luxury segment car, or do you think it just doesn't drive as well as these other ICE luxury cars?

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[element-o.p.]

Bovine scatology, "B.S." for short.

How many people routinely drive 200-300 miles? That's somewhere between 2 1/2 and 4 hours at highway speeds, depending on the speed limits where you live. In my neck of the woods, 120 miles is a really long commute. Yeah, people sometimes drive cross-country to visit relatives and friends or for business, but that's hardly typical (i.e., day-in, day-out) usage. And if you can afford a high-end luxury sedan, you probably can afford more than one car, so the luxury sedan is your commuter vehicle and you have a conventional vehicle for those other times when you need the ability to go farther.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[PortHaven]

Raises hand....

I drive 105 miles a day for commute to work. But I consider this a viable option. Heck, if I earned in a year what the car costs. I might just consider it....(and if I wasn't married with kids)

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[PortHaven]

Seriously, how often do you drive 150 miles? How often 320 miles.

Truth be told, sporty luxury cars do not usually get driven for distance. Rather they are driven for commutes and Sunday joy rides.

Those long trips with the family are usually driven in the Escalade.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[element-o.p.]

There's one in every crowd...

Yeah, with a 105 mile daily commute, this car probably doesn't have enough range for days when you might have extra errands to run, unless you can charge your car while at work (although I suspect not). But as you said, even in your somewhat extreme case, it still might be a viable option most of the time.

Off-topic: 105 miles per day?!?! Times five days a week, I presume? In my truck, that would be roughly $7500 per year, not including maintenance, oil changes, etc. Even on my motorcycle, that's $2600 per year. I'm glad I don't have your gasoline bill!

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the $87,500 model ($80K after rebate) gets 0-60 in 4.4s. The $57,500 ($50K after rebate) base model gets 0-60 in 6.5s. A BMW 328i actually does better than that by several tenths.

Don't get me wrong, 6.5s to 60mph is actually pretty good in the grand scheme of things. Much better than the 9-10+ seconds you'll get from an econobox like a Civic, but if you're going to compare the Tesla to sub-5s cars, you have to use the price of the expensive model.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, Americans seem to commute around 40 minutes every day (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/10/surveys); however, that seems to increasing (slowly) over time.

Recognizing that I'm an exception; my commute is 111 miles each way on the road, plus another 15 by rail. A number of my coworkers in Japan have even longer; but they benefit from an exceptional high speed rail system.

I think you are right for the moment, but over time commutes seem to get longer; and ideally, the range of these vehicles will improve.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[PortHaven]

Well, between my work hours and commute I don't have much time to drive errands. So I seldom drive more than a 110 miles in the day.

I am of the opinion that 140-150 mile true range (winter range) is the make it point. At that point nearly everyone can commute on a charge. And EV is very viable. I'd love to have a Tesla-S for my commute.

It was 5 days a week, just got granted permission to move to a 4 day work week. Longer days, but helps with commute.

I have a 1st gen Prius we bought used off of ebay, about 40mpg. Which helps. God help me if it breaks down and I have to take the conversion van. It'd cost me $40 a day to drive. *shudders*

My point is, even at 105 mile commute. The base model Tesla-S is a viable option for me. So long as it comes equipped with one feature. A location alert that reminds me to plug it in for charging when I come home. (Keep dinging until I plug you in, because I'll be more annoyed if I wake up in the morning and you're not charged Mr. Car.)

LOL

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[PortHaven]

Okay, compared the $80K to the $80K Porsche. And still the BMW and base Tesla-S are fairly comparatable.

So the price is really reasonable for it's class. We're talking new technology, new platform, sporty, EV. And priced comparatively to the BMW, Mercedes & Porsche platforms it's competing against.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[benhattman]

It's simple really. Many on /. are car geeks. They are proud of the fact that while other people go to Jiffy Lube for their oil changes, they are part of the privileged class who know how to change their own oil. It makes them very angry that those skills will become essentially worthless in the future because of EVs.

At least, that's what I see as the epitome of the hate.

Re:No the car is not more expensive...

[russotto]

It's simple really. Many on /. are car geeks. They are proud of the fact that while other people go to Jiffy Lube for their oil changes, they are part of the privileged class who know how to change their own oil. It makes them very angry that those skills will become essentially worthless in the future because of EVs.

At least, that's what I see as the epitome of the hate.

Which just proves that you're not too observant. And have no friends, because friends don't let friends go to Jiffy Lube for oil changes. Try going somewhere that they actually will reliably replace drain plug, filler cap, and filter before sending you on your way.

Nice car, but why a touch screen?

[pesho]

The posted specs look very competitive for the price/market (luxury sports cars). But why put all environment and sound controls on a touch screen?? What's wrong with big fat round buttons that you can find, recognize and adjust by feel without taking your eyes of the road? Touch interface makes sense for the GPS, but definitely not for the radio or the AC. Who the hell is going to look at album cover art while driving? And I sure hope the internet access is disabled when the car is in motion.

waiting for...

[chrisj_0]

I have a car why would I want one that plugs in and is limited in range?

Re:waiting for...

[Imagix]

You do realize that your current car "plugs in" (at gas stations), and is limited in range (tank capacity)?

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is it with this asinine assumption that anybody who buys unconventional cars (hybrid, electric, CNG, etc.) is automatically a smug bastard?

Same as similar assumptions about SUV owners automatically being right-wingers trying to "compensate for something", Volvo drivers being dirty hippies, and other such bullshit.

It's mostly projection, with a dash of confirmation bias from the rare occasions when they encounter someone they can pigeonhole into the chosen stereotype (whether accurately or not).

Re:Chevy Volts setting taxpayers back $250K per ve

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, there is an unbiased source. Sure the Koch Brothers funding has nothing to do with it.

160 miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that uphill, in Florida, in the summer with A/C, headlights and a 45 MPH headwind or in the winter in Connecticut in a blizzard at -10 F with the (electric) heater on?

