If you cannot remember a handful of names of your friends and associates, how do you remember your own name and where you live?
If you want to remember names and addresses and habits of the entire population of New York City, what makes you think that you are even entitled to that? If you don't know me in person, I probably am not in any hurry to tell you much about myself.
Technology is changing the society, but the society fights back. Not every change is for better; starry-eyed early adopters should be counterbalanced by old, conservative people who refuse to hear about anything new. Then only the best innovations are eventually adopted, after a healthy debate.
Sorry, but you're just not special enough to warrant searching through thousands and thousands of hours of video to find.
Walk within a mile from the murder scene that you aren't even aware of. This will quickly make you special enough. The police will find all the resources needed to sift through GG footage of everyone near the scene. If you look like someone on a grainy video, the police computers will select you as a suspect, and you will be taken in for questioning. You better have an alibi for 10:45am on Tuesday three weeks ago, and I hope you have ideal memory, so that none of your answers to the police are wrong even in a slightest way.
There is also a video "Don't talk to the police" on YouTube. There the prof explains how your innocent actions and your "best recollection" answer to a question can get you convicted.
We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.
Those LEDs can be easily covered with black paint, black tape, or simply drilled out and destroyed. LEDs are not visible in bright daylight conditions. You cannot see LEDs in crowd.
Even if you do see the LED, what can you do about it? If a person is so self-centered to activate the camera in public, do you think your humble request will make him stop? If you take the issue into your own hands, that would be illegal.
The only good solution to GG problem is to remove the camera at the design stage. A camera is not needed for the wearer, really - there are very few daily experiences that we want to record and relive. If you are expecting an interesting situation - say, when you are skiing down a slope - you can always wear a headband with a single-purpose HD camera that records 30 fps onto an SD card, so that you have your movie right away, and in the desired resolution. For everything else, like walking down the street and coming across a police who works on another Rodney King, there is the phone.
On a side note, I have neither nor do I find them appealing (still talking about tattoos and piercings)... but looking around, both are considered perfectly normal and akin to jewelery today.
The culture that I grew up in associates tattoos with incarceration. I still believe that a tattoo is a sign of bad judgement, even though it no longer necessary to be jailed to get one. I am not open-minded in this aspect, and I certainly don't accept tattoos as normal. Perhaps a generation apres moi will think differently; I wouldn't care, it'd be their problem then.
all very deliberate abuses of the battery, not simply failing to plug it in or driving it until it dies.
A lawyer would have a field day with Elon Musk's statement. But I'm not a lawyer, and probably you aren't either. If so, we should just wait for real scenarios to unfold. What happened to the Roadster can be written off as ancient history. Will the new Tesla support their customers? Let's hope that it will.
Do you have sources on the Volt?
There are many news articles on the subject; some blame Volt in some cases, and some show that Volt was not a cause in other cases. I cannot say that Volt is responsible for all the ills of the humanity, but chances are that one or two fires are caused by it. We know that its battery self-ignited after testing (that had been fixed.) We know that Karma self-ignited, for one reason or another (don't know and can't debate the exact cause.)
I do not separate plug-in hybrids from EVs because from the electric powertrain point of view they are the same. Volt goes pretty far in that aspect - it is entirely electric driven, and its gas engine is only used to charge batteries and to provide additional current at speeds above 70 mph (IIRC.) It's a complicated vehicle.
Yes, both links about Tesla are about the same incident - the reporter was testing if a Tesla Model S is capable of a road trip. Winter played a trick on him; if only the car hasn't lost half of the charge overnight everything would be fine; if the reporter would have charged the car fully (and not, per Tesla's advice, as much as he needed, mile-wise) then he would be also fine. There are far more links about this incident than these two, and the mudslinging was going strong at some point between Tesla and NYT.
With regard to water, there are several unique dangers of an EV that do not exist in a gas car. As matter of fact, a gas car becomes entirely inert in water, even if it was burning just a moment before hitting the water. An EV presents the following additional dangers:
1) The high voltage can leak onto elements of the chassis via water bridges and electrocute occupants. It is hard to predict what parts of the car will become conductive first and second and third. This determines what gets energized. Firemen are slowly getting trained on dealing with "live" EVs.
2) The DC potential that is present in the car will cause the water to conduct current; this will separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is an explosive mixture of gases.
3) Overloading of the battery due to high and uncontrolled discharge through water will cause Li-Ion elements of the battery to overheat and self-ignite. Lithium burns in water just fine.
There is only one advantage that an EV has over a gas car in water: the leaking fuel will not pollute the river.
Perhaps Tesla is starting to learn what PR is about. However Elon Musk's response to the last road test was defensive and rude. Elon Musk may be a genius and a useful slave driver when it concerns production, but in PR he is an idiot who cannot be allowed to speak publicly. Many excellent engineers have the same trait. The later analysis done by others is more cool-headed.
Regardless of all that, the exit clause of "deliberate abuse" of the battery is pretty open-ended. Who determines if the battery was abused? I should actually rephrase: who is the only person|company on the planet that can come to such conclusion? In other words, I do not trust Tesla because for all their company history they attacked the messenger and stuck him with a bill. To compare, a Prius's NiMH battery is unconditionally, short of a crash, warrantied for 10 years. Very few batteries ever went bad, and in each case the batteries were replaced by Toyota under warranty. I have reason to trust Toyota in this aspect because they do what they promise.
