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SXSW: Elon Musk Talks Reusable Rockets, Tesla Controversy
Nerval's Lobster writes "Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, took the keynote stage at this year's SXSW to talk about everything from space exploration to electric cars. Joining him onstage to ask questions was Chris Anderson, the former Wired editor and co-founder of 3DRobotics. Musk used his keynote discussion to show off a video of a rocket test, which he said had taken place earlier that week. In the video, a ten-story rocket takes off from a launching pad and hovers several hundred feet in the air before landing in the same spot, upright. It's an early test of SpaceX's reusable-rocket project. 'Reusability is extremely important,' Musk told the audience. 'If you think it's important that humanity extends beyond Earth and becomes a multitenant species' then reusable rockets will prove essential. Musk also talked about the recent controversy involving his Tesla Motors, which started when a New York Times reporter claimed in a much-circulated column that his electric-powered Model S sedan had ground to a halt during a test drive up the East Coast. 'I have no problem with negative feedback,' he told Anderson, in response to the latter's question. 'There have been hundreds of negative articles, and yet I've only spoken out a few times. I don't have a problem with critical reviews, I have a problem with false reviews.'"
I think the biggest reason he gets so much flak is because no one can figure out how to make a quick buck off his businesses.
The fundamental claim that Musk put out -- that the reporter intentionally drained the battery, and that the towing was faked -- has been completely disproven. The reporter used the car in non-optimal user behavior, and the car failed. This is entirely legitimate reviewing, and Musk called him a liar. '
Ok, You sound very angry and I don't know why, but let's break down your points:
1. 550 miles over 2 days. If the NYT journalist had charged properly and as instructed, then it would have been 3 charges, but even with 4 charges, eating for 1-2 hours over a 2 day period isn't "not good" it's normal. If I stop at a charging point, plug in and go to a cafe for lunch, it's going to take 45mins to over and hour to complete lunch. I don't think Tesla were suggesting you eat solidly for 2 hours without a pause.
2. The temperature is irrelevant. The NYT journalist claimed he turn the heat down to extend range, the logs show he increased the temperature from 72F to 74F. The actual temperatures don't matter, it's the lie that matters.
3. Same with speed. The journalist claimed he had cruise control on at 55, logs show him travelling at 62-81MPH. Again, it's the lie that matters no the actual speeds.
4. It's well know batteries perform worse in low temperatures, if the journalist had used common sense and charged his battery sufficiently then there wouldn't have been an issue. Most cars, no matter the power source, get 10-20% less than the claimed economy figures. Is this right, no, but to single out one company seems to smack of double standards.
Admittedly I don't follow news columns that closely, but I'm not sure where he's ever appeared to want to be considered a god, and I have no idea what the Segway has to do with Elon Musk or the Tesla.
As head of a company, you have an obligation to your employees and shareholders to defend your brand. Lawsuits are a perfectly acceptable means to accomplish that.
The video in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=2Ivr6JF1K-8
This rocket (the Grasshopper RLV) is just a test article. It's a mass simulation of the first stage of a Falcon 9, which has been launched to orbit successfully 5 times in a row. The idea is to test and prove the re-usability concept on the Grasshopper RLV before adapting it to the first stage of the Falcon 9. They've only done small hops so far, but the plan is to continue launching the Grasshopper RLV with more and more fuel until it can replicate the trajectory of the Falcon 9's first stage and safely return, at which point they'd be ready to begin adapting the Falcon 9 first stage for a safe return and landing.
Elon Musk is a visionary. He isn't looking to just do what others do, or limiting himself to what can be done next year, he's looking several years ahead. One of his goals is manned travel to Mars and return. That means being able to land a rocket in a non-destructive fashion and more efficiently than was done for Apollo. He's taking logical steps toward that goal.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Oh you naysayer, you! Mister Musk has demonstrated that he now has a solution for when you need to lift something light up a few hundred feet by rocket. This will surely change our lives forever.
That it has nothing whatsoever to do with landing a rocket that is in space is just you being negative. You're supposed to extrapolate that this is the first step towards that goal, even though tail landings aren't in anyone's plans, and has no place outside 1940-50s Sci Fi books.
By the way, I remember seeing a short clip of a German WWII rocket that lifted off, then put down again on its tail (without exploding). Anyone got a link?
It's relevant given that most of the Saturn research was directly based on V2, and that Space-X builds on that. There's nothing wrong with standing on the shoulder of giants - unless, of course, you beat your chest and pretend to be one.
CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors
Holy shit, I just realized it was the same guy although I know a little bit about both company!
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
That video is awesome!
I will have to stop telling my daughter that's not how rockets land in real life.
Why bring down a rocket if it is in normal operation this way? Is it theoretically possible for a launch vehicle to make it all the way to orbit and back? Probably, but it's extremely inefficient! It's a circus trick, by the time the rocket is up in space, it has no fuel left, that's why multistage parts are jettisoned in the first place, the only valuable parts in them for the launch was the fuel and it gets burned up completely for the rocket to get to space.
Yes, by all means, you are in fact more knowledgeable than the experts!
