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Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#'
Frosty P sends this quote from AutoblogGreen:
"Elon Musk is unafraid to speak his mind. Whether he's talking about other players in the electric vehicle space or sub-par reporting from The New York Times, this is a man with few filters. Musk says that fuel cells are not part of the solution that electric vehicles offer for giving up the hydrocarbon addiction. After commenting that the only reason some automakers are pursuing hydrogen technology is for marketing purposes, that lithium batteries are superior mass- and volume-wise for a given range, and that fuel cells are too expensive, Musk capped it all off with the safety issue. 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#,' Musk said. 'Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it's suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars,' he said."
In many regards, but especially to Mr. Musk's business model.
But the danger of fuel cells is not so much from the hydrogen storage part, you can engineer around that - ffs lithium batteries can burn too, and they carry their own oxidizers to do it, it's more from the fact that the cheapest source of hydrogen will be from gasification of fossil fuels, and from the fact that hydrogen via electrolysis is horribly inefficient, and then you actually have to build an infrastructure for the hydrogen distribution...
They all have their drawbacks, Elon.
Other car manufacturers say "batteries are so bullshit".
Be careful what you Mr. Musk. It can be embarrasing when somebody proves you wrong.
I didn't realize he was so direct. I like him.
Speaking his mind is what he does at meetings with employees. Also, don't his car batteries burn brighter than those in the Dreamliner?
There's a bit more to it than that, jackass.
a Model S traveling at highway speed struck a large metal object, causing significant damage to the vehicle. A curved section that fell off a semi-trailer was recovered from the roadway near where the accident occurred and, according to the road crew that was on the scene, appears to be the culprit. The geometry of the object caused a powerful lever action as it went under the car, punching upward and impaling the Model S with a peak force on the order of 25 tons. Only a force of this magnitude would be strong enough to punch a 3 inch diameter hole through the quarter inch armor plate protecting the base of the vehicle.
As well, the firefighters made it worse before they made it better:
"When the fire department arrived, they observed standard procedure, which was to gain access to the source of the fire by puncturing holes in the top of the battery's protective metal plate and applying water. For the Model S lithium-ion battery, it was correct to apply water (vs. dry chemical extinguisher), but not to puncture the metal firewall, as the newly created holes allowed the flames to then vent upwards into the front trunk section of the Model S. Nonetheless, a combination of water followed by dry chemical extinguisher quickly brought the fire to an end."
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Same thing was once said about Gas. Your strapping a massive storage of energy to wheels and sending it off at speeds faster than most peoples reaction time. I think the one that batteries have going for it over any other source today is that they can be used and deployed without the need of specialized fueling or anything like that.
That's a hard thing to change, just look at DEF, you still have very limited supply locations if your a general consumer that isn't always going to truckstops.
His comment applies only to hydrogen fuel cells. There are other kinds, and they offer higher energy storage densities. Don't let this guy's comments deter from the research.
We deal with Propane, Methane, and other gasses which seem like they would carry a lot more energy and thus be more dangerous. Does hydrogen have a lower flashpoint or some other quality which makes it more dangerous? We can oderize the gas like the others.
It seems like hydrogen would be the least dangerous gas. At least it burns cleanly and is not poisonous to breathe. Its light, so it would rise into the atmosphere away from people and property and not hang around near the ground.
Is this all about that black and white movie? Because I saw a fire, not an explosion.
Hydrogen is as dangerous as a big block of lithium batteries.. ie. not very unless you're doing something stupid.
Bonus. Many fuel cell designs and systems dont need replaced like a lithium battery pack WILL eventually.
He's just bullshitting to drum up some sales.
Someone slap him and tell him to shut up before he says something stupid that costs him alot of money.
Well, anything that stores high amount of energy per volume tends to be a bomb in the limit of things. Superbatteries of the future will be used by terrorists.
Fuel cells have been a "promise" for decades. Heavy investment and R&D has not yet come close to yielding a product the mass market can make use of. They will be relegated to niche markets unless some tremendous breakthroughs occur.
I've seen hundreds of researchers work to try to come up with a car-ready inexpensive fuel cell that's, if not safe, at least not going to level a block during a fender-bender. The conclusion I came to long ago was that the big car makers pursue fuel cells to avoid explaining why they've not pursued (or actively stalled) the development of electric vehicles. The fact is that electric cars have a much, much greater potential to replace internal combustion engines than fuel cells for the near future.
Even just the fact that infrastructure is basically in place for widespread transportation of electricity and not even on the radar for hydrogen gives electric a huge edge!
I'm not saying the technology might not prove itself within a few decades, but if half of the fuel-cell resources were placed into improving batteries, electric vehicles would be damn near ubiquitous by now. Would anyone argue that the existing automakers really wanted that?
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Sadly, I can only upmod you once.
Musk's criticisms depends on the particular type of "fuel cell" under discussion, I would think. There are many architectures & designs, some which only create small amounts of hydrogen & oxygen from electrolyzing H2O which is burned almost immediately internally which have a very low likelihood of causing/starting an explosion or fire.
There are any number of devices that could be called a "fuel cell". He may be quite correct in his criticisms of what is being currently proposed as automotive "fuel cells". That does not mean a different type/design of "fuel cell" would not be safe & practical.
It's also somewhat like asking MS's marketing their opinion on the suitability of linux as a replacement for Windows. Musk sunk his money into battery-powered-vehicle tech. You expect a favorable statement about that which could possibly threaten his investments?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
'Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it's suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars,' he said."
You mean like that other common rocket fuel, gasoline, which is used in the Russian R-12 also known as the Scud missile? Yeap, we would never use that in a car.
guard-weasel
lol
OMG, peak force. What was the duration of the peak, 0.00025 microseconds?
Anyone know the peak force that a mosquito exerts while it is biting?
