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The Hyperloop Industrial Complex
Jason Koebler writes: Two and a half years after Elon Musk pitched the technology, actually traveling on a hyperloop is still theoretical, but its effect on business is not. There is a very real, bonafide industry of people whose job description is, broadly speaking "make the hyperloop into a tangible thing." The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Weekend at Texas A&M University earlier this weekend was the coming out party for people in that industry.
You can be paid and produce nothing. Look at Facebook, or the US Federal Government. That doesn't mean you're an industry.
A ground-level, rail-mounted tube doesn't expend energy holding itself against gravity, and faces less wind resistance than an airplane in orbit. That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane.
The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.
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I too would like to have a coming out party, I've kept it secret how gay I've become for Elon Musk given all his monumental achievements, most notably his role in founding Paypal.
"That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane"
Besides the energy needed to ,you know, *build* the entire infrastructure... Which wears out, as opposed to air.
And why do you call it an "air plane" in two words? Are you posting from the 19th century?
It doesn't cost much to buy 500 Alkaline D cells... What's that? 50 packages of 10 cells at $12 each.... $600/charge? It's not Duracell but hey...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Comparing a hyperloop to an airplane is apples to oranges. Misk himself says that longer journies (like east to west coast USA) would be more economically feasible by plane. A hyperloop is much more like a maglev train in that it's suited to midrange journies that take hours by car but aren't worth the hassle of an airport. When compared to high speed rail, hyperloops have some very real advantages.
Also, calling EVs Musk's expensive toys when you can clearly see the entire industry introducing their own EVs is disingenuous. Certainly you can see that EVs have some very real advantages over fossil fuel cars.
Because airplanes (and runways) don't wear out?
But, a massive expenditure of energy to build this thing and connect it to where you want to go .. which means you spend a LOT of money building it.
And presumably, things like trans-oceanic things require vast bits of infrastructure of a sort we've not built.
Say what you will about aircraft, but if you build an airport with the right size runways, any aircraft with the range can use them.
I question is the hyperloop doesn't become one of those things which only gets you to a few places -- in which you still get on a plane anyway, or if it will really just prove to be a cool sounding idea which isn't really feasible.
Just how expensive is a network of hyperloop tubes to get you to all of these places, and is this in any way economically sane to think will ever happen?
So many of these things futurists tell us will be coming Real Soon Now more or less assume vast sums of money (spent by someone else) to tear down the world and rebuild it to work with your fancy new toy.
You'll excuse me if I'm not looking to invest in anything related to hyperloops. I have yet to be convinced this will ever happen.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You know it's an airline shill when their straw-man is THAT easy to destroy.
I would think a Hyperloop would be best started "Small" scale, like within a City like LosAngeles. or NYC. And then connected to other nearby cities. However, with NYC, you'd piss off Taxi companies.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Obviously a misspelling of "aeroplane". As opposed to "hydroplane".
How much does the battery cost to replace?
Or is the battery non-expendable?
This is what a special-interest framing argument looks like. It puts the question into the reader's mind, and without context (and noting that most readers don't take the time to think about things) it makes it seem like an insurmountable problem.
(Viz: "Ted Cruze's Canadian birth will be a problem for him, I'm just 'sayin".)
Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program.
Also note that Lithium batteries have an exponential usage lifetime ('sorta), which means that once you've depleted your battery to 90% of it's capacity, it'll stay at that level for a long time.
Also also note that a battery which is taken out of service will still have 85% of it's charge capacity for a really long time, and there are a lot of uses for such storage. A factory building filled with old Tesla batteries could help smooth out electrical grid demand - supplying power during peak times, and recharging at night.
(Put that building full of batteries next to a wind farm, or inside the industrial area of a large city.)
Again, the batteries will keep 85% of their capacity for a long time, and if the application doesn't care much about space or weight, this makes a good use for older batteries.
Also, no one has even begun thinking about recycling the batteries. Ten years from now we might start thinking about reforming batteries, and making removable/reusable cases with the option to recycle the lithium inside. Like we now do with lead.
And finally, all of this information is just a click away using this neat new service called "Google".
Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.
HSR is a non-starter for most locations, IMHO. The cost is way too high for it to be functional.
Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead. That would make it a good replacement for larger citys like LA or NYC or even in metroplexes like SD-LA and the whole Beltway on the East Coast. It might even work for San Diego - Seattle or Boston-Miami runs.
