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Elon Musk Pledges To End "Range Anxiety" For Tesla Model S
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk has used his Twitter account to announce a press conference on Thursday which he claims will end "range anxiety" for Tesla's Model S sedan. Whatever change they're making will be implemented through an over-the-air software update to the cars, affecting the entire fleet. Range anxiety is the term for a fear that your vehicle won't have enough fuel/charge to reach its destination. It's a common reason for people to avoid buying electric cars, given the much smaller infrastructure build-out compared to gas stations. If Tesla is improving the Model S's range through a software update, then it likely involves optimizations to the battery and to the ways in which power is used. Tesla has also talked about developing a feature called "torque sleep," which puts one of the drive units to sleep while not needed. They say it can wake up and begin delivering torque again "so fast that the driver can't perceive it."
.. range. For example, more charging stations and/or a better locator (perhaps with a partnership with a nationwide chain of stores or two), better range calculation, a service to have charging trucks come out to you to you should you run out of charge (maybe even heading to the point where you would run out of charge before it even happens so that there's no wait), or all sorts of other possibilities. There's no guarantee that it actually means more range.
Of course, it could mean that.
"TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
It's called a horse.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In order to stop drivers from micromanaging their ranges, is just to let a user know how likely is he to run out of juice, right off the bat when he starts his journey. A simple voice request from the car speech synthesizer, asking for a city, a street, or something not very specific which can be used for broad calculations, and then let the user know: "You might have not enough battery to go/come back home"/"You can make a round trip 8 times to that destination"/"You might run out of juice but there's a supercharger nearby, would you like me to reserve a spot for you at hh:mm AM/PM?"
"Tesla press conf at 9am on Thurs. About to end range anxiety ... via OTA software update. Affects entire Model S fleet."
It's called a horse.
See there's a not often remembered problem with horses and population density.
Shit. Yes, that's the problem, not just me being rude.
Before the invention of the horseless carriage London was suffering greatly from a horse-shit re-distribution issue, the plan always was to load the shit onto barges and ship it downstream to Kent (that Kent is know as "The Garden of England" is a not unrelated fact), but there were serious issues with the collection of all the turds and their loading onto the barges.
So whilst there's many great benefits from using beasts of burden (you can always eat your ride if it breaks down) they are not a universal panacea.
foo
better products at 4x the price (and profitability remains a mystery.)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This
an over-the-air software update [...] affecting the entire fleet
Yeah. That worked really well for the twelve colonies in Battlestar Galactica.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Sounds like all hype to me.
They mentioned that it's for the entire Model S fleet, most of which does not have dual motors so "torque sleep" may not be the answer. My hope is they eek out an extra 50 miles to a full charge and recommend 100% charging all the time (they currently recommend 90% charge most of the time and only to use 100% for long trips).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
There is also the significant danger of turd burglars who may ruin your attempts to fertilize your garden.
It said over-the-air so it would have to be a flying drone, not a pickup truck.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
you can always eat your ride if it breaks down
And I thought they smelled bad on the outside...
It's not a very good answer, though. The internal combustion engine is very wasteful, throwing out 3/4 of the energy in the fuel as heat.
Internal combustion doesn't solve anything. It require an infrastructure that isn't there, and that nobody wants to build. Electricity however, is everywhere. Every home & business have electricity. So you can charge an electric car anywhere. Not so if you run out of gas and you aren't at a gas station. A few people store gasoline at home, most people & businesses doesn't. Gas will never be as easily available as electricity. Especially now that peak oil is coming up.
Oh, you can easily avoid running out of gas by filling at a gas station before it gets too low. As anyone knows. But this little trick (planning ahead) works equally well for electric cars - and they have so many more filling places available.
Id be curious to see exactly how much of this 'range anxiety' is a users genuine sensation of anxiety in proportion to the new technology, versus manufactured fear from the media and pundits. Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC's top gear has done everything in his power, for example, to cast a very negative light on even the most powerful hybrid and electric vehicles.
that having been said, yes, vehicles have a definitive range. The same holds true for automobiles in that if you lead-foot it to work every day, you wont get the "advertised" mileage at all. If youre gingerly with the pedal and work to embrace things like hypermiling though, youll garner significantly higher gas mileage. The only thing different about 'electric' is the higher torque curve in most cases, the noise level, and the emissions depending on the fuel source of your local power plants and sometimes the transmission. The car still functions like any normal car, meaning that if you run your AC constantly in the summer you can also expect poor mileage. Mileage in winter will also decrease, just as in petrol automobiles because things like the Mass Airflow and temperature sensors will run the engine in 'worst case' mode to warm the engine quickly, thus burning more fuel.
Good people go to bed earlier.
First of all, "Range Anxiety" is a registered trademark of General Motors. I hope Elon doesn't get in trouble for using it without GM's permission!
Most people who actually own electric cars experience very little range anxiety. Far more common is "range anxiety anxiety": the fear that if you got an electric car, you might experience range anxiety.
Also prevalent among car makers is "range anxiety anxiety anxiety": the fear that, if you made an electric car, range anxiety anxiety might prevent people from buying it.
Remember folks, we have nothing to fear but. . . fear itself!
It's called a horse.
See there's a not often remembered problem with horses and population density.
Shit. Yes, that's the problem, not just me being rude.
