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Tesla Motors May Be Having an iPhone Moment
pacopico writes "Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too."
See folks, this is how you troll.
Watch closely, and learn.
The next generation of social marketing maybe.
Because at one point in the history of technology there came a point when the sales of the iPhone absolutely skyrocketed and changed Apple as a company and it's position in the Consumer Electronics Industry, as well as the industry and customer expectations to a large degree.
By drawing an analogy to that moment, the author is suggesting that Tesla Motors is about to have an equally significant effect on the motoring industry as a whole, and people's expectations of cars.
Ok, I love iPhones and I love the entire Tesla story but what was the point of dropping "iPhone" into the title of this post?
Oh. That's right. Page views.
meh...
Because Tesla is supposedly becoming successful.
If the iPhone is like Tesla, then the new Windows smartphones would be like a Yugo.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
... but French Exagon Motors is better (http://www.exagon-motors.com/)
For all the whining and moaning about rich people, that seems to be how society advances often. A rich person's fad then becomes a commodity.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
California isn't the only place where rich people buy toys. I see plenty of bald law/finance people in Chicago with them. Porsche should be getting nervous.
So, it's not just a fad for rich folks in California, it's becoming a fad for rich folks in other places too.
Right.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
For all the whining and moaning about rich people, that seems to be how society advances often. A rich person's fad then becomes a commodity.
Yeah ... but I mean to call the Model S no longer a rich person's fad is stretching it. Their MSRPs for a 60 kWh car is $62,400. $72,400 for an 85 kWh and $87,400 for the 85 kWh with upgraded features. Is this really affordable? I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current car ... Of course, if you're calling it the iPhone in that everyone else is buying it and I'm laughing at how much money they're spending on phones then, yes, it could be called the iPhone. Still very much a rich person's car though.
My work here is dung.
After a couple of years of using OS/2 computers, I finally got a Windows 3.1 computer. And oh lord I'm mildly amused! It is single handedly not quite the worst OS there has ever been so far. Far less troubles with fragmentation and, well, most just fragmentation and not lagging in the same areas. Windows 3.1 will somewhat at the medium-high end of this generation, any day now.
That's hard. I'm thoroughly impressed by happyurine's abilities.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Is that, according to Bob Lutz, it pushed Chevy to make the far more practical Volt. I've had one for 2 years, and love it, it wasn't sooo pricey, and you could actually get one the day you wrote the check.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Just about every morning on my way to work, I see two of the Tesla Model S on the road. I commute between Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter, Florida. That's less than a 20-minute commute.
If you're looking for a conversation starter at the country club or marina, a BMW, Mercedes or even a Bentley isn't going to work nearly as well as a Tesla.
While $65,000 to $75,000 seems like a lot for a car (I cringe at paying half that), there are just as many cars in that price range rolling in Palm Beach County that aren't nearly as exotic or as head-turning as the Tesla. I pass dozens of $65k+ cars on the way to work and it isn't unusual to see $100k+ cars either. Those are mostly background noise because they are so common.
Cheers,
Matt
yeah, and oil is totally free for the state; excpet for some extremely expensive wars, and subsidies for petrol cars. and health costs ...
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'm sorry, I just don't care for battery cars, just like I don't care for iDevices -- perhaps the (dumb) analogy is more accurate than the author intended.
I've actually sat in a Tesla Model S at a electric vehicle show. I defy anyone to actually test drive one and claim that they "don't like battery cars". The Model S is obviously too pricey for most folks but it is an awesome car almost any way you care to measure it. It's fast, handles great, has range comparable to gas cars, looks nice, doesn't need gasoline, has a terrific interior and can even be recharged relatively quickly given the state of the art in recharge technology. Given it's range the recharge time problem is significantly mitigated. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if I had the money.
If the technology can be developed to get recharge times down to 5-10 minutes you had better start learning to like "battery cars" because that is really the only serious problem holding them back. Until we get to that point I think we're going to see a slow but steady migration through plug in hybrids. I've driven the Volt and the Ford Fusion Energi and I'm seriously considering buying one or the other. They're both genuinely good cars for reasonable prices (not cheap but competitive) and I can do much of my daily driving without needing to use gas.
It seems that the only reason they are selling is that it's a $7500 tax write off for the rich.
Right, because the number one criterion rich people use when deciding which car to buy is price.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"...Franz von Holzhausen, can barely contain himself as he talks about the design of the Model S. “It’s like the leap of faith Apple (AAPL) took with the iPhone,” he says, explaining why the car has a touchscreen instead of the usual physical buttons."
This is monumentally wrong. Touch screens succeed on a phone because a phone is a portable device and the touch screen is lighter and smaller. Physical controls are preferable for humans because they model the physical world to which we've adapted. In a car, you need to use the controls without taking your eyes off the road. This means location by feel is important. A touch screen can't provide that.
It seems the entire design world has this backwards, include appliance manufacturers. I hate the buttons on my oven.
Magically, natural gas that goes into charging a tesla overnight is different than the oil coming out of the same well?
I saw the Model S in the new wing of the Yorkdale shopping center in Toronto. Nice setup and even nicer women selling you the car. That being said, while I can afford the Model S, I won't be buying it. Its a really nice empty shell with a big screen and all but for that money I'd buy an Audi priced the same before a Tesla. Call me old school but I still need to hear the car go vroom.
iPhone became "obscure", huh? What else is different in the alternate universe you apparently come from? Did the Nazis win WWII there?
Is that what the iPhone did?
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Because Tesla is supposedly becoming successful.
If the iPhone is like Tesla, then the new Windows smartphones would be like a Yugo.