He may well be a douch, but he's not the only one out there, and he is doing something that will push us in the right direction. Also, it takes considerable effort to get hydrogen gas from dihydrogen monoxide. Perhaps he knows this already?
I recently wrote an article on the ability to extract hydrogen from plants and a discovery by Percival Yang but the results of the discovery means that hydrogen can be extracted from plants at almost maximum efficiency in a low cost enzyme based process. Not only did Zang discover a way of way of extracting the hydrogen but he also went out an a limb and suggested another method using hydrocarbon storage of the extracted hydrogen as a method of holding the hydrogen in a safe and easily extractable form of storage. It wouldn't have the ability to go boom with car accidents and wouldn't require huge temperatures to extract the hydrogen. It would be safe or safer than lithium batteries. It would however require a beginning startup period where electric batteries would be required for the first 15 minutes of vehicle operation.
This discovery met ALL of the long term goals of power density, including an equivalent to 300 to 500 mile power density.
So in short I think Mr. Musk is wrong.
So a blog called "AutoblogGreen" has an entry in which the phrase "giving up the hydrocarbon addiction" is used. Yeah, I'm sure there are no agendas at work there.
I believe that using hydrogen for a fuel on a large scale is a terrible idea since it is usually extracted from water and some of it will undoubtedly escape in to space. Over time, all of those leaky vehicles will bleed off more and more hydrogen into space reducing the amount of available water which is essential for weather patterns and life itself.
While I will agree that Elon has about all the charm and tact of the average fanboy around here I will say that your calling him out over his claims that hydrogen gas is dangerous because hydrogen is an element to be found in water is about as dumb as it gets.
Why would the duration matter, unless you think cars being impaled from underneath with 25 tons of force for any duration is normal? Who the hell taught you how to drive?
Good thing it hit a battery pack. Considering it was sufficient to go through an inch of metal it would have had no problem impaling the driver of a different car.
It was totaled after hitting a large piece of metal at speed. A similar-size gasoline car would have probably killed the driver, and probably caught on fire as well. Did you forget that everyone else is driving around with a tankful of highly flammable liquid in their car?
Don't worry if Elon has few filters, everyone else seem to have plenty of filters they are dying to lend him. I'm pretty sure Elon didn't walk up to a reporter and say "Fuel cells are bull at percent bang crunch"...
Correcting.
they are like 1000x times stronger than regular cars and don't damage?
For any engineered device, there's a level of force that can act on it to damage it. Obviously, the vehicle encountered something that shouldn't be considered a standard road condition, and it handled it better than a vehicle with a gas tank might've under similar circumstances.
and one of the solutions for large-scale electric power grid storage to accommodate massive expansion of intermittent renewables.
We have to remember that the rational premise is we need to cut carbon emissions almost totally out of the economy, and fast, so why not experiment with multiple technologies as alternative energy and transportation infrastructure.
I don't see lithium battery powered intercontinental jetliners on the horizon any time soon do you? And it goes without saying that aviation can't continue to run on fossil fuel.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Top Gear maliciously reviewed his car. They editorialized a perception about his car. Calling it a "comedy show" does not invalidate their motive.
Elon Musk went on to say that Biofuels are cocksuckers, he did Clean Natural Gas's mother and compressed air vehicles lick donkey balls...
As much as I regard Elon as a self-aggrandising pillock, I have to agree with him here.
The perfect fuel cell as used on spacecraft and the like burns hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, heat and water. Fuel cells intended for use on Earth use air rather than pure oxygen for logistical reasons, air is all around us after all, and the resulting exhaust contains nitrous compounds as well as water. Sometimes the NOx, nitric acid etc. corrodes the red-hot fuel cell catalysts which can be an expensive bummer.
Fuels used in fuel cells can range from hydrogen up through assorted hydrocarbon fuels like butane, ammonia, oddballs like dimethyl ether and the like. Adding carbon gets more energy per kilo of fuel but adds CO2 to the exhaust and possibly traces of other interesting chemicals like CO, cyanogens, dioxins etc. and may cause more damage to the catalysts in conjunction with the NOx compounds.
Hydrogen is a piss-poor fuel for vehicles. It's low-density per joule stored, damages ordinary steels through hydrogen embrittlement and in gas form leaks very easily through joints, gaskets and even through the metal walls of containers given a chance as hydrogen is the smallest molecule known, the escape artist of the periodic table. Liquefying it is energy-intensive, it has to be kept very cold and LH2 is also very low density, the least dense liquid known in fact.
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Kind of a life mimics art thing. I wonder if he'll go for the Downey Jr. pirate goatee?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...comes from magic fairy farts collected on hobby farms.
Hydrogen is much more difficult to store than liquified petroleum gas. Why? Well, _liquified_ petroleum gas is a liquid, it is energy dense and the pressures required for storing it are reasonable. Hydrogen doesn't liquify easily, storing it involves usually involves compressing it to hundreds of atmospheres of pressure, and the energy density is still low compared to liquid hydrocarbons. Since the molecules are tiny, they will also escape surprisingly easily.
He needs a bigger lobby presence in Washington DC to get any traction in the US auto market. You don't honestly think there's any kind of free market operating in the US at the moment do you?
Musk would probably have more success if he moved his entire business to the arguably more capitalist economies of Russia or China.
There's already water dripping out of the tailpipe of your gas/diesel engines, a whole bunch of it. Somehow life goes on.
He's got a massive ego, there's no denying it, but your rebuttal is quite terrible. The whole fiasco surrounding Top Gear was bad, but the Top Gear guys have their fair share of the blame: they did do this so that the car would end up behaving as they wanted it to behave (ie. badly), not as it actually did. It may be comedy, but it's still misrepresentation, and we are all fully aware that electric cars (or basically anything but a fuel car) is going to have to fight an uphill battle for adoption, so why make it harder for no good reason beyond your own obstinate vision of a car being noisy, gas guzzling machines?