I haven't been waiting for one.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm perfectly happy with my gas-powered, 500mi range, sub $20,000 car.

Re:I haven't been waiting for one.

[Dripdry]

and which one might that be? Mine is one of the most efficient out there, and it's upper range is 450 mi when I drive 55 mph straight through on a full tank of gas.

I would rather drive this hybrid...

[tekrat]

This gets 125MPG, is a diesel/electric hybrid, and is much cooler looking than any Tesla.

http://reversetrike.com/xr3-hybrid.html

Oh, and it's cheaper too. In the meantime, I'll stick with my Honda Reflex scooter. 70mpg, and will pretty much go anywhere and do anything. Not so great though in the snow and bad weather, but, I'm learning to deal with that.

Re:I would rather drive this hybrid...

[rsborg]

This gets 125MPG, is a diesel/electric hybrid, and is much cooler looking than any Tesla.

http://reversetrike.com/xr3-hybrid.html

Oh, and it's cheaper too.

Yeah, that thing looks sweet. However, the site says it's estimated price ($10k-25k), not final price. It requires assembly, since it's a DIY kit. Furthermore it's not even ready yet. What a silly comparison (will it pass even standard safety tests?)

Re:I would rather drive this hybrid...

[tekrat]

You're forgetting that's the price if you have to buy all the parts retail, and one person assembles it. Now try and imagine a company assembling these, they are buying the parts wholesale and in bulk, which lowers the overall cost of the finished product.

How much would your phone cost if you had to buy all the individual parts retail by themselves?

It's a pretty good deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to a Volt or a Leaf which are basically economy cars with advanced drive trains, you do get a lot for your $15-17k markup...

Re:I can't wait

[undeadbill]

That would have been Aptera, which was focusing on the market for lower price cars, but they had to close shop before they could get their sedan model off the ground due to not getting Federal funding to complete final testing and get production set up.

On a good course

[NameIsDavid]

Tesla is following its plan nicely. Knowing that developing the initial platform technology would be expensive, they started with a car that people are typically willing to pay a lot for: a high-performance roadster. Next, they are approximately halving that price while increasing the versatility to expand the potential market. There are many cars in the price range of the Model S that sell well to upper-middle-class customers, especially those that can serve as a primary vehicle such as this 5-door. The work on the Model S will ultimately allow Tesla to bring down the cost of the next model still further with a more mass-market vehicle. Each step furthers the technology and brings in revenue to fund the next step.

Bet you're happy about the F-22

[tekrat]

How many days have you worked this year to subsidize a plane that has no equal in the air, constantly crashes and kills it's pilots and yet Lockheed, instead of being fired for making a piece-of-shit, is given MORE money to try and fix all the problems with a plane we do not need because if we ever get into a shooting war with a country that has enough air power to challenge even our old F-16's, then air forces are going to be the least of our worries.

Re:Bet you're happy about the F-22

[ScentCone]

Excellent straw man! No, actually, it's lame. How do you get to complaining about a fighter jet program from my complaint about taxpayers around the country giving cash to the people who buy these cars? These two things couldn't be more unrelated. Where's all the bitching about the 1%-ers getting away with stuff? Ah, it's about sexy, expensive electric cars, so it's OK to give people discounts on those with money taken from taxpayers to pay the interest on the capital borrowed from China to make the produce feel more competitive. Got it.

Re:Bet you're happy about the F-22

[tekrat]

Please, take a stress pill and sit down for a moment. My point is that YOU don't get to vote on where your tax dollars get spent, and there's plenty of government waste to bitch and moan about.

All you can do is vote in some representative who you HOPE will take your interests with him to D.C., and somehow, your vote will translate into his vote on spending bills.

And just as you can bitch and moan about money wasted on electric car subsidies, I can bitch and moan about hyper expensive jets that don't do anything. Or Oil Company subsidies, or bridges to Nowhere, or truck subsidies to small businesses (which is why every doctor owns a Hummer).

So in other words, please shut up. If you want a vote in how money is spent in government, then you'd better run for office, or run a lobby. Because right now, they way the US system is set up, you have no say.

Re:Bet you're happy about the F-22

[ScentCone]

Not so. I have a say. All voters have a say. I am annoyed that half of the people in the country vote for people who make sure that they don't have to pay taxes, while always asking those of us who are saddled with that burden to carry more and more weight. Voting for what other people must spend their day working to produce while you don't have to give - only receive - is actually evil.

Fisker Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, though more expensive, the Fisker Karma has landed.

$30K version planned

[JTsyo]

Never fear, there's word of a $30K version being worked on by Tesla. Something like that would blow the Volt away. Tesla also works with Toyota and Benz on some of their electric vehicles.

All battery EVs are rich people's toys

[Anonymous Coward]

All battery powered electric vehicles are rich people's toys. You need to not only afford a more expensive car, but be able to afford an expensive car that can never be taken on a long trip. They also have the problem that, in the real world, everybody doesn't spend every night at home, people will forget to plug it in and plans change. Spend the last few nights at a new lover's apartment parked far away from a plug? Good luck getting to work. Forgot to plug it in for a couple of days and want to go pick up your kid that got sick on a field trip? Sorry, he/she just has to suffer. Busy day driving around everywhere and your slightly-out-of-town friend is having a spontaneous party? Looks like you're sitting that one out. You can't really substitute one as your only car, you would need a gas burner for these (and thousands of other) scenarios. This puts it firmly in the "unnecessary luxury" category. They talk about quick charging stations and 5-minute battery swaps, but those won't help you until they are widespread, which is a long, long way away from happening. Right now, the only widespread charging station is (in the US) a 110V 15A circuit, which (on a Nissan Leaf, I'm too lazy to look up others) charges at the rate of 5 miles per hour. Have a few friends over and they want to charge up too? That will use half the normal house's (100 Amp) electrical supply.