Well, that would work, except for the fact that more Yugos were sold each year in the 1980s than Tesla has yet to sell in its history.
The idea of comparing Tesla to the Iphone at this point is ridiculous. Mostly because it is an apples to hamburgers comparison.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
My latest copy of BBW...
Huh, didn't know Big Beautiful Women had their own publication.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What I find hilarious is that they think that electric vehicles are a new thing. They come with all kinds of excuses to overlook the fact that at the turn of the twentieth century electric automobiles were outselling internal combustion automobiles by a significant margin.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Me too. You should wave next time. :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I wonder how electric cars compare to gasoline/diesel powered cars in terms of total energy consumption when you factor in the materials.
An example would be a Prius vs. Corolla. It seems to me that a lot more energy -- and other environmental impact -- goes into making a Prius due to the battery (lithium mining and battery manufacturing), more elaborate computers/controls (everything to do with chipmaking) electric motors (rare earth mining and processing).
After all the rich douche bags have bought these cars, and gotten tired of them, the market will be dried up forever.
Meanwhile Honda, Toyota and Kia have locked in the majority of the market for decades to come.
I've had my Toyota for 10 years and I know it will last for another 10.
Where do used batteries go?
Tyrion? Is that you -- given up on your wife and getting into the Green Movement?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Tesla demoed battery swapping technology recently. Takes 90 seconds, no need to get out of the car. Faster than filling up with liquid fuel.
Another advantage of the Tesla is the space. Flat floor and no engine do you have front and rear boots (er, what do Americans call them, trunks...)
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Guess your not an engineer. Internal combustion engines are 30% efficient, Large power plant including transmission are are about 80% efficient, so even if the power plant burned gasoline, which they do not, a car running off the grid would be more then 2x as efficient.
Your also assuming that in the US we have not reached peak car. The industry is currently concerned we have. The amount of cars on the road is beginning to plateau.
For the most part, they don't go anywhere - just about every battery put into a hybrid or an all electric in the last decade is still out there in service.
As for what happens at their eventual end of life... these batteries are eminently recyclable. The nickel in a Prius battery is valuable, as is the cobalt and manganese in li-ion powered cars (chemistries vary). The lithium content itself isn't terribly valuable, but can be recycled. The steel and aluminum chassis and casing is trivial and relatively profitable to reclaim. Copper bus bars are plenty valuable. The pack's control electronics may end up scrapped, or may end up in freshly produced batteries. There has been talk of using repleted packs in stationary applications like grid backup, UPSs, etc. In short, I think there will be a thriving market for these batteries. One will not simply toss them into the landfill.
The same is true for smaller packs in consumer devices today: NiMH packs from portable tools, Li-Ion packs from laptops, all can be recycled at essentially zero cost to the consumer and at some profit for the recycler. In many jurisdictions in the U.S., and pretty much everywhere else in the developed world (Japan, EU, etc.), such recycling is mandatory.
The only real problem with battery cars is the battery. Where do used batteries go?
Used batteries are recycled by KBI/Toxco...
No you don't. Just like the asshats who ride harley davidson motorcycles don't "need" to hear their motorcycles violating local noise ordinances. You might like it (no idea why) but you certainly don't need it. Speaking for myself I don't really want to hear your car go vroom either.
I'm somewhat mystified why people would a car that is any louder than it absolutely has to be. It's noise pollution, nothing more. Noise from a car is a by-product. People expect it because it has always been there but it does not make the vehicle perform any better. Personally I want a car that is absolutely silent and goes like stink. (and no there are no blind people crossing the road anywhere I drive)
Recycled, like the vast majority of batteries currently used in cars, hybrid or not.
And without a glove compartment.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Google 'state of charge union of concerned scientists' and you'll find a PDF document that is a study of an Electric Vehicles’ (EV) emissions and costs. Page 37: "Over the lifetime of an EV, the owner can save more than 6,000 gallons of gasoline" Page 17:"a typical midsize EV could save nearly $13,000." Page 11:"There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle." Page 37:"Nearly half of Americans live in regions where driving an electric vehicle means lower global warming emissions than driving even the best hybrid gasoline vehicle available."
Where do used batteries go?
They get recycled. 5 seconds on Google would have informed you of that fact.
The comment above is a classic example of a phenomenon you often see: a commenter with reasonable general education takes a small number of facts about the world and uses them to make wholly unsupported assertions and snarky criticisms. They may be entirely wrong but the original commenter is defiantly confident.
In reality, in any technical/environmental/engineering issue, people who have done this for a living have examined all the issues far more thoroughly, with quantitative estimations based on real physical facts and investigations. Yes it's an appeal to expertise, because the experts are far more likely to be right than an offhand remark or guess from gut feel.
Not infrequently a confident-but-wrong commenter then tells people to "learn something about science". It is much more frequent than the reverse than the opinions of this sort of person are on the side of opposing changes for environmental sake or any common benefit.
Actual ignorant people don't act this way, they don't think they know the answer already about something complicated. It's like somebody who's had a few weeks of biology class believe that they know more than a board-certified cardiologist.
Pretty soon Tesla will have sold as many cars as De Lorian.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Both cars. One chose Karma. One chose Roadster.
One executed conventional engineering with battery backup. One executed an allegory to automotive history wrapped around all electric engineering.
One's backup systems turned and committed car suicide in a NJ puddle. One executed a stanch defense in word and deed against NY media assassins delivering charging stations and more cars.
