Slashdot Mirror
Tesla To Build Its Own Battery-Swap Stations
New submitter lfp98 writes "Just a month after the collapse of independent battery-swap company Better Place, the uniquely successful maker of luxury electric cars, Tesla, has announced it will provide its own battery-swap capability for its Model S sedans. The first stations will be built adjacent to Tesla's charging stations on the SF-to-LA route, and a swap will take no longer than filling a gas tank. From the article: 'A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,' Musk said. 'Drivers who choose to swap must reclaim their original battery on their return trip or pay the difference in cost for the new pack.'"
Unlike propane tanks, it's a huge deal to refurbish a battery pack. You could "refill" your EOL battery pack for an $80 swap and get a new battery pack. Or, worse for the consumer, swap your brand new pack for a recharged pack that is nearing EOL. At $10k+ for a full sized battery (I'm guessing, too lazy to look it up), that's a pretty big fail for one side or the other.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A battery pack swap will cost between $60 and $80, about the same as filling up a 15-gallon gas tank,
It costs $47.25 to fill up a 15 gallon tank here. However this isn't California, thank God.
Better known as 318230.
The batteries degrade over a time period much shorter than a propane tank. However if you take a couple of trips you will save some amount of degradation on your own pack for each trip. You may want to just wait and let the station charge the car however as the costs are much cheaper.
This sounds like a good idea, but certainly does not scale and is a logistics nightmare, as Better Place will attest.
Elon should watch the movie Disclosure. "Focus on the problem". And the problem to be solved is getting recharge time down to 3-4 minutes. It's a sweet technical problem and the peeps who solve it will own the industry.
We have a Tesla showroom near where I live, and I've actually been there twice (it's in a major shopping mall...granted, this is in a fairly affluent area). They have two cars on display, along with just the undercarriage of the car...the part that holds the batteries. That section holds the bottom of the car, and the batteries are framed by the frame of the car's body itself, if not also welded or bolted in. The entire bottom of the car is battery...even with the entire upper body and cabin of the car absent, you can put your foot on the front bumper, step up, and walk down the whole length of the car without having the slightest chance of putting your foot through and touching ground. I can't imagine how such a massive battery pack (it's not thin, either) could weigh a small amount either.
So...I have to wonder...if I'd bought one of these cars yesterday, how in the hell would they be able to swap all of those batteries out in 90 seconds? If they were as light as empty cardboard boxes, I'd have trouble swapping them all simply because of the bulk. And there's no way they weigh that little, or are that easily dislodged.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
This battery swap system is going to fail. If you have to pick up your original battery on the return trip, how do you swap multiple times to drive cross country? Time limits? That won't work. Have to take the same route back? That's not going to work either. So Tesla is just building these swap stations to satisfy short-haul driving for the Model S. When the Model X comes out, we will still have this same problem so now you're just buying an SUV just because (you're not taking it off road, and you're not going on roadtrips).
This will be Telsa's Achilles Heel
The article is light on details, but it doesn't seem possible to always swap out with brand new batteries. Each battery pack keeps track of the exact number of charges and discharges, temperature levels, etc. So essentially the "age" of the battery is known. I would think Tesla would pro-rate the exchanges and charge based on how much newer the replacement battery is. The real question is whether customers swapping the other way (getting an older battery for their newer one) will be paid by Tesla for that difference as well.
Better known as 318230.
I don't see this being as problematic as some of the other posters think. Considering most trips are short, and cars will typically be charged overnight, I think swapping batteries at a swap station will be rare for most people.
A better solution would be to simply lease the batteries and not worry about getting the originals back. The lease would cover wear and tear.
I imagine most people would want their original packs back.
Very few, a couple percent tops ever take their SUV off road.
They can ship the battery to where ever you are going to be.
Worst case Tesla drops the idea and continues on with the current plans. Soon batteries will charge fast enough to make this pointless. They can already do half the battery in 20 minutes, cut that in half again and the problem is essentially solved. A 10 minute stop every 150 miles is not a big deal.