You have some valid points but it's more a matter of changing your perceptions than a problem with the car. Your first point about charging 4 times to cover 550 miles is valid. However you'd only have to charge more than once while on your trip for a total of about 30 minutes if there was something strange going on. Maybe you ought to mention why you feel the need to charge 4 times? Why do you think 72F is too warm? You realize the cars are made to work in Southern California where he lives and where the temperatures routinely are over 100F. So what made you think 72F is too warm for the car? I share your driving speed preferences and perhaps like to drive a bit faster than you. The Tesla car gives amazing neck straining torqued out acceleration at any speed up to about 130mph. Because of it's low center of gravity due to the battery packs people end up looking for curves to take because it feels so good. So when you say 62 to 81mph is too fast I can only assume you left out a qualifier. Perhaps what you meant to say was too fast for optimal efficiency. Despite the Tesla being the best aerodynamic car on the market and second best in the history of cars you still must take into account how aerodynamic drag increasing exponentially as the speed goes up. Take a BMW out and drive it at 55 and then drive it at 155. You'll notice you get about 1/3rd the mileage or even less at 155. It's physics. As for needing to charge your car in a European winter every 50 to 100 miles. Sure. If you say parked it outside and only drove a mile to 3 miles per day you might have to charge it every 50 to 100 miles. The Tesla keeps the battery packs and such at a working temperature and this drains the batteries slowly. Unlike a gas vehicle. So this may make the car unacceptable in a few strange cases or to the luddites looking for reasons to avoid change. By the way the judge declared Top Gear manufactured the lies but threw out Tesla's lawsuit because it was unclear how much financial damage resulted in the outright lies. I don't know about you but I don't start out a long trip without feeling up my gas tank, especially when the gas light is on, like the NY Times author did. I think Tesla should have blasted the NY Times harder because there are still some nutters out there that apparently don't get what happened.
"I have no problem with negative feedback"
BULLSHIT! Who did you sue and recently lost to?
Did they lose the lawsuit because the journalist told the whole truth? Or is it because a journalist is allowed an opinion? (Think gossip magazines..)
Sure TopGear was sensationalist. But hey you installed blackboxes without telling ANYBODY and then when you show them, it shows how crappy your car is.
Or did the blackbox show that the story from the 'journalist' was not the real truth?
Here is what I posted to the Tesla website to his weblog many weeks ago. And guess what Tesla did not publish it..
Gee, it they didn't publish it, then it must automatically be the truth!
These were my issues:
* In the space of 550 miles one had to charge 4 times meaning that I would have "eat" for at least 1 to 2 hours. That is just not good!
Sure, if you do a incomplete charge!
(Gee, my phone is empty again. Maybe I should have loaded it longer than 10 minutes?)
* 72F is considered to warm? Really? I live in Zurich and have lived in Quebec. 72F is no way too warm, if anything too cold for a car.
Nice way to distract from the real issue:
If the journalist states that he lowered the temperature, but instead the black box tells the temperature increased.
* 62 to 81 is considered driving too fast? Really? I drive on average 140 KPH and have driven on the autobahn at 155 MPH. The "good" speed of a Tesla means that I would be driving quite a bit below the speed limit of a typical European highway.
Very funny: The German autobahn has no speed limit. So can state any ridiculous speed you want.
This speed does not make sense outside Germany . (Yes, Europe has many more countries than Germany)
And you have driven 155 MPH? That's 250 km/h! That's insane!
* Even with these "higher" values as per the reporter the battery underperformed by about 20%. That is not just a bit. Imagine for the moment I had driven this car in Europe during a winter. I would have to find a charger every 50 to 100 miles.For a car that costs 100K this is about the worst performance I have ever seen in a car.
I this it is still pretty good for a electric car. But maybe its not meant for the "you suck because I drive 155 MPH"-crowd.
What gets me with this nutter is that he invents does something once and wants to be considered a god. Remember who the two wheeled segway was supposed to revolutionize the world? Silicon Valley sometimes needs to do a reality check and stop living in their own darn bubble.
Ok, personal attacks do not make your statement any more convincing. And what has the Segway to do with the Tesla?
Oh, and I did read that Musk said that cost of fuel is 0.3% of cost of the entire vehicle.
Sure, but what I'd like to know is the cost of tankering the fuel you need to make a powered landing into space.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
you installed blackboxes without telling ANYBODY
It was not necessary to read any further than this to discover that you are either too ignorant to read, or trolling. The car is a black box. Of course it has logging. And you can bet your bunghole that whatever they had to sign to get their hot, lying hands on the car included a clause about being tracked. You are either an idiot or a liar, or both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's nothing wrong with standing on the shoulder of giants - unless, of course, you beat your chest and pretend to be one.
You mean when you come on like a hard-on in spite of having done nothing whatsoever to advance the cause of humanity in space? Check.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Take a BMW out and drive it at 55 and then drive it at 155. You'll notice you get about 1/3rd the mileage or even less at 155. It's physics.
Almost all BMWs are top speed limited to less than 150 mph. It's policy.
By the way the judge declared Top Gear manufactured the lies
Do you have a reference? I can't find this by Googling, which is why I ask.
Who are you working for?
Reasonable intelligent people generally give arguments against a person's ideas and action rather than the person themselves. You seem to just be desperate to discredit the person but don't have the mental bus fare to discredit (or even attempt) his work.