Except for the few incredible cars it produced, Fisker is no more. To the victor the spoils. Tesla won
In ten years, can you convert your gasoline car to run on solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power? You can with an electric car. They are not a panacea, but they do allow us to move away from a specific fuel dependency (and one which also doesn't compete with food).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Right place, right time. If you think successful businesses are based just on know-how an sweat, you've missed pretty much all of human history.
And just because you get 500M doesn't mean you can make a business out of it - but it sure helps.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
6,000 gallons that is what roughly 24k in cash now add interest vs the price of a standard car and the math does not work out well.
Got Code?
Electricity is most commonly produced by giant furnaces burning fuel, which boils water into steam, which turns a turbine, which spins a magnet, which produces an electric field, which transfers electrons along miles of conducting bundles of wires at some loss to where they are consumed by a motor to produce work, or stored by a battery at some loss at the final destination.
Actually, Tesla is the only vehicle that does not require government subsidies and was being made before the government even stepped in. Fisker and the rest is what happens when you only use government subsidies - the project was porked, overburdened with regulation and doomed before it even started.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Does not bode well for our collective survival, if that is a picture of what a "next generation" of anything, looks like.
... whatever
I thought it was an apples to electric cars comparison?
On a related note, who names their recycling company "Toxco"?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Why did you even open your mouth? You described the solution, which WILL happen, and then said there's no solution and we're all gonna die.
So who's the idiot?
Oil can be used to make electricity. So can coal, natural gas, sunlight, biomass, flowing water, and wind. When was the last time you saw a wind powered car driving down the road (though this one is pretty neat). Or a coal powered car? Nuclear powered? We do have natural gas powered vehicles, but how difficult would it be for you to use it in your car? We have a glut in natural gas right now, and it provides about 30% of our power. So, those Tesla owners are (on average) powering 30% of their car on natural gas (made in the USA), and the rest on coal, nuclear, or the others I mentioned above (all made in the USA). So, you go ahead and keep financing terrorists and the countries that support them by propping up oil prices. And you can also keep threatening our national security by keeping us reliant on other countries for our energy. I will get an electric car. And I will be confident in my ability to use it regardless of who we go to war with because it uses the most flexible fuel source... all of them.
...and a wooden stick shift...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Long Live the Frunk!
+1 Disagree
Disagree. Advertising begets distrust; if all marketing consists of eulogy, then we will all become skeptics. A hundred years ago most people took miraculous claims at face value; now we look down upon the few who succumb to the half-hearted efforts of telemarketers, spam, and infomercials. Such marketers are destroying their own future—which, if we're lucky, means it'll all collapse sooner or later.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I wonder how Microsoft's marketing people feel about having to cut a check to a guy who calls himself "happyurine" for the service of posting non-sequitor spam on Slashdot.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Y'know, I saw a Nissan Leaf in Goldfield, Nevada. The Leaf has a range of 75 miles. To get to Goldfield, you'd need to come from Tonopah (30 miles north) or Beatty (67 miles south). To get to Beatty or Tonopah, you have a bit over 100 miles to the next town.
So, HOW DID IT GET THERE!?
+1 Disagree
Yes, yes, ofcourse.
However, they went away. In this time and day of ICE dominance they really are a new thing again. I don't feel a need to ridicule people who doesn't know this.
We're not there yet. The high-power charging infrastructure isn't widely available. That will come.
No car should have a giant touchscreen. You're supposed be looking at the road. At least until we get full automatic driving.
It seems that the only reason they are selling is that it's a $7500 tax write off for the rich.
You think the major reason why someone would buy a $105k car is for a $7500 writeoff? Where did you get your economics degree?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It sounded like, from the article, the Model S had a replaceable battery pack, and you would simply replace that at a station like a propane cylinder, rather than actually charge it... that was Tesla's marketing ploy on the video at the auto show. They showed 2 Model S vehicles having the pack replaced in the time that it took to fill an Audi with 20 gallons of gas. My probably with that is this. What is the cost of a replacement battery pack? Also, the packs are said to get 300 miles, but that's with extended-range mode enabled which is apparently not recommended for day-to-day use, and it also means no AC or heat. In tests done by third parties, they saw 200-220 mile ranges on a pack without extended-range enabled, and that dropped to around 180 miles with heat on in the winter or AC enabled. I'm going to go ahead and guess whatever model of Audi they showed, probably gets at least 300 and more likely 400 miles on a 20 gallon fill-up... so, you can change a battery in half the time, but you have to do it twice as often... doesn't seem like a benefit to me. The caveat being, battery tech gets better all the time, so eventually it may be better... then again, gas engines are getting more and more economical as well.
Didn't you know? fracking the fuel to create electricity really is the way to go.
Got Code?
The day when electric cars become also the economic decision is a revolutionary day for poor people. Some poor people struggle to make ends meet in part because of gasoline cuts into their income from commuting to work. Electricity costs about 1/10 as much as gasoline now, and with infrastructure upscaling, it could cost less in the future. So basically driving around would be free. People who rarely leave their house to conserve on fuel would be free to drive around. Maybe the roads would be more crowded, but they'd have the ability to frugally shop around at more stores for lower prices. This is because a poor person will spend more time to get better deals. The reason poor people don't travel to several stores at once now is because the gasoline prices say if you travel too far, what you gain in savings will be lost in fuel. With essentially free fuel, a poor person could be a more keen savings oriented shopper.
God spoke to me
That's what I think when something is compared to an iPhone.
So say we all
Hey with the introduction of Fracking there is not problem with the availability of gas to create electricity to power these green vehicles. LOL
Got Code?
How do you define "Rich" though? Something like 90% of Americans define themselves as middle class, so it really covers a wide amount of territory.
So what's your definition? $1M+ in assets? $5M+? $100k in income/year? $250k? More?
