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Tesla Delivers First Batch of Model S Electric Sedans
After years of tantalizing pictures and promises, on Friday the first 10 Model S sedans left Tesla's Fremont, California factory. This first handful of the new S has long been spoken for, and the cars have been delivered (or are on the way) to buyers around the U.S. Even with tax-supported subsidies, the new sedan isn't cheap: the subsidized base price is just under $50,000. Still, 10,000 people have put down five grand apiece for the chance to own one. Wired has a brief piece on what the S is like to drive. What's a 160-miles-per-charge, $50k car worth to you?
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me. Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
. . . $50,000 is probably chump change for you anyway.
A neat toy to park next to your DeLorean.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Just to save some time and energy for posts to come. Yes it's over 20K so you aren't interested.
Why can't they make one for under 20K? Batteries are too expensive.
160 miles isn't enough? It wasn't made with you in mind.
Gasoline suits me fine! Then be prepared for $5 and eventually $10 a gallon. Oil is running out and it will happen eventually. If you get solar panels to recharge from the cost of sunlight never goes up and the trend is for solar panels to get cheaper.
Summary says 160, Wired says 265. What gives?
It doesn't need to do 0-60 in 5.6 seconds. It does need to go further on a fully-charged set of batteries.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time? How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
Holy fuck get rid of that Ipad in the console and give me analog controls!
Do they have an equation, given a specific kWh cost (which varies by region), that shows how much it costs to charge the various sized battery packs? The charging process isn't 100% efficient so there is some amount of loss. That is really the bottom line number people want to know - how much does it cost per mile in electricity to operate.
Right now with gas prices dropping to below $3 a gallon in my area, a Prius operating at 50 MPG costs 6 cents a mile in fuel. How does the Tesla compare?
Better known as 318230.
I've always been curious, if the TOTAL long-term impact of electric cars during their entire lifecycle is actually better than fuel burning cars. I mean,
1. what happens with the batteries when it's done?
2. what is the cost of building these things?
3. is the manufacturing process cleaner or worse than fuel burning cars?
4. what about the impact on the electric grid? Is there any?
5. Isn't COAL a huge part of our electric grid?
6. Does this increase the dependance on coal?
7. Is there any repercussions from increasing our dependance on coal?
To be honest, I don't know much about these things, but I always wonder about, "Are these GREEN alternatives actually GREEN? Or is it just GREEN on the surface? And what does GREEN really mean?" I really hate political buzz-words, because they never seem to mean what they imply.
The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt have not been selling well. Ok, technically the Volt also has a gas engine but most people perceive it as an "electric" car. It seems to me that the Tesla will have a very limited audience. Sure, a lot of celebrities will snap them up. Everyday families? I doubt it. Battery technology continues to improve but until we have charging stations along the freeways and parking lots it's going to be tough to market it as an every day car. Americans don't like to be told that you can drive a certain distance and then the fun stops. We want to just fill it up and go. I want these cars to succeed, I really do. But until the Federal Government (yes they can be useful for some things) steps up and starts investing in charging stations and other technologies that all electric cars need to flourish, it's going to difficult to replace gasoline. Hybrids have caught on because the range is unlimited. They provide better economy while still having gasoline as a backup when needed. It's a good compromise between electric propulsion and conventional gasoline driven propulsion. Having said all that I'd love to take the new Tesla for a spin. I bet it's fun to drive.
"What's a 160-miles-per-charge, $50k car worth to you?" Presumably, $50k.
yes, but IF all the energy used is renewable, its not an argument for not doing it. If its all gas, coal etc energy to produce them then it can be an argument. High cost materials are irrelevant if they are produced with renewable energy
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I always wondered why none of the electric cars ever have a a solar panel on top of the car..
That's a big area. And what's your car doing most of the time. Outside... In the sun... In parking lots. In traffic. Sure it might not fill you up very quick. But it's more than zero... One panel in full sun puts out enough to add a couple more miles to your charge.
The hood, The roof, The trunklid. 3 medium/big panels just sitting in the sun all day long...
You already carry a charge controller and batteries on an electric car. Why not a panel or 3?
Even with tax supported subsidies, gas isn't cheap.
