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Tesla Touts Cross-Country Trip, Aims For World Record
smaxp writes "A cross-country trip by two Model S sedans 'recorded the lowest charge time for an electric vehicle traveling across the country – a feat that is now being assessed for recognition as a Guinness World Records achievement,' according to a Tesla blog post. 'The 3464.5-mile jaunt is yet another attempt to ease range anxiety among many consumers who worry about being stranded in a car with a depleted battery pack and nowhere near a charging station. While Tesla’s Model S is too expensive for average consumers, the company plans to roll out cheaper models at some point and needs to address the fear that has stopped many people from buying electric cars, even cheaper ones such as the Nissan Leaf...'"
Now THAT will impress me!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Big point-proving stunts don't help with people who go "my local gas station doesn't provide chargers. I'm doomed if I get one." Because that's really in their head, more than about any particular drive being possible. Tesla has to win market share the same way every new technology does: winning enough early adopters to seem normal(and creating a support market).
Why doesn't Tesla rent little trailers with extra batteries for long trips?
(or some sort of thing you can clip on the back of the car, or on the roof, whatever it takes...use your imagination)
Extend the range to as far as you're ever likely to drive in a single day.
That way you can drive down to Vegas for a weekend, drive to Grandma's place for thanksgiving, etc., no problem.
No sig today...
An ICE car can make the trip in 32 hours 7 minutes.
Average 108mph?
I assume Tesla wanted this test to be legal...
No sig today...
Diesel trucks don't run too well on gasoline. The octane is much too high.
It would be nice if there was an option for a small turbine with a 4 gallon fuel tank that could drive a generator for extended range. Preferably an air-cooled model so you can omit the radiator and coolant lines/pump.
OK, so Tesla builds ONE string of charging stations approx. 150 miles apart that stretches across the US. So tell me how does that work when there are millions of Tesla cars on the road? Charging will take 40 minutes, but the line to get to charge will take 24 hrs.
Will Tesla be able to build enough fast charging stations when selling cars that cost less than $40K?
A lot of things work when the average selling price of your cars isclose to $100,000, you have government subsidies flung at you and/or your customers left and right, you have fewer than 100,000 vehicles in the field, your company isn't really expected to show a profit, and your customers actually *read* the users manuals (probably send corrections to technical errors in them to your engineers) and make Apple Zealots look like disinterested teens.
I would be curious if the car is efficient enough to charge with say a 50 gallon inflatable water bladder in the trunk. IE could I drive to the top of the 9000' mountain pass with a stream, use a electric pump to fill the bladder with stream water, drive to the bottom using the regenerative brakes and empty the bladder. Would I have more energy than I started with? Obviously a steep enough grade, a few passes would eventually charge the battery enough for a few extra miles anyway. Could reduce the range anxiety getting through the mountains a bit, but wasteful on water use (unless you could dump back into the same stream.)
That's really only half true. Informed buyers know that a slow charge time (16 hours or so for the Leaf if I recall) is annoying and unusable. Informed buyers also know that extremely fast charging batteries wear out much faster. There are battery banks in some popular cars that cost over $10,000 to replace and have an anticipated usable life of 3 years due to their fast charging time. So what they really need to address is how internal filaments around the charging port break down in most lithium batteries.
actually they have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDE-AR-E_2623-2-2#VDE-AR-E_2623-2-2
Tesla's supercharger however is proprietary because it delivers far more power than the standard mechanism permits and it is intimately linked with the battery & its control system in the car.
Hey! You are the speciest insulting pigs in that manner you blockhead nincompoop!
based on 1197.8 kWh it took to drive, you can figure that out here: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/... or
1281 lbs of coal, or
1197800 cubic feet of natural gas, or
95 gallons of residential fule oil.
Just to keep things in perspecitve for the tree huggers.
And rather than avoid the problem and pretend it doesn't exist - like every other electric vehicle manufacturer to date - or accept the car's limited utility, Tesla is actually doing something about it. It looks to me like they are putting out a solution. Not a perfect solution, not the only solution, but a solution that can ameliorate the problem. Is that something that should be ridiculed?
then rent a car. Seriously all these people say "but it can't do this!" well it's not meant for that application no matter what tesla tries to shove down your throat. .5% of the time <150km the other .5% of the time I may run into issues. But guess what, that two days a year Ill just rent a car instead. Honestly even know sometimes I'll rent a car for long trips.. ill rent a fun driving car just to try something new.
99% of the time I am driving it is <50km Another
You wouldn't buy a coupe if you had a family of 5, just like you shouldn't buy a Tesla if you are consistently driving far range.
Also time is ripe for rental car companies to offer a simple car rental accounts to electric car, bus/rail commuter, bicyclers, elderly etc. I imagine if they come up with a model like 50$ a month gets you two days of rentals, and the unused days accumulate, once the customers reach something like 28 days of rentals they just pay a small annual fee to keep the account current. The might even provide a couple of electric charging stations and brag about their green credentials.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Just not with Tesla. Look, if you are in a leaf, you get 75 MPC. And that is without any extra energy use. That limits you to city driving. Worse, there were few fast chargers in the cities. Now, because of Tesla, Nissan is installing CHadmo chargers at all of their dealers. But a 75 MPC, means that you can really only go about 35 miles away, which makes the leaf a close car, nothing more, without access to decent chargers.
BUT, a tesla with a range of 250 MPC, well, none of those owners suffer from range anxiety. In fact, if you read what they post, they find this better than gas cars, because they can simply plug in at night time, and get a full charge each and every single night. Not even a gas car is that good, without taking a 10 minute stop at a gas station.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For all of GM's shortcomings, the Volt is actually a good idea that solves the range anxiety problem nicely. If you're just puttering around town, you can go all-electric no problem. Going on the longer trip? No problem, either, as the gas generator will supply you when the batteries run out. It's a win-win for about half the cost of a Tesla.
no. They BORROWED AND PAID BACK 450 million in gov money. And will have a 35K EV in 3 years and a $20K EV by 2020.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is a map of the superchargers that are currently in the USA, as well as those that are under construction. Do a 250 mile range to see where you can drive your model S today. Do a 100 mile range to see where the next super chargers will be built.
In addition, you can see the coverage that Tesla is planning here. Advance the time on the map to see where the build out will be at the end of 2015.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
n the end the ethnology that will win out, for those reasons and others, is Hydrogen. Cars will still be electric, they just won't have to lug around a literal ton of batteries
If there's one thing I agree with Musk about, it's that Hydrogen is a dead-end technology, and only exists as a potential is that it's backed by the oil companies, who want inferior options to exist, especially if the only extraction method is going to be fossil-fuel based anyway.
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