Likewise, I don't recall him making excuses for the car's performance, either the Roadster or the S. There's been a lot of talk about both models and sometimes expectations went a bit overboard. They have a lot to prove, so they're going to defend their product tooth and nail, which honestly is to be expected (and if it were somebody you liked, you'd be the first taking their defence for being gutsy).
Lastly but most importantly, his wrestling with car sales rules in many states is undeniably good. These rules have been bent and twisted to hell and back by the incumbent auto makers and their dealers to make it nigh impossible to compete with any other business model. For a place like Slashdot, with so many promoters of the "FREE MARKET", this thing should cause almost unanimous uproar. Tesla wants to cut costs on incumbent, useless, overpriced dealerships and modernize how cars are delivered, supported and maintained. It may work, it may not work, who knows? Regardless, however, laws shouldn't be designed to stack everything against that model in such a fashion, and saying that it's just whining and not a serious concern is childish at best, utterly irresponsible at worst.
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Well it sure as hell ain't a ferret!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
But the end-goal is flying cars, no? (Intentionally flying, that is. Not like a rear-ended Ford Pinto.)
Table-ized A.I.
he's a capitalist, therefore he's in it for the money. If altruistic progress was his goal he'd be selling Teslas at a loss just to get them in the hands of the people who would benefit the most.
Well, if he sold them "at a loss" he wouldn't be building them for any real amount of time. His high end selling scheme is what's going to bring more R&D dollars to someone who's actually in seeing this succeed. I'm not saying other automakers aren't interested in it but he has invested more of himself in this than anyone else at this point in time. That at least gets him a tip of the hat.
But while we're having this discussion, I'll bite and at point that you were maybe trying to make.... who exactly would be the people who would benefit the most from this that he should allow his business to fail? Who is so important that his vision and his livelihood is worth sacrificing that for?
We haven't managed to find a way to produce energy from fossil fuels quickly without generating heat either.
If THAT is going to be the hurdle to climb, then cars are impossible already.
It's always good to have a neutral party weigh in on the issue. Now we know.
Some settling may occur during posting.
I don't think hydrogen would offer much competition but he should look out for this guy:
http://driveonwood.com/
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Even smart people say stupid things.
Besides, what's wrong with waiting an hour? You need to stop for food anyway, so if you can recharge at or near the place you stop to eat, then you're not losing any time.
That's true if you're going to a restaurant like Bob Evans or Steak 'n Shake. But I'd be surprised if the six minutes spent waiting for carry-out at a quick-service workaurant is near long enough to recharge the battery.
Milliones of cars in Europe and south america run bu my knowledge on lng and...... In carbon reinforced plastic bottles !!!
Whats the difference???
We build complete ships that run on lng and up to now i haven`t seen a single vehicle explode
So I think the the excrement of the male bovine is in fact Elons comment
0 psi. That's because a mosquito doesn't 'bite'. The pressure to pierce human skin is on the order of approximately 1000 psi, but the mosquito doesn't have to puncture an entire square inch of skin (more like .25 square mm), so it's going to take significantly less force to do so.
Using those ball-park figures, the mosquito needs somewhere on the order of 1/2500 of that force, or .25psi.
Generally speaking, however, the duration of the peak force doesn't matter. If the peak force is strong enough to puncture a material, the material will be punctured no matter how short the duration of that peak force.
His batteries have been marketed as lithium ion, but the name of the stuff inside is lithium aluminum hydride. Hydride is hydrogen with an extra electron near it, and is unstable on it's own. Did you see the video of the tesla car batteries burning? Have you seen videos of other lithium batteries burning? That is a hydrogen fire son. But even worse, that is a hydride fueled hydrogen fire, so the hydrogen is already more reactive than normal. Elon's super safe batteries do not contain the burning runaway hydrogen reaction inside their individual cases as they have tried to say. Obviously that car burned up instead of the few busted battery cells burning out in a contained way.
Someone who has $108k for a Tesla Model S isn't going to go to McDonald's for food.
I know. I was thinking of a workaurant whose food doesn't completely suck, like Wendy's or Chick-fil-A.
given the horrible quality of their food and what it does to your body
Is this likewise true of Subway?
Everyone in the industry knows that hydrogen fuel cells are just a gimmick. Let's enumerate some of the problems with them:
1) Hydrogen can't be piped through pipelines of any non-trivial length. Well, technically you can make hydrogen leak-proof pipeline but then you can burn dollar bills for heating.
2) Hydrogen is difficult to transport in the liquid form. It has to be cooled by liquid helium or you have to vent the hydrogen vapor. Which is explosive in a wide range of concentrations.
3) Compressed hydrogen storage has very low volumetric density. You can _just_ squeeze enough of tank space in your average car and get a usable mileage, but using it for tanker trucks? Forget about it.
4) Oh, and fueling stations must also be pretty high-tech. You have to store liquid hydrogen and fuel tank adapters are awesomely complex. And the number of hydrogen stations in the US is smaller than the number of Supercharger stations.
5) Hydrogen fires are SCARY. Hydrogen does NOT just "drift up and burn away" - it burns at a temperatures high enough to _melt_ _steel_ and give you third-degree burns from thermal radiation while you are several meters away from the ignition source.
6) It's actually cheaper and easier to burn methane (natural gas) in regular combustion engines than to use it for hydrogen production with all the associated transportation headaches.
7) Fuel cells themselves are now much cheaper than 10 years ago, but they are still FAR more expensive than batteries.
One of the problems with hydrogen so far as its combustibility goes is that it will burn in a very wide concentration ratio, something like 5% to 95% in air, IIRC. Most other fuels have at least somewhat narrower ranges.