Gas shill Luddites would have us using a hundred year old technology instead of solving the technological problems that new technology always presents, all the while denying that there can be any negative consequences from any technology filling the coffers of right wing bloviating ignoramuses.
What's it worth to you to keep gas filled blow-hards redistributing money into the hands of cronies preparing the ground with lies and deceit for the next phony yellow cake war of liberation.
Donate your money to Al-Quaeda why don't you; Exxon Mobil, Shell, etc do with their royalty - and I do mean royalty - payments to Wahabi Arabia.
Or not.
If you can't afford the current tesla, wait a little longer; toyota will be using tesla battery technology to introduce an electric suv based on the toyota Rav model.
http://pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+tesla+build+rav4+ev+woodstock+ontario.htm
tesla has comitted to introducing a 30k+ model X suv by 2015.
http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx
This comment has not been approved by the Ameican Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, their employees or contractors.
"when China adds another 1 billion who want to consume like Americans"
Pro tip for you. Stop consuming like americans. Europe have a better standard of living and have half the amount of CO2 use per capita.
And before you whine about all the size of the USA, remember: YOU DON'T FRIGGING LIVE IN THE WILDERNESS.
Where the fuck do you think one of the worlds biggest and most populous cities exists???
Population density is much higher even on average than Finland which use much less than the European languages DESPITE living so far north they have to pipe sunlight to the country for months at a time.
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me.
Actually its more complicated than that. The car may be worth significantly more or less than the amount paid to an individual person. The car itself may only be worth $40,000 to a person but something else, say greening their image, may be worth $10,000+. One the other hand the car may be worth significantly more than $50,000 to an extremely environmentally conscious person, so this person essentially thinks its a deal. Yet another person may also think it is worth significantly more because they added up the price of the components and found a higher number, appreciate the taxpayer subsidy, and want to purchase now before that subsidy goes away - say due to a change of political administration.
In short, prices do not always match a person's willingness to pay, a more technical phrase for what its worth to person. A price generally needs to be at or below that willingness to pay. Apple sold a bunch of iPhones at $600 when it was introduced. Those people who thought an iPhone was worth $600 paid less than that when newer more capable models were introduced at $500 and then $400.
Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
Again, that depends. Back to that government subsidy. If the subsidy is removed and the price for a new car goes up then the used car may retain its value to some degree.
1 car family here. When long road trips anywhere can be supported with 300-400 mile range for a $25K vehicle, then I'll be interested.
Until then, it isn't even good for a commuter car for us. Our commute car needs to handle long trips too. To us, having a 2nd car is wasteful.
1. Like they are today, batteries can be recycled. And since these batteries are so big and expensive, they will have to be.
2. Does it matter?
3. It will be pretty much the same. The only only significant difference is that power plant. And unlike making engine blocks that require HUGE amounts of energy (melting of the iron/steel and aluminum), I would expect electric to be much cheaper and less energy intensive - sans any rare Earth elements they may use.
4. Yes there's an impact.
5. No. More and more of our power plants are switching to natural gas because it's become cheaper than coal,and it's MUCH more environmentally friendly. Here in the States we are having a Natural Gas boom and for the first time, we are now a net gas EXPORTER - fancy that!
6. No. See #5
7. No, See # 6 & #5.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time?
Because one of the things that contribute to bigger less efficient combustion engines remaining popular is performance. The electric car vendors are merely pointing out that high performance cars do not need to make loud vroom vroom noises. Its an important part of marketing to educate the public that electric vehicles can be "race cars", that going green does not necessarily mean sacrificing performance and fun.
Why not use solar energy to produce the solar panels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Solar_Breeder_Project
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I was recently in the market for a new car and I had the chance to research several of the electric and plugin hybrids on the market and test drive them. I'll brain dump some of my research here in case someone else finds it useful.
Tesla Model S - The car looks really awesome, and I loved the styling of it. It is quite expensive with the base model starting at just under $50k after a $7,500 federal tax credit. The big reason I didn't but this was that the base model isn't even out yet. They are manufacturing the signature series first which is the fancier model with the giant 85 kwH battery pack. Also, I live in Arizona which doesn't yet have a Tesla showroom to see/drive the car or a service center to service it. You would have to pay a mechanic per mile to come out and service it. Scottsdale, AZ is getting a showroom and a service station later this year though.
