Slashdot Mirror
EPA Confirms Tesla's Model 3 Has a Range of 310 Miles (theverge.com)
Tesla's Model 3 has a confirmed range of 310 miles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "That figure applies to the long-range version of the Model 3, and echoes the vehicle specs released by Tesla back in July," reports The Verge. "It also makes the Model 3 one of the most efficient passenger electric vehicles on the market." From the report: The EPA's range is used as the advertised figure for electric vehicles that are sold in the US. The 310-mile range is an estimate of the number of miles the vehicle should be able to travel in combined city and highway driving from a full charge. That's 131 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe) for city driving, 120 MPGe on the highway, and 126 MPGe combined. You'll have to pay more to get that extended range, though. Tesla said it would be selling a standard version of the Model 3, with just 220 miles of range, for $35,000. The long-range version will start at $44,000, the automaker says. Production on the standard version isn't expected to begin until 2018.
I don't care what the range is, until there are charging stations everywhere and a full charge happens in 10 minutes I would have range anxiety. You're totally going to say I'm being irrational, and I know I am, but it is what it is. I am just as bad with my phone,if it goes past 50% I have to plug it in.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
But like everyone I need to drive 311 miles per day. I'll wait for the Model 4.
The newer range is really great, about as much as most cars.
But the thing you'd want to larger range for is really road trips, which per day would usually be composed of at least two 300 mile segments. So you have to figure out at least two charging points per day of trip, as well as overnight.
Now they have done a great job of bringing superchargers online where a lot of trips I could probably plot a path that included enough superchargers. Evening is still an issue though, lots of places it is hard to find somewhere to plug in. But with that kind of range, maybe it would be enough just to find one in the city I was staying in and charge up before I went to the hotel.
I think it's close enough it would work for most road trips, except for some remote areas.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
MPGe is stupid. There, I said it.
Meanwhile, my $20,000 non-hybrid, gasoline (not diesel) car gets over 50 MPG on the highway.
It's got a small tank, but it still beats the Model 3 on long range.
The myth that just won't die.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
I'll wait a few more years. I know a few folks who love love love their Teslas, but they keep having to bring them in for service once a month for various problems (albeit minor in the grand scheme of things). You'd think for a car this expensive, the kinks would be all worked out.
Reminds me of Delorean's issues when they started out.
Have any actually gone that distance without needing service?
Since you live in a crap area that still uses coal to produce electricity all of us have to refrain from having electric cars?
So how much actual coal is that per mile?
Probably takes 2000 pounds of coal to make the electricity to charge it up once?
Especially the coal electricity California imports from Utah.
The math's pretty easy: according to http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/ctele.htm, it takes about one pound of coal to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity. The long range battery has a capacity of 75kWh, so that'd be about 75 pounds of coal. Assuming a gas vehicle gets 50mpg, the gasoline needed to travel 310 miles weighs 39 pounds, a far cry from your 2000 pounds claim. Either way, a centrally-located power plant would be able to more readily control its emissions than a smaller, mobile gasoline engine.
Depending on your power mix, that's a worst-case scenario. In California, which you mention, PG&E generates ~70% of its power from renewable and greenhouse gas-free sources, like nuclear, hydro, and unspecified "renewable" sources. 17% is from natural gas, which is very much cleaner than gasoline or coal, and "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline.
EVs have the advantage that the source of the power feeding the grid can be changed without requiring all users to switch to something else: switching all gasoline cars to something that's compatible with their engines and fuel systems but is less polluting and damaging to the environment would be quite difficult. Replacing aging coal power plants with cleaner-burning natural gas plants dramatically reduces emissions while still pushing the same electrons through wires. Adding nuclear, wind, solar, etc. can further improve the cleanliness of electricity supply without any change from consumers.
Although I agree that it's not too bad looking at two 20 minute stops, I totally disagree that sprint trips are dangerous.
I have done a lot of trips from Denver to Vegas by car, between 10-11 hours. There is absolutely nothing dangerous about driving less that 12 hours straight, with only stops to fill the gas and/or get food. The scenery changes all the time and it's very easy to pay full attention to the road for that long.
Now I've also done 19 hour trips, and I agree there is some line in there where trips get dangerous because you do get too tired. But there's not a huge difference between one small break to get lunch or two... even a fuel stop you are getting out of the car for a little while.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
tesla owns the epa but uh you already knew that.
Current electric vehicle batteries still use lithium, which isn't that great over time. Newer battery tech should be preferable, like graphite batteries that Samsung is currently trying to make, except one that has a long life cycle.
Would current inconvenience be palatable?
But you used to claim that it needed the same range as you got in your car which was about 250-300 miles per tank. And now it has, you whiff the goalposts again.
Frankly nobody cares what you don't care about. Find someone who cares.
A bunch of groups did tests and putting a really good gas generator in the back can get you more than triple that range. It's not exactly efficient money or energy-wise but it does work in actual tests.
I rode in a Honda Hybrid. With the little dinky drive and charge motor. That thing flew! And it easily gets 60mpg if you are easy on it. Tesla can do better than that. Maybe double the gas mileage. He's got the brains for it!
I have yet to see a Tesla in my town, but I have seen Nissan Leafs ("Leaves"?) literally every day for the past fortnight when travelling across town. If I had to guess, perhaps 1 in 50 cars I see at the moment is a Leaf.
That blows my mind.
Many have been of different colours and some had signwriting for small businesses. Either we've had a massive rise in their popularity or it's a very persistent and dedicated marketing campaign.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"The long range battery has a capacity of 75kWh, so that'd be about 75 pounds of coal."