It's interesting to note that concerns about longevity of Prius's battery were also voiced on the Internet, just as they are now voiced about EVs. There was only one process that alleviated those concerns, and that was personal experience of millions of car owners. For example, without those owners we would have never learned that the heat in Arizona significantly hurts Leaf's performance. Per Nissan, it would be all peachy.
Seriously? You recommend this much overkill?
Well, of course that's not feasible. But an EV in the garage, plugged into 240V, 100A circuit is a dangerous thing. There were several fires caused by a plugged Volt (and more that were not caused by a Volt that was in the same garage.) There was even fire in a parking lot, with Karma. Batteries are dangerous things; one of my friends charged batteries for radios, and he had to do it in an enclosure that protected everyone from explosion if it were to happen. Boeing got hit with battery fire, as were several notebook manufacturers. Gasoline fire, on the other hand, is rare, unless the car is destroyed in a wreck - then all bets are off. Gasoline will not self-ignite; but a battery can; a plugged charger that is capable of 100A charge current is just one p-n junction away from a spectacular failure; and there are many of those junctions in a charger, and they all were made by the lowest bidder somewhere between Taiwan and Philippines.
checking to see that the car is still charging once a month would be more than sufficient.
I'm not so sure. If the power fails one week after the caretaker checks it, the battery in a Roadster will be a brick by the next visit. As you say, Tesla may have fixed this, I don't know, but that's what killed those Roadsters. Tesla is adamant that their EVs must be always plugged in, hell or high water. (BTW, how do all these EVs react to being submerged? If a car falls into a river, what happens? A gas car just stalls.)
Tesla warranties their batteries for 8 years/125k miles.
That's about the break even point for a $30K car (Model X?) But even then the warranty is good only if you don't need it. If the battery becomes bricked because you, the owner, made an unforgivable mistake of not religiously charging your vehicle every night (say, the power is down in the whole region after a hurricane,) Tesla will not honor this warranty. Per Jalopnik:
When a Tesla battery does reach total discharge, it cannot be recovered and must be entirely replaced. Unlike a normal car battery, the best-case replacement cost of the Tesla battery is currently at least $32,000, not including labor and taxes that can add thousands more to the cost.
As I said before, sometimes you are not in precise control of your future. People get sick and become hospitalized; they get delayed in another city for urgent work; they cannot return because of a storm; the car is plugged in but the GFCI breaker disconnected it, and there is nobody in the house to notice. There are all kinds of reasons why care and feeding of your expensive car may be not the top priority of a responsible human being. Tesla's cars cannot survive this very common situation. In essence, if you buy a Tesla car then you also need to hire a chauffeur, so that he will be always on duty. Anything else is like playing with fire - as if we don't have enough excitement already. Tesla cars are just not trustworthy yet. They are cool when they work, but you must always be prepared to learn that they don't. We don't have that with standard cars; and short of pitching it over the guardrail into a ravine, a standard car will not hit you with a $32K bill.
the engine power necessary to maintain a given speed to goes up exponentially as your speed increases due to wind resistance.
The road noise also increases with speed. The noise of the engine is linked to RPM, but not to the output power. It doesn't take too much power to propel the car at constant high speed either. As you can see, the formula is not that obvious.
it sounds like it is easy to uninstall the Facebook from the First and make it a stock Android phone
Why would one buy a FB phone just to start hacking it? If you want a stock Android phone, there is no shortage of those; perhaps even a stock phone can be had at a better price because stock phones cannot claim some unique feature in them. The HTC First is special, and it can command a premium price. This is orthogonal to how many people want it.
If words of pretty smart people are insufficient, here is a formal mathematical proof.
If a person has a gun on him, the probability of that gun discharging is non-zero (regardless of how small it is.) If a person has no gun on him, the probability of that gun firing is zero. Therefore, it is infinitely more likely that if you carry a gun it will fire at some point.
One could argue that in some cases shooting a gun is beneficial. It may be so in the USA, where some semblance of self-defense still remains in the law - though that may be not very obvious to George Zimmerman. However there are several "more enlightened" societies, such as Australia and UK, where this right is essentially nullified. You would be better off being robbed and beaten by the robber - he won't rob you of your freedom. The government will do that.
And why stop at guns when there are items that don't require a license to buy if this is really about safety.
Let's give them (the police) the benefit of the doubt and believe that all they want is to protect people from their own stupidity.
Then it becomes actually likely that a young person will print a plastic gun, load it with one round, and will carry it in the street "just in case." Unfortunately, if all you have is a hammer, the reason to use it will eventually materialize.
One could say the same about a knife, or a sword, or a club. But those are weapons that present more danger to an untrained owner than to the other party; they don't make you stronger or more agile; they only build upon your own abilities. If you have none, a sword won't help you - you will cut your own ear off with it, more likely. But a well designed gun does not require much of a skill or strength; in close quarters it's a point and click device. As a famous playwright used to say, "if the gun is hanging on the wall in Act One then it will have to fire in Act Three."