Nissan Leaf - I test drove the leaf, and as with most electric cars this thing was pretty zippy. If you haven't had a chance to test drive an electric car yet I highly recommend trying it. Having 100% of your torque at 0 RPM is very nice. The main disadvantage to the Leaf is the only 100 mile range. I drive between Tucson and Phoenix often enough that this is impractical for me. I would imagine that for many people in large cities or on the east coast where things are closer together this would be more practical.
Chevy Volt - I really like the design of the engine of the Chevy Volt. An electric drive train with a range extending ICE is a good design that I think other plugin hybrids should pick up and run with. You could design the ICE to be optimized to run at a constant RPM and be way more efficient. The electric range on the Volt was between 25-50 miles with an average of 35 miles. This was actually an excellent range for my daily commute of 26 miles. I could in theory have driven the Volt almost entirely on electricity and only used gasoline very rarely. It has a few mechanisms to support using almost no gasoline. First if the gas engine hasn't come on at all in 6 weeks then it will briefly engage the gas engine to make sure everything stays lubricated and in good condition. Also the gas becoming stale in the tank can be an issue. In general you would want to go through a tank of gas at least once a year. Ultimately I didn't like the cargo space on the Volt and the fact that it only seats 4 people as the center rear position is taken up by the battery running down the center of the car.
Great comparison of the Volt vs. the Plugin Prius:
http://gm-volt.com/2012/04/13/cost-per-mile-comparison-2012-volt-vs-2013-prius-plug-in/
Plugin Prius - This was the car I was leaning towards getting for a while. It's probably the most practical of the other cars that I looked into. I was already a fan of the amazing gas mileage the regular Prius gets and it is a tried and tested technology. Even if you never plugged in the vehicle then you could drive it like a regular Prius and get great gas mileage. The cargo space on the Prius is pretty amazing (you can fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood in there). One drawback is that to fit the new batteries in the plugin model they got rid of the spare tire. They give you basically a fancy fix-a-flat and then tell you not to use it because it will damage the tire pressure monitoring system which costs $600 to fix. However the biggest drawback is the price. While it's only about $3,000 more than a comparably equipped regular Prius, you have to get a bunch of options that I didn't care about. The base model plugin Prius starts at $32k with a $2,500 Federal tax credit putting the final cost at $29,500. The base model (Package 2) Prius costs only $24,000. You do get some features like the navigation system, voice activated dialing, and Entune but all of that are worthless options if you have a smart phone. If I could have bought the plugin prius with the package 2 options for only $3k more then I would have done that, but as it stands it would've been $5,500 more for the plugi
The range of these vehicles and the cost are secondary considerations for me - how does it charge? I need a giant electric pad in the garage so I can just drive over it and have the car charge itself, or else at some point I absolutely will forget to charge my car overnight.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The fact that USA is producing much of its electricity from coal is an essentially separate problem from whether EVs are a step in the right direction or not.
With the electricity thing, I would just say: "Stop doing that, morons. It's really bad for the climate and there are practical alternatives, and/or alternatives that you could make practical with 10 years of focused, adequately funded R&D to optimize them."
The thing with an electricity grid and batteries is you can supply them with energy made in many different ways, many of which are not fossil fuel based. The fact that you aren't doing that yet is just an almost criminal level of complacency and laziness.
As soon as you get your electricity generation (and smartgrid and electrical energy conservation) act together, the EVs will be much less environmentally damaging than the ICE vehicles. So they are a step in the right direction.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Where do you think the electricity comes from? Most likely: diesel generators.
California University Launches Book Opposing Use of Electric Cars
> "The University of California at Berkeley is opposing the expanding use of electric cars saying these are neither clean nor green, as per a recent report."
http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1211736-california-university-launches-book-opposing-use-electric-cars
I submitted the article to slashdot, but slashdot would not publish it:
California University Launches Book Opposing Use of Electric Cars
> "The University of California at Berkeley is opposing the expanding use of electric cars saying these are neither clean nor green, as per a recent report."
http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1211736-california-university-launches-book-opposing-use-electric-cars
I submitted the article to slashdot, but slashdot would not publish it:
California University Launches Book Opposing Use of Electric Cars
> "The University of California at Berkeley is opposing the expanding use of electric cars saying these are neither clean nor green, as per a recent report."
http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1211736-california-university-launches-book-opposing-use-electric-cars
The idea is that your grid-tie PV system produces energy during the day, reducing the load on the grid when demand is highest. You then charge your EV at night, when demand is low and the grid has excess capacity.