Let's look at the basic 85 kWh model, which comes with free charging and such. $72,400. That works out to $1,207/month over 5 years. Ouch, no kidding. Let's say that our theoretical 'middle class' person is:
A: Car focused; they're going to be driving the 'best' car they can get no matter what, even if it impacts their savings/housing. Nobody ever said everybody 'middle class' is 100% financially logical/responsible.
B: Has access to free electricity for charging(work, supercharger stations, whatever)
C: Itemizes on taxes already.
D: Drives an average amount of distance per year, but no trips outside of a Tesla's range.
Please note that I'm trying to be favorable to Tesla in this case, in order to see how low it could realistically go.
1. $72,400 minus the federal rebate of 7,500 becomes $64,900
2. 15k miles/year@20mpg(nasty city driver, best case for electric, worst for gasoline), 750 gallons@$4 = $3k/year. $15k in fuel savings. $49.9k left
Picking on GM, the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan is more expensive(3.9 v 4.2 for 0-60), and the XTS and CTS Sport are close. BMW 7 Series are uniformly $25k+ more expensive. You need to drop to the 5 series to reach that price point.
It's not even to middle-middle class yet, but I'd say it's moved from 'rich' people to 'upper-middle'.
I don't read AC A human right
It does blend, as well as dice and puree! It makes exciting Julienne Fries! It's the only kitchen gadget you will ever need! Order now and get a second one for only additional shipping and handling!! Offer not available in any store!! OMG why didnt OP post the 800 number where operators are standing by before the offer expires!!!
Except they didn't go away. At the turn of the 20th Century, self-powered vehicles were a niche market. The market for electrical vehicles was larger than that for ICE vehicles. Early in the 20th Century, ICE vehicles expanded out of the niche and became general purpose vehicles. So far electric vehicles have failed to do the same thing. In the 1970s people began to look for ways to expand electric vehicles out of their niche into the general purpose vehicle market. So far, no one has succeeded.
The reason I think it is important to bring this history up is that people keep telling me that I have to give new technologies time to mature. I happen to think that any technology that is over 100 years old is not a new technology. Electric vehicles have been around for over 100 years and no one has solved the problem of market adoption yet.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Tesla demoed battery swapping technology recently. Takes 90 seconds, no need to get out of the car. Faster than filling up with liquid fuel.
I don't really see that taking off because it's too much of an infrastructure investment and requires too much cooperation between rival companies. Electric wires are already strung all over the place and it is fairly straightforward to upgrade them to accommodate the extra juice. For battery swapping to work at a large scale, electric car vendors have to agree upon a standard battery design and I just don't see that happening anytime soon. It's a nifty idea but I have my doubts.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is a well-known group of leftist activists who consistently advocate for greater govt control over people's lifestyles. Anything the organization says must be weighed against its known ideological biases.
I pretty much should have stopped reading at the ad hominem attack, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The fact that their document uses the phrase "higher global warming emissions" immediately indicates that the document assumes that humans are causing the climate to change, an assumption for which there is no proof only hand-waving fear mongering based on nothing more than dubious computer models.
The relationship between concentrations thermal infrared-absorbing gasses in the atmosphere and the amount of solar energy retained by the atmosphere is very, very basic physics. The fact that these gasses are on the rise in the atmosphere is very simple to track and has been tracked well for the past several decades.
As for whether this represents a deviation from the historical record, then you have to start getting to the reams of data from ice core, tree rings, O16/O18 ratios in corals, sediment layers, etc. The long and short of it is that we can get pretty solid estimates on both temperature and CO2 levels going back millions of years, and the theorem that CO2 levels cause changes in temperature seems very solid. We are soon to see CO2 levels not seen since the mid-Pliocene, and we're getting there faster than any other major change in CO2 levels in the geological record. (Frankly it's not how much CO2 we're putting in the atmosphere that's dangerous -- it's how fast we're doing it, without giving Earth's species enough time to evolve, adapt, and naturally sequester.)
I recommend you start here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
Any legitimate analysis of the environmental impact of switching to EVs must include all the factors involved including the costs of electricity production, EV materials production, EV materials disposal, electricity losses due to transmission, distribution and charging, the cost of battery replacement, the economic cost of waiting for vehicles to charge, the economic cost of capital investment in EV production, etc.
Oh, I agree. And they must be compared against the existing infrastucture and its costs: the emissions costs of the vehicle's use of gasoline, the costs of transporting it, the costs of materials used to construct the car (e.g. catalytic converters), losses and damage due to spills, evaporation at the pump, etc., the energy costs and emissions and other pollution from drilling, extraction, and refinement (including the varying costs of techniques like fracking and material like tar sands oil), the costs of continued capital investment in gasoline vehicle production and fuel supply infrastructure, pipeline losses, community risks from pipeline spills or oil tanker crashes, etc.
I mean, fair's fair.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hey with the introduction of Fracking there is not problem with the availability of gas to create electricity to power these green vehicles. LOL
Mock if you will, but that's a good thing. While I'd rather us not use gas in favor of renewables, I would much rather use natural gas than coal. The same applies to electricity from natural gas generation v. gasoline. Small progress is better than twiddling your thumbs until the perfect solution is ready.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Please clarify, I don't understand what you are trying to convey. Thank you.
It depends on what "headaches" you're talking about.
From a purely mechanical point of view a model S is a much simpler machine. It's a battery, a control computer and an electric motor. Add the steering wheel and linkages, brakes, lights and amenities.
Granted it's 2013 and we've managed to make a reliable combustion engine, but honestly it's not a matter of if, but when you'll have an issue with it.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Call me old school but I still need to hear the car go vroom.