TL;DR: Shill harder, troll.
Flying a rocket like this doesn't make much sense.... Here on earth, but as you can't parachute down to the lunar surface, or rely on chutes on Mars for hopping from place to place, then a reusable VTOL rocket becomes really handy. But it does have to be test flown somewhere, and easier to test here than out there.
I am not a rocket expert but this is not a question to rocket experts, this is an economics question. Taking up fuel instead of cargo and using fuel to bring back the launch vehicle safely as opposed to parachuting the launch vehicle (or its engines, the most complex part) and launching more useful cargo into orbit.
The question is about cost of production of a rocket and cost of fuel and cost of unit of cargo per launch, not about difficulty of a controlled descent. Assuming it's perfectly easy to do a controlled descent (which is probably much more difficult to do from a much higher altitude than a few dozen meters above Earth, given that the rocket also needs to reorient itself and maneuver a much longer distance down to the surface) then the question is: how much cargo are you not taking up because you are taking up a huge amount of fuel to do this controlled descent, so it's not just a question of cost of fuel, it's a calculation of cost of launch of unit of cargo and cost of launch in total, etc.
One thing I don't have to be a rocket scientist to know is that if you do this, you are not being very efficient with your rocket, you are using huge amount of fuel just to haul fuel, you are not launching as much cargo as you can. You are launching and landing fuel. Then why not launch more cargo and a parachute to land some of the launch vehicle and instead work on manufacturing the rocket cheaper, more efficiently with a manufacturing conveyor line, with robots, with fewer people?
Why not use the money to improve efficiency of manufacturing of the rocket?
Musk wants to be in this business end to end, he wants to manufacture rockets and launch them and do everything. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know for sure that he will not be as efficient at all of these as he can be at just some of it, that's why we have complex supply chains and specialisation.
Maybe he wants to be a total solution, but that would be Apple of space, not Linux of space so to speak. How about concentrating on the manufacturing side, creating the production process that is the most efficient and the cheapest and then mass producing launch vehicles for all who want to launch and operate them?
No, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at the overall business model.
You can't handle the truth.
Almost all BMWs are top speed limited to less than 150 mph. It's policy.
You are going to quibble over 5 mph, when the limiter can be defeated by anyone with money? We call that prevarication.
By the way the judge declared Top Gear manufactured the lies
Do you have a reference? I can't find this by Googling, which is why I ask.
It is nigh-impossible to find a reference because the google results are packed with copies of the same story reprinted by various news outlets with no reason to exist. It's too bad Google won't let you block an arbitrary number of websites from your search results permanently, because it is rapidly becoming useless for actually finding any targeted information on anything which has ever been major news. But the judge ruled that no one would take Top Gear seriously, that factoid shows up in multiple articles. That's because they're known to be full of shit. It's an entertainment program, not education.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can tell by how hard it is to drag people to the money.
The first stage weighs comparatively very little after it has been used because all the fuel is gone. So adding just a bit of extra fuel to land the now much lighter stage is not much of an expense, while being able to reuse that stage is a big deal. You seem unaware of this, but the cost of the fuel is not the main cost in sending things to space. The cost of the fuel per kg sent to space is about 16$-50$. It actually costs about 10,000$ to send a kg to space, so the costs of the fuel is not the main thing. Reusable rockets are a big deal.
Parachutes are already used to land rocket parts, but usually that's done in the ocean because they'd be crushed otherwise. Landing in water requires an overhaul of the engines. Rockets that land with parachutes on land also have boosters to slow their speed just before landing and they include crumple zones to keep the cargo safe from the impact. Also, with parachutes, you can't control where you land with precision. The SpaceX rocket lands exactly where you want it to land and no part of it is damaged from the landing.
Uranium offers about 1.7 million times the energy density of gasoline. Sometimes we trade off energy density for other qualities. In the case of electric cars, it's the elimination of emissions from the vehicle and the ability to use solar, wind and other clean sources of energy to refuel.
Add up to two hours, most likely less. At an average speed of 64 mph the range should be about 275 miles. Two 45 mins charges at a Supercharger should add enough range, provided there are Superchargers available. Three charges of 30 mins would be better though as the charging power falls with higher charge levels. Add an extra 30 mins somewhere if you want higher margins. You could (and should!) spend some of this time eating anyway which you do while the car charges. Charging is not like filling up a gas car. It has to be done more often and it takes more time, but you can leave the vehicle and do other things while it charges. You will not have to spend two hours watching the car. Best example here is overnight charging at home which is quite slow, but most people need sleep anyway so it is irrelevant.
Whether this is acceptable or not is up to you to decide. If "regularly" means "a lot" or even "primary use of the car" it may not be. And if there are no Superchargers along the way, that trip would require at least two days, possibly more, depending on what outlets you can use.
You're just pulling numbers out of your arse. I suspect the amount of extra fuel needed to land the rocket is more in the region of 1-2%, but I don't know. What I do know is that Elon isn't an idiot (shame I can't say the same about you), and he will reuse the rocket the most cost efficient way possible. It is also likely that he has already had his engineers run the numbers on how feasible performing a powered landing is and how much fuel it will use.