There is actually a short story (SciFi) about that, how easy availability of a gun prompted a space researcher to make a decision that he later came to regret. With air in the spacesuit running low, and with a gun in hand, he neglected to consider other solutions.
Why would a nail gun manufacturer design and sell cartridges that not just drive the nail into the wood, but propel the nail all the way through this board and three more boards, so that it flies all the way through the house and half-way through the other wall?
I am sure the powder charge is carefully selected to just drive the nail of a certain size into wood of certain density. Anything more would be just damaging the work.
That's an extra 43% that you're paying for the comfort of the ICE you're used to. If you extend that out to 20 years, you get $80K vs. $40K.
That looks like what people pay for mortgage. Same approach and same thinking. Those extra 43% do not need to be paid in any visible future. They don't need to be paid at all if you sell the car, if you wreck the car, or if you lose your job and don't need to drive to the office anymore.
Assuming you get 10 years of service out of the vehicle (I'm from the Rust Belt, not Cali)
Sorry to hear that. Good weather is very important, for people and for equipment alike. 10 years old car in CA is just like new, at least in terms of rust.
At this point, the long term reliability and maintenance costs of EVs aren't well known.
To make matters worse, Tesla actively refuses, as I understand, to make any promises and any warranties with regard to battery packs. There were several articles about bricked Roadsters, and Tesla just demanded money for a new battery pack. Those bricked cars are parked now, since the battery for a Roadster is something about $40K. The owners were at fault, of course, all of them - they failed in their duty to daily care and pamper the machine (they foolishly thought that it should be the other way around:-) Fail to charge your EV for 2-3 weeks, and it is dead. Doesn't matter what your reasons were. If you fell down, broke a leg and got a heart attack in the process, by the time you are out of hospital you will also learn that your brand new car needs a new battery at a low cost of $10-20K.
There were also cases of fire - while charging and while parked. Those batteries are dangerous. Remember what happened to Boeing 787 just a few months ago?
I personally believe that EVs - even those that are already on the market - would benefit greatly from openness about their capabilities. A simulator of an EV would be great; one would enter trips via Google Earth, specify frequency, and he'd know exactly what SoC would be at every point. As I said, I have no clue myself how would an EV behave on a hilly terrain. I'm not going to pay $30K to find out. This is ridiculously simple to do, and I don't understand why this tool is not already available.
For example, a combination of improvements could bump the full-charge range up to 600 miles and make it so a 15 minute quick-charge could add another 300 miles (i.e. not necessarily just making it so that you can completely recharge your 300-mile battery in 5 minutes at a fueling station).
This is already more than I would ask for. I don't need 600 miles without charge; it would be nice, but not with these batteries. A 15 min. charge that is sufficient for 30 miles (not for 300!) would be also adequate. I believe Tesla's Superchargers can do that already, but nobody publishes any specifics! Again, it's easier to find on the Internet all the secret orders of Hillary Clinton than a simple chart that shows Tesla's SoC vs. time.
Would you tie up an extra $3,300 initially to save $2,500 a year in fuel costs?
Yes, but only if someone at Tesla does his job and explains, with specific numbers, how their vehicle is going to work for me. They are based in Silicon Valley, they know better than anyone else what hills and mountains surround the place. But they have no calculator for that.
They have other calculators, which suspiciously stop at 65 mph. This may be the top legal speed on intra-city freeways, but I-5 allows 70 mph, and 73-75 mph is common. There is no telling how the car will perform. My car? I know exactly; it would be about 46 mpg regardless of gas tank's "SoC."
Using other calculators, I discover that for 15K miles per year my car (at average 45 mpg) will cost me $1300 in fuel. Tesla will cost me $467. I'd be saving $800 per year. Will that compel me to pay $5K premium? Perhaps. The break-even will be in 7 years. But if th
I'm not even sure if it is legally significant who paid for the drugs. I'd think it's more important to know who received them. Two quick scenarios to illustrate; one is legal, another is not.
1) You approach the drug dealer and give him $10. You never receive anything in return.
2) You approach the drug dealer and receive a dose of a drug for free.
Have you looked at new car pricing lately? $15K is basically where new cars start.
In another comment I referred to a Camry that starts at about $20,500. Your numbers are far lower, and I don't even know how much of a car they will buy you. My own car was bought for about $25K new. Comparing a Tesla to econoboxes wouldn't be reasonable.
What I was trying to say is that a $25K gas car may be a better value than a $30K EV, considering what it can do for you. On one hand, you save on gas; on another hand, you cannot recharge in five minutes, and if the road on your way back home is closed by an accident and you take a detour you may have to arrive home on a flatbed. On one hand, electrons are cheap; on the other hand, you are looking at a mandatory battery replacement after so many years or miles - and the battery costs more than half of the car. This is a poor retention of value; a $30K EV may have zero value by the time the original battery expires; but a 7-8 years old car (like the one I have) runs as new and keeps most of its original value.
