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Elon Musk Will Usher In the Era of Electric Cars
pigrabbitbear writes "There's a reason why Elon Musk is being called the next Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, he's a visionary, a super successful serial entrepreneur, having made his initial fortune with a company he sold to Compaq before starting Paypal. Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion. Like Jobs, [he has] a knack for paradigm-shifting industry disruption. Which means he's also demanding. 'Like Jobs, Elon does not tolerate C or D players,' SpaceX board member and early Tesla investor Steve Jurvetson told BusinessWeek. But while Jobs was slinging multi-colored music players and touchable smartphones, Musk is building rocket ships and electric-powered supercars. It's why his friends describe him as not just Steve Jobs but also John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes all wrapped in one. His friend Jon Favreau used Musk as the real-life inspiration for the big screen version of Tony Stark. Elon Musk is a badass."
If somebody compared me to that slimebag Rockefeller, I'd shoot them.
I guess that's why Jobs came up with ipods.
So he's going to design really crappy electric cars for 10 years which will sell well with artists who are big on brand loyality and tollerate being abused.
Next he's going to download various open source hardware car parts off the internet, put some faux wood and faux leather interior, and sell it to suave hipsters who he can ply on their on white/yuppie guilt to sell trendy fads and make them feel better about themselves, and then ignore any and all complaints for the next 10 years, esentiallly selling what should have been a $10k smart car for $20k.
He'll then dictate what speakers, intake and exhaust you put on it, sue chevy for patent infringements on the volt, and get his crowd of loyal followers to cover up his mistakes.
Then we'll start talking about how much of an innovater he was, but the people who did most of the real innovation will die quiet deaths, unnoticed by the technology he made popular.
Or mabey we should stop using the term "The Next Steve Jobs" out of the context of meaning "the next George Pullman"
This Slashdot story sponsored by Kusm Nole Enterprises (TM)
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I liked Elon Musk before it was cool. Just thought you should know.
So he's just another celebrity businessman who treats his employees like shit while taking the credit for designs he didn't come up with himself? You'll be comparing him to Thomas Edison next.
send us to Mars, usher in a new era of world peace, and while he's at it, make us all sandwiches?
How did this make it to the front page? It's not even a slashvertizement for a product; that might occasionally be useful. It's a slashvertizement for a person, that doesn't even have any useful information in it beyond "this person is awesome". It doesn't even make the slightest effort to argue the statement given in the title: I'd love to see an "era of electric cars" get ushered in.
then sue the crap out of everyone who produces something with wheels?
don't for get the $200 oil change at there dealers.
And they will use DRM lock downs and sue the jiffy lubes that have a workaround.
Look, the whole concept of cars is very OLD HAT, regardless of whether they're powered by gas or whether they're powered by electricity. Furthermore, they're the wrong solution to the real problem.
The real solution is to build a proper high-speed rail network throughout North America. We aren't talking about mere 300 km/h trains like are commonly found in Europe. We need to be talking about trains going just under the speed of sound. 1200 km/h trains, if you will. A solid network connecting the major cities of America would render many cars useless.
Then it is possible to address the next problems: suburban sprawl. Cities should be highly centralized, and built upwards. It is absolutely stupid to build suburbs. Those who want to live in a rural area should be doing so because they farm. Those who aren't farming should be living in dense cities, where public transit can be effectively used. Once that is achieved, cars will not be necessary for the vast majority of people.
If Mr. Musk were thinking big, NEW HAT things like this, then he'd truly be a visionary. But all we get is him thinking OLD HAT ideas about cars and rockets. We need NEW HAT ideas, not OLD HAT ideas.
Ever seen a modern locomotive? Scaling power in an electric car is far, far easier than scaling it in a fossil-fuel equiv. vehicle.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
where's that slashdot article that came up a couple of days ago, about velomobiles being 80x more efficient than electric cars? didn't it have some quite obvious maths that showed that if all cars in the USA were converted to electric, it would require 7,000 GWh of electricity just to charge them every day? what that velomobiles article didn't also cover is that it's highly unlikely that the world has enough lithium and neodymium to go round to supply all those vehicles.
i've *done* the analysis and the designs (http://lkcl.net/ev) and if EVs are to be the success that people really really WANT them to be, then they have to be ultra-efficient (350kg) ultra-streamlined (Cd 0.15) parallel diesel hybrids with a 5kW (7HP) diesel motor and a 10kW (13HP) electric motor running off of a CVT (quadbike) gearbox.
perhaps this is some sort of spiritual test of my patience when people make these kinds of statements "elon musk will be the next steve jobs for recommending that the world's population use more of our planet's natural resources than its humans can actually get hold of", or am i missing something here?