Which is why I would suggest that if they start building it, start in NYC or LA with Proof of concept. The problem is, that nobody is going to build semi-permanent infrastructure for Proof of concept, as it is really egg-chicken problem.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
With a hyperloop ... you need either central hubs to get people to their destinations, or multiple routes to get to multiple destinations. Just like cars and trains do now.
Connecting all of your destinations with lots of routes, that's going to get expensive. Doing them with many hubs and hops from one to the other? One begins to wonder if the whole thing still works as claimed or is even viable, or if it just becomes the same issues we have now.
Or, worse, you hyperloop to an airport and then get on a plane ... and all of your supposed benefits pretty much vanish.
You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A hyperloop within a city makes absolutely no sense at all. At that scale you just have a low-capacity subway. Hyperloop makes sense where the alternative is flying or high-speed rail.
"That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane"
Besides the energy needed to ,you know, *build* the entire infrastructure... Which wears out, as opposed to air.
And why do you call it an "air plane" in two words? Are you posting from the 19th century?
The estimated cost of the hyperloop is between $6 and $8 billion.
The cost to build one terminal in a big city airport is in the neighborhood of $2 billion (terminal 4 at JFK, in today's dollars). And the hyperloop would replace two ends, so double that to $4 billion.
So as a quick estimate you could build the hyperloop and replace the functionality of 2 terminals and it would cost roughly twice as much.
It would also use much less land (no runways needed), and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.
You could move twice as many people, lots more freight, and at the same time spend less on energy, use less land, make less pollution, have less noise pollution, and be safer.
It's not quite as cut-and-dried as your out-of-context note would indicate.
USA struggles just to get started in high speed rail systems of what rest of industrialized countries has for years. HSR has face significant resistance in culture and business (sorry the excuse for it costs too much is bankrupted considering how much this country has spent on other stuff with not much to show for it). Now along comes Hyperloop and HSR opponents immediately say we need to go this route because it's done by private industry. Not that there is anything wrong with private industry but I don't see them as implementing it where it needs to go, only where the investment pays off for them. However, as gstoddart pointed out this is a buzzword before business model that may kill HSR in the US and then it will go way of all those dotcom companies leaving nothing behind.
mfwright@batnet.com
Except nobody has proposed any of that. Hyperloop is not supposed to replace long-distance flying, it is supposed to be an alternative for high-speed intercity rail.
My actual concern is our ability to maintain it. A good friend of mine who is a civil engineer specializing in trains has been involved in proposals to build things like mag lev trains in the US. His determination is that we generally do not do a good enough job of maintaining infrastructure for projects that require high tolerances. We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues, we can barely keep our bridges standing. What are the odds that we take sufficiently good care of the hyperloop system in order to keep it operating safely.
Perhaps we will develop it and the rest of the world will use it, but if we want to have nice toys like this we need to start dealing with the maintenance of such infrastructure (and maybe our other existing infrastructure while we are at it)
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
And anyway, that was already thought of in 1869 and completed in 1870.
You don't know what hyperloop is if you think air compressors are moving the train. Read up on it a bit.
I am not quite sure what ultraistic means, but I suspect is has something to do with comparing a very smart man who has had success in at least four different industries, to you.
And we should pay attention to some dimwit that thinks 'ultraistic' is a word?
Hmm. I gotta be honest, none of that stuff sounds much like us...
Moron.
Um, it is exactly because the trains don't go fast enough. What convoluted reason do you think it is?
If they just build the first line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas they should make their money back rather quickly (and probably get plenty of casino-based investors to help pay for it). The next legs could be Phoenix to Vegas or a San Diego to Vegas (perhaps with an L.A. connector).
Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You mean other than the entire airspace spanning Air Traffic Control infrastructure that costs ~$7B per year to run? Lots of radar, stations, towers and other stuff to control things other than just the end-points.
If you're dedicated enough to climb onto a well elevated tube, cut a hole large enough to pour concrete in through inch-thick steel - after sabotaging all of the pressure sensors tbrough the whole length of the tube and feeding them false data - and then using a concrete pump with a very tall boom fill in the tube with concrete, in order to kill people.... then why not just fly planes into skyscrapers like most people? I mean, if you're going to go through that much work.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
considering average purchase of a car in US is 3.5 years... the battery is a moot point when it comes to this replacement issue.
Seriously. I was a big fan of Hyperloop Alpha. But the MIT team that won the "Hyperloop" contest is proposing something nothing like Hyperloop. The test track that SpaceX is building is designed to support a wide range of vehicles, most nothing like that in the Hyperloop Alpha document. So if I say "I like hyperloop", I don't know what exactly it is I'm supporting anymore. What exactly is "Hyperloop" these days?