In your case of a short and predictable commute a Volt may pay for itself in about 5-6 years, even though electric power is not free. (It is free to me, within limits - I have a solar PV system.) But I cannot depend on an EV because I live high in the hills, and not every gas car can make it here (all new cars can, and all old ones in good shape can, but some old beaters just overheat.) I cannot find anywhere what would be the real life power use of an EV on a hilly terrain. One would think that Google Earth gives you all the necessary tools to calculate that... but the data about power modes of an EV is not easy to find (it's more like a top secret.)
Besides, I have a car already, and it's good enough for what I need. If this car needs replacement, would I buy an EV? No, I wouldn't - there are too many hills here, and I have no intention to calculate every joule of energy ahead of a trip. A Volt, a hybrid, may work - especially considering that I already have a hybrid. But Volt is not made in Japan; and I'm done with GM cars.
Then again, my $3600 motorcycle [...] it's not so great in inclement weather or with large loads.
Been there, done that. These days I'm always carrying something in the car - heavy, bulky, or both. Once one leaves a rented apartment and moves into a detached home, a whole new bunch of needs appears out of nowhere.
Yes, outside of known limitations of an EV it is possible to break even at 5 or 6 years. Mileage-wise, that would be about 15*5 = 75K miles.
A Japanese gas car with that mileage is considered like new. However an EV may already need a new Li-Ion battery assembly. I read some expected numbers, they are about 10 years. Prius's NiMH batteries live up to such a promise. But Li-Ion batteries are pushed much harder. If a battery needs replacement, you lose about half of the original cost of the car at that very instant. Batteries can be damaged by full charge and by low charge, so we have to see how it plays out IRL. Traditional cars aren't going to need any such service after only 75K miles. After 150K - maybe. But then an EV would surely be on its second, if not third, battery pack.
With regard to noise, a lot of that insulation also dampens road noise - which is not going to be any lower, until you switch to antigravity. So you probably still need a lot of that foam and rubber.
Logic tells me that you are overpaying for the $24K... or the insurance company is willing to take a loss on your $45K car. That is if both your insurances are comprehensive. I, personally, have only liability insurance since the day I was done with the loan.
Most people don't buy a luxury car, neither for $30K nor for $80K. A regular new car for masses costs much less than $30K. A new Toyota Camry costs $20322. This will buy you a good car that will serve you for a decade or two.
The insurance costs will be higher just because if anything happens the insurance company has to buy you a new car. Unless you mean just the minimal liability insurance... yes, that one won't depend on the cost of the car. But most people cannot afford to not have a comprehensive insurance - they don't have spare money to just go out and buy another car.
There is also a large market of used gasoline cars, variably priced to match your wallet.
The same applies to the electric vehicle. It comes across as a big hit, when you don't notice the much larger leeching you've already suffered. But it's real.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the "big hit" also translates into higher insurance premiums - which may be larger than your gas costs. The model of free shavers and expensive blades has its place, and it does not rely upon mere stupidity of users.
The fear of your $30-40K investment being stolen, damaged, or just failing on its own is also a real thing. The range anxiety is much worse, though - I would be very much impacted by it, since it is in my nature to play safe and take few risks.
You need to get out of the whole concept of everyone having their own personal box on wheels and find more efficient means of moving people from A to B.
Most cars don't just move people, they move cargo. You cannot go to a grocery store, buy a weekly supply of food for a family, and then carry it all in your hands on three buses and walking half a mile to/from bus stops. Many people are doing shopping on their way from work.
By going to the store only once a week I save a lot of fuel, wear and tear, and several hours of my own personal time. But I cannot do that without having a personal vehicle that can be loaded up with groceries.
The one after that (Tesla Bluestar) is supposed to be a $30,000 compact car with a 200 mile range
It's still too expensive for the mass market. If I have free $30K I'd rather buy a real luxury car than a tin can with a luxury battery that can't keep me as cool or as warm as I want to. Anyone who wants to pay $30K for a car is not going to be too concerned about gas costs.
Insurance fees will be also sky high on a $30K vehicle. I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance premiums will be higher than the cost of gas for a gasoline car.
A gasoline-powered car isn't economical. You just don't notice the money flowing out of your wallet at the gas-station, or the doctor's office, or the tax receipt.
The "pay as you go" is a very valuable concept. Take a common man and offer him two choices:
* a new car for $10K and $1K in gas fees every year for 20 years
* a new car for $30K and no fuel fees for 30 years
The common man will pick the first option. Why?
To begin with, his WAF will not allow him to buy a car for $30K, regardless of how cheap it will be to run. He may simply not have the money. He may be able to take credit. But credits cost even more.
A car is an outdoor animal who moves at high rate of speed among other cars. It can become damaged and totaled. The chance of that, for most drivers, is not that great - but I know people who went through that. Probably we all do. Some may know it firsthand. Loss of an expensive car is final, and it does not allow you to recoup the premium that you paid up front.
Even if you have money, an expensive purchase locks up the money that you could have invested and obtained interest on. This money has to be counted against the value of the car. When you buy gasoline for your standard car you are "locking up" only $20-$50, and only for a week or two. That is OK. But if you lock up a $20K over even ten years, that's something you cannot dismiss.