Your name makes good sense.
This is not cheaper since you are swapping the pack. Charging at home at night will be cheaper.
Also environmentalism is not generally concerned with saving money, they would be fine with a solution that was more expensive but better for the environment.
Propane tanks also don't have an infinite life. Over time they start to rust, the screw threads wear out, etc. One way or another that cost will be paid by the end user, either through a filling fee or in the cost of the fuel.
A difference of course is that a propane tank's capacity doesn't decrease over time, which is a typical issue of batteries, making a swap harder.
On the other hand indeed I'd rather see a station outright swapping batteries, and where you pay for the amount of energy you get. However that's tricky: battery capacities vary with age, and your depleted battery is not empty (as otherwise you wouldn't make it to the battery station), and the amount of energy to be added to fully charge it depends on that. Somehow smart battery monitoring electronics will have to take care of that. And when that's done, it should work quite reliably.
The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, instead of having numerous competing standards. "One size fits all" is impossible as cars have different sizes, so maybe we should go for battery packs: small cars carry ten batteries, big cars carry 20, trucks 50. Like current gas tanks. Thinking of it, this could also solve the "rest charge" issue as the car could use the batteries one by one, starting to use one when the previous one is depleted. Or using 2, 3 at a time to get sufficient power, same principle applies.
many of our latest phones and laptops don't have accessible or replaceable batteries?
Only if you buy the overpriced ones...
With Tesla being an economy brand I can see your point.
Unfortunately batteries won't with that speed for any reasonable definition of "soon". 150 miles will be about 50kWh. A 10 minute stop will involve 2 minutes of faffing around (drawing up, parking, connecting, disconnecting, etc) meaning 8 minutes charging time. 50kWh in 8 minutes would require a charging system delivering 375kW of power assuming it's 100% efficient.
80,000 people live in my general area. Now let's imagine everyone has electric cars that can charge in 8 minutes. If we think how many people are fuelling their cars right now, there's probably right at this moment while I type - at a rough guess - at least 30 people putting petrol in their cars somewhere in my vicinity, and this is to fill a tank that lasts on average 400 miles. Reduce this to 150 miles and you're looking at almost tripling the "filling up" activity, so probably around 80 people simultaneously quick charging. This will require an increase in generating capacity of 30 megawatts. Our peak electricity usage now is about 30 to 35MW, so this effectively needs you have to double the generating capacity to do this.
So for rapid charging electric cars to be practical in anything other than really small numbers, it'll be years off just because the grid will need a significant upgrade. This is before considering the engineering that has to go into designing a charging system that delivers 375kW and has to be hooked up by the average car owner safely, not a specially trained operator. It's going to require high voltages just to keep the currents reasonable (at 11,000 volts you're still looking at about 35 amps).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Battery swap stations with cheaper prices than fuel are *the* killer feature that would everyone switch to electric with their next car.
And since solar power is nearly free, that should not be a problem.
But these high prices, lack of performance guarantees, and the expectation to pay even more for the new pack or be forced to take it back murders the concept in its crib. A false flag operation to destroy it couldn't have been worse thought out without losing believability.
I don't get what the problem is...
There *already* exists a system for returnable starter batteries (at least here in Germany), which works similar to returnable bottles.
Just build an automatic underground storage for batteries, which automatically keeps the batteries charged, using solar power (cheap!), and automatically marks all batteries below a certain performance (amount of energy it can store and wattage it can deliver) for recycling. Then every month or so a truck comes, and replaces all the dead ones with new ones.
You drive above it, a machine (e.g. a on a rail) detaches the empty pack (if it is of the right type), moves it to the storage, takes a new one out of storage, attaches it meanwhile you pay using the terminal, or a mobile phone app... and off you go.
You wouldn't even have to leave the damn car!
