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Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating Tesla's Battery Technology? (bloomberg.com)
"Tesla's newest promises break the laws of batteries," writes Bloomberg. Long-time Slashdot reader rudy_wayne summarizes their report.
"Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles...are monuments of envelope pushing. To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible." The Tesla Semi, which Musk claims can haul 80,000 pounds at highway speeds for 500 miles, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes, would require "a charging system that's 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today -- Tesla's own Superchargers."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
For trucks and buses that can follow the wires. They can be powered and "recharged" as they move, as well as following the wires automatically. Also, electrified freight rail. "Charging" vehicles while on the go is a solved problem and doesn't require production of large, environmentally-costly batteries.
...a standard car charging point isn't powerful enough to charge a semi in a reasonable time?
Instead of immediately accusing them of witchcraft, perhaps... they just figured out a way to bundle multiple 'standard' standard car-chargers in parallel, and use those to charge separate battery packs inside a semi, greatly reducing the total recharge time?
Or in July stating they can do 20K in December, but then sliding the required rate to March 2018 at the earliest? Oh wait...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Pretty standard"? In what world do you live where 325/30ZR21 tires are "pretty standard"? That's 325 millimeters wide - that's over a foot wide.
In what world do you live where Roadster 1 had torque steering?
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Has Elon Musk greatly exaggerated Tesla's battery technology in the past? From what I've read, Elon Musk has always ended up providing what he claimed albeit a bit behind schedule and over budget. However, once the baseline product is established it seems to improve over time. Jaffe's conclusion that this are factors he is unaware of is a logical one.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla, let alone decided to get involved in funding them.
That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, they've started down the path of H2 fuel cell cars, but also maintaining their Li battery development.
Fast forward to today, and everyone from BMW to Nissan sells electric and hybrid cars. And they all do it without Elon's grandstanding and drain on the tax purse.
Elon is a loud, obnoxious marketer, but if you pay attention, you'll see that many car manufacturers are doing more interesting things in this space than he is. It's just that they are based out of California so the press doesn't pay very much attention to them.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
We were talking about claims of vehicle stats and pricing.
No, that is what you want to discuss. The original claim was:
Elon Musk exaggerates everything in his advantage. It would be highly unusual if he didn't exaggerate a claim in an announcement made to destract from the problems with the Tesla 3.
You responded with media copy details crafted ex post facto.
See there is this shell game going on to misdirect investors and you have become so accustomed to that norm you have started participating yourself!
Name another car maker who is conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in.
The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla, let alone decided to get involved in funding them.
A huuuge red herring on your part. It seems that you couldn't plug a Prius in and recharge it before 2010, so Priuses before that had to choke citizens with their generator exhaust before that year.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, they've started down the path of H2 fuel cell cars, but also maintaining their Li battery development.
So they still keep getting distracted by building a separate infrastructure for small-scale hydrogen consumers? Then they don't really seem to be conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in, again.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, they did have a working prototype doing max acceleration 0-70 mph runs all night long without recharging. The numbers they quoted appeared to be real numbers for that prototype.
Unlike Porsche and others who display a stationary model and claim that it will be able to almost match the performance of current production Teslas, some day, when they actually manage to make it work.
I think Tesla did figure out something new, aren't quite able to mass produce it yet, but already did make it in very small volume and are now testing it. They may not make the 2020 deadline (it's still Tesla, after all) but I doubt it will be much later than that. They are getting a lot better at actually producing things, delays on Model 3 are only a couple of months and that's after accelerating the development by a whole year. I expect them to deliver the first token roadsters in december 2020 and start producing them for real in the second half of 2021.
I'm not sure you realize that if our climate predictions are even just remotely close to being correct, yesterday was already too late for manufacturers to ditch fossil fuels altogether. Your model could work...in a world where we have extra half a century to do something with it. We don't. There's nothing sustainable about what we're doing right now. Of course, that's not just the problem of the car industry, there's food production, construction, etc., but still.
Ezekiel 23:20