No, you are not directly charging your car from your panels. What you are doing is evening out the load on the grid, making everything work better. Everyone wins.
This is a neat idea, so far as I've heard in the past that such a concept was technically impossible to actually do in practice. While there are locations and applications for solar cells where self-sufficiency of the manufacturing facilities isn't needed, that it is something which could be implemented at all speaks volumes about the progress in efficiency that has happened with solar cell development.
Of course it is easier to achieve that sort of self-sufficiency in the Sahara Desert than it is in Detroit or London (for manufacturing solar cells), but that doesn't seem like a bad thing either. Thank you for the link!
The mile range is not important, we need to change the way we charge and make stations where batteries are charged, you come and take one charged to replace the used one in your car and you can go as quick as before. Maybe even do an incentive to promote coming with the battery at 1% instead of 50% (if these batteries don't handle a charge from 50% well).
0-60 is a good measure of overall acceleration capability
If you think of a car as an appliance and don't care about performance, then get a Prius or a Volt. Way cheaper, plenty of range.
Car enthusiasts do care about performance. My 335i puts a big smile on my face every time I drive it, and I use that acceleration regularly.
I could see myself one day in something like a Model S. Or if I could ever afford it, an i8
http://www.bmw-i.com/en_ww/bmw-i8/
If everybody used public transportation, how would anyone get to or from work for a night or Sunday shift, when buses don't run? If everybody used public transportation, how would people haul home groceries for the whole family?
For this reason, the car really needs a generator set powered from gas or diesel that you can plop in the trunk to extend your range.
Which would turn your electric car into an extended-range electric car like a Chevy Volt.
I'm always surprised at the reactions that keep coming up with electric cars. The point that they are worse to produce for the environment. That they are not as efficient as ICE. That the power for them is worse on the environment. Yeah, and?
As far as I see it, the point is not that and electric car is just better, it's that it makes the infrastructure flexible enough, eventually, to be better for the environment. If you get electric or hydrogen cars or any fuel we can produce ourselves (instead of finding a supply) then you're on your way. The infrastructure is now primed to be able to be adjusted by efficiency, marketing, environmental impact, whatever forces will come up to improve things over time. So, step one gets us to where we can do something, and step one has to happen competitively along side existing established and efficient cars already in place. AND IT CAN BE DONE based on the Tesla. Hence the excitement for many.
For example, I would be perfectly happy if each filling station switched from pumps to generators. Run the generator from the EXACT SAME FUEL they used to sell and charge electric cars. No net benefit to environment you say? yup, for now. but once most of the cars are electric fun stuff can happen. The gas station can supplement with Solar on the roof and save a few pennies or even switch to pulling electricity from the grid and become middle men. The current coal, gas or other environmentally bad grid sources may one day be phased out to something cleaner and, hey, what do you know, all the cars on the road benefit without a single hardware change at all.
the funny part is most people know this, but still everyone challenges the immediate benefit....what's the term for that in debate? scarecrow?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
On average, a gallon of gas receives about 2 cents in subsidies. And on average, federal, state, and local fuel taxes on gasoline are about 50 cents per gallon in the U.S. The subsidies are negligible, and the taxes significantly increase the cost of gas. (Not that they're unwarranted.)
Just because something is new doesn't automatically mean it's better. I've been following EVs pretty closely. (Back when hybrids were first introduced, I was one of the few voices supporting them due to their increased efficiency. The environmental groups opposed them because they were still 100% gasoline vehicles, instead of electric like they wanted.) I'd suggest checking your political slant at the door before delving into what is fundamentally a technical problem.