Plus, he'll need to screw over all the people who worked with him, so that only he gets rich.
In that case you'll be happy to know that Musk didn't really start PayPal. He started another company called X.com that eventually took over PayPal.
But Musk being Musk, he likes to take credit for things he didn't actually do.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Elon Musk is not as much an ashhole as Steve Jobs was. One has to be ashholish to be the next Steve Jobs. Elon Musk is a geek who seems to speak positively and less arrogant than the usual bosses. I bet he is demanding, but in a polite way.
~ Best man at your service.
The African Elon is an endangered species. Poachers are killing it for its valuable musk, used to power these electric vehicles.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
slashdot has gotten pretty bad recently. need more metamods and more real geeks on the firehouse. Less FUD, Less brownshirts, and less corporate sponsored ego trips.
You're joking, right? Gasoline-driven engines don't produce anywhere near the torque or power that an electric motor is capable of, depending on the type of electric motor being used.
Gasoline/diesel didn't win out because they're more powerful than electric, they won out because you can fill a gas tank in minutes, and go hundreds of miles on it.
If you want to worship him so much why don't you start a church and do it there rather then posting this crap to slashdot?
You've seriously never heard of Elon Musk? What rock have you been living under?
He's the financier behind Tesla Motors, which has been talked about many times over the years on Slashdot. He also fincanced SpaceX, which got a lot of press during the X Prize coverage. He also founded PayPal, and got a lot of press through that. There've been documentaries about him, and about his companies, some of which are available on Netflix if you're so inclined (Revenge of the Electric Car has a *lot* of interview time with Musk, if you'd like to get an idea of what kind of person he really is). http://www.revengeoftheelectriccar.com/
Come to it, having seen that movie, and his interviews in the movie, he doesn't come off as anywhere near the kind of jackass that Jobs was.
next steve jobs indeed.
the greatest crime of our generation is our history books are written by mercenaries who will write down whomever will pay for the privledge of deeming themselves worthy, and the real heros and inovators to be left in the dustbin of history.
I only hope that sites like archive.org will save the mass reactions that people have, so when history is whitewashed, 200 years later people will learn the controversy of these figures, and perhaps have enough information to prompt them to ask questions which will eventually dig and find the truth.
in the shape of a Bronco that can do 500mk on a charge on 35" tires and can go off reading.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
At least not in this sense: he stuck with things, not founding things to sell 'em to investors and move on. The first tech company Jobs founded was Apple, and that's the company he died leading.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They forgot one of the key things - both Tesla and SpaceX depend heavily on government money. He's got more in common with William Boeing than Steve Jobs.
I'm reminded of my favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Can your cynicism. If you don't like the way Musk is building electric cars or space ships, get off your couch and go build your own goddamn spaceship. Oh wait, that would require drive, vision, and effort, and making snide comments on the internet (like I'm doing) is much easier.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Electric cars don't use oil because there are no moving parts
... and the gearboxes are lubricated with unicorn tears, while the hydraulic systems use dragon's blood because of the higher boiling point.
If they can turn a profit on selling Falcon 9 launches anywhere near the price points they claim to be able to achieve, then it will change the universe.
Electric cars don't have oil to change.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The tax payers saved Tesla from the brink of oblivion, not Musk. Nearly half a billion dollars, at that.
Not to mention, the number of cars that Tesla has to sell in order to become profitable is a tall order for any company, not just one selling expensive boutique electrics to a very small niche.
Wow, a comment with a score above 2 which isn't a joke or a dig at Steve Jobs.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Unlike Jobs, Elon Musk seems like a nice guy. With any luck he can show how to be a pioneering leader in the technology sphere without having to be a dick at the same time.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Hydraulic and transmission oil is changed far less frequently than engine oil.