Exactly. It's also the reason some US east coast cities, such as New York, have high stoops on their homes; it elevate 2015-03-16eh entrance above the piles of horse manure on the street. Cars were seen as a non-polluting alternative to horses and an answer to grid lock; as well as safer since getting run over by a horse was a not uncommon occurrence.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
But there are other ways too, have spare battery packs that can be towed along available through tow truck operators. Or towable gensets to be rented on demand from U-Haul like operators or through tow trucks operators...
At some point gas car rental companies should move in to grab a piece of the action. If they provide subscription based car rentals (20$ a month, for one day a month, accumulate up to 24 days ) more people will switch to electric cars. Imagine, one could use a low cost high reliability electric car for regular day to day usage, and check out a pick up truck to pick an appliance or a station wagon for the road trip. If electric cars with limited range becomes more popular, the rental companies stand to get lots of business for their gas car fleet. Rental companies should pitch this model to electric car makers to package two year subscription to sweeten the deal and introduce users into this mode of thinking.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Isn't "torque sleep" a manoeuvre for stealing the covers?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Aluminum air batteries have far lower power density (power at high discharge rates) than the type of lithium batteries being used currently. Additionally aluminum air batteries are primary (non rechargeable) and too many problems exist with simply dumping out the spent aluminum.
Whilst what you say is true there's the refilling time to take into account.
A full tank of liquid fuel takes minutes to pour in.
A full 'tank' of electricity takes hours.
Not to mention that a full tank of liquid fuel gets you about 700 miles of travel whereas a full battery only ~350
foo
Please tell me, where can I charge my Tesla S in 10 minutes or less along the corridor from Atlanta to New York, because I am certainly not going to make it from Atlanta to New York without charging.
This is not range anxiety, this is practical realism. Elon himself coined the term "range anxiety" as a keen psychological maneuver in a transparent attempt to make those who think practically and realistically seem like they have something "wrong" with them in the eyes of their less-intelligent peers.
What an amazing technology...they run on 100% renewable resources, and their waste products are biodegradable.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Cars were seen as a non-polluting alternative to horses and an answer to grid lock; as well as safer since getting run over by a horse was a not uncommon occurrence.
This. People dont realize how much pollution/problems/rangers exist with horses because 99.999% of people never use them. It's just like people and diseases vaccinations have nearly wiped out.
Further with all the care horses require, modern feed, medical care, large open spaces, they actually do have a carbon cost. Due to the insane footprint of creating, transporting, and preparing food the human CO2 footprint is pretty large - so big that jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as driving a hybrid. The meat you almost need to eat if you excercise a lot is the most to blame.
You have all missed the point. I see electric cars as a step forward in technology. GP instead claimed the internal combustion engine as being "better". So I went a step further and claimed the horse (another technological step backwards) as being even better. Please spare us all the reasons why horses are less than ideal.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Full electrics pollute more than efficient gas in 17%-25% of America while efficient diesel pollute less then electrics in 50% of America due to the electricity being produced by fossil fuels. China is much worse and India is far worse. Yes in the future electrics will be a cleaner solution but today saying electrics are the panacea of all problems with driving and CO2 is disingenuous.
"Elon Musk ends range anxiety for penises - Film at 11."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Giant Tesla Coils mounted on top of the high voltage cross-country transmission line towers.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Before the invention of the horseless carriage London was suffering greatly from a horse-shit re-distribution issue,
This is the typically-given reason for all department stores being designed with the perfume counter in front of the door. Supposedly it helped cover up the stench of all the "horse pollution" coming from the street.
Its *very* unusual for a full tank to get you 700 miles of travel, even at optimum fuel efficiency for the particular vehicle.
In fact, tanks are typically sized such that the vehicle in question will get in the neighborhood of 400-500mi to a tank.
Small, fuel efficient vehicles tend to have ~9 gallon tanks, this would require nearly 80mpg to reach 700 miles.
Medium-sized vehicles tend toward ~14 gallons, and would require 50mpg to reach 700 miles.
It's incredibly rare that a vehicle large enough to be paired with a 20 gallon tank would also be efficient enough to get the 35mi/gal it would take to reach 700 miles on a single tank. Exceptions come in the form of vehicles designed around long-haul transit (such as semis), built with over-sized fuel tanks.
Due to the insane footprint of creating, transporting, and preparing food the human CO2 footprint is pretty large - so big that jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as driving a hybrid.
That's true, but also disengenuous. The thing is as anyone who has spent time checking energy burned, running uses destressingly few additional calories. The key there is additional: you need 2000 calories per day just to keep your metabolic processes operating. So while the rate of energy consumption running might be comparable to a car, you'd still use a substantial fraction of that even if you were still.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Please tell me, where can I charge my Tesla S in 10 minutes or less along the corridor from Atlanta to New York, because I am certainly not going to make it from Atlanta to New York without charging.
This is not range anxiety, this is practical realism.
No, it's making up special cases to prove your point.
There are places out west that a proper petro fueled vehicle owner will suffer the same anxiety.
Hell, once on a Sunday trip in Pennsylvania on my motorcycle the one gas station along my remote route where I planned to refuel my motorcycle had closed. Want to talk about range anxiety?
Three points 1. Range anxiety is most definitely not confined to the Spawn of Satan Tesla. I have relatives who start sweating at 3/4 a tank of proper gasoline fuel.