A standard car uses a well understood technology. You know pretty well how long the engine will last, on average, or the transmission, or the brakes, or the battery. You can manage these expenses by allocating money for future expenses - perhaps by buying extended warranty, perhaps by just setting money aside. It is difficult to do with an EV because no statistics are available. Whatever statistics are available, they are not always favorable.
In that aspect a gasoline car is also far more predictable. You may not leave the town for ten years straight, but one day your dying aunt wants to see you one last time and include you into her will. You jump into the car and drive for 500 miles non-stop, except fuel, and arrive by the end of the day. An EV is not capable of this trick whatever you do. Rentals are awfully expensive.
Even if all of the above is not applicable to your case, you still have to pay up front for decades of driving. What if your income changes? What if you want to save on fuel? You can do that with a standard car by just driving less, and taking the bus more. You cannot do that with an EV because you *already* paid the gas fees when you bought the car. You cannot fine-tune your expenses to your changed circumstances.
So when you compare the two options you *naturally* choose one that costs less up front, does more, is more reliable and predictable. In return you will be paying more for gas, on a "pay as you go" basis. This is a familiar - and, apparently, comfortable - situation, because most personal cars in the USA are either bought with a loan, or leased. People are reluctant to pay a lot in one lump sum; they are much happier to pay smaller amounts in installments. (If that weren't true, nobody would need credit.)
I perfectly understand that Tesla has a [luxury] market. It is not the market for everyone, where a steel mill worker (assuming there is one left in the USA) could walk into the dealership (well, into a Tesla Store, I guess...) and order a Tesla car for his family use. I also understand that they are doing whatever they can. It's a harsh world, and Fisker's fiery demise is not making Tesla people too happy.
All I want to say is that Tesla will not get anywhere until they have a model for the mass market. They will remain a curiosity car maker for a few rich people, but they will not grow. Small market, especially the luxury market, is a dangerous place to be. It may take just one bad accident where the hardware is at fault to lose your reputation - and your sales.
It makes more sense to send the expensive gas guzzlers to the chop shop and buy something economical.
It would actually make more sense to send the expensive EVs to the chop shop and buy something economical instead - a gasoline-powered car.
At this point Tesla does not have a market, and it does not have a vehicle that would fit into the spending pattern of a common man. It is known that luxury companies do exist, and can exist - as long as they are acutely aware of their audience. Jewelers, for example, remain in business, even though the only use of a diamond I can think of is to cut glass with it. Tesla can supply into that market for a while, but that won't make them a player.
IMO, Tesla needs to produce an EV that costs under $20K new. A $15K would be even better. It should have range... as good as it gets. Beggars can't be choosers. But probably 100 miles per charge would be OK for many. A $15K car that costs little to run would be an excellent reason to buy - and that would appeal to the mass market, to the people who have to count each dollar when they fuel up their current vehicles. The mass market will make Tesla. The luxury market - not so much; they'd be among Ferrari and Lamborghini, which is not a bad company per say, but eventually they would be overtaken by an EV company that comes up with a mass market EV that works good enough in every meaning of the word.
There is no technology, aside from an RFID chip that is implanted into your hand, that would be able to identify you as the owner. Fingerprints are not an option for the reasons that you listed; and they are not reliable either, even on our computers, in a clean environment, with guaranteed power, and when no one's life depends on it.
Besides, there are several videos on YouTube that show how a child can open a commercially produced gun safe in seconds, without a key. A child, having infinite time on his hands, will defeat the smart gun, just like they defeat nearly every measure that their parents come up with to constrain them.
A good test case may be GZ - he drew and fired while laying on the pavement and being beaten up. Any delay between drawing and firing (like "Authenticating... please sweep your finger three times on the sensor...") would only result in TM taking his gun away and using it as a heavy blunt object.
Slashdot Mirror
If you cannot remember a handful of names of your friends and associates, how do you remember your own name and where you live?
If you want to remember names and addresses and habits of the entire population of New York City, what makes you think that you are even entitled to that? If you don't know me in person, I probably am not in any hurry to tell you much about myself.
Technology is changing the society, but the society fights back. Not every change is for better; starry-eyed early adopters should be counterbalanced by old, conservative people who refuse to hear about anything new. Then only the best innovations are eventually adopted, after a healthy debate.
Sorry, but you're just not special enough to warrant searching through thousands and thousands of hours of video to find.
Walk within a mile from the murder scene that you aren't even aware of. This will quickly make you special enough. The police will find all the resources needed to sift through GG footage of everyone near the scene. If you look like someone on a grainy video, the police computers will select you as a suspect, and you will be taken in for questioning. You better have an alibi for 10:45am on Tuesday three weeks ago, and I hope you have ideal memory, so that none of your answers to the police are wrong even in a slightest way.
There is also a video "Don't talk to the police" on YouTube. There the prof explains how your innocent actions and your "best recollection" answer to a question can get you convicted.
We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.
Those LEDs can be easily covered with black paint, black tape, or simply drilled out and destroyed. LEDs are not visible in bright daylight conditions. You cannot see LEDs in crowd.
Even if you do see the LED, what can you do about it? If a person is so self-centered to activate the camera in public, do you think your humble request will make him stop? If you take the issue into your own hands, that would be illegal.