Sure, the idea of an electric car has been around for a while. So has the idea of a rocket, but dismissing every advancement since the Chinese launched glorified fireworks at the Mongols around 800 years ago is obviously idiotic, yet that seems to be exactly what you're doing with respect to the advancements in electric vehicle technology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
You should read the actual NYT review and not Musks disingenous claims. The truck driver has confirmed the brakes were locks and charging from his charge would not free them. Musk's claims stem from his logs, and a rather fluffy misinterpretation of them.
"The temperature is irrelevant. The NYT journalist claimed he turn the heat down to extend range, the logs show he increased the temperature from 72F to 74F. The actual temperatures don't matter, it's the lie that matters."
And yet Musks own data shows him dropping it sharply at that time, so the NYT journalists DID drop the temp at approximately the time he said he did. Musks argument is to move the arrow a little to the left and say "this is the exact time he said he lowered the temperature", and look he's raising it, but the graph shows a sharp drop shortly after. Nitpicking.
So the lie is important, the Musk lie, the graph clearly shows the cabin temperature dropping shortly after Musk chose to decide was the exact time the journalist referred to (based on Musks wilful misinterpretation of time).
Musks says he averages 60mph when he said cruise was set to 54. And of course he did. Because he's driving it, like a car! So what! Nitpicking! The rest of the traffic does 75-80 and Musk knows this. He's lucky he wasn't rear-ended at 60!
" It's well know batteries perform worse in low temperatures"
News to me, news to him, news to his readers.
"charged his battery sufficiently then there wouldn't have been an issue"
And there was the lie, the PR man from Telsa told him it would recover charge, if he hadn't lied to the journalist then he would have charged it at Norwich and it would have been enough.
Musks other complains are that he drove for 0.6 of a mile around a car park. And? So what? He quotes the cars rated range, but we know that number is misleading.
Really, they should invest in finding a battery alternative, Musks BS doesn't help Telsa at all.
Maybe the equipment required to parachute the rocket to the ground weighs more than the fuel required to land it?
Anyway, Skylon seems to be a far better launch vehicle for us here on Earth. Entirely reusable, and very efficient.
I don't really see why you got a "redundant" mod, but I'm going to risk one by spelling some things out which you left unsaid. Elon's aiming for the long term, and probably counts a even permanent colony on Mars as only intermediate term. He has little interest in parachute return because eventually, he wants systems that can take off and return to planets such as Mars where chutes have little to work with. Mars also having lower gravity, it would be great if we already had a way to get there and could develop a reusable vehicle suitable for Martian use in situ, but guess what? We don't currently have a Martian colony!!!!!
Testing here on Earth is the only alternative we have, and anyone talking about the cost and potential uses (as at least half a dozen posters have done), should realize that they are comparing the wrong alternatives - it's not Earth with Fueled return VS Earth with Parachute return, it's (over)design for testing some parts on Earth VS do all the construction on Mars, with Mars first developed enough to provide the infrastructure and Earth developed enough to both put that infrastructure there and provide an alternative method of return from Mars while the bugs are worked out of the reusables.
The real question is, why are the people who have at least figured out that it will cost more than the bank bailouts to put a permanent colony on Mars with current tech being modded down for it, instead of the people posing false equvalencies that show they don't even get that?
Who is John Cabal?
What is more important, to get the tube back down very slowly without damaging it (and burning up a huge amount of fuel while doing it and obviously making the entire flight much less efficient) or putting more cargo into orbit? I think he can achieve partial reusability by bringing down the rocket on parachutes (or at least the engines, which are probably the most intricate and expensive part) while using all the fuel in the rocket for its actual purpose - launch cargo.
Have you tried building a parachute to land 25 tons? NASA has for Ares I and it is very heavy and complex, more than a ton in itself. Alternatively you could do just the engines that are about 5-6 tons but then you'd need some kind of detachment system as well and you'll be throwing away a lot of expensive sensors and electronics not just a big tube. The bigger downside is that they're uncontrolled, you need to clear a big sea area, recover them then transport them back to base - not to mention they're drenched in salt water. If you just land there's not any added costs. The empty shell is only 7-8% of the launch weight and you're only slowing the decent so how do you need? Fuel is still only about $200k on a $50 million launch so even if you have to increase that by 10% you're probably shaving many millions off each launch. I think they know what they're doing.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Video blocked in Germany. Im starting to hate it when ppl upload vids with unrelated music copyrighted to big labels
I think you read me wrong. I did not say that almost all BMWs are top speed limited to 150 mph, but less than 150 mph. In most cases far less.
(Disclaimer: I own a BMW with a raised top speed limiter.)
when the limiter can be defeated by anyone with money
Yes, with enough money, pretty much everything is possible.
But most BMWs on the road can't go faster than 125-135 mph without modifications, which makes it a bad example.
To my surprise it took a cowboy to ride this beast, I had expected a Scottish tosser would've been the perfect man for the job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmR2yj6DHdY
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In related news, three babies were just born named Tom, Roger, and Astro.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If you have a 2nd car:
+ upkeep: depends on how much you do, what shape it is in. easily over $100 per year average
+ having to use it often so it doesn't stagnate: an inconvenience
+ additional insurance costs: minimal insurance about $500 per year, more if you cover the car's value
+ storage space: an inconvenience
+ initial cost of a 2nd car: $500-15,000
+ additional theft or vandalism risk
+ sell it before its a lemon: an inconvenience or an art form...