Battery EVs are just too inflexible for the real world except as luxury toys, unless you're the type that never goes far from home, always does everything properly and correctly and would never forget to plug in the car, never does anything spontaneous and never has emergencies. That theoretical person has far more problems than an electric car would fix, though.

Re:I can't wait

[ScentCone]

due to not getting Federal funding

No, that should be "due to not making a plausible case for their product being even remotely profitable to make and sell any time in the intermmediate future" - because if it had been, some of the trillions of dollars in desparate-to-invest-in-something-viable cash that's sitting out there in private hands would have been beating a path to their door. We should be thrilled they didn't have the political connections that Solyndra did. Just saved the half of the population that does pay income taxes a pile of cash. Good.

Rich is relative

[Firethorn]

Exactly. A dual income $150k/year family isn't 'rich' in most senses, but they could afford this vehicle if they aren't extravagent elsewhere.

My first thought was to add 'special purpose' to the list. With enough range and the right rebates, these vehicles may be very economical in certain situations - I can see them being used as taxis in pollution-heavy dense cities where the range isn't as important as the performance in-city.

At $50-70k, it's definitely in the 'special purpose' category, either 'non-financially motivated rich person's toy', or 'middle class with unusual driving pattern'.

Re:Rich is relative

[Nethemas the Great]

Well there's an interesting wrinkle to EVs that make them more affordable than their sticker price would initially suggest. That being the cost to drive them. Maintenance is of course cheaper since there's fewer moving parts, no oil to changes, etc.. But most importantly there's no $3.50+/gal gasoline to buy. Compare a $40-60/tank fill up for typical family sedan to a less than $5 from the grid battery charge. Over the life of that vehicle the total cost to own and operate an EV gets a whole lot more attractive and affordable.

Re:Rich is relative

[517714]

A NYC taxi goes 200-300 miles per shift and does at least two shifts back to back, most do three shifts. Range is very important, and you need at least 500 miles to be viable for two shifts and three shifts simply can't be done without battery swaps.

Re:Rich is relative

[stevelinton]

But battery swaps would work great for a taxi -- you're usually close to base and have competent drivers and even competent staff at the base.

Re:Rich is relative

[Firethorn]

Per PBS it's an average of 180 miles per 12 hour shift. Given that a medallian runs $1M, I doubt that having to get an extra $50k car is that much of a concern, though battery changes would probably be cheaper.

Per Shaller - average is 80-150 per shift, some 'over 200'. Now, from what I understand, most drivers have to fill up during the shift due to the lousy gas mileage they get with their driving patterns, but that might not be required.

I'll note that for true taxi service, I wouldn't go with anything but the 300 mile battery system. If we figure on a 180 miles a day, 365 days a year, that's 66k miles. At which point you're looking at under $2k for fuel cost for the EV, vs closer to $15k for the gasoline vehicle. Assuming it holds up, of course. Electric motors should have no problem, the frame should be engineered for it, same with the upholstery and such. Tires I figure are a static expense between the two. The only real question is the batteries.

Oh yeah, and NYC might kick them some money in compensation just for the lowered pollution.

Re:Rich is relative

[Rogerborg]

Then factor in the costs of extra batteries, plus replacements as you wear them out, plus your costs when your cars do run out of electrons and whine to a halt in the middle of an intersection.

Re:Rich is relative

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that the new taxi being designed for NYC has this in it.

Since all they do it drive around the city and out to airports, I always thought that a purpose built vehicle with taxi "use cases" would be the wise thing to do.

Re:Rich is relative

[haruchai]

Indeed, as the Better Place taxi demo project ( which ran for a year) in Yokohama showed. I would like to see a big push to convert taxis and fleet vehicles to EVs which, as you pointed out, are never very far from home base even if they're racking up many miles. And those vehicles with their near-constant running & stop-start behavior are likely more polluting than similar consumer vehicles and a larger contributor to smog in cities. Since they won't be consuming power when stationary and therefore no wear on the engine, a rapid conversion of these classes of vehicles would be a big win all around ( if not cost-prohibitive)

Wake me up later

[assertation]

Wake me up when Tesla motors makes something all electric, under 30K and is practical for apartment dwellers.

Couldn't you get a Toyota Corolla....

[tkrotchko]

Couldn't you buy a Corolla and have enough money left over to pay for 30 years of driving? And you can get it serviced at the local garage?

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks to me like this is just a gradual ramp up in production and decrease in price as the economies of scale start kicking in.

Build what you can. Sell to those who can afford it. See what happen.

Lower your carbon footprint; buy a recycled car

[wcrowe]

If lowering your carbon footprint is your concern, you don't have to spend a lot of money on an electric car to do it.

Purchase a recycled car. What's that? It's what most people call a used car. That's not recycling you say? Well, it's similar to recycling in that no energy was expended, or pollution ejected, or resources depleted in some manufacturing process to get you in a set of wheels. It's cheaper too. Naturally, you'll want to look for a vehicle with better fuel mileage that pollutes less as well.

I'm happy driving around in my used, $4,900, ten-year-old Buick. It's paid for, and has fuel economy that is 10mpg better than my last car.

Re:Lower your carbon footprint; buy a recycled car

[Firethorn]

Purchase a recycled car. What's that? It's what most people call a used car.

My works greed credo: 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle'. Reducing usage is preferable. After that, if you can reuse an asset, do so. Only when you can't do those two do you recycle.

Similar situation

[EdwinFreed]

Currently have a LEAF, 2010 Prius, and a 1999 4Runner. The 4Runner was an OK car, but we're selling it next week. We're also on the waiting list for an Tesla S Series; when that arrives next year the Prius will be the one to go. I agree that the LEAF makes the Prius feel old fashioned, although how much of that is because I prefer the Nissan's overall design sensibilities to Toyota's is unclear.

Restaurants; future opportunity with electric cars

[Firethorn]

Enter into a partnership with Cracker Barrel offer free installation of high speed chargers.