2. Making up special cases is silly, like looking down on people who drive car, because you want to haul stuff, therefore why would anyone want to get a car rather than a pickup truck? All vehicles have their purposes, and maybe not everyone needs to go from Atlanta to New York with only 10 minutes to spare. You need to take a gas guzzler across the western desert some time.
3. Don't want a Tesla? No problem - don't buy one. Just because you have to have a vehicle that has to meet certain specifications doesn't mean that everyone has to. Your major issue is infrastructure, which is easily addressed over time. As the infrastructure improves, we'll see the recharge issue start to go away. Don't forget that at one time, horses had a better refueling infrastructure than petrofueled vehicles. Of course, at that point you would probably be decrying those gasoline powered vehhicles you defend so much today.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, but there are a relative few number of fossil-fuel-burning power plants compared to fossil-fuel-burning automobiles, and once the electric car is built, it can be charged from electricity produced from any power plant, not simply a fossil-fuel plant. That means that the fossil-fuel plants can be replaced over time as they reach end-of-life or when they no longer meet emissions standards.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
True but if you eat meat, especially beef, it's much worse. Further i did say lots of exercise - when I was active id easily eat 400-6000 calories a day. When I'm lazy, like for the last 5 years, i only eat 2500 or so. Those results are pretty common. Most people dont think and don't want to realize that traditional forms of transportation, like walking, are almost as bad (in come cases worse) than driving.
Giant Tesla Coils mounted on top of the high voltage cross-country transmission line towers.
Now that's what I would call a Supercharger! :) (The tinfoil-hat crowd is going to have a tough time near those, though)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
They intend to brick every Tesla. You won't be worrying about the range anymore because that car is never going anywhere ever again.
this?
"Evolve recumbent trike folds up in seconds, fits in trunk of smart car"
www.gizmag.com/evolve-folding-recumbent-bike/20073/
Software update is software to call it to you when it calculates that you will not be able to make it to your destination.
I mean, as long as we're all speculating I may as well throw in my prognostication.
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
In a pure EV, Range Anxiety is a huge problem because obviously if you run out of power it will leave you stranded. Even if you could find an outlet to plug it into, it will take a significant amount of time to recharge especially if it is a low wattage 120v outlet. This could happen due to neglecting to charge up, incorrectly estimating range which is easy to do considering it varies depending on weather / driving conditions or in emergency situations. It's a problem because this means you need to plan for almost all your trips instead of the freedom a car is suppose to represent.
This is one of the major reasons why I went with a Chevy Volt, it's basically an EV but when you run out of battery, you have the safety net of using gas. It's a very good safety net as the Volt performs as well on gas with a flat battery as pure battery only modes. You will never hear of any Volt owners stressing over range anxiety but some will try hard to try to maximize their battery use to save gas. In recent studies, it's been shown that Volt owners are one of the few who are willing to risk pushing the battery use right to empty because they can. Most EV owners tend to only use half because it's too risky to run out of power on a trip.
I don't see how a software update could really fix this issue. Maybe there's a way to make the Telsa more efficient but that only gives you more range, it doesn't eliminate range anxiety. Or they design the car to outright lie to the user about how much range is left by severely underestimating.
He has an absolute real genius for stirring up interest.
And he's got me. I'd love to get a used, dual-motor Model 3 in 2020. Seriously.
Base load coal plants, even including all the losses, are still more efficient than burning gasoline in a car. And obviously, electricity has many sources, so with very little impact to the overall energy infrastructure, you can replace a coal plant by nuclear or wind.
It's not a very good answer, though. The internal combustion engine is very wasteful, throwing out 3/4 of the energy in the fuel as heat.
Another Thermodynamic neophyte... It is the rate of heat FLOW from the hot to the cold that gets you power our of a system, so you need to dump a lot of heat.
Actually, internal combustion engines are fairly efficient devices compared to the ideal heat engine considering how much power they produce. Yes, they do dump a LOT of heat, but despite what most people would have you believe, this dumping of heat is necessary to get WORK out of the fuel. Are they ideal? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But given how they are used, with wildly varying power outputs, RPMs and operating conditions, they are amazingly good.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A full 'tank' of electricity takes hours.
With current state of technology, yes. There's no theoretical reason why this couldn't be improved to the same time as liquid fuel, or better. We're still improving battery technology. In addition, people can plug in their cars whenever they're parked, reducing the need to go to a service station for a quick charge.
for range anxiety? VW Passat TDI. 690 miles before you have to hunt up a diesel pump.
Oh the horror.. You need to stop slaughtering the sacred cow of the environmentalists.
Let them spend more money on their electric cars and believe they are helping the environment if they insist. Stop confusing them with actual logic and facts because this is about assuaging their guilt about being rich consumers, and not about the environment. You are poking the sacred cow when you bring up CO2 emissions. They won't like that.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Are you referring to the Tessum Hill Marshall study? That was discussing particulates and ozone, not CO2. Burning coal for electricity is a terrible idea, but as electric vehicles are not tied to a particular power source, they won't force us to use fossil fuels for generations.
Teslas can charge in minutes at a super-charger, don't forget. Clearly not as quickly as a liquid-fuelled car, but it's still not hours.
And as someone else pointed out - 700 miles? Pull the other one.
More likely lack of easily available hot water. People did not wash themselves or clothes very often before the advent of in home hot water. Unwashed people smell bad.