Since this would be a long-range car, one has to factor in just how cheap you want to go with it - since a junker may not be what you want to take on a 500 mile journey. An electric might take time to recharge and beg for an outlet - but a gas car has a much higher failure rate - a mechanic might fix it quick (for a high fee) or you might be down for more than 8 hours.
For many people, it is cheaper to RENT a car than pay the insurance for a largely idle possession. If I average the total cost of ownership I am paying approximately $3000 per year to own a car. I get bye cheaper than most people. I won't have an exact average until I change cars, but I spreadsheet everything. Removing gas will save over $1000 per year. The savings from a switch to electric will cover the rentals. Its the initial electric car price that is the current problem.
Rental and shared ownership will become easier and cheaper.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Almost all BMWs are top speed limited to less than 150 mph. It's policy.
Not really true. 130 mph limit for cars that come with all season tires from the factory, 155 mph limit for cars that come with summer performance tires from the factory. And from what I can tell the higher performance models come with the 155 limit only.
Anyway, Skylon seems to be a far better launch vehicle for us here on Earth. Entirely reusable, and very efficient.
Except I can't see any business case for Skylon that makes any sense. You'd have to invest ten billion dollars or more to develop a flyable vehicle, and if it worked, it would launch cargo to orbit for about the same cost as SpaceX expect for a reusable Falcon which can be making money as an expendable or semi-reusable launcher while it's in development.
Any business plan which starts with 'first spend tens of billions before we bring in a cent of income' is pretty precarious.
You really think people wouldn't be lining up to spend a week's vacation in space if they could buy it for the cost of a week-long cruise?
The big problem with spaceflight is that there's enough of a market at $10,000 a pound to keep several rocket companies in business, and there's a much bigger market below $100 a pound as mass tourism becomes viable. But there's no clear new market between those two, so an existing rocket company is likely to make less money as costs drop.
If warming the cabin to 72 is too much of a drain on the batteries, I'm quite interested in what the performance would be while running A/C.
protip: cooling is more energy-intensive than heating.
I've started trips with my fuel gauge on E -- it was broken, but I knew how much gas was in the tank. The NYT article stated that Tesla's people told the author that the charge would recover, that it was displaying an incorrect charge level due to the cold. They were, obviously, wrong.
I'm sure there's records of that call but I've not seen them offered up. Wonder why?
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
A lot depends on whether you can land downrange or have to turn around and return to the launch site. The former takes very little fuel as you just have to survive aerobraking and land, the latter takes quite a bit more as you have to cancel all velocity, launch yourself back toward the place you came from, then land.
But still, the mass of the first stage does not have a huge impact on the payload. Adding a ton of structure or fuel might cut 100kg off your payload, and even if you have to add enough return fuel that you cut the payload in half, you'd only need to save half the launch cost by reusing that stage to break even. Reduce the launch cost by 60% and you'd be ahead.
It's the New York Times, I find it hard to believe anyone thinks the article is accurate considering the source. The only thing in the Times worthwhile is the crossword puzzle.
That's not quite true
http://green.autoblog.com/2013/03/10/uk-appeals-court-dismissed-teslas-bbc-top-gear-lawsuit/
Tesla Motors' efforts to clear allegations of reduced range on its electric cars just took another hit. A British appeals court dismissed a libel lawsuit filed by Tesla against the BBC's Top Gear show. The court rejected Tesla's appeal of a court decision last year that struck out its "libel and malicious falsehood" case against BBC. Tesla had asserted that the popular British automotive TV show had faked a scene that appeared to show a Tesla Roadster running out of power, which the Palo Alto, CA-based automaker said caused sales to drop.
Top Gear road tested two Roadsters in 2008 around a track - much more like racing conditions that typical day-to-day driving. Drivers tested the electric sports cars for acceleration, straight-line speed, cornering and handling. Top Gear claimed the car ran out of power after 55 miles - much lower than the automaker's estimated range of 200 miles. The TV show's review wouldn't have misled "a reasonable viewer" into thinking that the Roadster's range was less than the company's estimate under normal driving conditions, said Martin Moore-Bick, an appeals court judge in London, in his decision.
Tesla claimed it had lost $171,000 in lost sales as a result of the show's review of the car, and were well below the level of sales in the United States and European Union. Tesla's lawyers argued that the comments were defamatory because it had "intentionally or recklessly grossly misled potential purchasers." Judge Moore-Bick disagreed, saying the comments did not libel Tesla. Viewers would recognize that Top Gear's high-speed track testing was quite different than a normal driving style, he said.
Inaccurate media coverage can cost Tesla Motors much more than $171,000, according to CEO Elon Musk. He said that the "fake" report by New York Times writer John Broder on reduced range during his Model S road trip may have wiped out as much as $100 million in stock value for Tesla Motors. Musk asserts that the article resulted in several cancelled orders, probably costing Tesla "a few hundred" Model S purchases.