I'd expect this sort of stuff to be a bonanza for sit down restaurants - with high speed chargers, you can get around 90% charge in 1 hour. 270 miles charge on a 300 mile battery. Figuring on 65mph, that's just over 4 hours of highway travel. Drive from 8 to 12, eat. Drive from 1 to 5, eat. etc... Driving more than 8 hours a day? You could ramp it up to 16 hours - Drive 3-7 am, eat breakfast. 8-12, lunch, 1 to 5 dinner, 6-10, then sleep at a motel(with charger).

With gasoline, you don't want it too close to your food, and filling needs to be monitored, but doesn't take long. With electric, the cost of charging is less significant, doesn't need to be monitored, but takes longer. Might as well have them at places you tend to spend around an hour at anyways.

50k+ is cheap for the specs

[Colin Smith]

This is up against top of the range BMW, Mercs, Audis, low end Maseratis, Porches, Aston Martins.

Depends how it handles in reality, quality, but the spec (apart from top speed) says it's cheap.
 

Re:50k+ is cheap for the specs

[Thumper_SVX]

Hardly high-end. It's slightly larger in interior room than a new 5-series at the same price as a base 5'er once you add some options. Few people buy these cars without adding a few toys.

go back to sleep

[OrangeTide]

electric cars won't be practical for apartment dwellers until someone makes charging stations a requirement for apartment parking lots. Or if someone invents a way to charge a car in 10 minutes, but don't hold your breath.

Re:go back to sleep

[assertation]

Read ecogeek.com there are already charging stations similar to gas stations that charge electric cars in about 15 min.

Re:go back to sleep

[OrangeTide]

yea charging at 4C isn't recommended. if you can charge at 20C then that would be something, that's about where I'd feel comfortable, but likely most Americans would put up with 6C.

There is this magazine called Popular Science, has this stuff in pretty much every issue, no need to check out random websites you suggest, it's common knowledge.

Re:go back to sleep

[assertation]

Magazines are so 20th century dude.

Re:go back to sleep

[OrangeTide]

That's how old that information is!

The problem is the cost of the batteries

[mbessey]

Swapping out Li-Ion batteries isn't like swapping out propane tanks. The value of a propane tank is basically $0, plus the cost of the propane. The cost structure on the batteries is exactly the opposite - the charge is essentially free, but the batteries cost thousands of dollars.

In order for battery-swapping to make sense, the same entity has to own all of the batteries, or there needs to be careful tracking and accounting for wear and tear on each battery. Otherwise, there's an economic incentive to cheat.

Re:Tesla

[amorsen]

there's a reason most locomotives are hybrids these days (and rail frieght takes a tiny fraction of the energy-per-ton of road frieght).

Locomotives aren't hybrids to improve efficiency. They are hybrids because you basically can't make a gearbox which will provide sufficient torque to start a loaded freight train -- at least not if you want it to last for more than a few days. The hybrid drivetrain on most diesel locomotives is a horrible waste of energy. Heck, they even have regenerative brakes but they don't actually store the energy. The electricity is burned in huge resistor arrays.

Diesel on trains is just a bad idea.

Break even points

[Firethorn]

I really need to find my EV spreadsheet, or rebuild it.

$50k Tesla car vs $25k Chevy Impala(30 mpg). At $4/gallon, and assuming maintenance savings are offset by you actually having to pay for your electricity, it's 6.25k gallons to make up the difference, or 188k miles.

If you assume you're NOT looking at the base model, and instead a $35k car as the 'equivalent, it's $15k/3,750 gallons/113k miles.

Update: Spreadsheet partially done.
Assumptions: $50k Model S vs $25kChevy Impala. 4 miles per kwh, 30 mpg, Insurance is a wash, an extra $320 of maintenance on the gas vehicle, 15k miles driven for each, $.10 electricity, $4 gasoline. 5% interest rate/cost of capital and a 10 year lifespan.

Total Annual Cost: $7,850.23 for the Tesla, $6,557.61 of the Impala. Advantage Impala by $1,292.61

Not quite right - that's for a highway driver using the cheapest available. Upping the cost to $31k for a nicer package, and figuring on a 100% city driver(18mpg), that flips it - the Impala's cost rises to $8,667.98, potentially saving you $817.75/year.

Drive a LOT of city miles, like a taxi driver, if the vehicle has the endurance, use it. Otherwise you might as well plug in your own assumptions.

Re:Break even points

[HungWeiLo]

You make the assumption that gasoline *only* costs what it says on the sign at the pump.

Re:Break even points

[Nethemas the Great]

You can play those kinds of games with power from the grid as well so it's probably a mute point. Either way, few would argue whether it's a net savings or an added expense of about $100/month that a luxury sedan shoppable against a BMW 535i is a very difficult choice to ignore a sufficient reason to make a number of companies nervous.

Re:Break even points

[lupine]

Good luck buying gas for only $4 a gallon in 10 years.

Also many utilities will allow you to switch to time of day billing and charge at off peak rates. My utility charges only 6.5 cents per kWh off peak.

Re:Break even points

[Firethorn]

There's a reason I said 'assumptions'. I currently pay closer to 20 cents a kwh, and don't get any cuts for time of day/off peak billing. There's companies out there promising that they can produce bio-fuels at ~$3 gallon once they get a full size plant built. Electric cars are at the cusp of econability, though I once calced it out that families would use an average of 50% more power if they switched to 100% EV, so we'd need a lot more powerplants.

But anyways, since you listed a specific price point: Annuel fuel cost @15k miles@10 cents = $375. @6.5 = 243.75. Difference of $131.25 per year. Given that you're looking at a $2k difference in car payments over the same time, not necessarily that significant.

Also, is that 6.5 cents your marginal cost? Does it include per kwh charges like 'fuel surcharge'? Would it be like my option, where they'd charge $10/month for the privilage of doing off-peak service, then drop the rate to only 18 cents instead of 20?