The past was putrid.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Large trucks routinely get 700+ miles out of a tank full, or actually two tanks full. Of course they usually carry over 100 gal per side too. However, this is really because "time is money" in the trucking business and it's all about getting miles behind the load ASAP. You don't want to stop for fuel every 300 miles if you can help it, you want to book as many miles as your hours allow and only stop when the law requires it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
jogging/running is approximately the same CO2 output as driving a hybrid
I don't think you're factoring in the reduced medical care that people who exercise require. This results in a decreased demand for healthcare goods and services, lower resource consumption and specifically consumption of the fossil fuels used to create the plastics most medical devices are made from nowadays due to their throwaway nature, and the energy consumed by the medical staff going to/from work, home visits, etc. Also, as far as consuming calories for exercising, the way most people obtain them is through eating carbs, not meat. Take a look at the horses you are referring to - they eat grain.
Holy cow lol! I mentioned jogging/running. Have you seen the injury rate? You ruin your knees and lower extremities so badly it's only two notches down from American football, boxing, or rugby players. Yes for a few years medical costs 'may' be lower. In the long run those people will ruin their bodies actually requiring more care. I myself messed up my knees and can't run or jog as eh short distances myself. I can still use elliptical trainers or bicycles, but it has pushed me to stop exercising nearly as much. Ur. Isn't ruins your body long term unless you are genetically and traditionally very lucky.
The small subgroup of middle age, mid life crises men, who bought the model S as some form of maintaining their sexual prowess only to be overcome with 'range anxiety'.
And here I thought the model S purchase was about assuaging their guilt over their incredibly large and expensive carbon foot print that their rich lives had.
Where is all the "bigger the foot the bigger the... " logic here?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yes, but there are a relative few number of fossil-fuel-burning power plants compared to fossil-fuel-burning automobiles, and once the electric car is built, it can be charged from electricity produced from any power plant, not simply a fossil-fuel plant. That means that the fossil-fuel plants can be replaced over time as they reach end-of-life or when they no longer meet emissions standards.
New power plants take decades to plan, build and come online. Minimum 10 years in the USA. Very small solar and wind can go faster but make little impact since they are little. I live in a region where electrics get 35mpg and there are no plans on upgrades of any significance. If you buy a car now in a region like that, and don't move, you just paid double to pollute the same over the entire life of the vehicle.
Can HOSTS files block your spamming? In-browser blocking can...
Oh, they didn't miss the point. The problem with the current EV's are multitudious just like the previous "solutions". (I'm off to gore some sacred cows now...)
The battery manufacture, recycling and/or disposal is a more toxic form of pollution than the previous "solutions".
The source of power, at least until we ditch the idiot notions about Thorium fueled nuclear power, is one of being more polluting (even the unreliable (yes) "green" power "solutions" pollute worse than Coal does...just not where you are. As such, any EV is as removed from "green" as Coal and the "green" wind and solar are. Coal's big reason for existence is that it's cleaner than the current alternatives (yes) and is reliable as opposed to the so-called "green" solutions in play right now.
Ultimately, they're not an improvement- it's a sloppily done shifting of the problem around. Could they be an improvement? Yes. With something like the recent ultracapacitor tech improvements, if it succeeds in being commercializeable, would remove the batteries from the equation. If you move to Thorium for most of your electric power with hydroelectric being the remainder, you end up with something relatively green as a power source for everything.
At that moment, and not before, do you have an improvement over the modern IC engines which actually emit less than the coal fired plants, the manufacture of the "green" solutions for electric power require to accomplish a move to all EV for personal transport.
Should we do better than we're doing? Yes. Is an EV in the current state of affairs "better"? Nope. Not even close.
Yes electrics pollute CO2 per mile the same as efficient gas and diesel for about 80% of the worlds populations. But lithium batteries are relatively non-toxic compared to lead acids, nickel metal hydrides and nickel cadniums. Ultra-capacitors have good power density, more than lithium in some cases, but energy density is 1.2-2 orders of magnitude lower making them useless as a power source. Pseudo capacitors may have some potential, but look like they will fall short of newer battery tech by a large gap even over the next decade.
Electrics have good torque at low speeds, are extremely easy to control precisely, are very efficient, and turn and off in extremely short amounts of time with nearly no efficiency overhead costs. They are superior in many ways. It's just electric fanboys neglect power comes from coal, the increased environmental costs of producing current electrics, and the fact that because they cost so much it would reduce global emissions more to promote efficient diesels instead for the next 10-20 years at least. But they compartmentalize facts and don't listen to reason trying to believe we live in a shiny new future instead of actually reducing emissions in the most econonomical and feasible way now.
Another Thermodynamic neophyte... It is the rate of heat FLOW from the hot to the cold that gets you power our of a system, so you need to dump a lot of heat.
Yeah, I know how they work. Electric motors don't have this problem. That's why they are superior.
But given how they are used, with wildly varying power outputs, RPMs and operating conditions, they are amazingly good.
Electric motors are much better. Very efficient. No problem with varying power. Maximum torque at low speed. Smaller and lighter.
When that Model-T was released as the affordable automobile, it was considered an environmental improvement... And it was.