All I can say is that I really liked the alpha one. The MIT team's maglev thing is Meh^2.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
If airports were cost-effective, airlines would build them. Airlines don't build airports; therefore, airports are not cost-effective.
If roads were cost-effective, drivers would pay the full cost of them. Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads. Therefore, roads are not cost-effective.
So what's left? What mode of transportation pays for itself?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Still ignoring the whole 'airplanes' aspect of it I see. I wonder why that is? Do a sufficient number of airplanes to cover a route just appear out of nowhere for free?
The only way that diesel costs half as much as gasoline on a cost/trip basis is if you treat the whacky CA fuels market as the boundaries of your universe, with $2.60/gal reg and $2.40/gal ULSD.
In most of the US, you're looking at $1.50/gal reg and $2.10/gal ULSD, and then that difference goes away. An engine that has 25% higher energy efficiency running on a fuel that has 10% greater volumetric energy density cannot overcome a fuel that costs 35% more per volume.
In the rest of the universe, you also amortize the cost of the vehicle that gets you there and add it to the energy cost. A vehicle that costs 3-4x as much makes much of that difference go away as well.
BTW: At CA electricity and gas prices you're claiming that a 100% efficient Tesla, consuming only 62MJ of electricity, will make that trip, but a gasoline powered car would require 1180MJ to make the same trip. That is a 5% fuel-to-travel efficiency, not the 14-30% that is known.
All in all, your figures are crap.
First, let's drop the hype, this idea is ancient for 'new ideas', it was published in an issue of Popular Mechanics older than Elon Musk (40s era issue I believe) .
Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.
Yes, that's right, all those super tight tolerances needed to keep it air tight and within safe turning range of a high speed capsule are at risk.
No matter how much we like to pretend, the earth isn't 'rock solid steady'.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up soil subsidence, faults, and even earth tide.
Earth tide is an interesting one and it can be around half a meter, depending on location and conditions, but it effects pretty much the entire planet.
The point is, there are serious issues about trying to keep an airtight low pressure tube of extraordinary length intact and functionally safe, especially when you're going to be shooting giant passenger carrying bullets down it. That's one target you better not miss.
Yes, there are probably a ton of other issues I've never thought of, but I'm not an engineer and it's not my job to be intimately familiar with variant thermal expansion rates or whatever else might go wrong with this concept. I still think it makes cool mad science fiction, but I don't see it being a rational expenditure of resources and effort at this time. (By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?)
ultraistic; of or related to the ultraist movement ["a literary movement born in Spain in 1918, with the declared intention of opposing Modernismo, which had dominated Spanish poetry since the end of the 19th century." --Wikipedia]. Or, Google thinks "ultraism" means "the holding of extreme opinions". Somehow I don't think either definition applies here, or is even the same league of literacy as GPP
Airplanes for free?
I thought that they cost tens of millions of dollars each and hundreds of millions for airports and more for air traffic control systems.
Somebody has to pay for that.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
California is a strange place to start the hyperloop project. There are two mountain ranges between LA and San Francisco, and the dominant cost of the high-speed rail project is bridges and tunnels to cross the mountain ranges. Hyperloop is designed to go over twice as fast as high-speed rail, which means the curves have to be much more gradual, meaning longer and more expensive tunnels and bridges.
Musk should really think about starting the project in a flatter area, perhaps between Chicago and Dallas, where it really could be cheaper than rail.
There used to be a train between LA and Las Vegas, the Desert Wind. It shut down in 1997 due to budget cuts and lack of riders. Then again it wasn't an express train and took nearly 8 hours on average when you can drive quicker than that in good traffic or take a plane in even less time.
No, it is NOTHING like that. Perhaps you should consider reading more than one sentence. In those tubes there is different air pressure ahead of and behind the module. That difference in pressure causes the module to move. In the hyperloop, the air pressure is THE SAME throughout the tube. The pressure is kept low to reduce air resistance, NOT to provide propulsion. And the compressors are used to create the air cushion to keep the pod away from the tube. If the compressors fail, there is this amazing new invention called 'wheels' which contact the tube and allow it to move (at much lower speed). ALL of the propulsion is done by linear induction motors, which are hardly a new invention (ride Rockin Roller Coaster at Disney World if you want to see what they can do).
And there is no 'train', it is single 28-passenger pods.
Are you implying that people in general 'know how to drive' now?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Uh yeah, that is my point.