Storing H in compressed metal hydride tanks works and might someday have reasonable mass/volume/energy ratios, but the real problem is that it's only an energy carrier, not a source, and mass production means of getting from an energy source to H2 haven't come anywhere close to being as efficient as, say, just burning CNG. Hobbyists might electrolyze water with power from PVs, and while that's fun and all, it isn't going to satisfy the masses. Transporting electricity from production to storage in your car, given the infrastructure we already have, is a lot easier than building a brand new infrastructure to distribute some form of hydrogen. So, yeah, Musk is just protecting his business model, but the reality is that H2 is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon, and batteries are already becoming ubiquitous.
So let me get this straight ... guy who uses technology A exclusively ... says alternative/possibly competing technology B is bad, except when he uses it on his other projects ... FILM AT 11!!!
Seriously, who the fuck cares what Musk says, he didn't design the Tesla or anything in it. He's not an expert in the field, he's just a guy who had some money from a company he started that just happen to be in the right place at the right time, and that company was a pretty shitty one that only made money due to timing and dumb luck. Then he started a couple new companies with the ridiculous amount of money he made by idiots buying stocks. He has a fuckton of engineers all talking in his ear telling him things and then he goes out, mixes it up a bit and puts a spin on it so he's products come out rosy and everyone else products are shitty.
How is this news for nerds? This is news for wall street groupies who aren't smart enough to follow the actual technologies involved and instead listen to the company sales leaders, I'm sorry, CEO.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The vapour is far more dangerous than the gasoline itself, especially in situations where heat can cause pressure to the point of rupture. If there's a suitable ignition source nearby: BOOM.
Disclaimer: I designed fuel cells and fuel reformers for both home and automobile applications.
Fuel cells ARE BS and here's why. 1) fuel cells require hydrogen, that's not exactly an easy gas to manufacture, store, and transport. 2) fuel cells and their associated fuel reformers rely heavily on platinum as a catalyst for the water gas shift reaction - there isn't enough platinum in the world to put a fuel cell and reformer in every car and home in America. 3) the technology is super reliant on clean fuel inputs - for example, the tiniest bit of sulfur will wreck a fuel cell stack in seconds 4) they aren't cheap - a 1KW fuel reformer and associated fuel cell could easily run around 150k even considering mass production options (and a stable platinum supply) "ain't nobody got time for that" :)
Fuel cells are great for specialty applications - like the space shuttle, like laboratories, MAYBE for public services (bus fleets, powering public buildings, etc.) But nowhere near feasible to put one in everybody's automobile - that's just crazy talk. The fuel cell industry is all smoke and mirrors my friends - they are just making pretty presentations to suck the venture capital out of rich men's pockets.
He's got a massive ego, there's no denying it, but your rebuttal is quite terrible. The whole fiasco surrounding Top Gear was bad, but the Top Gear guys have their fair share of the blame: they did do this so that the car would end up behaving as they wanted it to behave (ie. badly), not as it actually did. It may be comedy, but it's still misrepresentation, and we are all fully aware that electric cars (or basically anything but a fuel car) is going to have to fight an uphill battle for adoption, so why make it harder for no good reason beyond your own obstinate vision of a car being noisy, gas guzzling machines?
Malarkey - I've actually seen the episode, and not only do they not put the car through anything more rigorous than other cars tested, Jeremy Clarkson (you know, the guy who would rather have his testicles eaten by a million angry bees than compliment an electric car) actually praised both the car and the company at the end of the show.
Not to mention, a wheel really did lock up at speed and almost kill the Stig, which Tesla readily admits did happen.
Likewise, I don't recall him making excuses for the car's performance, either the Roadster or the S. There's been a lot of talk about both models and sometimes expectations went a bit overboard.
So, he did but didn't overspeak the features of the vehicle then renege? Not really 100% what you're trying to say here.
Lastly but most importantly, his wrestling with car sales rules in many states is undeniably good.
In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else.
Just like one would expect from a self-serving capitalist.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
An electrolysis rig and $200 of electricity will get you $40 of hydrogen, yes.
Oil comes from dirt. What's the point?
Generally speaking, however, the duration of the peak force doesn't matter. If the peak force is strong enough to puncture a material, the material will be punctured no matter how short the duration of that peak force.
False. The total energy of an impact is very much relevant and that involves duration as well as peak force.
Is Elon any worse than any of the other Car CEOs out there? You know, the ones who push out the same overcomplicated machines with slight year-over-year refreshes, and put in place schemes to keep people wanting more, and which use a black, tar-like substance which is mainly gained from drilling under the ocean, or in war-torn countries, or by strip-mining the countryside? Every time I see any care I see a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals, and gasses, and damage, and that damage continues as long as those cars operate.
The alternator would be powered by the engine, right? The engine is powered by the hydrogen. So you'd be burning hydrogen to make hydrogen.
Is that what you mean? If that's what you have in mind, it'll "work", you just have to burn two pounds of hydrogen to get the electricity to make one pound.
I suppose it's an interesting, Rube Goldberg, way to get rid of hydrogen.
You can make the hydrogen, H2, much more energy dense and easier to handle by combining it with another element or two.
Plants and animals are powered by a hydrogen based molecule of the type Cm(H2O)n, meaning two hydrogen molecules combined with one oxygen molecule, bound to some number of carbon molecules. Having the oxygen in there is a waste of space, so you could take that out and power a car with CnH2n.
CnH2n has seven times better mileage than H2, and is found in nature, so it doesn't have to be made via electrolysis or any other method.
It burns well in an engine, but doesn't explode. The "n" in that formula stands for any of many different numbers that will work. For example,
C8H18 is quite good. It makes for pretty efficient engines because it's 100 octane rating allows for a 10:1 compression ratio. In general, the
CnH2n group is called "hydrocarbons". C8H18 is octane, a primary component of gasoline.