EVs are still nowhere near solving the problem of energy density. If you look at the amount of usable energy in gasoline (i.e. factor in the ICE's ~30% efficiency), and try to match that with batteries, you're still looking at batteries needing about 25x the weight to match gasoline. And even if you solve the weight problem, charging is still a huge issue. Imagine the energy of two cars traveling at 60 mph colliding head-on. That's the amount of energy which passes through the hose every second when you refuel at a gas station. If you try to pump that much energy that quickly through an electric cable the size of a gas pump hose, it will melt. Something radical will have to be developed to enable recharging to be as quick and convenient as filling up at a gas station.
As an engineer, it seems far more likely to me that biofuels are going to win out in the end. For transportation, energy density is king. And unless there's some huge breakthrough in battery tech, it will be decades if not a century before battery energy density and recharging rates approach that of simply sloshing around a few gallons of liquid chemical fuel. The corn ethanol scam notwithstanding, alcohol-based fuels are easily derived from the sugars in plant matter, as our ancestors have done for millenia making alcoholic beverages. Right now plants high in sugar are the focus (which is why corn sucks), but if we can do something like cultivate the bacteria in termite guts which break down cellulose, that opens up all plant matter (cellulose is basically a really long sugar molecule). And except for the problem of alcohol dissolving current seals, modern ICE designs can easily be adapted to run off of alcohol.
Gas shill Luddites would have us using a hundred year old technology instead of solving the technological problems that new technology always presents, all the while denying that there can be any negative consequences from any technology filling the coffers of right wing bloviating ignoramuses.
The internal combustion engine is the hundred year old technology huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
The history of the electric vehicle began in the mid-19th century. An electrical vehicle held the vehicular land speed record until around 1900. The high cost, low top speed and short range of electric vehicles, compared to later internal combustion vehicles, led to a worldwide decline in their use.
What are the problems with the Tesla. High cost, low top speed and short range.
Let's be generous and say they can cover the car with 5 square meters of cells at 20% efficiency. Let's say it's full sun, 1 KW per square meter. That's 5*0.2*1=1 kW. Let's sit it in the parking lot for 8 hours under that baking sun. That's 8 kW*h.
1 hp = approx 750W. That's about 11 hp*h. 11 horsepower for one hour if you are in Mexico city during the Summer Solstice.
Forget about totally covering the car, and just have the wimpy little panel on the roof with maybe a square meter, and it's even less. Now take it to North America in a non-Summer month. Now it makes sense why these roof panels are being used to keep the car cool in the parking lot, or to power a few accessories; but not much more.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Couldn't the battery charge it self with the energy produced by the car while running? I guess the produced energy wouldn't be enough but it would keep the battery from draining less. I don't know if it already works that way but I don't see it mentioned.
What new technology are you proposing to replace internal combustion engines? Electric cars have been around almost as long as internal combustion engine cars and people are still calling them "cutting edge technology" because they haven't caught on.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Something that hasn't been mentioned is the collectors market potential.
How cool is cool? And how much will people pay for it in years to come?
Hell, even something as crappy and sad as a 30 year old DeLorean has the same asking price (4-5 times its original price) as a Tesla S. I'm sure, at least, a few of the new owners of the Tesla sedan are praying for a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Tucker_Sedan Tucker-esque collapse of Telsa Motors.
And... the rear facing bat-shit crazy hatch back inculcated jump-seats are double fun subaru brat bat-shit crazy!
Or, of course, you can create a standardised, automatic, fast battery exchange system, where batteries are exchanged at fuel stations within 10 minutes for a fully charged one.
It's not the hardest problem these guys have to deal with, and I saw schematics on how to set it up years ago mentioned on /..
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Ummm ... Where on the site does it say that the Model X will be around $30k? I looked all over it and read all the press releases ... Nothing about price. I am asking more from a person who is interested than asking for facts.
Agreed.
One of the major issues here is weight.
If we go with your model, and centralize the combustion to electricity generation at the traditional pumping station, then we can attach much heavier fixed catalytic converters and smokestack filters than would be practical to haul around on individual vehicles. Right now we make a compromise between effective emissions filtration vs vehicle exhaust system weight.