The price would just be the money to keep the refill stations and batteries alive (= recharging, repair, replacement, modernization), divided by the number of clients, plus your profit. That's it.
If that's not profitable, say that publicly (so that nobody misses it), and we know what's up! If it is, *do it*. What's the hold-up?
That's what Renault do. However it causes my company some headaches when it comes to underwriting them for dealerships - the batteries are leased by the owner, so the car will effectively have no battery when it is part exchanged for a new vehicle. Not many dealerships are keen on leasing a set of batteries for a car that they will (hopefully) sell within 90 days, or (more likely) trade out of.
So all the gasoline you use comes in a pipeline from the refinery to your car or is it stored at the gas station in a tank?
The station would charge a large storage system and draw off of that. Normally charging would also be done at home at night, not at these stations.
A 10 minute stop every 150 miles is not a big deal.
You say that but on the last Tesla thread there were legions (well maybe one or two) of slashdotters who claimed that they regurlarly drove 7 hours without a break so clearly this will be a deal breaker for them and everyone else.
This steps around most of the problem, but now you'll have people who regularly drive 7 hours to completely random uncorrelated locations without a break. Naturally of course electric cars are unsuitable for the general population as a result.
Some people here seem to be very emotionally invested in the idea that electric cars will fail. I'm unclear as to why, but they will find all manner of bizarre excuses and rare use cases for why electric cars will fail.
The thing is electric vehicles have dominated well in certain niches and as tech improves the niches will expand, as they are expanding right now.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Using the UK price of approx £1.40 per liter, and the Sterling to USD exchange rate quoted on xe.com, it would cost £95.34 or $147.13 to fill a 15-gallon tank in the UK.
You never had it so good...
You are confusing uk gallons with US Gallons. There are 3.78541 Liters to a US Gallon, whereas in the UK it is 4.54609 liters to a gallon.
80,000 people live in my general area. Now let's imagine everyone has electric cars that can charge in 8 minutes. If we think how many people are fuelling their cars right now, there's probably right at this moment while I type - at a rough guess - at least 30 people putting petrol in their cars somewhere in my vicinity, and this is to fill a tank that lasts on average 400 miles. Reduce this to 150 miles and you're looking at almost tripling the "filling up" activity, so probably around 80 people simultaneously quick charging. This will require an increase in generating capacity of 30 megawatts.
There's one HUGE flaw in your logic. You are basing your figures on how many people are currently filling up their gasoline cars, and then extrapolating that out to electric. However, how many of those people have a gasoline pump at their house that could fill their car up overnight? If people could easily fill up their cars at home each night, do you think there would still be 30 people at the pump at any given time? Or do you think that more than 80% of them would never need to visit a gas station during their normal daily driving?
And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology. You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.
Besides, the power draw is going to be around 30 MW regardless on whether you fast- or slow charge the car. When charging slow, the time per car increases, and the number of cars simultaneously charging increases proportionally.
There's been that talk of the mini nuclear reactors for a few years now, and a number of prototypes made to power neighborhoods. That's exactly the kind of distributed power generation that would make EV very attractive technology without straining the grid. It could make for a very interesting and effective pairing if either one ever became common enough to foster the growth of the other.
Annually I drive from NY state to TX.
I stop every 2 hours and so should you.
To me it sounds like complaining that there is no way everyone could have broadband at their home because the phone lines could not handle that much data. When there is demand for it there will be solutions developed.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
There's one HUGE flaw in your logic. You are basing your figures on how many people are currently filling up their gasoline cars, and then extrapolating that out to electric. However, how many of those people have a gasoline pump at their house that could fill their car up overnight? If people could easily fill up their cars at home each night, do you think there would still be 30 people at the pump at any given time? Or do you think that more than 80% of them would never need to visit a gas station during their normal daily driving?