So pick one. Global Warming, or Plague?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
But that doesn't mean that electric cars pollute more, it means that the U.S.A. has crappy means of generating electricity.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You act as if to have a choice in power lol. Yes you can move, buy a super expensive solar or wind installation. Outside of that you are stuck with electrics polluting badly. Were I live in the USA electrics get around 35mpg equivelant. I'd rather buy an efficient diesel, pay less than half what a cheap electric costs, and not blow as much money on alternat power sources as my house.
Two points: 1. No. It isn't - When you take everything into account, including the relative efficiency of a big coal fired plant, the relative inefficiency of an ICE, the transmission line losses, everything, end-to-end, the electric car running on coal fired power emits half the CO2 of an ICE car. 2. Electricity can be produced by all sorts of methods that emit no CO2.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Which is still twice as efficient as a gas powered car.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
But that doesn't mean that electric cars pollute more, it means that the U.S.A. has crappy means of generating electricity.
Hiding or disbelieving in entropy/tailpipe location is irrelevant. Electrics pollute quite a bit and the enviornment responds to reality not fanboy pipe dreams. You could run solar powered biofuel in a diesel it dosent mean people who run regular diesel get that benefit.
As a runner who's run over 15000 miles in his career, you are false in your assumption. Runners have a lower rate of arthritis. My response to folks is: What's worse on your knees, running 5 hours a week or carrying 50 extra lbs of body weight all day every day?
" In the analysis, long-distance running was not associated with accelerated incidence or severity of radiographic OA over a mean observation time of 11.7 years."
Also, I know people who run after having knee and ankle reconstruction. If I had a $1 for every "my knees" are bad story, I would be retired. That downside is, some of them are genuine stories, just no way to tell. It always seems when I tell someone I'm a runner, the "my knees" anecdotes come out at an alarming rate. So runner's tend to become desensitized to them. It's much better to just say running isn't my thing.
Tesla at a super charger still take 30-60 minutes not 1-3 like gas.
There is a fine line between humor and troll. I'm not sure who thinks a 500hp 4800 lb sports car is good for the enviornment even if electric. Electrics get 35mpg or so where I live, they don't do much green anything for many people. That said it is a nice sports car, and we all know why many older men buy them.
Given all the talk about extending and charging, you'd think he was talking about a Model "P" rather than a Model S. But I hear that's the case for all high-priced toys.
That is all.
Plus in Europe, various jurisdictions have different tax rates on fuel.
It makes a lot of economic sense for truckers to have an extended tank and fill up in the place with the lowest fuel tax, and avoid places like the UK with high taxes.
Same thing applies in the United States. Different states have differing fuel taxes on diesel fuel and truckers routinely schedule their stops to take advantage of such things. In fact, many fuel stations end up getting built just inside the borders of lower taxed states for that very reason.
I've been know to stop and refuel before crossing the border into an "expensive" state like Illinois, even when there was half a tank left for that very reason.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It ruined mine and I was very careful. I've had two friends who have required surgery from running. The studies I've seen on the internet compare runners typically to people who do not excercise and are likely overweight. So yes maybe it's true then. Compare the knees of cyclists, swimmers, etc... To those of runners and you can see it wears on them badly. Cartilage does not repair itself and heavy repeated impacts wear it out way faster than lower more constant pressure.
From the first post of that thread:
The video linked below was made by a Russian Model S owner. He was traveling to Barnaul, industrial city in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, and found himself with 70 miles of range left, but 90 miles away from the destination (and presumably charging facilities).
The owner negotiated with a trucker to tow him for 20km in order to get some additional range via regeneration
As shown in the video he "charged" at near 60kW - a rate which, as the owner notes in the video, is 20 times faster than charging from a 16A, 220V outlet.
Here is the actual video.
My SO loves watching Shark Tank (which I despise, but try to keep to myself). A telling indicator of how busted the current system is that these millionaires (who apparently just don't *quite* have enough lucre yet) always ask the same question: "Do you have a patent?"
...he plans to end price anxiety
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The problem is the anode and cathode get degraded in aluminum air batteries. You can't just recycle the aluminum by fueling it like gasoline or an oil change. You would need to double the battery pack size/weight to keep the same horsepower as a lithium battery - since batteries are already bulky and heavy its prohibitive and has only been used on a few prototypes.
Because those who claim range anxiety want to have a "reason" for them thinking electric cars won't work
Nope, people who don't have range anxiety just have a use case where the range isn't an issue for them.
I'm not moaning about range because I don't want an electric car: I'm moaning about range because I would quite like an electric car, but paying 50-100% premium over a comparable ICE car (far more than you'd ever save in fuel costs) and then having to plan journeys around re-charges, or keep a second car or rent for long journeys just doesn't make sense.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
it elevate 2015-03-16eh entrance above the piles of horse manure on the street.
*blink* I think I still understood what you were saying, I just don't understand what happened there.
Auto correct took a misspelling and decided I was trying to enter a date and I missed it. I really should proofread...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
.
I get ~ 40 mpg on gasoline. There is no range anxiety. Further, the gasoline backup is a more efficient charger for my house (backup) than the Honda Inverter-Charger I also have (always wise to have more than one hot spare). When dumping around 600w into my home via an inverter I put on the 12v system of the Volt, hooked to a forklift charger, the engine runs ~ 90 seconds every ~15 minutes (this is about twice what my house uses "at idle" on average so I get net charge to the house system). There are serious advances in IC engines with all the ECM stuff (variable valve timing and so on, effectively, variable compression ratio - better gas gets you better efficiency).