Let me provide a real world anecdote here. For a few years, I worked on an island in the Caribbean where the local governement had decided to boost the local economy by making transportation cheaper. They did this by allowing heavy heating oil (normally used to heat furnaces in countries with cold winters) to be sold as diesel fuel. In the Northern countries I grew up in, home oil furnaces burned relatively clean because they burned at an optimal temperature with a predicatable work cycle http://www.oilheatamerica.com/index.mv?screen=furnaces/. In the diesel vehicles on this Caribbean island, the work cycle was much more varied, and the combustion was portable with minimal exhaust filtration on a fuel that is much dirtier than what used in diesel vehicles in the States and Europe. Each diesel vehicle was identifiable from a distance due to the back being black with oil soot and from the black particulate clouds coming out the tailpipe. After the 15 minute bike ride to work, I would cough up black phlegm. I soon took to riding with a respirator, and changing filters on a quarterly basis.
Anecdote aside, vehicle battery technology is getting lighter, no doubt about that. We're steadily improving battery energy density to the point where we will one day pass the liquid petroleum product energy density. My money is that this is further off than the low hanging fruit of being able to centralize emissions control at the neighbourhood generation/pumping station, but either way, both contribute greatly to the goal of making an electric vehicle lighter than a combustion one.
So I think the issues of rolling equipment weight and distributed vs centralized pollution are two factors that support his idea of neighbourhood filling stations fueled by modular energy sources.
wind is ultimately an indirect and somewhat awkward way to use solar power
But there's an advantage to this indirection. Wind turbines let you harvest power from sunlight that landed where you can't put PV panels or mirror arrays. And if you think about it, fossil fuels are indirect solar power as well because they're created from anaerobically decomposed dead plants, which had grown using photosynthesis.
What kind of transit system doesn't run at night or on Sundays?
Fort Wayne's.
If you live in a city and have too many groceries to bring on a bus you're doing it wrong.
How often do you buy groceries?
I have three grocery stores within 5 blocks of my house, no bus needed.
Apart from a convenience store seven blocks away, the closest proper grocery store is about 20 blocks away. Do I live in a grocery "dead zone" that's an edge case?
Tesla lost nearly $1 billion selling an earlier model, a high-end electric sports car called the Roadster, and the company is hoping the Model S will help it turn the corner to profitability.
If only Tesla could have had the managerial talents that ran SpaceX so successfully, they wouldn't have been such an abysmal failure.
5,000 units per year might not do for profitability though.
If Tesla makes $10,000 per car, it would still take them 20 years to even recoup what they lost with the Roadster.
By far and away the largest expense with maintenance of electric vehicles is the replacement cost of the battery pack
Correct - I actually did the calculation in a previous Slashdot post a while ago (that I can not longer find!) but the upshot was that the cost of fuelling a Tesla was the same cost as fuelling a petrol vehicle which achieved ~10 mpg e.g. a Hummer. This accounted for the cost of petrol (in the US), the price of electricity and the replacement cost of the battery using the Tesla rated mileage lifetime. Of course this is just to break even in fuel cost - to make the high initial price worthwhile you have to do better than break even. Given that most cars today achieve 30-40 mpg you'd need to see a increase of 3-4x in the price of petrol before break even and even more before the larger initial cost is financially justified.
Obviously there is the environmental question too but to be able to answer that you would have to now the environmental impact of manufacturing the battery pack as well as the electricity to charge it. My guess would be that the Tesla would come out on top overall but probably not by a lot (but that is a pure guess).
I wonder why diarrhetic Tesla shills like Teancum and WindBourne suddenly stopped posting when the bean count started to look bad for their gay love Elon?
Probably busy preparing the Tesla Pride parade float. Theme of Tesla's float this year: Free Jerry Sandusky.
I would suggest that you learn about engineering.
So many of you ppl scream and compare POSs like the Volt to tesla and say that it can not be done. Yet, they ARE doing it. Hell, by your bizarre math, then the roadster with 56KWH could not POSSIBLY get 220 miles/charge. So, how is it done? Well, the issue becomes what costs you energy? It turns out that it is not rolling drag, but the aerodynamics drag. So, if a company like tesla spends a lot of effort at making their car aerodynamically superior to the junk that you seem to like, then it is TRIVIAL to get the distance that they ARE getting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The internal combustion engine is SO 19th century. Seriously, it's high time we started looking into other engine technologies and I think that someone has built an electric car that I would drive is great. If we apply the same slowness in innovations to computers, we would still be on PDP-11s.