Re:Break even points

[Jeremi]

$50k Tesla car vs $25k Chevy Impala(30 mpg).

Given that the Tesla is being marketed as a luxury sedan, is an Impala the proper model to compare it to? It might be more appropriate to compare it to a BMW or Mercedes or similar.

Re:Break even points

[ckthorp]

Otherwise you might as well plug in your own assumptions.

I see what you did there...

Re:Break even points

[Anonymous Coward]

$4 per gallon? You will *dream* of this price in 5 years. We are in the middle of a recession, and peak oil has very likely happened already.

Re:Break even points

[Anonymous Coward]

Moot. MOOT. The word is fucking MOOT!

Re:Break even points

[Rogerborg]

Good luck getting replacement batteries for your Tesla in 10 years.

Re:Break even points

[lupine]

Because electric cars can (and should) be charged at night, they do not add to peak loads. Excess nighttime capacity will be sufficient to charge electric vehicles for quite some time. Additional renewable resources such as wind power will help to bolder nighttime grid capacity.

"It’s estimated that 75 percent of the 250 million vehicles on our highways could be charged at night on the current electric grid – without any new power plants"
http://goelectricdrive.com/GetStarted/Top10Questions.aspx

Re:Break even points

[Firethorn]

I made the math work with a bloody Impala. It's come that far.

Putting it up against luxury cars just expands the math. Apparently BMWs of today have around a 5 year lifespan(according to my mechanic uncle) before some HEAVY maintenance is required.

I'm going to stand by my conclusions: If you drive a car as a status symbol(cost is the point), drive what you want. If you're mostly a highway driver, keep the gasoline vehicle. If you drive only a little, stick with gas. If you drive a lot of city miles, stop and go traffic, then get the electric.

Note: 15k miles is 41 a day, every day. 288 a week. I'm currently averaging half that. I'd probably be better off with a cheaper plug-in hybrid.

Re:Break even points

[Firethorn]

Hm... My concern is that while we might not need MORE power plants for a while with only night time charging, that article also frequently mentions topping off at work, the mall, etc... The evening would mean that we'd want to transition some plants from peaking operations to baseload, but the extra daytime charging would mean that we'd need to keep the peakers, and build more baseload.

Even 25% works out to a lot of power plants somewhere the size of the USA.

It also doesn't list a source for their estimate, and I'd like to see how they figured that out. Running peaking plants more often isn't cheap. More even power demand is good though.

Apartment dwellers

[Firethorn]

I've heard this argument before, but I don't think you're thinking it entirely through - once EV ownership has become common among the (on average) more affluential home owners, apartment owners will start thinking of EV charging points as a 'feature' they can use to more easily attract renters and/or charge more rent. It's not the current tenants they're thinking about - it's the future ones.

Re:Apartment dwellers

[BStroms]

That's very true, but we're a long way from that sort of market penetration at the moment. Nor is it likely to help me the next time I go car shopping. Despite paying for pools, tennis courts, playgrounds, and other such features I never use, I find it doubtful I'll convince the other members of the association to hook up plugs for electric cars in the parking lots anytime soon.

You already subsidize rich people's other toys

[tekrat]

You already subsidize other rich people's other toys.

For example, some of your local taxes may be paying to clean up beachfront property that raises the values of expensive beachfront houses that the wealthy own.

Or you might be paying taxes that are spent to create boat docks so the wealthy have the places to park their yachts.

Or repairs to a drawbridge that is used by the wealthy to get their yachts in and out of a harbor.

You're paying for roads that the wealthy run their big-rigs on to deliver their raw materials to each other to create their widgets that perhaps only other wealthy people can afford.

You're paying for the runways they land their private jets on, you're paying for the air-traffic controllers that direct their private jets, hell, you're subsidizing the companies that make their fuel their jets use.

You're subsiding their massive insurance contracts, so when 9 guys plow their Ferrari's into each other in Japan, everyone's insurance rates go up.

In fact, I pretty much cannot think of ANYTHING that the wealthy pay for by themselves -- which is perhaps, why they are so goddam wealthy.

The problem isn't solvable by Tesla...

[rocket rancher]

...because the problem is how we produce energy, not how we use it. We need to change our energy production infrastructure, not fuck around with ever-cuter ways of consuming it. EVs (and all the other so-called green technologies) are pretty much the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, for all the good they are going to do in averting the disaster everybody can see coming. Seriously -- each EV produced still contributes something like 19 tons of carbon to our environment, which truly isn't all that much better than my Lingenfelter C6, if this life-cycle study produced by the British government earlier this year can be believed.

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples, Oranges, and rotten pears...

Bikes, Cars, and hideous cars are quite different. Tesla's only two designs so far have been soundly in the beautiful-car-range.

Some people [like me] will never buy hideous cars [Prius, Fiat 500, Smart, etc], but are more than happy to consider a beautiful car [Model S] or a normal looking car [Hybrid Civic/Accord, Hybrid Altima]

Personally, I think Apple might be a good comparison to Tesla.. Roadster being like the original iPhone, way over priced but cool and unique; Model S brought down to more of the mainstream [late original iPhones, 3G iPhones], and then mass market with their next vehicle ala iPhone 3GS being only $50 now.
If Tesla can follow Apple's path, good for them. I'll be happy to pickup one when it's in my price range. ^_^

30 minute fast DC recharges

[spage]

The Leaf's optional DC fast charge to 80% takes 30 minutes from a 50 kW CHAdeMO charging station. There are 800 in Japan, 150 in Europe and a handful in the USA, though supposedly most Nissan dealers will be installing them.

Some (all?) Model S variants will support Tesla's own 90 kW Supercharger, which will give a 50% charge boost in 30 minutes (150 mile range in a 300 mile pack). Also the Model S pack is swappable, so for a long trip you could borrow a 300 mile pack from a Tesla store (for now Tesla is vague on the details).