There should be an app for that. No, seriously. It's got a sound system with subwoofers. It should be relatively trivial.
Kind of like all how some modern electronic guitar amps can mimic the flaws ...er.. special sound of many different old vacuum tube-based analog models. If some old fossil (no offens) can't stand missing the quirks of the previous technology, then we can emulate it. Plus, it gives you the fun of switching up the feel of your car. Want to feel like you're in a sports car? Excellent. Want to it to sound like driving a dump truck? Well, that's cool too.
Actually, that sounds kind of fun...
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Lets put it this way, Tesla would have to outsell Civic and Corolla combined to be even remotely considered analogous to iPhone's success. iPhone replaced shitty economy phones, Tesla has to replace shitty economy vehicles.
A $100k commuter vehicle is a fad, not a revolution.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Headaches like regular oil changes, having to regularly stop at the gas station to fill up, periodic emissions testing, etc? My biggest headaches are that I have to wash and vacuum my car.
I own a model S. I haven't had any headaches with it in the 3 1/2 months I've owned it. It's silent when driving, has insane instant acceleration and good handling. When I come home at night I spend 5 seconds pressing a button to open the charge port and plug in and in the morning just unplug and go with the equivalent a full tank of gas (a full fill-up costs under $10 with the insane electricity prices where I live). A few weeks back I drove up to Lake Tahoe with a stop at the Folsom Supercharger. While my car was recharging for free I got a nice lunch at one of the many nearby restaurants spending less money than I would have spent on gas. I didn't take it easy while driving either, all the way up to my 7200' destination where I had over 100 miles of range left. At night I plugged in there and had the equivalent of a mostly full tank (I didn't charge all the way since going downhill adds more range). I drove like a bat out of hell in Nevada and coming back via Kingsbury Grade (grade? What grade?) was a lot of fun as well. I love being able to do things like turn off the "creep" feature common with most automatic transmissions and using the default regen braking mode whenever I lift my foot off of the accelerator pedal. It's basically one pedal driving where I only use the brake pedal for rapid deceleration and stopping at low ( 5MPH) speeds.
The instant response and torque are incredible. Yesterday I looked into what it would take to drive to LA. I figure if I stop for a few minutes in Gilroy to top off I only need to do one battery swap on my way to LA so a trip from the Bay Area to LA would cost roughly $70 in "fuel" assuming I start with an empty "tank" before charging the night before ($10) and one battery swap ($60). Not bad when the other cars in its class take premium fuel and are lucky to get 20MPG. Of course I could also schedule to where I stop at Harris Ranch to charge and get a great steak lunch or dinner while charging for free.
There are very few headaches with this car though I'll admit more supercharger stations will help a lot as will the eventual availability of Chademo charging support.
The only maintenance the car needs is minor stuff, like rotating tires, filling the windshield washer fluid and replacing wiper blades. The brakes should last basically forever since I use them so infrequently with this car due to regen. There's really a lot less to go wrong. The electric motor is lubricated for 12 years. There's no transmission and far fewer mechanical parts in the drivetrain. No spark plugs, fuel pumps, O2 sensors, alternators, belts, etc to wear out except for the 12V battery.
Tesla service has been great too. I end up with a virtually new top-of-the-line loaner car which I can keep if I want to pay the difference in value.
The only downside is that I may go through tires fairly quickly and need more frequent tire rotations... rapid silent acceleration is addictive.
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BTW, BMW is taking Tesla challenge seriously. It is moving to i3 a plug in electric with a range of 100 + - 20 miles with a range extender engine giving another 80 miles of range. Scheduled for late 2013.
Lotus has been working on a integrated IC engine + generator on a single block, tuned for running for long periods at max efficiency RPM. There are going to be lots of competition in the Chevy Volt segment and the Chevy Spark Nissan Leaf segments. In fact BMW is trying to squeeze in the middle of these two segments. Tesla is conspicuous by its absence.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think this is a really good point. Gasoline as an energy supply is portable in the sense that it can be moved around. Electricity as an energy supply is portable in the sense that you can generate it from multiple platforms.
Ha ha, that's awesome.
I live in Redmond, and I see more Tesla Ses driving around than people holding a Windows Phone 8... even with MS giving WP8 to all its employees for free. Do see a fair number of their tablet thing, though.
The (too few) WP8 product demos I've seen did look pretty good, though. Things could have been different had it come out a few years ago back when WebOS / Maemo were contenders.
"...the document assumes that humans are causing the climate to change, an assumption for which there is no proof..." Wow, remember when the argument that there was no proof that global warming was actually happening? Now the argument is that it isn't caused by humans. What's next? "Global warming isn't caused by Americans!", "Global Warming is caused by people in the mid-west.", "Global warming is caused by neighbor"? The last I checked there was a 97% agreement among climate scientists that humans were causing Global Warming. Or is a statistical study of published peer-reviewed papers not a good indicator scientists agree on a given subject? Google 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' (now that's a mouthful!)
'based on a Lotus Elise' would be the Tesla *Roadster* - which they haven't produced for a couple of years now. the car everyone is talking about in this story is the Model S, which is built from the ground up by Tesla as a pure electric vehicle, and is therefore a much more optimal solution.
'42% US power came from coal in 2011' - and it's dropping rapidly in most states (ie the non-coal producing ones). some states are 0% coal. doesn't matter either way. even at 42% coal, the power station is still far more efficient than an internal combustion engine (ICE is 20-25% efficient, coal power station is 80+%). that's where the official government MPG values come from - 92 MPG equivalent (based on CO2 emissions). reduce the coal percentage in your state and that MPG value climbs dramatically.