What is it with this trend of mounting ridiculously big wheels on cars nowadays? Bigger wheels are less comfortable and tires are much more expensive for them than normal-sized wheels.
-- Cheers!
I'm glad to see by the headline that Nikola Tesla overcame his handicap of being dead to make such a historic delivery.
I'd bet Teslas footprint overall as a corporation and for each model of car is not even close to sustainable.
I'd like to see self driving Aptera style cars for personal and public transit with auto train formation and so on. Oh yeh ... plus backing up the grid.
I guess I'm the only one who tunes out when someone with an obvious agenda rants about people with agendas, let alone tossing in pointless asides that have nothing to do with the point they're trying to make. It's a sign of a small, closed mind.
That and being a midget.
Not "scarecrow", it's a straw man argument, but you're otherwise correct.
Current Federal Gas Tax is 18.4 cent per gallon, average state tax is 31.1 cents per gallon. Doubling these will add less than 50 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline.
Fuel taxes and tolls only ever covered a portion of the cost of road construction.
Many of the roads and bridges need to be expanded to handle higher volumes of traffic or meet higher construction standards. The cost of acquiring land has increased dramatically.
Fuel tax is on a per gallon basis, not on a percentage. As gas prices increase, the tax does not. Road construction is fuel-intensive. The 18.4 cent Federal tax was enacted when oil was about $20 a barrel. Oil is now around $100 a barrel. Gas taxes really need to go up by nearly a factor of 5 to cover this.
Cars get much better gas mileage now than they did a few years ago. This means they are paying less tax per mile.
>That they are not as efficient as ICE
http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency
says they are 2-3 times as efficient
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Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
The Australian Government (such as it is) recently hiked electricity costs with the Carbon Tax. Goodbye any idea of anyone except the rich and extreme greens in Australia buying an electric car. No point shifting to electric now.
How odd your perspective that gasoline addiction is for the rich ("What's it worth to you to keep gas filled blow-hards redistributing money..."). You have it exactly backwards. Who do you think is buying those Tesla's at $50K, the 99% or the 1%? Yes, it is only the rich buying them, and that means the subsidies from the government are coming from the 99% to the 1% - so if you are an OWS type or a liberal (but I repeat myself), you should be opposing any government help in subsidizing the Tesla. Second big issue I've not seen addressed in the comments is: Where is the energy supposed to come from for all these electric cars? If all the cars in the US were electric, it would take in excess of 100 additional nuclear power plants to provide energy for them - and that's pretty easy to calculate for an electrical engineer, which I am. Actually, it's easy to calculate using 6th grade math. Very few people have the real estate or the cash to be able to lay out another $10K to $20K for a solar power system to keep their Tesla charged. Maybe that it is included in the Tesla's sale price, but I doubt it. I'm all in favor of electric cars and building additional nuclear power plants, but part 2 isn't happening because the same people who are pushing part 1 are opposing part 2.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant
Something radical will have to be developed to enable recharging to be as quick and convenient as filling up at a gas station.
You should try actually driving an electric (or at least talking to people who do) rather than pontificating from a distance. The vast majority of charging happens at night while you're doing other things, so, unlike the gas station, you're not standing around waiting for it. It's actually more convenient than getting gas because you plug it in when you get home (which takes, literally, a few seconds) and then never give it another thought. Your "tank" is magically full every time you leave the house.
If all the cars in the US were electric
Any argument that takes the form "If all [X] were [Y]..." is pointless, because that's not how it's going to happen. The transition is going to be gradual and there will be no 100% solutions (nor anything approaching that).
The marginal generation deployed to meet the marginal load does matter, and it would be a shame if it were all coal (hint: it won't be) but even if it were, it's a significant win in terms of energy savings compared to importing (and refining) all that oil.
Dude, you totally missed my point, which is: If we want to get off oil, we need vastly more nuclear power. Yes the transition will take a long time, but mainly because of politically correct foot-dragging, not because of technology. And with coal fired plants being closed by the dozen under Obama, the cost of electricity is going to continue to rise. Wind and solar can't really make more than a tiny dent in the need. Fracking for natural gas can provide a stopgap measure for a couple decades, but environmentalists are starting to gear up against that too.
Synchronizing stop lights across the US = one less nuclear power plant