Uh, the Jetta TDI gets 62mpg in practice (someone did a 5,000+-mile trip going counterclockwise, west across the northern U.S. and then east along the southern U.S), while its gasoline counterpart boasts 32mpg on the highway and 27mpg in the city.
In most of the U.S., you need ULSD. Here on the east coast, gasoline costs $1.55 now and diesel is going for $1.75. A 300 mile tank on my Mazda 3S with the 2.4L (averaging a good 25-28mpg) costs $18 now; a few months back it was still around $25, when gas was $1.92. Surprising me with these low fuel prices.
BTW: At CA electricity and gas prices you're claiming that a 100% efficient Tesla, consuming only 62MJ of electricity, will make that trip, but a gasoline powered car would require 1180MJ to make the same trip. That is a 5% fuel-to-travel efficiency, not the 14-30% [fueleconomy.gov] that is known.
Yes but California is a lunatic state. See also: Texas, where some cities have electricity for under 5 cents per kWh.
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I'm just guessing here, but poster may have been looking for 'altruistic', but who knows...
If by average purchase you mean average age of cars on the road, you're very wrong. The average age of a car on the road in the US just surpassed 11 years old. This is exactly why the longevity and long term resale of a car is very important. I know I won't even think about an electric car until they ensure it will last at least 10 years without an expensive overall. I'm currently driving a 14 year old car and have no plans to buy a new one as this one keeps going strong, I have real doubts the same can be said for electrics.
Kinda true, kinda not. The idea was to replace CAHSR, but CAHSR is itself billed as a replacement for flying.
Personally I think the Hyperloop proposal is done in bad faith - the system Musk proposed was supposedly substantially cheaper, but only served two of the four cities joined by CAHSR, was something in the region of a hundred miles away from those two cities, couldn't carry anything like the same number of passengers, and Musk hand waved quite a bit about costs (did he really think the CAHSR people hadn't considered viaducts? And in what world does a viaduct - even for a single pipe stuck up on stilts - cost only a quarter of a million dollars a mile?) suggesting it would probably cost several times the amount Musk proposed.
And, I'll be honest, I think travel in those things will be a nightmare. But I'd expect nothing less from anyone in the car industry - these are people who have never "got" public transportation, largely because they love driving so much they can't imagine anyone else wouldn't.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
First off, you do make some good points (especially with regard to the utility of having the station in the city center, instead of a 30-60 minute drive outside of town), but, that said, you're also oversimplifying things. Probably the most egregious example is to suggest that building the hyperloop replaces the cost of two airline terminals (especially using JFK as a model). JFK serves dozens, if not hundreds, of discrete destinations, while the hyperloop serves two. Worse, the hyperloop destinations are only a few hundred miles apart. JFK has flights to six continents. In other words, unless you are advocating replacing all air travel with hyperloop style transport (something that would cost several orders of magnitude more than the short range test project) you are comparing apples to oranges.
Lastly, you are looking at sunk costs vs new investments. It's not "we can pay for the hyperloop instead of the airport" because the airport already exists.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You are ignoring costs such as:
- pilot labor (hyperloop will probably be fully automated)
- air traffic control (could be mostly or fully automated as well)
- maintenance (not sure the maintenance requirements of hyperloop but surely not as extensive as aircraft maintenance)
- security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)
You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.
Same concern with roads and railways, with the same answer: it only matters if the economic advantage isn't high enough.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I want to get into a field where I don't have to show results - but still cleaner than politics.
I said 'long distance flying'. HL is supposed to replace SHORT distance (few hundred miles) flying. And he says where he gets his cost estimates - from building pipelines, which we do today using the same materials.
Once the vacuum has been created, the amount of energy required to maintain it is not significant assuming that there are no major leaks. I imagine that at the stations that the pod would enter a chamber where the air is removed before entering the main tube. Since most of the volume would be from the pod the amount of air needing to be removed would not be all that great. It also isn't a high vacuum, so it takes much less energy to obtain.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The car doesn't disappear in 3.5 years. It gets sold as a used car to someone else. So SOMEBODY has to replace the battery pack when it goes bad. And that will figure into the resale value.
The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.
While I'm a huge fan of Tesla, I also greatly enjoy my dinosaur-burning sports cars. So I'm going to argue a few points here. For comparison's sake, consider a Chevy SS, powered by a LS3 6.2L OHV aluminum V8. IMO one of the greatest engines ever invented. Let's also consider a hypothetical engine swap with the torque-monster direct-injected LT1 from the Camaro and Corvette (the LS3's direct successor engine).