Mr Moore-Buck chucked out Tesla's libel lawsuit because "Viewers would recognize that Top Gear's high-speed track testing was quite different than a normal driving style, he said"
The problem with this is that it's a horrible piece of PR on the part of Tesla. Firstly Top Gear are petrol heads and very sceptical of electric cars and it was dumb to give them a car to review. Having done that it was even dumber to sue them for libel for making a negative review. All Tesla have ensured is that journalists will simply not review their cars in future. Plus of course they lost - if the object of a libel suit is to make it clear that the criticism was false they failed.
If you're making something new and different it is probably better to get reviews - even slightly negative ones - than have people ignore you. You can see this with Windows Phone. Windows Phone is really different from Android and iOS, even philosophically because it is much less based on installing applications and much more based on using the device out of the box.
Now Microsoft have screwed up the marketing big time but one thing they did do right was to hand our review phones to people who were previously presumed to be confirmed Apple users and then let them publish reviews that were at best mixed. Sure you can have a marketing person explain all the cool features and they'll end up in the review but you probably need to let them mention the negatives too. If you stopped that it wouldn't have been convincing.
Tesla are selling a funny product compared to most cars - the acceleration is stellar by all accounts and it would have been easy to get a petrol head to cover that in a positive way. They're always going to whine about
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
All true but I don't know why rebuttals have to be so complicated:
Broder didn't charge the car to full, charged it less at each charging opportunity, and didn't bother plugging in overnight, cold night or not. Then he hit the road when the car told him he would not make it.
No one that owns a smartphone can say what he did wasn't moronic or malicious.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
I am not a rocket expert but this is not a question to rocket experts, this is an economics question. Taking up fuel instead of cargo and using fuel to bring back the launch vehicle safely as opposed to parachuting the launch vehicle (or its engines, the most complex part) and launching more useful cargo into orbit.
The question is about cost of production of a rocket and cost of fuel and cost of unit of cargo per launch, not about difficulty of a controlled descent. Assuming it's perfectly easy to do a controlled descent (which is probably much more difficult to do from a much higher altitude than a few dozen meters above Earth, given that the rocket also needs to reorient itself and maneuver a much longer distance down to the surface) then the question is: how much cargo are you not taking up because you are taking up a huge amount of fuel to do this controlled descent, so it's not just a question of cost of fuel, it's a calculation of cost of launch of unit of cargo and cost of launch in total, etc.
One thing I don't have to be a rocket scientist to know is that if you do this, you are not being very efficient with your rocket, you are using huge amount of fuel just to haul fuel, you are not launching as much cargo as you can. You are launching and landing fuel. Then why not launch more cargo and a parachute to land some of the launch vehicle and instead work on manufacturing the rocket cheaper, more efficiently with a manufacturing conveyor line, with robots, with fewer people?
Why not use the money to improve efficiency of manufacturing of the rocket?
Musk wants to be in this business end to end, he wants to manufacture rockets and launch them and do everything. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to know for sure that he will not be as efficient at all of these as he can be at just some of it, that's why we have complex supply chains and specialisation.
Maybe he wants to be a total solution, but that would be Apple of space, not Linux of space so to speak. How about concentrating on the manufacturing side, creating the production process that is the most efficient and the cheapest and then mass producing launch vehicles for all who want to launch and operate them?
No, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at the overall business model.
Lets say a disposable rocket costs 150 million, thats 150 million per launch.
If a reusable rocket costs 300 million and gets 10 launches thats 30 million per launch, if it costs 600 million thats 60 million over 10 launches, if it costs 1 billion, thats 100 million over 10 launches. A reuseable rocket can potentially save a lot of money even if it is vastly more expensive.
Considering he is figuring out how to make his current rockets reuseable this will make launches dirt cheap. As fuel is only 2.5 % of launch costs even if you double it relative to cargo orbited to make the rocket reuseable, you still save a lot of money. If a rocket costs 200 million, and fuel costs 5 million, if you only launch half as much cargo but get to reuse the rocket 10 times you spend 50 million on fuel to save 800 million on the 10 replacement rockets you would have destroyed if you launched at full capacity on a disposable rocket. Thats 750 million dollars saved if you only launch at 50% capacity. As a rocket is much lighter landing than taking off launch capacity will likely be reduced by less than 20% which means 1.45 billion in savings over the 8 disposable rockets for the same mass orbited. Thats 250 million for 10 uses of a reuseable rocket vs 1.64 billion for 8 disposable rockets and fuel for the same mass orbited. Thats around an 85% reduction in cost per unit of mass orbited.
The only cost between launches will be recertification and refueling, If the rocket is designed right, recertification will be cheap (10-20% of manufacturing cost or less). Reuseable rockets will also increase manufacturing efficiency, as every man-hour spent on the manufacturing line will enable 8 times
A Supercharge will realistically give you approx 150-200 miles of range. If you're driving at 50 mph, that's a 30-45 min pit stop every 3-4 hours, less if you're driving faster. I do not eat every 3-4 hours. Also, my lunches are typically 15-20 minutes. A dinner at a restaurant will be 45 min to 1.5 hours. But not lunch.