The only good solution to GG problem is to remove the camera at the design stage. A camera is not needed for the wearer, really - there are very few daily experiences that we want to record and relive. If you are expecting an interesting situation - say, when you are skiing down a slope - you can always wear a headband with a single-purpose HD camera that records 30 fps onto an SD card, so that you have your movie right away, and in the desired resolution. For everything else, like walking down the street and coming across a police who works on another Rodney King, there is the phone.
On a side note, I have neither nor do I find them appealing (still talking about tattoos and piercings)... but looking around, both are considered perfectly normal and akin to jewelery today.
The culture that I grew up in associates tattoos with incarceration. I still believe that a tattoo is a sign of bad judgement, even though it no longer necessary to be jailed to get one. I am not open-minded in this aspect, and I certainly don't accept tattoos as normal. Perhaps a generation apres moi will think differently; I wouldn't care, it'd be their problem then.
all very deliberate abuses of the battery, not simply failing to plug it in or driving it until it dies.
A lawyer would have a field day with Elon Musk's statement. But I'm not a lawyer, and probably you aren't either. If so, we should just wait for real scenarios to unfold. What happened to the Roadster can be written off as ancient history. Will the new Tesla support their customers? Let's hope that it will.
Do you have sources on the Volt?
There are many news articles on the subject; some blame Volt in some cases, and some show that Volt was not a cause in other cases. I cannot say that Volt is responsible for all the ills of the humanity, but chances are that one or two fires are caused by it. We know that its battery self-ignited after testing (that had been fixed.) We know that Karma self-ignited, for one reason or another (don't know and can't debate the exact cause.)
I do not separate plug-in hybrids from EVs because from the electric powertrain point of view they are the same. Volt goes pretty far in that aspect - it is entirely electric driven, and its gas engine is only used to charge batteries and to provide additional current at speeds above 70 mph (IIRC.) It's a complicated vehicle.
Yes, both links about Tesla are about the same incident - the reporter was testing if a Tesla Model S is capable of a road trip. Winter played a trick on him; if only the car hasn't lost half of the charge overnight everything would be fine; if the reporter would have charged the car fully (and not, per Tesla's advice, as much as he needed, mile-wise) then he would be also fine. There are far more links about this incident than these two, and the mudslinging was going strong at some point between Tesla and NYT.
With regard to water, there are several unique dangers of an EV that do not exist in a gas car. As matter of fact, a gas car becomes entirely inert in water, even if it was burning just a moment before hitting the water. An EV presents the following additional dangers:
1) The high voltage can leak onto elements of the chassis via water bridges and electrocute occupants. It is hard to predict what parts of the car will become conductive first and second and third. This determines what gets energized. Firemen are slowly getting trained on dealing with "live" EVs.
2) The DC potential that is present in the car will cause the water to conduct current; this will separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is an explosive mixture of gases.
3) Overloading of the battery due to high and uncontrolled discharge through water will cause Li-Ion elements of the battery to overheat and self-ignite. Lithium burns in water just fine.
There is only one advantage that an EV has over a gas car in water: the leaking fuel will not pollute the river.
Perhaps Tesla is starting to learn what PR is about. However Elon Musk's response to the last road test was defensive and rude. Elon Musk may be a genius and a useful slave driver when it concerns production, but in PR he is an idiot who cannot be allowed to speak publicly. Many excellent engineers have the same trait. The later analysis done by others is more cool-headed.
Regardless of all that, the exit clause of "deliberate abuse" of the battery is pretty open-ended. Who determines if the battery was abused? I should actually rephrase: who is the only person|company on the planet that can come to such conclusion? In other words, I do not trust Tesla because for all their company history they attacked the messenger and stuck him with a bill. To compare, a Prius's NiMH battery is unconditionally, short of a crash, warrantied for 10 years. Very few batteries ever went bad, and in each case the batteries were replaced by Toyota under warranty. I have reason to trust Toyota in this aspect because they do what they promise.
It's interesting to note that concerns about longevity of Prius's battery were also voiced on the Internet, just as they are now voiced about EVs. There was only one process that alleviated those concerns, and that was personal experience of millions of car owners. For example, without those owners we would have never learned that the heat in Arizona significantly hurts Leaf's performance. Per Nissan, it would be all peachy.
Seriously? You recommend this much overkill?
Well, of course that's not feasible. But an EV in the garage, plugged into 240V, 100A circuit is a dangerous thing. There were several fires caused by a plugged Volt (and more that were not caused by a Volt that was in the same garage.) There was even fire in a parking lot, with Karma. Batteries are dangerous things; one of my friends charged batteries for radios, and he had to do it in an enclosure that protected everyone from explosion if it were to happen. Boeing got hit with battery fire, as were several notebook manufacturers. Gasoline fire, on the other hand, is rare, unless the car is destroyed in a wreck - then all bets are off. Gasoline will not self-ignite; but a battery can; a plugged charger that is capable of 100A charge current is just one p-n junction away from a spectacular failure; and there are many of those junctions in a charger, and they all were made by the lowest bidder somewhere between Taiwan and Philippines.
checking to see that the car is still charging once a month would be more than sufficient.