There is no fscking way this pollutes more than my Honda Ridgeline, which gets at most 17 mpg...give me a break. I'm sorry about your illiquid investments in oil (and the useful idiots their shills have created). It's not my problem. I just go where I want, when I want. It's a great car and fun to drive.
I didn't do it to be green, it just worked out that way - just like I bought a farm and let it grow up to a nature preserve, because I'm too lazy to be a good farmer. Yeah, the furries are cute, but that's not the reason, I like being away from the nut-cases that inhabit most cities.
The key word is "freedom" as in libre - not having to have a job to pay an electric bill. It's amazing how much money you save driving for the cost of tire wear and insurance alone. Things like oil changes - only when it gets old, not ever X thousand miles. Brakes rarely needed, that's what regen buys you. Nothing wears out. Add those costs...or as I did, subtract them, and suddenly the wallet is too fat to sit on.
Disingenuous comparisons with just the CO2 output of fossil fuels are...stupid. Mining, EROEI, deaths, mercury, radiation (check those last two downwind of a coal plant) and so on should be added - you'll pay those costs someday, even if not in the power bill. Cost of right of ways, wire maintenance, plant maintenance - all gone with distributed solar. Yeah, it won't work in the north. Sorry guys. It works fine in Virginia.
Elon...I hope he does well. He's my only living hero. Most people would have retired to a beach after making that much money on PayPal, not "gone all in" for what they believe. Succeed or fail - the man is the man. Even Bob Lutz (always certain, sometimes wrong, as he says) admits that without the push by Elon, the Volt (which I like better, actually) would not have been done. Search on Charlie Rose's website for a very good interview with both of those people...he discourages hardlinks, but it's there.
I take the Volt whenever it isn't a truck-only job (like moving horse poop from my neighbors' hobby horse farms to my garden, or firewood). It's fun to dust off ricky rice-racer on the mountain twisties where I live - they seem to think Fast and Furious2 is how you win a race - it's fun, but nope. There's a vid on my youtube channel, with yes, a visiting GM engineer holding the cam as we hit a 15 mph hairpin at over 60mph and didn't slide to the yellow line. He needed toilet paper immediately thereafter. Lighten up and have some fun!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Actually, even if the electricity is generated from coal the pollution is less. I can drive around 30 miles in my model S using the energy used to just refine one gallon of gasoline. Also, as time goes by, the pollution from an EV goes down, especially as the utilities move more and more towards natural gas and renewable energy sources, natural gas now being cheaper than coal for electricity generation. Gasoline and deisel, by comparison, become more and more energy intense to extract and produce, especially when sources like the Alberta tar sands are used.
Also, in countries like China and India their ICE vehicles tend to lack the pollution controls that are present in western countries.
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An electric can go at least 20-30 miles using the energy it takes to refine one gallon of gasoline. The wheel to well energy usage of an electric is far lower than any ICE.
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I don't think that article is accurate. It does not take into account the well to wheel efficiency. Hell, I can drive 30 miles using the energy required just to refine a gallon of gasoline.
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Even at high torque at low speed they are far more efficient than an ICE. As for more expensive controllers, the controllers for an induction motor are no more complicated than that of a synchronous motor. A synchronous motor needs to know the position of the motor, an induction motor needs to know the speed. In terms of complexity, they're not all that different. Also, usually you're not running at peak power. In terms of average power usage, say on a freeway, an induction motor may be more efficient than a brushless motor. See http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors for a good discussion.
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Currently I can get an 80% charge in 40 minutes with over 200 miles of range. A "full tanke" takes around 75 minutes. The thing is that usually the charging time doesn't matter. When I come home at night it takes me 5 seconds to plug in (yes, that fast) and it takes me 5 seconds to unplug in the morning to a full tank. I only need to plug in every few days if I want to. In that way, the charging time is usually irrelivant and only comes into play during long trips. Contrast that to my ICE car where every week or so I would have to wait in line and spend 5 minutes filling up the car.
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Actually a full tank does not take "hours". For long distance travel a full tank takes 75 minutes using the superchargers. If the battery is completely empty it takes around 40 minutes to charge to 80% with over 200 miles of range. Usually I spend around 30 minutes charging instead of the "hours". Usually the amount of time is irrelivant since it takes me 5 seconds to plug in at night and 5 seconds to unplug in the morning.
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I'd love to see a gas car take 1-3 minutes. It's typically longer than that. Even without a supercharger I spend less of my time charging than I did filling up my car. I spend 5 seconds plugging in at night and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning. The time spent actually charging is irrelivant in most cases except during long trips.
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If that were the issue, they'd need to spread the perfume racks out evenly throughout the store.
I don't know of any electric that gets 35eMPG. My model S is rated at 89MPGe. A leaf is even better. Also, the model S is not a sports car but a sedan. And we buy them because it beats the hell out of driving a Prius (my previous car). Hell, an electric can go 30 miles using just the energy required to refine a gallon of gasoline.
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Actually it's not 4x the price in the market the model S is in. It's actually fairly comparible and in some cases a bargain when compared to the other luxury cars it's competing against. Right now they have 28% margins on the model S. As for profitability Tesla is doing the right thing and is spending their money on growth which is exactly what they should be doing. They're not an old established company like GM or Ford so they have to spend a lot of money investing in the infrastructure they need for the future (i.e. the gigafactory, R&D for more models, superchargers, more manufacturing capability, etc.) Once they're out of the huge expansion phase then they should be profitable.