Also all-electric cars don't have the same complex tranmissions since electric engines don't have the same narrow power band
Well, the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman architecture, the Manhattan Project and the Arc of Triumph were also state-sponsored affairs. Big things that deliver external benefits long after the angel investors are dead sometimes require a little bit of Roosevelt in every John Galt.
Hell, even little things like chips do. Even those Steve Jobs' Apples run on.
Electric cars don't have oil to change.
If you want to get really, really technical, there's going to be oil in the transmission gearbox, even if it's a single speed. $200 for changing that oil wouldn't be too bad, because it'd be like 500k mile maintenance.
I don't read AC A human right
... and the gearboxes are lubricated with unicorn tears, while the hydraulic systems use dragon's blood because of the higher boiling point.
Pure electric cars don't need gearboxes. Hydraulic brakes likely won't go away soon, but electric power steering is rather popular.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Sound can be synthesized if you really must. Efficiency, cost, acceleration and lack of noise can't.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
39% of electric vehicles have solar panels on their home, so they generate their own power (at least on average). And it would take an extraordinarily sudden leap in EV use for off-peak EV charging to be more load than daytime peak usage--both are expected to climb over time, and more capacity is needed regardless of EV adoption. They will just make the load more constant, which is *better* from the power company's perspective.
I like lopey V8s, burbling boxers, and screaming 3 or 4 rotors as much as anyone, but the Killacycle sounds kind of like a rocket when it takes off. It's not bad. Certainly not silent.
Pure electric cars don't need gearboxes.
They don't need multi-speed gear boxes, but may still need a single-speed transmission to change the ratio of motor output RPM to desired axle RPM, and/or offset the shaft axes for mounting/layout reasons. They also still need differentials.
huh. I mostly remember him for once being married to Talulah Riley. How he managed to catch but not hold on to such a hottie will forever taint the guy as a loser in my eyes regardless of how successful he is in other areas of life.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The Volt battery pack is 40 miles because that's more than 75% of Americans drive on an average day, so GM sized it to keep costs down. I know that's true for me (I've been tracking my daily miles for almost a year now). Not sure where you're getting your numbers, but the battery volume is MUCH greater in the top-end Model S than it is in the Volt. The Volt has a 10kWh battery, while the Model S has an 80kWh battery, so the Model S get 250-300 miles on a charge instead of 35-50. The Model S is actually less efficient, possibly thanks to its weight, but has enough capacity to make up for it. Plus, weight isn't as much of an issue for electric cars as gas because regenerative braking recaptures some of that extra kinetic energy when you stop.
But I'm with you on you decision to not buy a Volt--I don't want my EV to go anywhere near a gas station. That's why I'm waiting for the 2013 LEAF to come out this spring.
Right, let me tell you how this has worked out in this place called Ontario. In a country called Canada, so far it's cost tax payers $20B, for those said solar panels. Because of a FiT program, or Feed in Tariff system. This puts Ontario on track to have the price at 16c/KWH by 2016. And because it's paid at a premium, to offset the cost the actual cost is passed along to consumers on their electric bill. Now let me tell you about Germany where this has also happened. Where the price per KWH is now climbing up towards 14c/KWH on the low side.
There's happy fun time, then there's reality where solar panels don't work. By the way, speaking of solar panels. Today was the first time in nearly three weeks that there was more than half a day of solid sunlight here.
Om, nomnomnom...
You don't necessarily need differentials, you can also have one motor per driven wheel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
500 marks! See dick run!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Universe won't be changed all that much; it's quite large.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Do they have to be compared to others?
I mean, Elon Musk is Elon Musk, whatever Elon Musk does, or doesn't do, is his business - as long as it does not interfere with the life of others.
Comparing Elon Musk to Jobs or Rockefeller or Hughes is just silly - and in fact, TFA is a totally meaningless article.
I know Slashdot has fallen, but even I, a long time visitor, hadn't realized that Slashdot has fallen into such a deeeeep abyss that it had to carry useless article that does nothing but sing hosannas and heap praises to Mr. Elon Musk.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Universe won't be changed all that much; it's quite large.
Yeah, at least it will change our star system.
things like "influence on the world"
Has it occurred to you that some people may not want to have influenced the world in the way Jobs did - I for one, would not like to be the individual responsible for the age of closed platforms and walled gardens we seem to be heading to.
Regardless, surely Henry Ford would be a better comparison, at least for the "influence on the world".
Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion.
And unlike Steve Jobs, he first put it there himself, and only "saved" it by pissing in his investors' and customers' pockets and telling them it was raining.
...Which might be forgivable, if he had put himself as far out on a limb as he put them. He didn't; through the process of milking his investors (big and small), he managed to hold on to almost every penny of his personal multi-billion-dollar fortune. And frankly, even THAT could have been forgivable, had he not also leveraged the Department of Energy for an additional $465 million of taxpayer funds.
Ostensibly this was a loan; realistically, with an anticipated total market of 1 million electric cars by 2015 (the DOE invested in 2009), even if every one of those came from Tesla, it would have to pay almost $500 from the sale of *every car* to pay this "loan" back. Hell, they finally made the FIRST payment on this loan this month after more than 3 years. How? Not from being profitable. Not even from being frugal. From a $200-million influx of investor cash, which investors are only putting up because they know it's all but secured by the US government (having seen how Washington says, "How high?" when Detroit says, "Jump.") -- in other words, if (rather, when) they don't pay that money back, you and I will.
Screw Elon Musk. I'll happily let the Brits get a head start on private-sector space travel if it means we don't have to reward the fetid values and practices on which Musk builds his vision.
Show me a car sporting these engines you talk of on a track and I'll take back my statement. Hell on a drag strip 400m and sub 7 seconds is all your fancy electric car has to do... no takers? No proof? Didn't think so. All those heavy batteries ruin power to weight.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
So can sex... but it will never be as good as the real thing. Some new BMW's do this and it is terrible.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
The one that's faster and corner's better.
Speaking of screws, the one holding the car together will of course be non-standard and tamper resistant, so that if you get any work done at a non-official repair location you'll lose your warranty. You'll have to take them to the Tesla Virtuoso Station instead.
You've had simulated sex with a BMW? That does sound like it would be terrible.
This is actually a much better design for passenger ergonomics, weight distribution, and traction/braking control as well.far more to
Confinity, the company that originally wrote PayPal, had the Palm Pilot and similar mobile units as their first target for deploying the software. That's either idiotic or visionary depending on how you look at it; in any case it wasn't going anywhere in 2000. Elon's company X.com was instead focusing on online banking. It's fair to say that the original PayPal business model was crap, and Elon refocusing the service to the web and promoting it was important to it becoming successful. Inventing the business model that turns technology into a useful service is important, and it's fair for him to take credit for that.
What's impressive about Musk is that he's good at running manufacturing. Space-X designs and builds rockets and spacecraft in their own plants with their own employees. Same for Tesla. That's what impressed Automobile Magazine. The Tesla roadster was, in their opinion, just a Lotus Elise with an electric power plant. But the Tesla sedan is an all-new design and a well-executed one.
Apple is a design house and a marketing operation. The manufacturing is done by low-wage workers at Hon Hai Precision Industries in Shenzhen. Apple used to be a manufacturer, but they had trouble running plants efficiently and gave up.
that's all well and good, but...
1. Government did not give money to the president's political contributors so they could build and own the Panama canal and then charge government (the taxpayers) for the use of said canal. President Roosevelt did not give money to his campaign supporters to build and own "the bomb" leaving those contributors as the owners of the bombs, charging the government for access to them, and hiding the details from the government as "proprietary IP". In the crony world, Obama provides Musk with a billion (half to Tesla and half to Space-X) and musk gets to own the results... when NASA wants to use a Falcon to send cargo to ISS, Musk (rather than NASA) owns the rocket and the IP and he decides how much to disclose to NASA and the congress. Musk, having used the taxpayers, then gets to profit by using his taxpayer-enhanced rocket company to sell services to anybody he wants including foreign governments (that's fine in a capitalistic sense, but it would be nice if it was 100% his own and his investors' money). His achievements are lessened by his dependency on the public teet.
2. Yes, Steve used computer chips whose lineage could be traced back to some government projects, BUT the government never funneled money to Jobs (he just used what was available plus his investors' money). Jobs did not support a politician, then go to that politician for taxpayer money to fund development of the iPod... which he then sold primarily to the government.