I'm not so sure. If the power fails one week after the caretaker checks it, the battery in a Roadster will be a brick by the next visit. As you say, Tesla may have fixed this, I don't know, but that's what killed those Roadsters. Tesla is adamant that their EVs must be always plugged in, hell or high water. (BTW, how do all these EVs react to being submerged? If a car falls into a river, what happens? A gas car just stalls.)
Tesla warranties their batteries for 8 years/125k miles.
That's about the break even point for a $30K car (Model X?) But even then the warranty is good only if you don't need it. If the battery becomes bricked because you, the owner, made an unforgivable mistake of not religiously charging your vehicle every night (say, the power is down in the whole region after a hurricane,) Tesla will not honor this warranty. Per Jalopnik:
When a Tesla battery does reach total discharge, it cannot be recovered and must be entirely replaced. Unlike a normal car battery, the best-case replacement cost of the Tesla battery is currently at least $32,000, not including labor and taxes that can add thousands more to the cost.
As I said before, sometimes you are not in precise control of your future. People get sick and become hospitalized; they get delayed in another city for urgent work; they cannot return because of a storm; the car is plugged in but the GFCI breaker disconnected it, and there is nobody in the house to notice. There are all kinds of reasons why care and feeding of your expensive car may be not the top priority of a responsible human being. Tesla's cars cannot survive this very common situation. In essence, if you buy a Tesla car then you also need to hire a chauffeur, so that he will be always on duty. Anything else is like playing with fire - as if we don't have enough excitement already. Tesla cars are just not trustworthy yet. They are cool when they work, but you must always be prepared to learn that they don't. We don't have that with standard cars; and short of pitching it over the guardrail into a ravine, a standard car will not hit you with a $32K bill.
the engine power necessary to maintain a given speed to goes up exponentially as your speed increases due to wind resistance.
The road noise also increases with speed. The noise of the engine is linked to RPM, but not to the output power. It doesn't take too much power to propel the car at constant high speed either. As you can see, the formula is not that obvious.
it sounds like it is easy to uninstall the Facebook from the First and make it a stock Android phone
Why would one buy a FB phone just to start hacking it? If you want a stock Android phone, there is no shortage of those; perhaps even a stock phone can be had at a better price because stock phones cannot claim some unique feature in them. The HTC First is special, and it can command a premium price. This is orthogonal to how many people want it.
If words of pretty smart people are insufficient, here is a formal mathematical proof.
If a person has a gun on him, the probability of that gun discharging is non-zero (regardless of how small it is.) If a person has no gun on him, the probability of that gun firing is zero. Therefore, it is infinitely more likely that if you carry a gun it will fire at some point.
One could argue that in some cases shooting a gun is beneficial. It may be so in the USA, where some semblance of self-defense still remains in the law - though that may be not very obvious to George Zimmerman. However there are several "more enlightened" societies, such as Australia and UK, where this right is essentially nullified. You would be better off being robbed and beaten by the robber - he won't rob you of your freedom. The government will do that.
And why stop at guns when there are items that don't require a license to buy if this is really about safety.
Let's give them (the police) the benefit of the doubt and believe that all they want is to protect people from their own stupidity.
Then it becomes actually likely that a young person will print a plastic gun, load it with one round, and will carry it in the street "just in case." Unfortunately, if all you have is a hammer, the reason to use it will eventually materialize.
One could say the same about a knife, or a sword, or a club. But those are weapons that present more danger to an untrained owner than to the other party; they don't make you stronger or more agile; they only build upon your own abilities. If you have none, a sword won't help you - you will cut your own ear off with it, more likely. But a well designed gun does not require much of a skill or strength; in close quarters it's a point and click device. As a famous playwright used to say, "if the gun is hanging on the wall in Act One then it will have to fire in Act Three."
There is actually a short story (SciFi) about that, how easy availability of a gun prompted a space researcher to make a decision that he later came to regret. With air in the spacesuit running low, and with a gun in hand, he neglected to consider other solutions.
Why would a nail gun manufacturer design and sell cartridges that not just drive the nail into the wood, but propel the nail all the way through this board and three more boards, so that it flies all the way through the house and half-way through the other wall?
I am sure the powder charge is carefully selected to just drive the nail of a certain size into wood of certain density. Anything more would be just damaging the work.
That's an extra 43% that you're paying for the comfort of the ICE you're used to. If you extend that out to 20 years, you get $80K vs. $40K.
That looks like what people pay for mortgage. Same approach and same thinking. Those extra 43% do not need to be paid in any visible future. They don't need to be paid at all if you sell the car, if you wreck the car, or if you lose your job and don't need to drive to the office anymore.
Assuming you get 10 years of service out of the vehicle (I'm from the Rust Belt, not Cali)
Sorry to hear that. Good weather is very important, for people and for equipment alike. 10 years old car in CA is just like new, at least in terms of rust.
At this point, the long term reliability and maintenance costs of EVs aren't well known.