You make a very good point. But you also have a flaw in your thinking. Many people, especially in large cities, live in apartments with no parking. If you need to park your car on the street you will need to use filling stations to recharge it. Yes, people with homes and garages can plug in at night, but many people will not be able to do that.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I don't doubt fast charge will happen (supercapacitors, recently a story about Al based batteries, whatever). It's just not there, and doesn't mitigate the simple fact that we need to roughly double electrical power generation if we want to run all our cars electric.
And sure, lots of idle power overnight. After midnight, when everybody is sleeping - not at 18:00 when they come home and plug in their car to charge overnight. Of course that can be solved again (timers on the chargers or so), it's not that straightforward either. And charging 50 kWh in say eight hours means a power draw of 6.25 kW. 27 amps at European 230V, or about 60 amps on US 110V. Many houses don't have that much power available, and even if they have, the cables in the street are not up to everybody actually using that much, so that requires expensive upgrades of the local distribution networks.
Actually smart meters and chargers are already fixing this. You tell the device I want to only charge when power costs $X. Then it will charge day or not when power costs $X. The electric company sends the cost of power to your meter every Y minutes.
This can be used to charge a bank of batteries, cheap floodies to then charge the car when you get home, if you want a faster charge. This stuff all exists, you really should look into it.
In the USA you tie two 110s together to make a 220. No different than an electric dryer. Adding supply to both homes and on the poles is something done everyday. It will take time and it will happen.
However, once electric cars become very popular any parking space could potentially be a 'filling station'. Charge your car while shopping or at work. This is a huge opportunity for people to make money, and it will be used.
"The final step is going to be to have all car manufacturers agree on a certain standard, "
Hell will freeze first. we cant eve get the Gas cap on the same side of the car.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Some people here seem to be very emotionally invested in the idea that electric cars will fail. I'm unclear as to why, but they will find all manner of bizarre excuses and rare use cases for why electric cars will fail.
I think, by their very nature, tech-minded people are obsessed with edge use-cases. This, coupled with a desperate need to be able to say "I told you so!" results in a visceral hatred for electric cars in some cases even though, for 80% of the use cases, they're fine.
As a member of one of those understrength legions you are talking about, you're doing the point a disservice. Some of us may be luddites, but I'm certainly not. I just don't want to trade a car that does everything I need for one that does not (and pay more for the privilege).
For instance, I have been looking for a battery swap program, which would make trips a lot more feasible without long stops intervening to refuel. This program is getting closer to what I want to see. Obviously, there are some downsides to be worked out, but it is a step in the right direction.
And no, my routes are usually the same, and are predominantly Interstate driving, so this could work. I do shift routes occasionally, based on traffic at my destination, but it is usually a choice of one or two routes, not "random". That said, I'll be driving to another state soon to go to an event that I attend maybe once a year. I'd like my car to be able to get me there with minimal trouble, but this might be in the range of these vehicles.
I get the feeling that you have some idea that oil companies are paying shills to have these objections, or you believe that we are out to get electric cars. Nothing is farther from the truth. When I write about what I would like to see, I am asking for features or outlining requirements for my own purchase. I am not suggesting that it will not work as a mass production vehicle. There are plenty of people who would use these for commuter vehicles, and in that regard, they are pretty much there.
What current EVs are *not* is a replacement for an automobile for more general transportation purposes. They are not yet a replacement for a standard gasoline/diesel vehicle, and I would actually like for these electric car companies to work to that end (as I am sure they are). If I am complaining, it is mostly so that people are aware that what they are giving is not good enough for me, but I certainly don't want to discourage others from buying it if it is perfectly acceptable for them. After all, early adopters will provide the capital to get features that I want, so please, keep buy them if you like them.