3. Tesla cars are economically destructive; the market cannot currently support them since the tech they require is too expensive relative to the benefit provided (when compared to alternate transportation solutions) therefore Musk not only uses a burst of money from the taxpayer, BUT the target audience is rich people who can afford the eco-friendly status symbol as long as the taxpayer kicks in additional subsidies to buyers. The taxpayer takes a double-hit on the cars... a triple-hit if you consider all the smug eco-friendler-than-thou rhetoric from the jerks who buy and drive these (and to be fair, Fiskers etc). If the Government is going to fund rich guys building eco-friendly high-tech transport let's fund an effort to kickstart Disney-style monorails for our cities and NOT subsidize rich jerks in Teslas and Fiskers...
There's a HUGE difference... Jobs used what was available in the market plus, his ingenuity and drive, plus his investors' money. Musk, unable to match Jobs, turns to politicians whose palms he has greased, for an additional infusion of cash from the taxpayers. I'm not alleging that Musk is incompetent OR evil... he's taking advantage of the system within the letter of the law (and congrats to him as long as he stays within the dotted lines) but it is unfair to Jobs to elevate Musk to the same level as long as Musk achieves what he does partially on the backs of the taxpayers.
Take a look at the tesla roadster. They literally had to limit the motor as the first prototypes could bend their own axle with the torque it produced. It still has faster acceleration than any non-electric car produced so far, even the fancy Italians
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True, it probably won't affect much more than a sphere a few hundred million light years in diameter.
You use your dragster to get to work? Or for grocery shopping? How many nitromethane filling stations are on the way to the post office?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Nitromethane? There are a variety of fuels out there that can be bought in bulk for cars in the seven second bracket... VPImport, Methanol, add good squirt of NOS. How about we switch the argument to range then, how many LeMans cars are running for 24 hours on batteries? Plus the summary (you did read the summary right?) said "electric-powered supercars" how many Lambos, Ferraris, Bugatti do you see being driven to work? How many for grocery shopping? Tesla roadster runs 12.7 quarter... so Subaru WRX times... wow! Street car running sub 7 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwF-kr91uxU http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/22/videos-worlds-fastest-street-car-drives-1-200-miles-whips-off/
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
Tesla roadster runs ~12.7 quarter... don't mistake poor engineering and production of an axle as evidence of performance. Cheap as Subaru STI beats Tesla http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDFmbZorx_g&feature=related I think the Italians are pretty safe.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
The vast majority of cars are overkill for daily life. But speed and power are seductive - especially when it's quiet and understated. EVs are very good at that, even if the driving range is yet anywhere near that of ICEs.
Yes, I read the summary but I've also read, more than once, what Musk wrote on the Tesla site 7 years ago. Have a look.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It's rarely worth replying to ACs, but here goes...
The Tesla Roadster needs the gearbox oil changed at every service. It's right there in the workshop manual.
The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
I'm sure all the other electric cars on the market are the same, but I'm just going by the manuals I have to hand.
What he is describing does not sound like a super car. Yes it has advantages but it is not going to produce anything 'super', getting enough energy from a battery to propel a car down the quater mile in a 'super' time is not gonna happen. Getting enough power from a battery to do 'super' sustained high speed runs is not gonna happen. Thousands of years of human existance would suggest cars in general are overkill for daily life. Being quiet vs being loud and noisey is subjective, some people like noisey and loud. EV are not good at speed, perhaps your version of 'speed' and my version of 'speed' are different. You also failed to address any of what I put forward such as the widely available fuels, the fact that there are road driven sub 7 second cars and that all documented races by Tesla are poor... I don't consider any thing running double digits in quarter mile fast. Methanol is a naturally occuring substance that can be made from waste products so it is green as well. So like I said at the very start electric cars... yawn.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
So can sex... but it will never be as good as the real thing. Some new BMW's do this and it is terrible.
I think the correct analogy here is that modern condoms will never be quite as good as the ones made from pig's bladder.
what? you can change the oil? nobody does that, ever! make sure the oil is a closed system which can never be accessed in any way, makes it so much more efficient and consumes less space! - if the oil gets old and clogged, just buy a new car!
Find me at http://herbert.poul.at
Someone with a name like that, is bound to be awesome!
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
They're getting close to your expectations.
Brief reading tells me that there is not nearly the same level of expense and engineering talent going into these as even your average stock petrol car. The electrig drag vehicles seem to be running DC motors because it is much easier to modify/redesign them or run them outside of the intended specifications.