What are you talking about? If you're talking about lead-acid batteries, they're plastic, lead + lead oxide and sulfuric acid. If you're talking about lithium-ion, there's plastic, lithium + whatever the particular chemistry uses and perhaps some electrolyte.
All of those components are recyclable or reusable in some way.
Oh, I don't doubt that it's a fine electric automobile, based on a Lotus Elise,
The Model S is not based on the Elise. The Tesla Roadster was but that no longer is in production. Try going to Tesla's web site before posting next time.
Personal prejudices and preferences aside, my biggest issue with electric cars is that you're really just shuffling the emissions around.
You're forgetting several important details. First is that you can power an electric vehicle with power from non-fossil fuel sources. Hydro, wind, solar, nuclear etc. You can actually reduce the emissions to a good approximation of zero. Second is that it is MUCH easier to control emission at the generating station than it is to try to do it on every tailpipe out there. Would you rather have one big filter or millions of small ones? Third is that the power efficiency of electric motors is significantly higher than for internal combustion engines. ICEs waste a huge amount of power in the form of heat. Fourth is that you have the option of powering an electric vehicle with fossil fuels that are potentially less polluting. Instead of coal you can power it with natural gas or even oil.
Until we get a point of 100% clean renewable energy, I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it.
So nothing is worth doing until it is perfect? That's a pretty tragically stupid argument.
'based on a Lotus Elise' would be the Tesla *Roadster* - which they haven't produced for a couple of years now. the car everyone is talking about in this story is the Model S, which is built from the ground up by Tesla as a pure electric vehicle, and is therefore a much more optimal solution.
you're right, mea culpa.
I'm asking what unwanted byproducts result from the process of breaking down the battery and turning its components into a reusable condition. How much of the recycling actually happens at North American facilities and how much is shipped overseas for processing?
TVA?
It sounded like, from the article, the Model S had a replaceable battery pack, and you would simply replace that at a station like a propane cylinder, rather than actually charge it...
It is replaceable and Tesla has demonstrated this technology. However I think it is unlikely to become widespread anytime soon. The logistics and infrastructure simply don't make it economical. I think it is VERY likely however that recharge times will be brought down to 5-10 minutes in the not terribly distant future.
My probably with that is this. What is the cost of a replacement battery pack?
Doesn't much matter. The battery pack is under warranty for the better part of a decade and if you do swap it you are getting an identical unit. There is some cost obviously but it's kind of irrelevant.
Also, the packs are said to get 300 miles, but that's with extended-range mode enabled which is apparently not recommended for day-to-day use, and it also means no AC or heat. In tests done by third parties, they saw 200-220 mile ranges on a pack without extended-range enabled, and that dropped to around 180 miles with heat on in the winter or AC enabled.
I know a guy who owns one of the performance models with about 7000 miles on it and he uses it as a daily driver. According to him in normal driving you'll see 240-270 miles which is pretty close to the pickup I drive right now as a daily driver. He also said that worst case scenario (100mph lead foot driving in frigid temps) you'll see 170-180 miles. He can charge it at work and home and has enough range to drive from Detroit to Cleveland without stopping (about 200 miles). Obviously you can come up with circumstances where a gasoline/diesel engine would be a better option but with the Tesla Model S the only common circumstances are very long distance drives (>250 miles) or in some parts of the world extreme cold conditions.
I'm going to go ahead and guess whatever model of Audi they showed, probably gets at least 300 and more likely 400 miles on a 20 gallon fill-up... so, you can change a battery in half the time, but you have to do it twice as often... doesn't seem like a benefit to me.
You have a bladder that can drive 400 miles in one sitting? Frankly I pretty much have to get out of the car every few hours anyway to stretch my legs so I don't really care if I need to plug in (or battery swap) while I do it. If you just like driving an Audi that is fine but it doesn't make the Tesla a bad alternative. You're just picking a different set of tradeoffs.
The caveat being, battery tech gets better all the time, so eventually it may be better... then again, gas engines are getting more and more economical as well.
Gas engines do not have the upside potential of electric motors. They simply aren't as efficient. There is a reason locomotives use electric motors and the diesel just provides the juice to power them. (I'm hoping trucks do that someday) They'll continue to improve but electric motors are going to take over a big chunk of the market in time. Hybrids in the near term with electric vehicles taking over as recharge times fall below the magic 10 minute mark.
LOL, power plants are nowhere near 80% efficient, more like 38% thermal to electric, add in a few percent transmission losses and you're not far off from ICE.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
A good chunk of tesla sales go to norway, making norway the first country outside US to get Tesla superchargers. The reason is simple: EVs have enoromus tax breaks and road access privelidges:
No VAT (Equivalent to US sales tax) Normal VAT is 25%
No taxes. Most cars get added taxes to the tune of $4000 and up. Cars in the same performance bracket as tesla usually have taxes in the $20000-$50000 range. (Taxes are based on emissions and weight)
Access to bus lanes (Which makes most EVs in norway largely concentrated in a single county just outside Oslo where the highways are notoriously congested)
These benefits will not last .If a lot of teslas outside-US buisness is based on such tax breaks I foresee a significant political risk for teslas buisness
It's BS. I closely follow the Tesla forums. I have never heard of a failed battery pack. The ones being sold on Ebay were people who paid the deposit and are basically selling their place in order to avoid the wait or else are selling new cars at a profit.
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He's not a MS shill, he's just a dumbass detector.
Electric cars should be much less complex than you petrol/diesel cars. No need for fancy gearboxes like in your average petrol car.