The way I see it, the best use of the proposed battery swapping isn't for a quicker charge. It's to allow one to borrow a battery to use/abuse during a road trip. If going on a long road trip, rather than subject one's own battery to the added stress of multiple fast-charge cycles, one has the option to borrow a battery for $60-80 and subject that one to those conditions. If we assume that a new battery is ca. $10k, then the rental is under 1% of battery cost. If a long road trip with multiple fast-charge cycles causes sufficient battery wear (or even just lots of anxiety about the potential effects), then for $60-80 one can get a loaner battery.
In the 60's everybody drove huge V8 powered behemoths. Then gas started getting expensive, and Japanese manufacturers started introducing small 4 cylinder cars. Many, many people said 'those small cars will never be suitable for me - I can't put the whole family and a ton a camping gear in there, they have too little power for my kind of driving, it will be too uncomfortable to drive for long distances, etc'.
What does the road look like today? It seems that an awful lot of people who thought they could not possibly use a small 4 cylinder car are, in fact, using small 4 cylinder cars. So what changed? First, the small cars themselves got better. Second, people realized that their actual driving requirements were not what they had thought they were. They realized they did not need a large car all year just so they could go on vacation once a year - you can rent a large car for that. They realized that you do not need a 400HP car just so they can tow their boat to the lake in spring and back again in fall - you can rent a truck or pay someone to haul the boat for you. In short, they realized that the benefits of a small car outweighed the supposed restrictions it put on their driving habits. And, of course, if you do actually need a large vehicle or truck, you can still buy one.
Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.
To me, battery = "device that stores electrical energy". What technology they use is irrelevant - chemical like current lead-acid, Li-ion, etc, or physical like supercapacitors. The key problem is the peak of power demand needed for fast charging. You will need a large supercapacitor at a charging station that charges constantly to provide a fast charge boost to the smaller supercapacitor in a car (with smaller being relative, of course).
Except most people will charge at night when it is *not* during peak load.
First off, nobody is going to pull 60 amps at 120v. In north america, households are fed off a center tapped transformer, with 2 hot leads and a neutral. Between a hot lead and neutral the voltage is 120v, between the two hot leads the voltage is 240v. Most large loads such as central AC, electric water heaters, electric ranges, electric dryers and well pumps use 240v circuits. A rapid charge electric car will be no different and should be able use 240v as well.
At 240v, the circuit requirements will only be 30 amps. An electric dryer, central AC, or electric water heater requires roughly the same ampacity. Most houses built within the last 40 years where the service is adequately sized to the home should be able to handle this one extra circuit. It has been estimated that when it comes to sizing distribution transformers, that adding an electric car, would be the same as upsizing your house by 1/3rd. Not a critical increase. During nighttime hours this should not be a major problem.
Really? We can get this for cars but many of our latest phones and laptops don't have accessible or replaceable batteries?
All of mine do.
And in either case, feigned indignation aside, if you wanted your car to be a quarter inch thick, stylish slab of aluminum or polycarbonate, it wouldn't be removable either. If for style purposes a designer, say, wanted to have an almost entirely glass vehicle and needed to hide the batteries in the various A,B, and C pillars, you wouldn't have them removable either -- because the design decision was a higher priority.
And that's the trick: storing large quantities of electrical energy and having this available quickly is not possible with current technology. You can't take a tank of electricity like you take a tank of gasoline.
How do you think Tesla is doing it with their charging stations? Exactly that way.
Its not rocket science... but even if it was, I hear they've got someone there who has some experience in rocket science, too.
You say that but on the last Tesla thread there were legions (well maybe one or two) of slashdotters who claimed that they regurlarly drove 7 hours without a break so clearly this will be a deal breaker for them and everyone else.
Electric vehicles are of course inevitable, as gasoline is only going to get ore expensive as supplies become ever more limited. And if one effect is that people aren't able to drive 7 hours at a stretch, but need to do the occasional forced 30 minute break, then that's a good thing!
