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Tesla Presses Its Case On Fuel Standards
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla is preparing their case to leave federal mileage and emissions regulations intact, or make them even more strict. In addition, the company is fighting other car makers from loosening more stringent regulations in California. The WSJ reports: "Tougher regulations could benefit Tesla, while challenging other auto makers that make bigger profits on higher-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Tesla's vice president of development, Dairmuid O'Connell, plans to argue to auto executives and other industry experts attending a conference on the northern tip of Michigan that car companies can meet regulations as currently written. 'We are about to hear a lot of rhetoric that Americans don't want to buy electric vehicles,' Mr. O'Connell said in an interview ahead of a Tuesday presentation in Traverse City, Mich. 'From an empirical standpoint, the [regulations] are very weak, eminently achievable and the only thing missing is the will to put compelling products on the road.'"
They *are* doing them, but there are several manual steps currently. Go to Teslamotorsclub.com if you don't believe it.
For what it's worth, battery swaps are a dead end. Few people need them with Supercharging becoming more ubiquitous by the day . Tesla won't be doing widespread swaps for privately owned cars any time soon, if ever. Maybe for commercial vehicles 5-10 years down the road...
they'll have significant control over lithium ion battery production with the Gigafactory, and a 5-10 year head start at building ground up purpose-built all-electrics.
Building a new factory doesn't give you control over production. Other manufacturers of lithium ion batteries are available. It might give them a cost benefit.
As for a 5-10 year head start, what planet are you on? They have about a 12-month head start, if that. Just because other companies aren't productized yet doesn't mean they're 5 years behind on the tech.
All Tesla have really proven is that anyone can build these things. When Dyson gets into it, things are going to get real interesting real quick.
I can only have one car, and an electric just cannot now, nor is likely to be able to, in my lifetime, do the kinds of things for which I use one.
And that would be what exactly? What do you do with a car that is so different from the rest of us that it can never work for you?
It doesn't help that none of the current, or probable, models of car (not SUV) allow a linebacker-sized driver (and, yes, I've tried the on the Telsa; it's pathetic).
If you think the Tesla is "pathetic" then you are talking out your ass. It's among the nicest luxury vehicles available this side of a Rolls Royce. Maybe it's not your particular cup of tea but anyone who thinks it is "pathetic" has either never actually sat in one or has an ax to grind. You don't even have to like Tesla to see that it is a very nice car.
As for size, if you are really that big (approaching 2 meters tall) then you are way on the far side of the bell curve size and fit is always going to be a problem for you. The type of drive train will be irrelevant. If you are both tall and fat then there is a solution for at least half of that equation. One of my closest friends is around 2 meters (6'7") and there are not a lot of vehicles he can fit comfortably in which is why he drives a Chevy Suburban. Watching him get into the little two seat coupe I used to drive required some contortions on his part that I don't envy. If you are 2+ standard deviations from the mean size wise then you are going to struggle to find a vehicles that fits you.
"Furthermore, why all the hate over the credits? Tesla collects government incentives, Oil and gas companies collect government incentives, other automobile manufacturers collect government incentives."
So, your argument is that multiple wrongs make it right? Incentives are driven by special interests with inequitable influence. Let the people decide in a free market.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"the Republican party which has spent the last three decades doing everything they can to cut taxes on the wealthy."
They haven't been very successful at it. From the latest data I could find (2012), the top 5% of income earners paid 58.9% of all Federal taxes, and the top 1% paid 38.1%.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
CARB was convinced that Tesla demonstrated the ability to swap batteries, and CARB sets the rules for ZEV credits. Tesla have done exactly what they needed to do in order to meet CARB's bizarre diktats.
Now, can anybody explain to me why battery swapping is worth additional credits in the first place? CARB's mandate is supposed to be cleaner air. Swapping batteries doesn't make the air cleaner. They give three times the ZEV credits for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as they do for battery electric vehicles -- even though both produce the same amount of pollutant emissions: none. Where's the logic?
Oh yeah. . . The logic is that Toyota -- by some measures the largest car company in the world (effectively tied with VW, last I heard) -- unloaded a truckload of cash to lobby CARB board members.
Nobody counts the emissions to produce any other vehicles, so why would we hold electric cars to a different standard? The manufacturing processes are not particularly worse for one than for the other.
In fact, I would bet that the reduced metal machining from not having a solid-block engine under the hood probably saves overall manufacturing emissions, once you factor it all the way back to the metal foundry, refinery, and strip mine. Only the strip mine would be comparable for rare earths that go into batteries. The refinery is much smaller due to smaller volumes and the foundry isn't really necessary at all.
Other than that, you still have to have a metal frame, metal or plastic body panels, a finished interior, glass windows, and rubber for the tires and various other parts. This is identical for any car manufacturing process.
The reason they're pushing to measure emissions is because that's the only meaningful difference between electric and ICE cars.