Meanwhile some USA and European car makers have endorsed a proposed third DC fast charger, the SAE J1772 "combo-coupler" with two extra fat pins beyond the current plug that almost all plug-in cars for DC charging up to 90 kW. The joy of standards...

30 minutes is still longer than a gas vehicle, but it makes the occasional long-distance trip (on which you didn't take your family's other car, or rent, or fly) more practical. I'm sure it's not enough for you, from your comments you seem allergic to EVs for a host of reasons. But you don't speak or buy for everyone.

standardized batteries aren't happening

[spage]

The Model S battery is swappable at a Tesla store, though Tesla is vague on the details.

An EV's battery pack weighs many hundreds of pounds and is integrated into the vehicle — under the floor in the Model S, in the trunk of the Focus Electric, in a T-shape in the Volt. How can you standardize that? Within that pack are sheets or modules of batteries that CAN be individually replaced in servicing, but they are offered by various battery suppliers and are integrated into thermal/electrical/safety monitoring systems, so swapping 7 modules becomes very time consuming.

Next problem is cost. A car battery isn't like a propane tank: the metal part costs way more than the fuel/electricity. Also, you'll only occasionally be swapping batteries, but if you get a dud you'll be recharging it over and over and eventually trying to sell it with your car. No one wants to swap their $10,000 pristine battery pack for a clapped-out battery that's only holding 70% of its original charge.

Better Place had your idea, they have a standardized QuickDrop swappable battery system that you can get in the Renault Fluence Z.E. (and NO other car model) and then exchange at a robotic swap station. To solve the dud problem, BP owns the battery and supplies you charge. But that makes buying/leasing the car a three-way deal, and it means a third party has to make money off what should be a cheap operation (recharging from the wall) while financing lots of extra batteries and building extremely expensive swap stations. You'll pay BP big $$$ for the convenience one way or another. BP is trying to make it work in Israel and Denmark (while doing a lot of PR and spin and shilling forums with crap about how they're big in China).

If and when battery density and economy both quadruple, you could imagine a car carrying half a dozen 40 pound standardized modules that you can add to for long trips or swap out for fully charged ones. Honda Power Systems is thinking along these lines, they announced a "Loop battery" concept about the size of a small briefcase that you can use to power a neighborhood EV ("golf cart"), then remove to power home tools, electronics, etc. Similarly, another Japanese automaker (Suzuki?) showed a scooter that can carry one or two removable battery packs.

gas consumption outweighs production pollution

[spage]

It takes about 1000 gallons of embodied energy to make a 1.5-ton car, and most of the resources are recyclable. Meanwhile your 2001 Buick Regal gets 21 mpg combined according to the EPA. Over 120,000 miles it will consume 3,300 more gallons of gasoline than a 50 mpg Prius; that's 10 *TONS* more gasoline which turns into 32 *TONS* of CO2. (Here's a spreadsheet.) And every one of those gallons took additional fuel to produce, spill, and deliver.

That's why every reputable study concludes 75-90% of the lifetime pollution of a car occurs in its operation, not its production.

I'm not knocking you for driving an old car, so long as you don't drive much. But everyone who smugly puts down Prius/Leaf/Volt drivers for hurting the environment with their shiny new toys is misguided.

Re:gas consumption outweighs production pollution

[wcrowe]

You've completely missed the point. You ignored the fact that I went from a 14mpg vehicle to a 24mpg vehicle (I don't care what the EPA says, my Century gets 24mpg). So, estimating from your spreadsheet, over 120,000 miles I will produce about 6 tons less CO2 than if I had kept my other vehicle. I've lowered my carbon footprint. Admittedly not as much as if I had bought a Prius, but the Prius would have cost six times as much.

My point was not that people should not buy Priuses. If anyone really wants a Prius, and can afford it, go for it. My point is that they don't HAVE to buy a Prius to make a positive environmental impact.

If you're buying a Prius just to make a statement about how you feel about the environment (and to feel like you're better than other people), then you are no different than the guy who buys a Hummer because he feels insecure about the size of his penis.

Playing money games...

[Firethorn]

As Nethemas said, you start getting into such matters, it quickly gets muddy beyond practical consideration. I was only trying to address microeconomics - what the individual, familiy unit, or small business has control over. When it comes to electricity, are you coal & oil like where I'm at? Are you hydro or natural gas? Do you pay the premium for wind or solar? Don't forget that I penalized gasoline by assuming $4/gallon, when pump prices are averaging closer to $3.60-3.70, and helped electric by figuring on a rate of only 10 cents.

If you want to penalize gasoline further, go right ahead and plug your number in. Some might penalize the grid more, some penalize hybrids for the dirty nickel production. That's beyond my simple 'will it save you money' calculation, and I'm not even attempting to factor in abilities, preferences, etc...

Heck, the insurance alone could be a make/break factor - logically a more expensive vehicle should be a touch more expensive to insure, right? I'm assuming that insurance remains a constant expense. Other things - how can we be sure the vehicle will last 10 years?

BTW, if you figure on 15k miles a year@25mpg for your alternative to the S, it's only a $116 penalty a year to drive the Tesla, at $4 gasoline. Gas shoots above that, you're saving more money.

Thoughts from an actual Tesla S buyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Money down, on the list, and very eager to receive my Tesla S. Thoughts in response to the comments here:

Performance, size, and luxury comparables: BMW 535i, Audi A6, Infiniti M. For the record, sports sedans are my preferred vehicle (former Acura and Infiniti owner)

Range: Three to choose from, 160 miles, 230 or 300. My take on the "range anxiety" thing: much ado about nothing. Tesla offers three ranges (for a cost of course), but realistically, as an actual consumer, I'm going the 160 mile range model. I usually drive 80 miles per day and only once or twice a year do I drive more than 140 in a single go (and even then its usually in a rental car on the other end of a flight). What if the mood struck for a college-style 1000-mile road trip? I'd either rent a car (definitely the best way to go financially for a road trip btw!) or we'd take my spouse's car.