In fact, it's part of why the movie Rush is so cool.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
See, thing is, if you could just put an industrial electric turbine in a car, and then have some space left over for a passenger or two and some batteries, an electric car technically could go much much faster than a gasoline car.
It wouldn't go very far, though, but it would be a sweet sweet ride.
And since most people commute less than 10 miles to get to the office, this sounds like a pretty good deal if you live in an area where electricity comes from sources other than coal, oil, or natural gas. Wind turbines could charge fleets of these supercars up, and then we could all have an electric rocket supercar to get to work in.
Provided you didn't care about traffic laws, mind you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Range is less of an issue for childless couples and single people. When you have a family and aren't wealthy, long car trips become the only affordable way to travel. But then, Elon isn't selling to that demographic.
well, diverting some of the energy to power the alternator, it doesn't have to be a perpetual motion (which is supposedly impossible). just a way of extending, if a tank will run out in X hours or X miles if left alone without additional production, it'll run out in Y hours/ Y miles (where Y >> X), at that point you'll have to fill it in some way or an other (just like with ICE cars, gas stop). or what you said :)
so your scenario of a 6-minute carry-out isn't going to be realistic unless you intend to consume that meal while driving the car.
Guess what ends up happening on family road trips. Burger King even designed its paper cups for French fries and chicken fries to fit in a vehicle's cup holder.
68% of the power in the USA is generated by fossil fuels. source It's why you can half jokingly refer to electric cars as "coal cars", since they're essentially filling up with 37% coal-derived electrons. The lithium ion batteries come with their own environmental costs during their creation, as well. The primary function of today's electric cars is to perform an "out of sight, out of mind" on your carbon footprint. Tesla's cars are toys for rich people who as kids, cleaned their room by shoving everything under their bed.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Guy selling a product says competing technology is inferior and may, in fact, set the world on fire. Maybe if an independent third party came forth and empirically proved that x was better than y, I'd listen.
Cool. I wondered if I was missing the point.
I had to think that through myself, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work.
To power the alternator requires more power from the engine. More power means burning more fuel. So 2 lbs MORE hydrogen burned to make one pound.
If it's NOT powered by the engine, but instead uses energy you're trying to throw away, that could work. The only energy I can think of you'd want to throw away when be when you're braking . You'd connect it to the brakes, not the engine .
Still it would probably be more efficient to store the braking energy by compressing a gas or in a high speed flywheel, as in a toy friction car . It could theoretically work, though.
Saying "I know this goes 100% against the Slashdot groupthink" IS the Slashdot groupthink.
News at 11...
Musk is a guy who rightly saw his physics career was going nowhere and switched gears to something much more useful and profitable. The trade off is, he can't make statements like this and be taken seriously. Even if he's right about something technical, his history is that his business interests come first.
This still doesn't solve the problem that it is still just a very fancy battery for your electric car. Call back when the chemical processes you are talking about have the same round trip efficiency on store and release energy as a LI battery.
a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals
As opposed to a big-ass tank of liquid heavily polluting blood minerals?
Hydrogen that is pumped into a fuel cell to mix with air to produce electricity in a motor vehicle is "bull@%!#" for two reasons, it competes with his business model and requires storage of hydrogen in large quantities which is not entirely the best thing unless it is stored like the United Nuclear corvette, unfortunately regulations exist against certain materials that are used in atomic weapons were required to make it safe, funny thing is gasoline and fumes are extremely volatile and dangerous but that is overlooked. Now the better idea is to store the hydrogen in the form of water and produce hydroxy gas on demand by use of the fuel cell in the other direction, but this requires that the system utilize large amounts of electricity that will in turn produce enough hydroxy to run the motor. This process makes a car safe again because for one it makes friggin noise when it runs, most folks never knew how much safer it makes an automobile that you can hear, electrics fail there. Unfortunately none of this will ever come to be released because it does not work with commercialization and money and big oil profits, those that try will likely be killed by big oil.
Well, I will say this:
When I submitter the story, the word "bullshit" did not contain a lot of special chars.
And my name is "Frosty PISS".
Slashdot is getting soft
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#'
Spoken like a true crony capitalist.
Malarkey - I've actually seen the episode, and not only do they not put the car through anything more rigorous than other cars tested, Jeremy Clarkson (you know, the guy who would rather have his testicles eaten by a million angry bees than compliment an electric car) actually praised both the car and the company at the end of the show.
Not to mention, a wheel really did lock up at speed and almost kill the Stig, which Tesla readily admits did happen.
I'm specifically talking about the bit where they push the car around. It's been revealed that the whole thing was faked and the car did not inaccurately report remaining charge nor actually fail to do the whole run, they just filmed it like that anyway. I've not watched the whole thing (not a UK resident, not a car fan, and most certainly not a Top Gear viewer), but what I have seen of it points at a fair amount of "malarkey", as you say. I'm not saying the Tesla was perfect, remember? Just that Top Gear did some not-so-great things to prove a point.
So, he did but didn't overspeak the features of the vehicle then renege? Not really 100% what you're trying to say here.
I remember a lot of people thinking that the mileage figure was being overrated because you couldn't do that at -30C in the snow or that the batteries could never, ever catch fire or other such things. Exaggerations, basically, which I'd blame equally on Tesla's boasting and on critics' misrepresentations.
In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else.
Just like one would expect from a self-serving capitalist.
I can't find a source that says that, amusingly enough. What I did find seems to point at an exemption made for "American-owned manufacturers who exclusively make electric vehicles". To me, this sounds tailored to actually pass. Anything broader and the TADA would jump in guns blazing saying how they're destroying America. They're already opposing the bill with such a ludicrously small scope, imagine if the American-owned restriction wasn't there or the electric restriction wasn't there? Texas happens to be both ultra-patriotic and an oil baron's paradise, what did you expect?
Thanks for the comments on this from the people who replied. Apparently, hydrogen is a pretty serious bastard. Good to know.