1. Performance. While the Tesla has instantaneous torque, the LT1 still delivers 300 lb-ft at ~1000RPM. That's barely above idle. Also, the SS is about 10% lighter than the lightest ~315hp Model S (4,000 vs 4400lbs), so the power to weight ratio is vastly superior. While the P85D probably skews outright power back in favor of Tesla, the damn thing weights nearly 5,000lbs. And the P85D is a 6-figure car. For the extra cost of that package, forced induction can be easily added to the V8 and return the balance of power to the Chevy.
2. Durability/longevity. Jury is still out on this one as I'm waiting to see how barely-maintained 10-year-old Model S's hold up. But pretty much all the kinks have been worked out of the LS engine platform and T56 6-speed manual transmissions. The only engines in the family that aren't utterly bulletproof are the 7.0L LS7 (high-G oil starvation during track use) and the supercharged LT4 (quality control during fabrication).
3. Fuel cost. Starting price on a Model S is ~$30,000 more than a Chevy SS. You would have to drive 400,000 miles to break even via fuel savings.
I'm really curious how you conclude that "power, performance...and cost" don't seem inferior on the electric cars.
Not the OP. But anybody who only knows one way to spell a word has no emagination.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The original railways lines in the UK were formed by making lots of small connections at first and then connecting them up later. London's underground started off as a tunnel going underneath the Thames and avoiding the smell and muck on the bridge. Then others started building more tunnels, eventually they kept extending all the tunnels until they started going over land as well.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
You are comparing the estimated cost of the hyperloop to the actual cost of an airline terminal. If an airline terminal actually costs $2 billion to build, do you really think that $6-$8 billion is a realistic estimate for the hyperloop? How would a hyperloop terminal be any less complex than an airline terminal?
Less land?? Are you forgetting the amount of land that the tube take up?
You could terminate in the center of a city iff you could acquire the right of way to the center of the city. Good luck with that.
Film at 11.
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Advantage #342 of HyperLoop - unlike High Speed Rail, it doesn't share its infrastructure with overladen freight trains which tear up the rails and lead to lengthy delays and a unsmooth ride.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Drive them until the engine stops or the wheels fall off.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Well at least you know where the name came from: It took about as long as an actual 'desert wind' would take to get from LA to Vegas, maybe longer.
Presumably every Hyperloop capsule would be instrumented to gather data along its journey to immediately reveal any imperfections or problems. Since the travel surface is a completely controlled environment (no birds pooping on the tracks, etc.), it ought to be far easier to maintain than open highways or exposed railroad tracks. The Hyperloop system will directly generate revenue for its own maintenance and upkeep, whereas bridges really don't. (Toll bridges, maybe.)
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead.
How the heck do you make out that the Hyperloop is more flexible than HSR? Just one example of HSR flexibility : it can run off its high speed lines onto slower legacy lines for the purpose of reaching into an existing city central station; the French TGVs do this for example. That sort of flexibility is lacking with any system that needs a non-standard track.
If the Hyperloop is going to run at the speeds claimed, it is going to need some serious civil engineering because the curvature will need to be very gentle and the rate of change of vertical gradient very slight - or the occupants are going to be tossed around like dried peas in a rattle. That won't be a problem in a flat-ish desert, but in hilly areas it will need a lot of tunnels and high viaducts, not just the cheap 20 ft pillars that some people think are all it will need.
Flexible? - No.
Mod parent up - got it in a nutshell.
Exactly. That is why every jar of vacuum packed peanuts has a little pump included that is running 24/7. Because it is not possible to maintain a pressure differential otherwise.
Or seriplane, hyperplane, or delaplane!
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues
They run them on normal rails to in the UK. I saw one parked at London bridge station a while back so I chatted to the techs. Impressive equipment on board. They've even got ground penetrating radar off to the side so they can examine platforms for structural issues.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Sure, but consider that you are talking mostly about the US public infrastructure system. Private infrastructure has different incentives to keep up maintenance. That assumes a reasonable level of competition, of course.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)
I think you have this the wrong way around. The only drawback I can see with Elon's Hyperloop is it's susceptibility to terrorism; you need to keep airport-level vigilance over its entire track length, that's a lot of razor wire, dogs and operatives.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.
You almost had it. It is Grand Central Terminal, not station, because that is where the rail lines terminate. The trains do not pass through Grand Central, they stop (excluding the subway).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1. You're citing MPG from a Volkswagon diesel car? Can we turn off most emissions controls on the gasoline engine too, or is that considered cheating?