If you look at the beginning of the speed and charge logs, there's a little slop there. It looks like the logs start with when the car left Tesla's showroom. The author then drove it home and charged it overnight. The day of the trip it looks like he drove it around town for 15-20 miles. Then the highway speeds start. If you assume the start of the trip is when the highway speeds begin, then the miles into the trip where the temperature is decreased matches exactly with the author's claims. Musk's claim that the author raised the temperature only fit the logs if you assume the trip began at the beginning of the logs.
It's exceedingly rare to find a car review by a major publication done on public roads where the author admits to driving above the speed limit.
No it's not well known. And (barring the development of technology which can charge a battery in a few minutes) if EVs ever hope to become accepted by the general population, the public won't ever have to know this. The computer will have to measure the ambient temperature, location, weather reports, and do its best to accurately report how many miles in range it can realistically deliver.
The initial charges at the Supercharge stations were exactly how you'd want to charge an EV if you want to maximize distance traveled while minimizing time spent charging and risk of damaging the battery. It's the disputed third charge (which was not a Supercharge) that is key, and it's a he-said/she-said. The author claims Tesla staff told him to undercharge because as the battery warmed up it would recover some of the reported range it lost while parked overnight. Musk claims his staff told him no such thing.
The Tucker fell apart at it's unvieling, breaking to control arms under it's own weight. It was louder than any other car of the time, and had no reverse gear. Did "the man" force him to try to sell a terrible design, or is it possible that he simply wasn't up to the task?
cooling is more energy-intensive than heating.
I'n an internal combustion vehicle, heating is essentially free but in an EV every watt comes from the batteries, whether it is for heating or for cooling. I see no reason for heating to be less energy intensive than cooling.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
$12bn for the entire project, and $970/kg versus $4,100 for the Falcon 9. The Skylon planes will be entirely reusable, and ready to fly again within days. The two are not comparable with regards to reusability or cost per kilogram. Not everything is developed a business first, remember.
Just because you don't want one (Tesla) doesn't make it suck. Electric cars are interesting, potentially awesome. I'm glad someone is building them. At least its an American car that is better than most/all of its competition. Which is pretty rare. And the wide availability of recharge cuts the gasoline cord. Most people drive within its roundtrip range most of the time. There are inexpensive rental cars for long journeys. It makes sense if you want it to. If you don't want it to it never will.
andy
$12bn for the entire project, and $970/kg versus $4,100 for the Falcon 9.
You presumably missed the part about a reusable Falcon. That Skylon number is higher than I've seen before, and if it can really only achieve a factor of four over a current expendable rocket, it's a lost cause. Particularly when that's a paper number vs a real cost and the real Skylon number would probably be higher.
Not everything is developed a business first, remember.
So you just need to find a philanthropist to give you $12,000,000,000 with no guarantee of success, and then cover the almost inevitable multi-billion dollar cost overruns before anything flies.
Good luck with that.
A lot depends on whether you can land downrange or have to turn around and return to the launch site. The former takes very little fuel as you just have to survive aerobraking and land, the latter takes quite a bit more as you have to cancel all velocity, launch yourself back toward the place you came from, then land.
You are forgetting that the first stage no longer has to decelerate the upper stages nor the filled mass of the first stage itself, just the residual weight of the first stage & whatever fuel+oxidants needed to land. Even if this & whatever weight added for landing gear adds 10% to the first stage's mass, SpaceX has shown that they have plans for performance improvements that should make Return to Launch Site feasible.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I see no reason for heating to be less energy intensive than cooling.
I can. An electric heater can be nearly 100% efficient. An air conditioner isn't going to be anywhere near that.
If you're going to be a physics pedant, at least get it right.
Drag is approximated by a Taylor series truncated at n=2 for low velocities. In reality, drag is more complicated than that.
As Henry Spencer said long ago, Skylon & every other hyperspace plane suffer from the problem where they accelerate slowly & are incapable of performing the last steps in attaining orbit without a rocket motor.
I haven't been able to find Henry's post but here's another one:
http://yarchive.net/space/launchers/space_plane.html
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
You are quite right. It is more than 100 % efficient since it uses a heat pump. It takes less than 1kWh of energy from the battery to remove 1 kWh of heat from the car. Tesla uses a heat pump for heating too, so it's also more than 100 % efficient, by the way.
That was the prototype. Production cars had none of those problems. What "the man" did was get the SEC to pursue him with a pack of lies. Tucker was acquitted on every single charge without calling a single witness for the defense. He was acquitted based on the prosecution's testimony! One of the prosecution's witnesses stated that he was still driving one of the Tucker 48s and that it had over 30,000 miles on it and still handled smoothly at 90 miles per hour. The SEC charges were baseless and were brought simply to discredit Tucker and cause his company financial difficulty. Not the last time such tactics have been used to destroy competition. If you can't compete, litigate.
The input energy for the heat engine is less than the total amount of energy transported. In an example of a heat pump acting as a chiller, there is significant waste heat which must be dumped into a heat sink.Total energy transported is more than the input energy, but overall energy is conserved.
You need to read up on how heat pumps and air conditioners work. A plain heating element is 100% efficient in that all of the electrical energy used goes into generating heat. A heat pump is more efficient since most of the energy is used to pump heat from one location to another. A heat pump is basically an air conditioner run in reverse.
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That's news to me. Tesla can't make them fast enough for the demand. In their last quarterly report they said that if no new orders came in that there are enough on the books now for the rest of the year, and that's without any advertizing other than their show rooms.