"What about charge time?": How long does it take you to charge your mobile phone? Not how long does it take your phone to charge, how long does it take YOU to charge the phone? You plug it in at night, two seconds, a couple more to unplug it in the morning. Way faster than going to the gas station.

Cost: With the tax credit, the Tesla S is in the middle of the cost pack of the aforementioned vehicles.

Return On Investment (ROI): For the Audi A6, the ROI is 4.3 months, for the less expensive Infiniti M, it's 17 months, and for the BMW it's immediate since the 535i costs more out of the gate. If you abhor accounting (a pending tax refund is an asset after all) and/or insist on cash-in-hand when calculating your return on investment, then including the median time to tax refund in the equations the ROI is ten months for both the BMW 535i and Audi A6 and 17 months for the Infiniti M.

Energy source: #1 on my list is getting the heck off of OPEC fuel sources (national security). Environment is honestly second in my book. But even then, the coal FUD is a moot point because I don't live in West Virginia (where Coal is 97.6% of supply and banjos are sure to always outsell them 'lectric cars), but rather in Washington state where the mix is 76.8% hydro, 8.5% coal, 7.3% natural gas, 5.4% wind, and 1.7% biomass (source: EIA, 2011)

efficiency matters, tons of gasoline

[spage]

Stop thinking there's a single silver bullet. Driving a fundamentally more efficient car thanks to electric propulsion and regenerative braking is part of addressing energy consumption. And "so-called green" is as meaningless a phrase as "green".

That lifecycle study was produced by a UK "anything but batteries" consortium looking for government money for efficient internal combustion engine and flywheel (?!?) technology. It all hinges on your electricity generation mix (its 500 g CO2 per kWh iseems sky-high), but even an EV owner in a midwest coal-fired state can put solar panels on the roof.

Meanwhile your Lingenfelter C6 (nice car!) is based off a Corvette that gets 19mpg combined EPA. At 12,000 miles a year, every year it will consume 630 gallons of gasoline, or 2 tons, that turns into 6 tons of CO2. And each gallon took an additional ~0.25 gallons to produce, spill, and deliver. Even without the solar panels, if you live in a natural gas or hydro powered area (here's the EPA's map), an EV is "all that much better". And that's before you consider all the geopolitical, terrorist, financial, etc. downsides of gasoline.

Electric cars, a pending environmental disaster.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until all those batteries end up in your local landfill.

Jump Seats

[Anonymous Coward]

My family is looking at a new Ford Explorer. With the EcoBoost engine it can get 24mpg combined and costs about $36000 if I leave off Navigation and some other bits I don't *need*. Then we see a /. posting about the Tesla S and I remember seeing it's a 7 passenger car when ordered with jump seats. For the last six months the only days I have driven more than 160 miles were days I went to *insert capital city here*. I can always take my piece of junk old minivan, it does 25 on the highway if I'm careful. Most of the time the van has 2 or 3 or 4 belts in use. So unless we're ALL going somewhere together, I can leave those jump seats folded. Cool. In fact most days I'm lucky to clear 40 miles in all my running around. So I'd be charging what, twice a week with the base 160mi model? Better than pumping $60 a week worth of dead dinosaurs in my tank, believe it!

$57400 + $1500 jump seats + $1200 charger thing + $1500 twin charger + $950 sound system so I can give the iPod to one of my kids. That's a $62550 car. That's a $26K premium over the Explorer. But also, no more gas. I'm tethered to the electrical grid but I can plug in to any 110 or 220 outlet anywhere. Also you might think there's a LOT of cars I could get for $62550. None of which look like an Aston Martin or a Maserati which the Tesla S truly resembles to me, except maybe a Jaguar XF, that's pretty comparable at $53K plus options. Or I suppose I could buy a used exotic sedan but I also suppose I could stick my left arm in a meat grinder running at full tilt. I'd do that for one of those V10-powered BMW M5's. The sound of a V10 screaming to 8K is unmatched. But you know what? All those exotic sedans-the Rapide, the XF, the E60 M5, the Quattroporte-none of them have third row seats. *gasp* some of them only seat 4 people! So here I am with a bloodied shoulder stump and two or three of my kids are stuck riding in the minivan with Mom. That's not fair...to me...I like my arm...not to my wife...she HATES the minivan...not to the kids...they would have to fight over who gets to listen to the V10...so we're back to the Tesla...

From everything I've read so far, the car fits our lifestyle. As long as I don't get rid of The Van of Questionable Mechanical Integrity...because sometimes we do want to go to *insert major metropolis here* and sometimes I need to replace sections of drywall. I have 5 kids, for Nikola's sake, sometimes you just have to put the plaster away and replace the wall!

Price considerations

[uvajed_ekil]

$50k+ seems like a lot of money, and it is. I will certainly not be buying an Tesla at that price. But look at it this way: how many new Corvettes, Cadilac Escalades, various Porsches, and countless other equally or more expensive vehicles do you see on American roads? Tesla's cars look to be attractively styled mechanical wonders, and I see no reason why they would not be highly desirable. The Tesla S could end up being a huge hit, as many many people are willing to pay $40k-$70k or more for a fancy car. This is not an affordable, practical every-man car that means we have begun a new era of electric vehicles in every garage, but it is a damn good step along the way. Early horseless carriages were expensive too, but once they caught on a bit and multiple manufacturers got in on the party things really changed.

And once you factor out gas?

[BlueCoder]

Sure you have to recharge the batteries but that's pennies compared to filling up your tank with gasoline. You don't spend 99% of what you would have been spent on gas. And electric cars don't need the maintenance that engine powered cars do. They are far more reliable and will not break down as much (mostly flat tires) or need to go into the shop.

You do have to have checkups for the batteries and to replace them after something like 8 years which will cost another $10,000 or so. But again that's like the investment in gasoline but paid upfront. And with mass production the batteries are only going to get cheaper where replacements should come down to at least $2000.