2. You're comparing someone's hypermileing adventures in a TDI on low roll resistance tires to EPA estimates for a 2.0L normally-aspirated, automatic transmission model. That's not remotely apples-to-apples. The EPA numbers are 45/36/31 for a Jetta TDI automatic, and the 1.8L turbo has better numbers than you're reporting with 20% more HP than the TDI (180 hp; 37/29/25). So, again, the comparison is crap.
3. Texas fuel cost is also almost half that of California's. 5 cent/kWh electricity is the same as $1.80 regular gas on a cost-per-MJ basis.
Why don't you pick one state, one set of roughly equivalent cars, and one style of driving instead of making crazy claims that not only can you halve operating costs by driving a diesel (no, you can't), but drop them by 87% by driving electric (again, no, you can't).
While diesel is more efficient and electric even moreso, the difference is not nearly so large as you claim. In the meantime, diesel has self-evident problems with particulates and particulate emissions controls, and electric has the minor problem that you cannot deliver that much power to that many people over the existing grid. Once penetration hits 5-10%, you're not going to get 5 cent/kHr electricity anymore if only because of the transmission costs increases that you will see for the next several decades. Many places already risk brownouts on extremely hot or cold days, and now you want to add loads that make AC and electric resistive heating look like someone left their lights on in comparison.
Regular gas is actually $1.95 in California (source: filled up today). Of course, it could easily be $5 again in a year with the right combination of events. Electricity prices are considerably more stable.
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How much does the battery cost to replace?
/quote>
Unknown since it is not known how soon one needs to replace it. With the first round of the batteries in the MS (i.e. 2012 version), it appears that somewhere around 200-250K miles, is when the battery pack will be around 85% level. So most ppl think that it new packs will be needed around 2020-2022. At that point, it might costs 5K for a change.
Of course, with 200-250K miles on an ICE car, you will most likely have to rebuild the engine, along with all of that nasty maintenance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why do you stick with your idiotic 'it has to keep pumping' idea? Are you really that stupid? After the original evacuation the ONLY thing the pump needs to do is pump out the LEAKAGE. And if the thing is leaking 750 CFM per mile something is very wrong.
Trains are much easier to derail, yet don't have the levels of security that you speak of.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"Drivers" and "Taxpayers" aren't exactly non-intersecting sets.
Do airports pay property taxes? No. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of air traffic control? No. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of TSA screening? Also no.
Unfortunately, that is also false.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I have some doubts that these are equivalent costs. The terminals for the hyperloop won't be need to be as large to handle a large number of planes. How do the number of passengers compare? Also the airport terminal has to have luggage handling facilities that the hyperloop terminal won't.
And if you want to go from the first city to a third city with the hyperloop then it will cost approximately another $6B to $8B (assuming it's about the same distance). By plane you build a new airport at the third city at a cost of bout $2B. Imagine then if there's demand for travel between the second and third cities. With the hyperloop you need to build the track but at least the terminals are already built. The airports are already built so your cost is $0.
I'm not a big fan of airplanes, especially for short haul flights but I don't think hyperloop is the answer.
Exactly. With a subsidized cost of 4000 to 12,000 usd after every 8-10 years you are basically paying the same as gasoline despite the inexpensive charges. Further many people who purchased hybrid and electrics around 2006-2008 are now suffering from replacement anxiety.
the batteries aren't even lasting as long as promised, and the total extra cost of the car would buy decades of fuel. the math proves electric car at present more expensive
They were in the hyperloop industry before it was cool, or even a thing.
Pro-tip: You might want to let someone prototype and test the concept and see if it actually works before getting carried away about building the infrastructure for the hyperloop economy. Speculation is great until you fuck up and get it wrong and are left with a lot of pissed off investors and a hyperloop seat cushion factory that no one wants.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
airplanes last for decades properly maintained, they don't salt the roads up there
hyperloop isn't a vacuum tube, and it has air compressors to make cushion of air.
vacuum packed food doesn't have hard vacuum, minus five psi is typical.
But, a massive expenditure of energy to build this thing and connect it to where you want to go .. which means you spend a LOT of money building it.
Massive expenditure of energy to build this thing? What does that remind me of? Something called the New Deal, I think. Where a country built these expensive bits of infrastructure called roads, when how all anyone needed were horse carriages.
Tesla battery packs do not use regular, non-rechargeable, D cells that you pick up from a store.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Point of order: Trains have been attacked a hell of a lot in the US. Many more times than just once. Depending on your view, you might even attribute some of those attacks to "terrorism." (History goes back before your date of birth.) If you want to see what that turned into (when not trying to derail them and cause loss of life) then Google for Sherman's Neckties.