Also one of the main limiting factors is getting power to the motor (my guess would be that lugging around all the batteries would be what makes the drag times so slow) so there is not a lot of incentive elsewhere to build an electric motor suitable for drag racing (power delivery over wide rev range, extremely high power, low weight and low lifetime), nor is there a lot of drive towards making batteries that can dump their whole load in 6 seconds (I wonder if anyone has tried super capacitors).
huh. I mostly remember him for once being married to Talulah Riley. How he managed to catch but not hold on to such a hottie will forever taint the guy as a loser in my eyes regardless of how successful he is in other areas of life.
"...and yet no matter how good she looks to you at that moment, somewhere out there is a bloke who's sick of putting up with her shit"
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
...when I'll can pay online my ticket for the electric spaceship that will bring me to Mars.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
How many nitromethane filling stations are on the way to the post office?
>Starts counting Taco Bell, Taco Cabana, El Azteca, Rio Bravo, Mama Ninfa's,......
--- Mercutio was right.
"Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion"
Really? It seems to me that the company is on as shaky ground today, just as much as in the past. Its continued survival appears to depend on cash infusions.
Nothing wrong with that, but it does not seem to me that the company is fully booted, and this statement is just a little too rah-rah.
I don't know out of Elon Musk and the submitter who's the biggest twat.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Heh, your stock Subaru is only sitting on 11.7 quarter... lets see it do sub 7 seconds at the same price. The relevant number for talking torque is the 0-60, which is 4 seconds to the Subaru's 7+. That's where the limiting had to happen. The Tesla Roadster has acceleration figures that match cars significantly more expensive than it. Finally, take these cars and stick $20's worth of fuel in, then see if they make the same range as the Roadster on $20's worth of electricity :P
This is less 'haha that's funny' than 'haha that's so true' than many would like to believe.
That, and the fact that when you floor a gas/diesel engine (especially with a highly tuned 4 banger, 6, V8, or higher)...you hear the primal roar of your engine coming out from the exhaust. You feel connected to the car. Then you have the ----- quietness ----- of a speeding electric supercar. Which pulls harder on your driving heart?
A lot of high quality expensive cars pride themselves on their quietness and comfort (Rolls Royce or whatever). Driving is not just about creating road-going racing cars.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There is a difference between 100 mph which is overkill for most driving and 200 mph which is overkill for any road driving.
Same with acceleration. There is simply no need ever to be able to do a standing quarter mile in less than 10 seconds on the road.
The question of your right to drive a pointlessly fast car is something in which I have little interest, other than to say that the proper place for a racing vehicle is on a racetrack.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Making electric vehicles out of reach of most people is not game changing or paradigm shifting. I don't really need to spend $80k+ to save the world, or at least I shouldn't have to.
Jobs designed products that are a stretch but at least not out of reach of the average consumer. Telsa makes flamboyant overpriced status symbols for the 1%..
Also hoarding technology the way Apple does is not going to change an industry, its doing to destroy it. If Telsa doesn't share and license its technology to companies that actually want to make relevant products for the everyday person then they will make the same mistake that seemingly is starting to drag Apple down today.
If Elon wants to be taken seriously create an everyday car that people will line up to want to buy otherwise he may as well start a company making flying space cars for the complete lack impact he has on the industry and environment.
Telsa (and Elon) is completely irrelevant until they create something that everybody not only wants, but can actually obtain.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
huh. I mostly remember him for once being married to Talulah Riley. How he managed to catch but not hold on to such a hottie will forever taint the guy as a loser in my eyes regardless of how successful he is in other areas of life.
However rich, attractive, clever or amusing you are, it takes two to make a relationship work. Unless you are a close friend you cannot possibly comment on the reasons either for their marriage or divorce.
This is irrespective of the ridiculously sexist idea that a woman is some sort of prize that you win for being good at something.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
Really? What page? 'cause I got both the 2011 OEM manual and owner's service manual here and I can't find any reference to changing the gearbox oil as part of routine maintenance. Inspect, sure, but not change.
Can't speak for the Tesla Roadster but I'm willing to bet it's the same story. Electric cars need their gearbox oil changed as often as any rear-wheel-drive car needs the oil in the rear differential changed... which is essentially "never" except in a case of catastrophic failure.