As a new owner of a Tesla model S all I can say is that it is an amazing car. The problem has been that most of the EVs in the past had very limited range or were otherwise serious compromises. Many were converting a conventional ICE body to an electric drive train. Tesla built the car from the ground up around an EV drive train and were able to leverage the advantages of it. I have a 416HP motor with 495 ft-lbs of torque the size of a large water melon hidden underneath my large rear trunk, a large interior and another trunk in the front. The fact that the battery is entirely underneath the car makes for a very low center of gravity so the car handles beautifully.
Right now their problem is supply. They're running at near full-capacity making 450 cars per week. They can't make them fast enough. Once they sell enough cars to improve their finances they'll be able to invest in increasing their production.
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Or an hour and a half later, when AAA gets there. At which point you could be towed to a charging station instead, anyway, and then get a quick cjarge.
I don't think you have the same definition of "quick" that the rest of us have. It takes an hour to fully charge from drained and that is at a rapid charging station. Get it down to 5 minutes and then you can call it quick. Not to mention that you now have to have a tow truck and be towed to a charging station. I'm all in favour of electric cars but until they improve the recharge speed I can only imagine using them for a "runabout town" sort of car where the distance is not too far and they can recharge overnight.
Even then I will not be buying one until they are cheaper to run than an ICE - the "fuel" might be a lot cheaper but unfortunately this is more than compensated for by the huge cost of the batteries which have a limited life span. If you factor in the Tesla specified life of the battery the cost of fuel is roughly equivalent to a car which makes ~10 mpg - at least this was the case a couple of years ago when I looked into it.
As for newspapers the NYT is no better than the rest: they are generally more interested in making a story sound good to attract readers then they are in communicating the truth. Just look at the Leveson inquiry and related prosecutions in the UK.
This is actually the whole point of what SpaceX is trying to do. The numbers aren't as bad as you make them out to be, but they plan to deliberately trade performance for re-usability. The economics of launching 25,000 lbs to orbit 10 times using the same rocket, rather than 40,000 lbs to orbit once is the whole point. If you're legacy space, getting cost plus contracts from the DoD or NASA, then building a cutting edge rocket you toss into the Atlantic each time is a great gravy train.
AAAAGGHHHHH.
Under some circumstances, yes. Under others, no.
At worst, the efficiency of the heat pump as a heater will be 1. This happens when it's rather cold outside (a heat pump in a Tesla being used as a heater would need the outside air to warm the cooling side of the heat pump's loop, and as the temperature differential between the cool loop and the outside air decreases so does its efficiency until the outside air is as cool as the cool loop and your efficiency becomes 1, as the only energy moving into the system is that provided to the pump -- it's unable to extract any energy from the outside environment).
At best, the efficiency of a heat pump as a cooler will never be as high as its efficiency as a heater. You're adding energy to the system via the pump. When used as a heater, that energy is useful -- it's heat. As a cooler? That energy you've added to the system is now *WASTE*.
It is impossible for a cooling system to be as efficient as a heating system given equal circumstances, because THERMODYNAMICS!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
It's called thermodynamics. Work = heat. Are you heating? Work = heat = useful output. Are you cooling? Work = waste = diminished output.
Given similar circumstances, a heater will always be more efficient than a cooler. Because thermodynamics says so.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Not to mention, if spaceflight were much cheaper we would definitely launch more satellites. Currently you build an expensive satellite, because pretty much no matter how much you spend on it, it's still going to have a large part of it's expense dominated by the launch costs.
Get that price low enough though, and suddenly the whole "microsat" concept starts to make more sense and we can consider doing all sorts of interesting stuff (satellites which use point-to-point lasers for ground communications?)
Have you tried building a parachute to land 25 tons?
- I haven't, however military sometimes parachutes tanks and other vehicles from planes and some of them are more than 25 tons.
You can't handle the truth.
Anybody else notice the stowaway ridding on the outside of the Grasshopper during the recent test flight. Looks like a Texan! This is a cropped blowup of a still from the video - http://s22.postimage.org/s82e5jpgx/Grasshopper_Stowaway.jpg . Yea Haw ride-em cowboy. Who says rocket scientists don't have a sense of humor.
Yeah, uh... that's pretty much the point I was making.
Perhaps you meant to reply to the post I was replying to?
It's too bad Google won't let you block an arbitrary number of websites from your search results permanently
Here ya go.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html
See, the problem is that you're an idiot. It is just stupid to make comparisons like this, I see nobody suggesting you get rid of all your other vehicles and buy a Tesla. Road tripping in an EV is more to say you did it than actually doing a road trip. How often do you drive less than 300 miles a day? For me it is damn near everyday. If it is different for you then it means an EV isn't suitable for you, not that the design is flawed. This is like saying convertibles are stupid because where you live it rains constantly, or someone in Siberia saying motorcycles are stupid because it is too cold to ride. An EV fits a certain use case, outside of that use something else. The people that can actually afford these things love the hell out of them and use them every day, so clearly the car works just fine. All NYT proved is that if you're an idiot you should stick to ICE as it takes enough intelligence to know that your remaining range must be greater than the distance you wish to travel to operate an EV.