"For the Model S lithium-ion battery, it was correct to apply water"
As someone certified for Class D and E fires (metal and radioactive, respectively) - WRONG MOVE.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
True, but in this type of accident the gasoline tends to pool up under the vehicle and incinerate the entire thing.
He may well be a douch,
Oh, he is.
but he's not the only one out there,
No, but the fact there are other douche-bags on the planet is no excuse for being one.
and he is doing something that will push us in the right direction.
According to you. Me, I fail to see the merit in the concept of having everyone drive around in what is, essentially, a big-ass pile of heavily polluting blood minerals that won't get you to your destination without taking a minimum hour break every couple hundred miles.
Not to mention, even if electric cars are "the right direction," Elon Musk doesn't give half a fuck about that - he's a capitalist, therefore he's in it for the money. If altruistic progress was his goal he'd be selling Teslas at a loss just to get them in the hands of the people who would benefit the most.
Also, it takes considerable effort to get hydrogen gas from dihydrogen monoxide. Perhaps he knows this already?
Uh, that was a dig, not a comparison or question of science. I figured it was obvious.
Lithium does not have to be mined for blood money (and there's probably lithium in the screen you're looking at, so you're a murderous hypocrite). The new chargers will work in twenty minutes from empty.
Now go watch a video of him being interviewed or giving a tour of SpaceX. He literally walks around naming all the parts off the top of his head and knows what they do. Name any CEO capable of that. First, the man really is a genius. Second, he's actually quite down to earth. Saw him get very emotional about the "perversion of democracy" that other automakers are going to to try to stop him. His college education is specifically for designing batteries, not what you pursue to get filthy rich, he's just good at what he does (and very lucky). They actually don't patent any of the the SpaceX technology, that greedy bastard. And lastly, no one said he's trying to be altruistic. And altruism isn't also suicidal.
Course, I actually know what I'm talking about instead of just spreading ICE automaker FUD.
"In reference to the Texas fiasco, no - it would be undeniably good if he was trying to get the law changed because it's wrong, but that's not the case - he was trying to get a special exception made for his company, and fuck everyone else."
Cause you know the dealerships should be the one's deciding how cars are sold, and fuck (literally) everyone else, not just a couple car salesmen. That's like WalMart lobbying to not allow you to shop online. You really think if the law allows him direct sales then no one else would be allowed? The exception is for him cause the big players don't want an exception at all.
Every organization/organism, from the smallest flea to the Salvation Army (and GE) has to take in more than it puts out. It is the way of life, just as it is the way of all social systems. In Capitalism we call that profit, a non-profit calls it 'reserves', a household usually calls it 'savings'. if your local free food pantry agency doesn't bring in more (in the form of donations of goods and money, plus government assistance), the lights will get turned off and everyone will go home, or back under the freeway overpass. Even governments and countries (government + the people and institutions) have this. If a nation spends more than it takes in, eventually it will be destitute, subject to revolution or takeover.
TL;DR: Profit is not a dirty word. Many, many people (myself included) are the type who are willing to bet some part of their assets, time and energy to make something cool happen. In my case it is commercial space development. If my associates and I succeed, according to the best analyses the mean standard of living of people worldwide may increase by as much as a factor of 10. And in the process, my heirs or some foundation (I'll be too old to see most of the benefits) will get a piece of the action.
In sum, Musk has shown in several ways that he does care about this stuff. He's not blowing over $1 billion on SpaceX because he's in it for the money - . he was betting that what he believed was a viable project. There's no better way to focus one's mind than to put a big chunk of everything you own on the table. After PayPal he could just retire to an island somewhere and play tennis all day. He's doing it because he believes in it. Making money at it separates the doers from the dreamers, and proves your idea and your plan were good. If SpaceX succeeds, Musk will live in history not as a guy who made a bunch of money, but a guy who used that money helping to lift humanity off this rock.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Musk is both right and wrong.
The wrong is the interesting part as he does not have a penis in hell of how to fix this 200 year old engineering problem!
Musk is a drug-y.
"AAAAhhhh"
"AAAAhhhh"
"Musk is the drug that I'm think'n of."
"AAAAhhhh"
"AAAAhhhh"
"Musk is the drug to day."
'80 like man, yea we know, don't bother.
Interesting. I did not know about that. I did know that Consumer Reports, which is much more in touch with the average US consumer than Top Gear, rated it the highest of any car in their history. Of course that may be in part because of the promise of viable, attractive, electric vehicles, but the order backlog seems to back up the notion that he has hit a sweet spot in the market. Above a certain minimum level of utility, people buy cars to satisfy themselves with style, performance, cushiness, and obviously not least, feeling good about their apparent environmental impact.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
that makes as much sense as "let's add dynamos to every wheel on the car to make more electricity!".
(now if you have some way to harvest the waste energy from the engine, ie heat, breaking, into that.. then yeah, but in principle you would be going to be using fuel in the car to create fuel for the car. by using more energy for the alternator you would required to burn more hydrogen to offset for that power drain.
hydrogen could be a nice storage medium - if there was a place on earth with free electricity.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Lastly but most importantly, his wrestling with car sales rules in many states is undeniably good. These rules have been bent and twisted to hell and back by the incumbent auto makers and their dealers to make it nigh impossible to compete with any other business model. For a place like Slashdot, with so many promoters of the "FREE MARKET", this thing should cause almost unanimous uproar. Tesla wants to cut costs on incumbent, useless, overpriced dealerships and modernize how cars are delivered, supported and maintained. It may work, it may not work, who knows? Regardless, however, laws shouldn't be designed to stack everything against that model in such a fashion, and saying that it's just whining and not a serious concern is childish at best, utterly irresponsible at worst.