But that's not going to happen with electricity in any reasonable definition for soon. Notice I did NOT at any point say "it's impossible", just that it won't happen "soon" (during the next decade or even two). The technology to store such vast amounts of electrical energy and then be able to discharge at the furious rate required to charge 50kWh in 8 minutes (and not only do that, but keep doing it *all day long*) don't even exist in the labs today. When they exist in the labs, based on current track record, it takes roughly 10 years for the technology to reach the streets in a form that's usable and reliable.
Storing liquid fuels is trivially easy in comparison. Pumping liquid fuel at the equivalent rate of 1MW is trivial. Doing the same thing with electricity has several engineering headaches to be solved, and requires technology still to be invented.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
In the 60's everybody drove huge V8 powered behemoths. Then gas started getting expensive, and Japanese manufacturers started introducing small 4 cylinder cars. Many, many people said 'those small cars will never be suitable for me - I can't put the whole family and a ton a camping gear in there, they have too little power for my kind of driving, it will be too uncomfortable to drive for long distances, etc'.
What does the road look like today? It seems that an awful lot of people who thought they could not possibly use a small 4 cylinder car are, in fact, using small 4 cylinder cars. So what changed? First, the small cars themselves got better. Second, people realized that their actual driving requirements were not what they had thought they were. They realized they did not need a large car all year just so they could go on vacation once a year - you can rent a large car for that. They realized that you do not need a 400HP car just so they can tow their boat to the lake in spring and back again in fall - you can rent a truck or pay someone to haul the boat for you. In short, they realized that the benefits of a small car outweighed the supposed restrictions it put on their driving habits. And, of course, if you do actually need a large vehicle or truck, you can still buy one.
Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.
I have to disagree here. In my grandmother's era, most V8 engines struggled to break 100hp. Plastics weren't invented/widely used in cars, so they were very heavy. Putting a I4 of the era into an all-steel car of that era is laughable. If anything, expectations for power/weight have increased.
Finding 0-60 times for old unmodified cars isn't all that easy, but the 1962 Lincoln Continental 7.0L V8 had a 0-60 time of 12.4 seconds with 300HP. Perhaps comparing to a new Lincoln would be appropriate, but a new Honda Civic with a not-terribly-exciting engine can do 0-60 in 9 seconds with about 140hp. You have to look pretty hard to find a car these days that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60MPH. Stopping distances are much shorter, and new cars corner far better than the old ones. Driving requirements have actually gotten much more demanding, but weight and power advances have kept up.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
off topic, but lack of capitalization is *not* a sign of poor english skills.
Poor English skills or laziness. It's the writing equivalent of spending all day, every day in jogging gear, and eating instant noodles or McDonalds for every meal.
You might think it's an anachronism, but you're wrong. The majority of people do use sentence capitalization. And referencing the work of a poet that's been dead 50 years hardly helps your implication that this is the new way.
...
Electric cars are now pretty much in the same position as small cars were in the 70s. They will improve, and people will make their own decisions on which car is right for them.
I have to disagree here. In my grandmother's era, most V8 engines struggled to break 100hp. Plastics weren't invented/widely used in cars, so they were very heavy. Putting a I4 of the era into an all-steel car of that era is laughable. If anything, expectations for power/weight have increased.
Finding 0-60 times for old unmodified cars isn't all that easy, but the 1962 Lincoln Continental 7.0L V8 had a 0-60 time of 12.4 seconds with 300HP. Perhaps comparing to a new Lincoln would be appropriate, but a new Honda Civic with a not-terribly-exciting engine can do 0-60 in 9 seconds with about 140hp. You have to look pretty hard to find a car these days that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60MPH. Stopping distances are much shorter, and new cars corner far better than the old ones. Driving requirements have actually gotten much more demanding, but weight and power advances have kept up.