However, attacking a "regular passenger train" has a fine history in this country. They've attacked passenger trains, with the loss of regular passenger lives, for everything from political motivations to robbery. In the former case, the attacks were getting to be so frequent that one fort or another actually had a decoy train - which was promptly attacked by the natives. I think that would have been Fort Philip Kearny, if you want to look it up. I'm not sure how it's spelled or anything and I'm kind of lazy this morning so you get to do it on your own.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I really don't know where to thread this but your comment is good enough.
I too don't know if the hyperloop is the answer. What I do know is that it's not going to be exclusionary. It's not like they're just gonna say, "Well, we built this one. Ground the airplanes, boys. The transportation issue is settled!"
We'll still have planes, trains, and automobiles for the foreseeable future. Having options or even just exploring new things is not a bad thing. It's not like we don't have a history littered with bad ideas. What's one more? It's not like this is going to be done to the exclusion of other choices. It's not like this is some mandatory thing that we're gonna be forced to ride in.
And no, I have no vested interest in this project's success or failure.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Oh the things I could say... It's tempting but I'm trying to avoid novellas today. (I'm saving up.) Man, this would be a fun one to write. Ah well...
No, people don't know how to drive. In some areas, it's better than others. In all areas, the average driver is an inattentive idiot who's fortunate that the safety devices work as advertised and graced by pure, dumb, luck. People point to the number of deaths on the road and say it is too high. I say it's off my a couple of orders of magnitude from where it should rightfully be.
Some comedian speculated that they should swap the driver's side, steering wheel (yes, that actually has to be specified now), airbag for a big, sharp, steel spike. Sometimes, I'm inclined to agree.
No, most drivers know how to point and some aren't even good at that. They sure as hell don't know how to drive, but you know that. ;-) I point them out, when they're being "special," and I refer to them as the, "Mysteriously Not-Yet-Extinct North American Non-Driving Fuck with a License." I then make comments where I speculate that the reasons they're not extinct include mating habits and preservation activists who continually work to decrease their likelihood of death with engineering instead of education. Sometimes, I go so far as to agree that that's probably the best method as attempting to teach them seems like an exercise in futility.
Sorry folks but you're not in a race. Picture a *regular* glass of water that's full to the point where it's rounded over. Now picture it sitting on your dashboard. That is how you drive in snow. Lower the level a half inch for poor conditions but not snow. Low it a full inch for when the conditions are optimal. Adjust the level of water to suit the conditions. Accidents are almost always caused by driving too fast for the conditions. If you're fortunate enough to get off-road or onto a track, dump the glass out and throw it away, you don't want glass in the passenger compartment. And yes, yes there are some exceptions.
Tempting but no... You already know that the average person can't drive worth a damn and isn't interested in learning. No need to preach to the choir and most everyone else thinks they're a professional and a race car driver.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Hmm... Lots of the roads, specifically the large interstate highways, were built after the New Deal had ended. They were built under the auspices of Present Eisenhower. He'd seen the military and civilian value in the autobahn and wanted to emulate its successes. (Note: The autobahn was not completed and was smaller then than it is now.)
I believe the story goes a bit like this:
Eisenhower saw a photograph of some Panzers going balls out in a line down the freakin' highway. He looked to his Aide De Camp and said, in his bestest and most Generalist voice, "Shit niggah! We gotta get some of that shizat up in this bitch. Dat be some phat shit dawg. Ya hear me?" His aide said, "Fuck ya, y'all gonna get busy up in there with their cars and shit but we made that shit fo tanks. For tanks! Tanks, bitch-ass-mother-fuckers made for tanks and aint no fuck gonna know that shit. I fucking hear ya, Big D Dizzle-dawg-hower, you feel me?"
And so, in the history books it is written. The laws were passed, the research done, the money spent, and the highways made big enough for tanks but mostly used by cars and trucks.
(General Dwight Eisenhower was also known as "The Big G" but when he became president he usually went for "Super P" and, while it's only a rumor, it's generally believed that the P was for Pimp.)