You're probably right. But this may be one of those "be careful what you wish for" things - imagine if all the dealers were gone, and the car makers only sold their cars through their own 'stores'. It's very hard to predict what the pricing and other aspects will be at that point - especially with regard to warranty repairs. There are worse (for the customer) business models than the one presently in operation.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I have been driving an LPG/Propane car for the last 20 years. It uses about 30% more than on Petrol.
Spare tire size tanks in cars here can hold about 60 litres with a 20% expansion margin.
that gives about 260 miles not 20!
You need 1/3 more volume for the same range. In my vehicle the tank takes up 1/3 of the boot space (Trunk for the speakers of "US english)
I get approx 7km/l on LPG, and around than 9 km/l on Petrol.
Why would you use an ICE? The product of a fuel cell is electricity, plus the combustion products and heat. Depending on the type of fuel cell, it could be a lot of heat - enough so that recovering the heat energy by running the hot, gaseous output from a fuel cell through a steam turbine can increase its energy efficiency as much as 20%. So the water is not likely to be 'dripping out' the tail pipe after the first two minutes, except in very cold climates.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
there is (sun, wind, heat ). but bot enough apparently.
but what would be the point of having more electricity in a car that do no require more.
No. If you plug in your invention, your car's tank will run out even quicker; even if you could make a system with no losses, or weight, the most you could hope for was a net zero gain. If you are joking, then well done, that is very funny.
> the question is, how much does the engine produce, how much is needed to propel the vehicle.
The engine is mechanically connected to the wheels, so whatever the engine produces propels the vehicle. There cannot be any "extra" energy.
The system can produce more energy by pressing the gas pedal further, using more gas.
There is exactly one energy "leak" in all systems - heat. If you could set something on top of the muffler to convert that heat to something usable ...
You give me a high performance car (thankyou), and i can break it in an hour or so, without hitting anything or crashing in any way. There is a lot going on very fast when a car is pushing the limits, and it doesn't take that much to push it over (this has been shown repeatedly on top gear). I don't know how much easier a tesla would be to break, but I think the top gear team went into the review looking to push the merits of the petrol car, than actually properly testing the tesla.
Rocket Surgeon.
As someone who's certified for Class D and E fires, I'd expect you to realize that MSDS data from the manufacturer of a specific item trumps general rules such as that.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Elon Musk is unafraid to speak his mind. Whether he's talking about other players in the electric vehicle space or sub-par reporting from The New York Times, this is a man with few filters."
Except for his multimillion dollar PR apparatus. You can't start a story with that line and expect anything but BS PR to follow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSB7QpldGTQ
Well, I'd be interested to hear him actually pronounce that: 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#'. He knows it, we know it, everyone knows it, so why the hell can't we write the proper word. Ehh.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Your ideas don't make any sense. You're not just talking about perpetual motion, you're talking about getting extra energy from nowhere. Why don't we power cities that way? Start with an empty 15,000 cubic meter hydrogen tank, a massive hydrogen powered generator hooked up to an electrolysis cell, and a small starter tank of hydrogen. Run the generator starting with the small tank and use the power it generates to run the electrolysis cell and feed back hydrogen into the generator, with a surplus filling the giant tank. Why, you'll get free power, plus a giant tank filled with hydrogen out of the deal... Can you think why no-one has developed this ingeneous idea before?
Now, if you're getting the power from some other source, you can use it to make more hydrogen fuel to give the car a little bit of extra range. For example, from solar cells and regenerative braking. Of course, the power from regenerative braking is generally stored more efficiently short term in, for example, a capacitor or even a battery. Ditto for solar if the car is running, feed it directly to the engine or store it short term when needed. If the car is off for a long time, you might conceivably be able to make hydrogen with power from solar cells and store it, but you'll need to leave your car out in the sun for any real benefit.
Countless people have been trampled to death by horses, did that stop people from riding them? Their shit is dangerous to, did that stop people from using them in cities turning every street crossing into an adventure? No.
Petrol is dangerous and early cars were dangerous and their wheels and brakes were a joke. How many died in car fires? Yet do you think of the average car as unsafe? Even pinto's? (
Scientists invent new stuff and then engineers make it safe and usable. Then workers make it. Managers then screw it up. Musk is showing his true colors here. Plenty have claimed Musks own car is unsafe. Engineers proved them wrong.
Maybe someday we will see a hydrogen car for the masses. Maybe not but to claim X is inherintly unsafe is stupid especiallly when you yourself are selling a product some claim to be inherintely unsafe.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Because Tesla PR is mostly about writing up meaningless numbers. Peak force on a microscopic scale means nothing, and by the looks of it, the car batteries in that Tesla burned in what is a typical road accident. That's one fire in a deployment of, what, not even 50k vehicles? Imagine this kind of frequency of car fires in your regular automobile park, and you'll see what it means for Musk and why he finds it imperative to fling more poo.
The guy's just another P.T. Barnum.
Why would the duration matter, unless you think cars being impaled from underneath with 25 tons of force for any duration is normal? Who the hell taught you how to drive?
More importantly, warn anyone who may be tempted to have sex with him!
Incidentally, lithium in the tesla batteries is scraped up from salt in the salt flats. Most of it comes from Bolivia, and the worker make good money, and work in pretty good conditions. The rest of the car is made out of metal and fiberglass, much like any other car. Perhaps you're mistaking it for a prius.
As someone that's got the certification plus chemistry experience, your MSDS means jack shit in the face of established reality.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I think that a hybrid could be better creating a basic electric car, and "plugin" fuel + fuel cells when you want to expand the range.
A electric car is most suitable for daily transport, so it's the natural car for most the time. In the future, biofuels or synthetic fuels will be the replace of fossil fuels.
So hydrogen, ethanol, butanol, (bio)diesel will be the fuel of the future for expand the range.
So, instead of carry a thermal engine all the time, it's reasonable to make some kind of plugable fuel cells, and a drainable tank, so you can convert a pure electric into a hydrid long range capable car.