Think of all the parts that are dropped or simplified when you move from petrol/diesel to electric:
- Drive shaft (you can put the electric motors right where you need them)
- Gearbox - can be much less complex, no need for multiple ratios
- Alternators - vehicle is powered by electricity directly
- Crankshafts - no need
- Exhaust systems - no exhaust
- Noise reduction systems - your car's silencer system is an engineering marvel
- Complex cooling systems - electric motors don't produce as much waste heat
So you save by not having to produce all of those parts in the first place - although you do have to produce the battery.
As many have pointed out, once on the road, you are saving about half of the input energy compared to a petrol car, and that adds up. If you spend £5,000 on petrol per year currently, this could come down to £2,500 or less in electricity/energy costs.
We are probably not there yet, but electric cars could be far more efficient in every respect than petrol cars in the future.
6,000 gallons that is what roughly 24k in cash now add interest vs the price of a standard car and the math does not work out well.
Of course you won't be buying those 6,000 gallons at today's price, you'll be buying them at whatever the price is whenever your gas tank starts to become empty.
What will that price be? Nobody really knows. Probably more than today's cost, though.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Not at that price at least.
If people are buying them because they're novel and start talk then they simply will become more common until they aren't novel and don't start talk.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If the truck is driving back empty, they should fire their logistics guy.
The problem with this is that because it's a hazardous flammable and fairly poisonous liquid substance you're transporting it in a tanker designed for hydrocarbon fuel, not a general transport vehicle. You still need to get the trailer back to the refinery/distribution point to move more gasoline, but the selection of items that can go into the trailer is extremely limited - can't put food products in there, can't put potable water or drinking alcohol, etc... That's assuming any of this is produced at your distribution point.
Longer ranges it's piped or transported by railroad, but for ~100 mile final transport, they are stuck driving back with an empty trailer.
I don't read AC A human right
If you think that $7500 credit means dick to any of the buyers you are stupid. The people buying this car are buying it instead of a Lexus, Mercedes, Porche, etc. The cars they are forgoing for the Model S cost as much or MORE than the Model S.
The Model S is NOT a mainstream car. Though initially targeted at the mainstream market they couldn't get the dollar target so they upgraded the car and sold is as a luxury car. It comes fully loaded. Go to the website and price one, about the only option you can choose is whether it comes with a 240V fast charger they install in your house. Previous numbers I've seen show high end German cars have seen a 50% drop in sales due to the Model S. The Model S has and will remain a Luxury car with an electric drive train but it's in the same price range as the cars it's displacing. It's a really really nice car, and it's priced into that category and it also comes with the same service the people buying in this range expect. Such as you call Tesla if the battery dies and they tow and charge for free.
The Model S is just a high end Lexus or Mercedes, it appeals to the same audience of upper middle class that want cars that are pretty and that they will get great service with.
Of course they also repaid that half a billion. What about the multiple billions the other US car companies received, some of which has not been repaid?
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the iPhone more or less created the Smartphone market in the US. Prior to that the carriers in the States were holding back development with crappy phones and expensive dev kits ($25k+ for a kit was common).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I hate the idea of the touchscreen though. The last user interface I want to have while driving is one that requires me to look away from where I'm going to fiddle with a featureless surface that I can't operate by touch.
Disagree. People still take miraculous claims at face value, entire TV networks exist to take advantage of this. Marketing is not going to collapse from lack of faith in it, because faith is not a factor. These people prey on the human subconcious, they seed desire and then fill that desire, regardless of actual need (and with much waste of resources involved). That would also be why advertising begets disgust, they're telling bald faced lies.
This particular troll however is not really a prime example of good marketing. First of all, I doubt he is a marketing drone at all; it's too obvious a troll, and the audience is wrong, the post is off topic and he fails to provide a call to action. No, this is a sad troll with no life, trying to masturbate his way out of boredom by stirring the pot on /. in a manner pleasing to him.
... whatever
Insane. Raise a legitimate issue and get modded as "troll".
Of course it's much easier to control one point than many, but until the EPA gets serious about a carbon cap or other controls on the dirtiest power plants -- I'll stand by my argument.
Last time I checked, internal combustion engines emit quite a lot of carbon dioxide, not to mention a lot of other nasty stuff. Even the cleanest gasoline powered cars are still pretty dirty. Just because coal plants aren't clean doesn't make continuing to use internal combustion engines more than necessary a compelling alternative. The EPA doesn't control motor vehicle emissions notably better than they do power plant emissions and it is a global problem, not just one in the US. Shifting to a power regime where you can focus on relatively few sources makes the scope of the problem a LOT more manageable.
You *can*, but many folks don't have the option of choosing where their power comes from.
Look at it this way. My current car is powered by gasoline 100%. I have no ability to influence that percentage and never will. If I buy a Tesla Model S, where I live my car would be powered by 66% coal, 22% nuclear, 8% natural gas and 4% renewables. Per state law by the end of 2015, 10% will be powered by renewables (wind mostly in place of coal) and the state is on track to accomplish that. I also that the option via my power company to source all of my electricity from renewables (for a price). I also have the ability to put a wind turbine or solar panel on my house to generate my own electricity if I am so inclined and have the means. In other words I gain the ability to influence in some measure (however small) how my vehicle is powered. Without an internal combustion engine I completely lack that ability.
The beauty of electric vehicles from a power perspective is that we can power them with a diverse set of sources. These sources can be optimized based on fuel availability and emissions targets. In places like France that make heavy use of nuclear power going to electric vehicles is a huge win on pollution. For places like the US and China which use a lot of coal it will take longer. But just staying with the status quo because it will take a while to show full benefits is stupid.