While everything you said may be entirely accurate (and seems so), it does nothing to refute bws111's claims. In fact, if you take your facts and align them to bws111's analogy, it makes perfect sense. Right now, battery technology and charging methodology are still lacking for mass-market EV adoption. Personally, I'm thrilled that Tesla is releasing cars with reasonable range for commuters (I drive 75mi each day I commute - 160 is probably the minimum I would want in an EV), but I really wish there were more Volt-style plug-in hybrids available - I think they're the easiest next stepping stone (after "Prius" - i.e., the one that came before - now hybrids are mainstream).
Once battery tech gets to a point where it's long range enough for 99% of commuters and it's not $10k/pack, we'll be very ready for mass adoption of swap stations, charging points and all the economic activity that will enable/sustain it.
For now, Tesla is blazing the trail.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You would lose badly. Even now, there are batteries going into production that have DOUBLE the density of what is in the Tesla cells. And a new chemistry (lithium-sulfur) will be in production within 2 years, that hold 4x the density, 1/2 the costs and at over 1000 charges still has not gone down in capacity.
In addition, a number of small breakthroughs in ultra-Capacitors are happening. Once the energy density on these equal a li-ion of today, then the game is over. The reason is that you have charges in the million ranges, and you could charge a car faster than you can fill one.
About the only place where a hybrid makes sense, is in large passenger vehicles (suburbans), and commercial vehicles. For these, a serial hybrid is ideal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So many things wrong there.
1) You may have range anxiety, but most others are losing it quickly.
2) Electric cars do not pull all of the energy out of all of the cells at the same time. Instead, they rotate through them. That is why tesla went with a LARGE number of small cells. So, charging at nights time constantly OR an occaisional 3000 mile trip with lots of super charging will not bother the cells. OTOH, if you are driving coast to coast daily, then electric is NOT the way to go. ICE, or even better yet, serial hybrid is.
3) weather does not bother the tesla that much. the fact is, that these are driven in deserts and in northern areas. Plenty of ppl in Norway, and greenland are saying that they love the car. BTW, your AC on your gas car likely costs more to run than it does on the tesla.
4) there is more rare earth in your car then in the batteries in Tesla, or Leaf. In addition, there is plenty of rare earth around here. Look up molycorp.
5) numerous studies have shown that this one is SO full of crap. Basically, we have more than enough power to run 100% of our cars/trucks, IF less than 25% charge in the daytime.
Now, why electric cars will succeed, is that electric companies will push these because they will lower THEIR costs and make them higher profits.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Give em time. It's amazing they can make an electric car not suck at the price point the manage today. As the technology matures, I bet they'll come downmarket. Heck, if I went to work everyday in a very small corner of a very large manufacturing plant, I know I'd be looking for ways to make a product more people can afford.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Which is, amusingly, exactly Tesla's business plan.
That is consistent: obsessed with edge case, ignorant of common cases.
But I suspect (since I have no citation) that "commuter vehicles" (and shopping at the grocery store/Costco) IS what the vast majority of the U.S. population does for "general transportation purposes". A commuter vehicle *IS* general transportation for most people. That's why even the EV1 was sufficient for 80% of people (if I remember the movie quote correctly).
When the Model X comes out, we will still have this same problem so now you're just buying an SUV just because (you're not taking it off road, and you're not going on roadtrips).
Very few conventional SUVs can be taken off road, unless by offroad you mean the maintained gravel road out to your favorite trail head. SUV hasn't mean off road for many years now, SUV generally means minivan-without-the-stigma.
Unless and until someone comes up with better technology for charging and batteries than Tesla (and nobody's within 10 years of them), Tesla will be the gold standard by which any others are measured. Smart car manufacturers will license Tesla's tech as quickly as possible with a long term agreement and save the R&D. Lock it in at the cheap price point now and then sit back while everyone else struggles to catch up. Musk is very big into sharing the amazing technology he comes up with because he isn't looking to make a buck; he's looking to change the world (this usually results in making a buck along the way anyway).
Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota; they'd be stupid not to license the tech now. Musk will keep it cheap, they'll have access to the supercharging network, and they'll be able to mass produce within a few years.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."