You have to compare the total lifetime cost of a car with an engine vs a car with motors and batteries. A car that can go 60 miles (they always overestimate and you divide by 2 for the round trip) seems perfectly reasonable and you can always upgrade the capacity. That's two hours of driving without any traffic at just below the speed limit.. But generally you want more space for hauling people and groceries at least as far as the 120 miles you might drive in a day. If you live out in the country then your obviously going to need more range but then those people are really more interested in pickup trucks.

Anyone that lives in say Los Angeles will be more inclined to rent a car with a bigger battery for the weekend trip to Las Vegas unless they do that all the time. A vehicle with a bigger battery is only worth it if you REGULARLY travel long distances. (Remember if you really drive a lot everyday you won't be spending the money on gas.) If you have the larger capacity battery and you don't use it then it's a luxury item and your just throwing money away since the batteries degrade even if you don't use them.

It's also might be possible that you could drive into a shop like a tire change center or a Jiffy Lube and get a booster battery installed in the trunk in 10 minutes. (Takes up space but it will get you there.) If you drive long distances then you could have the boosters swapped out just like stopping for gas.

Value isn't there

[Anonymous Coward]

A ~70K electric car should have a 500 mile range and recharge itself from the envy of others.

The price isn't outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is complaining about the price and wonders why they can't be as cheap or cheaper than a regular car. The problem is the batteries. Do the math. You could run a 2 or 3 bedroom house for nearly two days off the batteries. See how long a car battery will power your house to put it into perspective. We're all spoiled because the energy density is so high with gasoline. It's unfair to compare a gasoline car to a battery powered electric. Sure we can stick with gas for a while but not much longer and the cost will keep going up. Hydrogen isn't a power source it's a storage medium. Slashdot loves nuclear but the obvious solution is electric if we go nuclear. Hydrogen involves a whole new infrastructure where as electric largely uses the existing one. Yeah you can't drive from LA to New York easily but how often do you realistically do that? We need to rethink how we live not cling to how things are now. Remember a 100 years ago most people still used horses. It's only jarring because few people remember those times. If you want to stick with fossil style fuels there are replacements but get used to $10 a gallon prices. Alcohol and biofuels can fairly seamlessly replace gasoline but they are more expensive. Eventually they will be cheaper than oil though.

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[xeno]

The intersection is "fun to drive." The Tesla is a miniscule 2-seater that's not easily driven with the roof on except by hobbits. The Ural is an open 3-seater that drives like a lightweight car. Smart's a 2-seater made by cutting a C-class in half and stuffing in a motorcycle-spec 1000cc turbo. All more or less cargo-less with high smiles-per-mile. You get the point: quite comparable in actual use.

Everything else is in the eye of the beholder. For example, the Tesla roadster with its top off looks sporty (Don't be so smug -- I'd hardly call it beautiful), but with the standard roof on, it looks like a funny-lookin' guy with a bad toupee; the automotive equiv of old Gov. Blagojevich. And no matter what's under the hood, Accord says "soccer mom" and Altima says "first decent job and apartment, but I'll sell it when she gets pregnant." Ask a woman between the ages of 25-35, and apparently you'll be told the Fiat 500 is adorable**. The Prius looks like a wheel chock to me, but Portland hippies think it's sexy. Ask a guy from 2hrs east of here, and he'll say you & me we're all f@99ots because we don't have a diesel pickup with duallys and mudders. Ask the next guy down the line, and you'll get a completely different mix. YMMV.

Anyway, trying to mimic Apple's marketing success of the iPhone with anything outside of a 2-pay-period-disposable-income item is harder than you would think. Can't easily think of a successful example, but I could pave a highway coast to coast with the bodies of those who've failed. Currently Fiat is doing reasonably well on that path** with the 500, but Tesla would do well to avoid counting on that working for them.

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[DrFalkyn]

Motorcycles are simply not practical for most folks. You have to brave the elements, at most you have a one passenger capacity, and you can't haul much. And they just much more dangerous than cars. Everyone I know that owns a motorcycle also owns a car.

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they sorted the primary bearing - in the UK they used to advice you replaced the main bearings with aftermarket ones as the originals were failure prone. Pity that they are currently illegal in the UK as the sidecar is on the wrong side

Also you can get a whole range of add ons like a bench saw to run off the driven sidecar wheel by putting it on jack and replacing the wheel with the factory option belt drive, there is also a single furrow plough available.

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Some maths for folks like you. In the last 100 years, we have burnt over 60 million years worth of oil. The deposits of petroleum that we have been tapping are the result of millions of years of degradation of organic material. So ... for the oil reserves we have burnt off to get replenished it will take another 60 million years. This is NOT about money - it's about keeping the gains our species has made in the last 1000 odd years going. Without energy generation, our civilization is going to fall appart. Think of what winters are going to be like when heating oild goes to 15 dollars a gallon. If we don't get cars and home running on renewable energy, the 1% will be driving while the remaining 99% slowly sink back to the middle ages.
Investing in renewable energy is purely about building a world for our children where could possibly have a quality of life that matches our. It's not about profit - its about survival. If we don't - then our children will be the first generation to face a life that is worse than what their parents had.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. According to you the Earth is 6,000 years old - and God is going to create new oil deposits just for you. And of course according you Climate Change is a left wing hoax (the fact that it's 60 degrees on Christmas Eve all along the East Coast is a collective hallucination).

"plaything for the rich"

[Anonymous Coward]

People dismissed the car as a "plaything for the rich" over 100 years ago. Sure, today, Tesla cars are more aspirational, than practical. This will change. People with 2 cars will see the value of low long-term ownership and use their other car for the occasional long trips.

Re:and at the other end of the spectrum: Ural Mode

[benhattman]

How is this insightful? We have a major wealth gap developing in the States, and in the midst of the latest recession it was the working class, not the wealthy who cut spending. Have you forgotten all the reports about how luxury brands have done just fine, while everybody else tanked?