=Smidge=
PayPal is a shady corporation that definitely falls on the "evil" side of internet companies. Sadly, that precludes my ever being a fan of his, regardless of his other accomplishments.
What is it with the slashdot hatred of PayPal? I use it to buy stuff off eBay, and if I ever sell anything I give PayPal a cut. So fucking what? No one's forcing me to use either eBay or PayPal if I don't want to.
I always suspect the problems people have with PayPal/eBay are when they try to use them for business purposes while pretending just to be a private seller. Well, if you want to be a business, do it properly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Don't know about lopey V8s or burbling boxers, but in all likelihood people like what they remember from childhood, unless they pay attention and realize some of it wasn't so nice. Burbling V8s sound terrible unless you use a crossover exhaust. Flat-crank V8s found in Ferraris and the last Lotus Esprit, that's entirely different. Here's one that'll get some hate mail... V-twins top the heap of ugly noisemakers. Bang-bang... bang-bang...bang-bang... all that's missing is the chitty-chitty.
"There is simply no need ever to be able to do a standing quarter mile in less than 10 seconds on the road"
I can think of one. Somebody's shooting at you. In that situation, I'd happily take any amount of acceleration as long as I can steer it. But there must be a break-even cost between increasing acceleration and having bullet-resistance.
I already pay more than 16c/kWh, but whatever...
If we just burned all the oil we pump out of the ground to make electricity, the gains in efficiency would reduce demand by something on the order of 10% or so. That's really how bad the gasoline infrastructure and average fuel economy is compared to centralized generation and distribution efficiency, along with charging and utilization efficiency of EVs. Gasoline is fucking horrible in terms of efficiency and the only reason it became so popular is because it's cheap and easy. Or was... not so much as of late, and getting more expensive and harder every day.
Also, for all the power they use, adding an EV to your home is less demanding than adding an electric water heater or central AC unit. Imagine the logistical nightmare of everyone running out and buying a couple of electric space heaters! On top of that, lots of utilities in California at least are offering rate structures to get users to charge their EVs during off-peak hours when the grid is underutilized anyway. So far so good.
=Smidge=
16kWh nominal. But to maintain capacity over time, the actual usable capacity is limited. State of charge is kept close to the half-charged state to keep the chemistry happy. The result is a nominal pack capacity of 16kWh, but a usable capacity closer to 10-12 kWh.
Your math also assumes critical performance metrics - "size" is only one part of the puzzle. There's also efficiency, aerodynamics (related to size), weight, rolling resistance, etc. You can't just assume a simplistic correlation between battery capacity and range like you have... not if you want to be honest anyway.
=Smidge=
I just took a brief glance at your comment history and I have to say: You are a thoughtful, intense, but humorless SOB. Are you a woman? (hint: joke) Or maybe my efforts at levity hit a personal nerve? If that is the case, I'm sorry for your relationship issues. A joke in this context is not intended to be taken personally. Given the nature of your response, I think you would not object to me in honestly wishing BOTH Elon and Talulah well (joking aside) both personally and professionally in their respective lives.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
pics or it didn't happen! :-P
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Pricing
SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing for its launch services. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.
PAYLOAD PRICE
Up to 6.4 ton to GTO $83M*
Greater than 6.4 ton to GTO $128M*
*Paid in full standard launch prices for 2012. Please contact us for details at sales@spacex.com
btw, GTO = Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit
Hydraulic brakes likely won't go away soon
They will in electric cars. Friction brakes are wasteful. If each wheel has its own motor/generator you have regenerative braking, where the kinetic force of the car is transformed into electricty and fed back to the battery, rather than being transformed to heat which is wasted.
Free Martian Whores!
It's rarely worth replying to ACs, but here goes...
The Tesla Roadster needs the gearbox oil changed at every service. It's right there in the workshop manual.
The Nissan Leaf needs its gearbox oil changed every service interval. Again, right there in the service manual.
I'm sure all the other electric cars on the market are the same, but I'm just going by the manuals I have to hand.
I own a LEAF. You don't know what you're talking about.
Yes sure, you will do regenerative braking when you can. But you still need an emergency system, and the current hydraulic brakes work quite well. Most electric cars cannot apply 1g of deceleration from full speed using just the regenerative brakes, so they cannot do without . I doubt there are any production electric cars which can do that.