Ignoring all transmission and conversion losses.
Average transmission losses between the power plant and the consumer are 8-15%. Charging efficiency varies widely depending on many conditions (~54% - 98%, the peak figures that Tesla list assume ideal temperatures and relatively slow 12A 110v charging), lets assume a 20% average real world loss. These losses are cumulative. From that 75 pounds of coal, only 55.2kwh make it to the battery.
" "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline."
Such sources include bagasse or other crop waste, sewage and landfill gas, sawdust/wood waste (from wood manufacturing) and black liquor (paper production). Don't confuse renewable with clean.
"switching all gasoline cars to something that's compatible with their engines and fuel systems but is less polluting and damaging to the environment would be quite difficult."
? Ethanol... E85 and flex fuel cars already exist, most modern cars are already E10 or more compatible.
? Ethanol... E85 and flex fuel cars already exist, most modern cars are already E10 or more compatible.
All modern cars are E10 compatible, because you can and will get E10 out of the pump in California during part of the year whether you like it or not. As it turns out, though, any car that isn't sitting can pretty much handle E10. Seriously traditional parts like leather accelerator pump diaphragms would probably wear out quicker, if there were any left intact today. There was one in my 1960 Dodge Dart's 650 Carter...
However, ethanol is crap. Cellulosic ethanol production has never met up with its promises, and the majority of fuel ethanol feedstock is corn. Virtually all of that is grown continuously, meaning without crop rotation or even permitting fields to lie fallow. This requires heavy fertilization, which means that ethanol is barely energy-positive. The argument in its favor was always free energy from the sun, but much of the energy in ethanol fuel actually comes from synthetic (petrochemical-based) fertilizer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From that 75 pounds of coal, only 55.2kwh make it to the battery.
Fair enough. Of course, the well-to-wheel costs for gasoline is non-trivial either. In California, for example, coal only makes up a fraction of the total power supply, at least from PG&E, so the electricity is relatively clean.
" "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline."
Such sources include bagasse or other crop waste, sewage and landfill gas, sawdust/wood waste (from wood manufacturing) and black liquor (paper production). Don't confuse renewable with clean.
True, but renewable stuff is generally closer to CO2-neutral than gasoline production and use: crops will still get harvested, sewage and landfills will still get used, wood products and paper will still get manufactured, etc., so using the waste streams from those things as fuel for power generation makes a lot of sense. Additionally, power plants can be built or refitted with pollution controls that wouldn't be effective on millions of small, mobile engines and, as I mentioned before, electrons are fungible and it's possible to incrementally improve the cleanliness of the power generated for the grid without having to make wholesale changes on the consumer side once EVs are more widely used.
To me, that latter part is the key advantage of EVs: even in areas that generate power from relatively polluting sources now, the deployment of EVs will centralize emissions at large power plants with better pollution controls and that are typically relatively far from populated areas rather than right at in areas where people live. Over time, those polluting sources can be upgraded or replaced and all EVs on the road would immediately benefit.
"switching all gasoline cars to something that's compatible with their engines and fuel systems but is less polluting and damaging to the environment would be quite difficult."
? Ethanol... E85 and flex fuel cars already exist, most modern cars are already E10 or more compatible.
Sure, but E85 sucks for reasons that "drinkypoo" mentions in this thread. I like the idea of biodiesel that's drop-in compatible with existing engines, but that doesn't seem to have panned out as expected, plus it does little for the particulate emissions from diesel engines. Liquid fuels have many advantages for cars (e.g. fast fill-ups, high energy density, etc.), and gasoline has the advantage of essentially-universal availability in terms of gas stations being available in every little town across the country, but that also means there's a lot of inertia to switching to other fuels that becomes problematic.
As battery tech improves and the grid becomes cleaner in more areas, EVs look to be more and more practical for more and more users. That has a big appeal to me.
In the UK at least (and many European countries), 0 lbs of coal. The UK has had increasing numbers of days where no coal fired power station has been running at all. Coal is on the way out and will be gone completely within the next 20 years. An average of something like 50% of the UK's power is from low/no CO2 generation (nuclear, wind). The rest is CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) which is very thermodynamically efficient especially when compared to a petrol engine in a car.
So at least here, you should be thinking of uranium and natual gas per mile, not coal.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Was this reported range, eMPG, with the Air Conditioner or Heater turned on. Many Volt drivers I talked to rather despised having to make a choice of Heat in the Winter or making it to their destination.
And there was me thinking that trains and trams were the most efficient electric vehicles on the market. They can carry more than 5 people, plus they don't need expensive batteries and chargers, you don't have to pay insurance or even have to buy them, they don't run out of electricity, and you just pay a minimal fee for a pass that lets you ride on any of them any time you want, and best of all, you don't have to drive! :)
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
The subject says it all.
However, ethanol is crap.
More like Piss, really. It's a liquid.
Cellulosic ethanol production has never met up with its promises, and the majority of fuel ethanol feedstock is corn. Virtually all of that is grown continuously, meaning without crop rotation or even permitting fields to lie fallow. This requires heavy fertilization, which means that ethanol is barely energy-positive. The argument in its favor was always free energy from the sun, but much of the energy in ethanol fuel actually comes from synthetic (petrochemical-based) fertilizer.
Nope. That was NEVER the argument for Ethanol in the US, the argument for Ethanol was its use as an oxygenate, only in places like Brazil were they expecting to get more net energy, and they're using sugarcane anyway.
Of course, it didn't help the anti-Ethanol people that they DID lie in their calculations, and damaged their own cause by repeating it.