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Which is why Tesla has numerous patents on this using a hybrid approach. They use the metal air batteries to charge normal batteries for peak demand.
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How about the energy required to strip mine coal, transport it (sometimes half way around the world), gasify it, burn it, use internal combustion to change it to electricity, step up the voltage, transport the electricity across the grid, step it back down, power the charger used to charge the battery, the losses that occur charging the battery, then the losses the internal resistance and leakage currents of the battery produce then the losses in the inverter/moror drive circuits? electrics pollute more than efficient gas for 80% of the worlds population
You are wrong.
Electric engines have like 98% efficiency, the whole loading of batteries etc. is also in the range of 90%
A combustion engine is in the range of 20% efficiency and perhaps 23 - 25 for diesel.
So bottom line with like 45% efficiency of electric power production an electric car is twice as efficient as an ICE car. _Minimum_
On top of that not all electric power generated by power plants produces CO2 ... so your claims are plain wrong.
I spare myself answers to the rest of your comments, sorry: you are wrong.
And actually you either are an idiot or obviously on the payroll of an anti electric car lobby. No idea.
In case you are not an idiot, I suggest to google about efficiencies ... it is so easy to calculate yourself how much CO2 an electric car produces (*facepalm*)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sure compare a mileage efficient desist to a standard gass guzzler SUV and you are right. Most of the world including the USA fares poorly compared to efficent gas and diesel. In fact half the USA does worse with electrics than efficient diesels while the majority of china is worse and nearly all of India.
Actually, internal combustion engines are fairly efficient devices compared to the ideal heat engine considering how much power they produce.
No they are not! They are not even half as efficient as they could be according to the Carnot theorem (which would be roughly 45%).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No an induction motor needs to run currents on both the stator and rotor sides while a dc brushless only on the rotor. They are more complicated and expansive in terms of electronics and control. look here for actual equations. You get 50% efficiency at half your no load speed and if you big it down even more it's less. You can play with how you excite the windings but the core issue is still there.
Actually electric motors tend to be inefficient when providing high torques at low speeds.
That is wrong!
Most electrics use brushless motors and get about 50% efficiency at peak power. :D
That is wrong, too. Electric engines/drives have an efficiency between 98% and up to 99.75%
There are only small inefficiencies during heavy load changes due to strange magnetic effects, call/ask an EE for explanations
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Lol. Yes and I can make one million dollars on a 1 dollar investment in five minutes by buying a stock in 2 minutes then selling it in 3 one hundred years later. Nice analogy.
If you assume efficiency in dumping to the same temperature you took the air in at efficiency goes up a lot.
Erm, seriously? I suggest to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
(*facepalm*)
I hope you are not one of that idiots with the habit to shout in your house: "in my house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Usually the charge time is 30-60 because people have range anxiety and only use half the battery or less. I doubt many owners have the balls to roll in their garage at 5%.
Electrics dont get a mpg equivelant rating. You need to factor in where you live. Tesla S gets around 30 mpge here because everything is coal and natural gas with a little bit of nuclear and a sprinkle of renewables.
It's true the tesla is a nice quality sports car. A 500hp 4800lb vehicle is about as green as a electric SUV. Tesla is a bad choice if you want to save the planet but a good choice if you want a nice sports car.
There's no theoretical reason why this couldn't be improved to the same time as liquid fuel, or better.
Ofc there are theoretical reasons preventing that.
You can only move so many electrons from A to B in so much time. I would outrageous say: with batteries that will always be impossible. Super Capacitors are an other issue as they don't require a chemical reaction in the storage medium. But even then you simply can do the current, voltage, watt math and figure how much current and voltage you need to transport x watt in y time.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A free Prozac prescription with every car sold.
Most electrics "refill" overnight, whil(e|st) you're sleeping. Does your ICE based car do that? No. CAN it do that? No.
Depending on the range used -- not the range it's capable of, but the range used -- the EV may never, ever have to be charged outside of the home, overnight. This is actually a very common scenario.
See, these are things you have to take into account: You can't reliably think of an EV the way you think of an ICV. Many of the "problems" people imagine are primarily the domain of the ICV, and apply either not at all, or differently, to an EV, in most common usage scenarios.
Now, me, I need range -- it's 290 miles to the nearest decent city in my state from where I live, and I have to go there more or less regularly (medical reasons... but they also have restaurants, music, shopping... so it's always worthy for me and my SO.) And then when I *get* there, I usually end up driving around quite a bit. So EV's, at least at the moment, are highly problematic for me. But I recognize that I am very much the exception.
I'd *still* like to have an EV for use locally -- then I'd be one of those "charge overnight" people, just taking the ICV out when a long trip is called for, or snow makes the EV unable to get around, with no possible way of using up the EV's range puttering around our little 1-mile across town, or even with a 20 mile (so 40 round trip) jaunt out to the lake, something we also do regularly in the summer months.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If one looks at the average power generation an EV is more efficient than diesel. Where I live none of my power is generated from diesel and a fair amount comes from renewable sources (wind, geothermal, solar, etc). The percentage of renewable power is growing quickly in my area as well and most new power plants coming online are natural gas since it's cheaper than coal. The percentage of power in the US generated from coal is dropping rapidly.