The Fisker business plan was doomed from the beginning because they could only make a profit assuming they would get the tax credits in the first place. Tesla planned on having the tax credits go away some time before the vehicles got into production and treated the tax credits as potential additional profit, but not necessary to get into the black. While I'd agree that Fisker had private investors, suggesting that the government money didn't have a negative impact upon the company is patently false.
Having seen the latest annual report for Tesla, most of the reason they are still in the red right now is because of massive amounts of R&D spending. That tends to in the long run result in much more revenue.... sort of the point of why you invest in an enterprise of that nature. The Tesla manufacturing plant itself is incredibly profitable right now.
The graveyard of automobile manufacturing companies is vast and contains a large number of names. The amazing thing is when anybody breaks past producing something for more than a couple of years as making automobiles in mass production is very, very hard to do.
A call to action? A great deal of modern advertising is about brand name recognition; that's why sponsorship deals exist, and why television is full of advertisements that merely strive to be funny and have little if anything to do with their product. Certainly there are a lot of campaigns that will depend on exploiting synthetic desires and insecurities for the rest of time (particularly beauty products) but the more aggressive they get the more transparent they get, and marketers aren't quite that stupid. Spam, "lose weight instantly" banner ads, the Shopping Channel, and other blatant predators don't represent the majority of marketing efforts either in dollar value, products covered, or marketers thus engaged.
A well-done advertisement doesn't need to risk triggering disgust; it's simply a frank presentation of services and features offered, given in a format that emphasises the audience and (if appropriate) lifestyle most likely to benefit from it, and how they might benefit from it. No one is going to find this or this manipulative, even though they both try to sell a message about why their services are superior (and the latter ad uses a fallacy to make a point.)
There's little question that the original poster was a troll; Slashdot has a rich tradition of such antics. It does fit a template, however; it's been euphemistically called "low-quality content" by Google and others, and basically consists of astroturfing by dedicated bloggers and reviewers. There was a really prominent case of this last year when Google discovered it had accidentally funded a crap-posting campaign for Chrome as part of a larger marketing deal. The same applies to the recent Amazon Vine reviews—not all of them actually instruct the reader to buy the book, which may come across as too transparent or be redundant since the user is obviously already considering it.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
HOLY FUCK YOUR MATH IS SHITTY!
"The truck burning 14.28 gallons of diesel generates about 145 grams of CO2. [1]"
-that's 145 Kilograms you fuck! And you have not included the return trip of the tanker as has been discussed already, making it 290 Kilograms of CO2!.
"The energy losses for the transmission line (considering it comes from coal) generates about 7 tonnes of CO2. [2]"
-Where the fuck do you get that from?? And it doesn't even make sense with your later comparisons!
"A BMW 5 Series 520i would be able to drive about 915.294 miles with that gasoline. [4] Driving these miles, it would release about 91 metric tonnes of CO2 (in the streets)."
-With 10,000 gallons of gasoline..
10000 * 3.78541 liters per gallon = 37854.1 liters * 7km per liter = 264,978.70 km *163 grams CO2 per km / 1000000 = 43,190 kg of CO2
43,190 kg + 290 kg = 43,480 kg or 43.480 metric tonnes of CO2
You have also forgotten that gasoline/petrol is refined from oil, and that the refining process uses some percentage of energy and releases CO2 and sulfur. I cannot find any info on the refining cost.
So how does that compare with the Tesla? .162162 / .8 /.9925 = 0.204234461 kW per km if produced at a plant and transmitted (see previous discussions and citations)
Lets make it easy by comparing the grams of CO2 produced for each km according to the BMW literature.. 163 grams/km.
From your own citations, the Tesla has a 60kW or 85 kW battery. -I know nothing about charging of batteries, but they are rated at 370km for the 60 and 480km for the 85. The 60kW is less efficient so I will use that.
60/370 = 0.162162 kW per km.
Accounting for transmission loss and charging loss,
So how much CO2 produced? 2.08 lbs per kW according to your source.
2.08 * 0.204234461 = 0.424807679 lbs CO2 per km
BUT WAIT! THERES MORE! lets convert the pounds to kg
0.424807679 lbs * 0.453592 kg per pound = 0.192689365 kg CO2 per km.
OUCH! According to this (which is highly subjective) A Tesla running on coal-powered electricity produces 19% more CO2 than the BMW.
-But to compare apples to apples.. an oil fired plant about matches the BMW.
And of course a Natural Gas fired plant allows the Tesla to net 30% less Co2 emissions.
We wont even get into carbon-free power sources like solar, wind, water, etc!
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Anybody with an interest in reducing power plant emissions should check out the "NeuStream," a very promising new type of scrubber that removes sulfur dioxide, mercury, particulate matter, and maybe even CO2 -- which would mean, for the first time we could burn coal without environmental consequences.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
great news, but i still fear that a serial hybrid is a necessary link to the final goal, i.e., a fuel-cell commuter car, but so far the "government" seems to be succeeding in its efforts to stop progress in this area, e.g., its sabotage of the Chevy Volt project.
The cars are awesome two trunks, fast, awesome looking, they just dropped the price on some models making them reachable for higher middle class.
My source is http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2009/09/where-does-my-electricity-come-from/ and as it says in the article there is no state that is even at the 50% level of it's electricity being provided by renewable sources. So, by that factor every state in the union has at least 51% or more of it's electricity provided by some sort of fossil fuel, whether it be natural gas, coal, oil, etc... Therefore, at the current status quo the situation will worsen, not get better as the number of electric cars increase unless we start increasing the number of renewable electricity sources.