Brake pads should live a long time...
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It is not "freedom of worship", it is "freedom of religion".
"Freedom of worship" is what you have in Iran. Freedom of religion is what is recognized as a Universal Human Right.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
As I offered to another AC above, please feel free to email me at man-on-pink-corner@ultrafark.com with your PayPal address and a statement summarizing the amount of your Federal and/or state taxes that have been used to subsidize either Tesla or SpaceX over the past five years, or since either company began taking such subsidies, whichever came first. I'll reimburse you.
(Reply to me here so I'll know to check that email account, as I don't use it very often.)
I heard it was the other way around. SHE divorced HIM because he was too wrapped up in running his business to bother being much of a husband.
========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
Steve Jobs was a seriously overrated salesman.
If you want to admire computer people, then admire people who advanced the state of the art, such as John Bardeen/William Shockley/Walter Houser Brattain, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie. Maybe Linus Torvalds.
Indeed, the Walmart of space. People like the GP like to sneer at the lowest-cost vendor but lowering the cost of access to space into a whole new range like SpaceX is doing is damn hard, and the payoff is going to be incredible.
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that solar panels don't work near the poles of the planet, through no fault of either the panels or the regulations. Guess you'll have to build some more nuclear power plants then. But the other posters are right, 14c/KWH is not an unreasonable price for sustainably-produced power. Maybe you're spoiled with low rural rates (or alternatively, non-deregulated electricity markets), but I'm paying 12c/KWH where I live on the USA east coast.
Admittedly, this applies more to the lower latitudes, but a power company in southern California did a study to see whether paying consumers "retail" for the power they generated (by rolling the meter backwards) was actually fair, or if they were over-paying. After weighing all the factors, the buy-back rate they came up with was actually *more* than the retail rate for electricity. There were so many operational benefits to having distributed generation, like less load on the grid during peak times, less need to build more plants or bring extra capacity online, etc, that it actually made sense to credit the solar owners more per kWh than they were paying the utility. Maybe this won't be the case where you live, and maybe this doesn't take into account all the installation costs, but it sure seems like a smart investment in the long term for a lot of people in the world. (Sorry I couldn't find the link at the moment.)
As far as I can tell and what that blog posts affirms, building supercars was never Tesla's ultimate goal. In the end, it's to expand their popularity while building ever-more affordable and practical EVs with a rich man's toy as a 1st step.
I have several reasons for wanting to see EVs ( cars and buses ) as the de facto means of transport instead of ICEs.
1) Irrelevance of fuel type - that becomes a problem for the utility. Just deliver my electrons safely and efficiently.
2) Central point of control for emissions of all types. Even if we can't get rid of coal, oil and gas in a hurry, managing the emissions is better done centrally than for each of hundreds of millions of small vehicles in residential areas.
(Note: Even if we switched 100% to methanol and that was derived only from renewable resources, there's still a local emissions problem such as ground-level ozone, which forms smog)
3) Benefits to the grid - since daytime and peak usage is so much larger that nighttime and off-peak, power gets dumped cheaply or generation shut off to cope. This has costs in both revenue losses and equipment wear. Having lots of EVs charging at night partially alleviates both problems and, with V2G, can be tapped for peak-shaving or to reduce the amount of spinning reserve.
Also, EVs can be used in blackouts to power homes - something disaster victims can appreciate. The same can be done with a diesel generator ( or modified auto or truck) but there's that emissions problem again.
4) Greater efficiency - liquid fuels of all types are vastly more power/energy dense than the current battery techs. But, even leaving aside the emissions, the ICEs waste a lot of that power. Batteries (and supercapacitors) will only get better - likely faster than ICEs can become more efficient.
ICEs are not going away anytime soon but there are lots of vehicles that can and should be fully converted to EVs as quickly as we can afford to do - city buses, taxis, company fleets, delivery van, post office vehicles. The rest can come over the course of the next few decades.
You love speed and that's fine but there's a bigger picture here and your methanol / nitrous funny cars are not going solve those problems. We've spent a century building an electrical infrastructure that's truly improved our lives. Let's get on with the next expansion of that.
You can carry on building a bottle-rocket mobile that'll complete the 1/4 in the blink of an eye but that's not the answer for the vast majority, not now, likely not ever.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body