And, before anyone asks/accuses, I'm actually part black (mostly Amerindian, if you're curious) and currently have three people sharing this house with me who are also black. No Ebonics were harmed in the making of this post. Also, the reasoning for why I have three people sharing the house is long and complicated but it has been fun to have all these extra people around.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I, too, am an automobile aficionado. I not only race a little bit (we've an pro-am rally circuit in my area with some nice routes) but I drove as a profession, worked in the industry, and now own what can best be called a "stable of cars." (I've actually posted pics of some of the more interesting ones. They are probably not what you'd guess.) I am not home but the car I have with me is a rather up-scale, "sport" edition, rather beefy 6 series BMW. I've even gone so far as to spend a couple of weeks in Germany, taking classes and then hiring a coach and doing laps in rented exotics at Nuburgring. I don't just love driving, I love the automobile. I love the engine, I love the noise, I love every bit about driving and that includes driving in traffic. I own a restored and modified 1982 Volvo 245 specifically because it's RWD and a whole bowl of fun in the snow. Yes, a 245. I also have a 911 ('78 in Targa trim) but that's mentioned to give you a bit of perspective as to where I'm coming from.
So, I think I'm entitled to opine. You are not obligated to agree or even listen.
But, ludicrous mode... Yes, I'm buying a Tesla just for that. The missus can drive it most of the time. I'm buying it for that and for that alone. I've driven one, before that mode was enabled, and it's actually similar to driving a 7-series. It's big but once you get the hang of it, it feels lighter on its feet than it is - the center of gravity is really low. The torque is instant. The ability to throw in some understeer is fantastic - once you realize that it's 2.25 tons.
I'm not just an automobile aficionado. I'm a driving enthusiast. How can I not buy a Tesla? My love is big enough for both an ICE and an EV. My thrill, some 45+ years after I first drove a car, is still the same when I get in it - even if it's to just go to a store. I go out of my way to drive - to this day. I don't even dislike driving in traffic. I have yet to drive one vehicle (and I've driven a whole lot of 'em) that I can't find a redeeming quality for - and I've driven a Lada. If it has wheels, I've driven something like it - where legal. Some of the things I've driven don't even have wheels. Some have as few as a single wheel but that was really riding. I'm happy when I'm driving a golf-cart or an electric wheelchair. I've driven things with a whole slew of wheels - as many as 22 wheels to be exact and not counting spares.
How can I not buy a Tesla? Ownership doesn't preclude my ownership and enjoyment of other things. No, my heart's big enough for all of 'em and it really will be vibrating with joy when I have one of my own to play with. The one I drove belonged to a friend, a trusting friend who told me to drive it like I stole it, but I didn't really get the chance to find all its quirks and fully understand the handling characteristics or find all the limits. I will put myself on the list to buy one once I'm back home and able to take delivery of one.
It doesn't work perfectly (or even work, really) for all of my driving needs. Not even close. My home is in Maine and 24 miles from the nearest village and over 60 miles from a real town. It's full of hills and bad weather that means I need something with more energy storage capacity than a Tesla. However, it fills a niche and will be appreciated - and used to its limits because automobiles are meant to be driven.
Again, how could I not buy one?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Unfortunately the "cost savings" Musk envisaged for the LA-SF version were in part achieved by not going anywhere near the cities it served, sitting tens of miles outside - a situation more extreme than most airports, which at least try to be close to the cities they serve.
You can probably build a pretty cheap airport "serving" LA if you build it fifty miles away too ;-)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sarcasm is lost on some I guess...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Emissions control on a VW TDi in test mode gets worse performance, lower fuel mileage, but better emissions. So yes, let's turn the emissions control on the TDi into the correct operating mode and get 70mpg instead of 62mpg.
Most of the emissions control systems on gasoline cars actually improve mpg. EGR improves performance *and* fuel efficiency.
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The batteries are warrantied and replaced if they don't last.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
actually i meant actual typical ownership, looking at reccent numbers (been out of car business for a while) looks like the economic downturn has changed the figure to around 5.6 years... battery lasts longer than that.
exactly, it will get figured into the resale value, either it is replaced or the cost is removed from the purchase price.
Would somebody please tell Mr. Musk about http://skytran.net/
Hyperloop is an interesting concept but it doesn't come anywhere near what we really need right now or even in the near future.
Ticket prices? That has nothing to do with anything.
The usual 'lie with statistics' method to make your point is by showing that landing fees don't cover the cost of airports. Of course that's a big fat lie, it ignores the parking fees the airport also collects from passengers and the profit it makes selling fuel (or leasing the space to a private sector fuel supplier).
All the major airports in the USA operate at a profit for their 'sponsoring' cities. They pay the bonds issued to build them and return money to the local general fund.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I probably need batteries for my meter. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
and Tesla goes out of business if they don't last
So they have an incentive to provide well-made products and reasonable warranties.
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