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-d...
The energy losses in electricity transmission are fairly low (estimated around 7%). The chargers are also fairly efficient (over 90%) and charging Li-Ion batteries is also quite efficient. Similarly, the inverters are also quite efficient (over 90% is typical) and the electric motor are also quite efficient (typically 80% or higher). There is minimal loss in the transmission compared to an ICE vehicle as well since there are only two gears (single speed, just a 9.73:1 gear reduction). At least in my Tesla, losses due to resistance are quite low due to the very short runs between the battery, inverter and motors and very heavy duty power buses. On top of that, a lot of energy is recovered from braking, unlike diesel vehicles.
There are other advantages as well. An EV is extremely smooth and quiet, unlike a diesel. It cost me a fraction the amount it cost per-mile compared to a diesel vehicle as well. My EV gets cleaner as time goes on whereas most vehicles emit more pollution as they age.
Another thing to consider is that many EV owners have also installed solar to help offset their energy use, further reducing CO2 emissions.
For urban delivery trucks electricity makes even more sense.
https://www.fleetio.com/blog/n...
http://www.greencarcongress.co...
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Also, there's no reason to require your one car (or zero cars) to cover every use case.
And there you have it. In my family, we have 4 vehicles, each fo ra different use. Two Jeeps, My wife's which is a nice SUV, my jeep which I use as a ruggged on/off road. Than a motorcycle, and an RV. All different purposes, and trying to have a one size fits all solution doesn't work well.
I'm certain that the people who try to make up all this special cases just don't like the Teslas - probably based more on inertia than anything else, and try to come up with justifications.
Right now, a Tesla doesn't fit in with my driving habits. But I love them, and if I can talk my better half into getting one for her car in our mix, I'd buy it in a minute. But she loves her Jeep.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Tankers.....
That's right, trucks that are strategically located and can re-charge your Tesla. And a few strategically located regional helicopters to reach more rural areas. ;-)
Think Tesla AAA, a partnership to help equip tow trucks with rapid recharging systems.
Range anxiety isn't just a factor of distance, but also a factor of time. If you're on a tight schedule you can't exactly be wasting time going out of the way to find a supercharger if your range is getting low, not to mention the time spent recharging.
And for all of time, all will be as it is now. Right?
Really, if you live on a razor's edge, where a lost minute spells utter failure, and must always have a choice of refueling stations at every stop on the interstate because for crissake, if there's a line at the gas station, you are well and truly screwed......
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you are doing.
But that isn't the crux of my argument anyhow. It's that all these "special cases" are irrelevant. If you have to invoke special cases, you invoke special vehicles.
I loves me some good motorcycling. But I don't drive it in snowstorms. Because its slippery and wrecky then.
And that doesn't detract one little bit from the enjoyment. When its slippish, I loves me my 4wd Jeep
Now if you want to tell us how the Tesla is a bad vehicle, prone to breakdowns, batteries blowing up, or accidentally triggering proton decay and destroying the universe, then I'll listen.
As it turns out, it doesn't do any of those things. We know this for a couple reasons. Every time one suffers a problem, it is treated like front page news. A Tesla catches fire, and millions of petrofuel fanboys jump all over it because, well you know that petrofueled vehicles never catch fire do they? When the themometer dips way cold in Frostytballs Minnesota, they come out bragging how this invalidates the battery powered concept, mysteriously forgetting that those petrofueled vehicles need bigtime help starting at 35 below. Interesting unless you belong to the start a fire below the oilsump crowd, it's electricity to the rescue. All these special cases, and not actually special.
Now we have the faked reviews, where the reviewer deliberately goes out of his way to induce "failure" - which oddly enough, running out of gas is not a failure, yet running the batteries low by driving around in circles is.
Finally, the transparent attempts to ban Tesla sales in some states, oddly enough supported by some folks who otherwise get all preachy about free markets, and you get a trifecta of evidence that The Tesla is a growing threat to the status quo.
A bad vehicle will fail on it's own merits. If it takes special cases and duplicity and outright banning of local sales to attack a vehicle, by trying to eliminate it as competition, it isn't a bad vehicle.
Working the infrastructure is not an issue either. I look to places like Alaska, where they already have outlets at parking meters as a prototype power distribution system for recharging vehicles. And assuming that batteries never ever get any better, that we have reached the ultimate limit in battery, charging, and efficiency, that will handle 99 percent of driving. And are you going to make that bet that we're not going to improve any of these?
And if you are in that 1 percent? Sucks to be you.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The point is a typical (modern) ICE has an efficiency of 20%. ... in comparison to an ICE that is a factor of 5.
Regarding thermodynamic and the Carnot Theorem, a "heat engine" running in similar temperature conditions has an efficiency of 40%.
So an ICE is only at 50% of its theoretical maximum.
On the other hand electric engines are above 99% efficiency
OTOH we could go back to "steam engines". With our modern technology we could build small scale steam engines close to the theoretical maximum of efficiency and would be twice as good as ICEs.
A few years ago a british team wanted to build a new racing car based around a steam engine, unfortunately it was not as fast as hoped: http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When it comes to big trucks many states do weight/mileage taxing so the fuel isn't taxed at all. The only way to avoid weight/mileage taxing is to sneak through without getting caught.