Probably, liquid fuels are better, so we need good methanol/methanol/butanol fuel cells for this.
That must be why they changed the coating and not the gas, then.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He is very afraid. And rightlfully so.
It all depends where that carbon comes from. If the butane, methane, dimethyl ether or whatever it is is created directly or indirectly by photosynthesis or if it is created electrochemically using waste CO2, the net CO2 in the exhaust is not a problem. The other reaction products you mention still are but it should be able to crack them up catalytically -- these are essentially the same you find in a diesel exhaust, minus the soot, which is a plus.
Hydrogen fuel storage is really still a problem, and I am not sure it is likely to be solved, but I think the alternatives of cells that work with methane or methanol are promising technologies.
Yes, because they were running out of daylight to finish the film. This makes the essence not less true in any way. Also this delay was due to various technical problems with the car, so who is to blame for that?
If they would have been able to continue filming they would have been able to catch this event for real as it would have happened for real. So I don't see that much difference.
Also mind the Voice over at this specific part of the film: "Teslas Engineers told us that it WOULD ...". So it was very clear (except maybe to US-american fanboys) that this was not the depiction of something that really happened (but would have).
I've not watched the whole thing
Yes, it shows. But do you think it is fair to make conclusions from (in many cases carefully edited) portions of the film? Watch the whole thing, it is inly a few minutes, you don't need to be a UK resident, car fan or Top Gear viewer.
You are denying yourself from getting the whole picture. This should actually disqualify you from making any comments or conclusions.
the tesla uses energy over 4x more efficiently
That's not right. In city driving Tesla claim a 292 mile range off a 85kWh battery, or 651kJ/km. Adding in battery manufacture and allowing a generous 1000 cycles, that goes up to 923kJ/km. Allowing for losses in electricity generation (40% at best) and transmission (~7%), the overall consumption is 1653kJ/km.
A medium size diesel gets about 60mpg (UK gallons), equivalent to 1690kJ/km. The difference is just 2%.
Not saying the way it's currently set up is right, but on that same note, lobbying for a special exception to the rules just for you and no one else isn't right either.
Point being, the idea that Musk is championing social change for the greater good is pure bullshit. He just wants to sell more cars.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The one big advantage Hydrogen cells would have is, it is fairly easy to create Hydrogen gas from water. Lithium ion batteries are considerably harder to manufacture, not to mention much more hazardous in some situations.
Musk's behavior (in this case of hydrogen fuel cells being unsafe) seems to be similar to Edison disparaging AC current; I am waiting for Musk to start blowing up cars to show how unsafe hydrogen is.
Both Tesla and SpaceX (I don't know if they share an office) have permanent staff in Washington DC. I suppose it is just a matter of time that your wish will be granted.
One problem they don't mention with fuel cells is that when you're extracting power from them only half the energy they produce is in the form of electricity, the other half is heat.
(Top Gear did)..not put the car through anything more rigorous than other cars tested
Apart from falsely stating (or merely strongly suggesting, your honour) that the car ran out of power after being driven on a racecourse.
How is the fuel economy of any car (especially a sports car) on a racecourse, driven at racing speeds? Seriously low miles per energy input, whether Porsche, Tesla or whoever. So their lie seemed a little pointless.
Re Top Gear's "Neutrality"
Top Gear Live shows/events are sponsored by Shell Oil, who might just have a interest in not having their fuel supply networks rendered largely obsolete by mass electric car use.
I can't find a source that says that, amusingly enough. What I did find seems to point at an exemption made for "American-owned manufacturers who exclusively make electric vehicles". To me, this sounds tailored to actually pass. Anything broader and the TADA would jump in guns blazing saying how they're destroying America. They're already opposing the bill with such a ludicrously small scope, imagine if the American-owned restriction wasn't there or the electric restriction wasn't there? Texas happens to be both ultra-patriotic and an oil baron's paradise, what did you expect?
The only issue I can see with it as portrayed in the article is the difference between what is in the bill - "American-owned manufacturers who exclusively make electric vehicles" - and what perhaps should have been in the bill - "American-owned manufacturers who make exclusively electric vehicles".
A subtle difference, but the difference between a bill that could be argued is an exception solely for Tesla vs. one that could cover any manufacturer that have electric-only vehicles (possibly in addition to gasoline-powered or hybrid technologies). The bill, as described by the article (and that is important, as it's the journalist's reporting of the bill, not the full text of the bill itself) would apparently cease to apply to a company the moment they make something other than an electric-only vehicle. Potentially, it could even be considered to exclude Tesla from complying, as they not only make the vehicles, they make the chargers and spare parts too (letter of the law vs. spirit of the law)!
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2010/update87
250 million cars
if only one in 10 thousand catches fire then their would be 25 thousand car fires.
http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-problem/highway-vehicle-fires
187 thousand fires on the highway alone.
or nearly 1 in 2000 petrol cars catch fire each year.
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I'm specifically talking about the bit where they push the car around. It's been revealed that the whole thing was faked and the car did not inaccurately report remaining charge nor actually fail to do the whole run, they just filmed it like that anyway.
They didn't fake it so much as they filmed the scene. Top Gear is a sitcom about cars and like any sitcom they first write the script, then they film the scenes. Then they put those scenes together and there you have the week's episode.
The major disconnect here is all those people who seem to think that Top Gear is some sort of unbiased, or even just serious, product review show. It is not: it is a British scripted comedy show. It is a bit unusual in that cars play parts in the show, but then that is presumably an important factor in its unique appeal. (In the movie Evolution the protagonists use a well known brand of shampoo to give the big bad alien a fatal enema, saving the world; the same people who take Top Gear seriously might also think that saving the world from aliens is an actual feature of that shampoo.)
sigs are hazardous to your health