To make matters worse, Tesla actively refuses, as I understand, to make any promises and any warranties with regard to battery packs. There were several articles about bricked Roadsters, and Tesla just demanded money for a new battery pack. Those bricked cars are parked now, since the battery for a Roadster is something about $40K. The owners were at fault, of course, all of them - they failed in their duty to daily care and pamper the machine (they foolishly thought that it should be the other way around :-) Fail to charge your EV for 2-3 weeks, and it is dead. Doesn't matter what your reasons were. If you fell down, broke a leg and got a heart attack in the process, by the time you are out of hospital you will also learn that your brand new car needs a new battery at a low cost of $10-20K.
There were also cases of fire - while charging and while parked. Those batteries are dangerous. Remember what happened to Boeing 787 just a few months ago?
I personally believe that EVs - even those that are already on the market - would benefit greatly from openness about their capabilities. A simulator of an EV would be great; one would enter trips via Google Earth, specify frequency, and he'd know exactly what SoC would be at every point. As I said, I have no clue myself how would an EV behave on a hilly terrain. I'm not going to pay $30K to find out. This is ridiculously simple to do, and I don't understand why this tool is not already available.
For example, a combination of improvements could bump the full-charge range up to 600 miles and make it so a 15 minute quick-charge could add another 300 miles (i.e. not necessarily just making it so that you can completely recharge your 300-mile battery in 5 minutes at a fueling station).
This is already more than I would ask for. I don't need 600 miles without charge; it would be nice, but not with these batteries. A 15 min. charge that is sufficient for 30 miles (not for 300!) would be also adequate. I believe Tesla's Superchargers can do that already, but nobody publishes any specifics! Again, it's easier to find on the Internet all the secret orders of Hillary Clinton than a simple chart that shows Tesla's SoC vs. time.
Would you tie up an extra $3,300 initially to save $2,500 a year in fuel costs?
Yes, but only if someone at Tesla does his job and explains, with specific numbers, how their vehicle is going to work for me. They are based in Silicon Valley, they know better than anyone else what hills and mountains surround the place. But they have no calculator for that.
They have other calculators, which suspiciously stop at 65 mph. This may be the top legal speed on intra-city freeways, but I-5 allows 70 mph, and 73-75 mph is common. There is no telling how the car will perform. My car? I know exactly; it would be about 46 mpg regardless of gas tank's "SoC."
Using other calculators, I discover that for 15K miles per year my car (at average 45 mpg) will cost me $1300 in fuel. Tesla will cost me $467. I'd be saving $800 per year. Will that compel me to pay $5K premium? Perhaps. The break-even will be in 7 years. But if th
I'm not even sure if it is legally significant who paid for the drugs. I'd think it's more important to know who received them. Two quick scenarios to illustrate; one is legal, another is not.
1) You approach the drug dealer and give him $10. You never receive anything in return.
2) You approach the drug dealer and receive a dose of a drug for free.
Have you looked at new car pricing lately? $15K is basically where new cars start.
In another comment I referred to a Camry that starts at about $20,500. Your numbers are far lower, and I don't even know how much of a car they will buy you. My own car was bought for about $25K new. Comparing a Tesla to econoboxes wouldn't be reasonable.
What I was trying to say is that a $25K gas car may be a better value than a $30K EV, considering what it can do for you. On one hand, you save on gas; on another hand, you cannot recharge in five minutes, and if the road on your way back home is closed by an accident and you take a detour you may have to arrive home on a flatbed. On one hand, electrons are cheap; on the other hand, you are looking at a mandatory battery replacement after so many years or miles - and the battery costs more than half of the car. This is a poor retention of value; a $30K EV may have zero value by the time the original battery expires; but a 7-8 years old car (like the one I have) runs as new and keeps most of its original value.
In your case of a short and predictable commute a Volt may pay for itself in about 5-6 years, even though electric power is not free. (It is free to me, within limits - I have a solar PV system.) But I cannot depend on an EV because I live high in the hills, and not every gas car can make it here (all new cars can, and all old ones in good shape can, but some old beaters just overheat.) I cannot find anywhere what would be the real life power use of an EV on a hilly terrain. One would think that Google Earth gives you all the necessary tools to calculate that... but the data about power modes of an EV is not easy to find (it's more like a top secret.)
Besides, I have a car already, and it's good enough for what I need. If this car needs replacement, would I buy an EV? No, I wouldn't - there are too many hills here, and I have no intention to calculate every joule of energy ahead of a trip. A Volt, a hybrid, may work - especially considering that I already have a hybrid. But Volt is not made in Japan; and I'm done with GM cars.
Then again, my $3600 motorcycle [...] it's not so great in inclement weather or with large loads.
Been there, done that. These days I'm always carrying something in the car - heavy, bulky, or both. Once one leaves a rented apartment and moves into a detached home, a whole new bunch of needs appears out of nowhere.
If you work for BP or DuPont, fuck you. I hope you die in a fire.
Praised be FSM, I don't.
Yes, outside of known limitations of an EV it is possible to break even at 5 or 6 years. Mileage-wise, that would be about 15*5 = 75K miles.
A Japanese gas car with that mileage is considered like new. However an EV may already need a new Li-Ion battery assembly. I read some expected numbers, they are about 10 years. Prius's NiMH batteries live up to such a promise. But Li-Ion batteries are pushed much harder. If a battery needs replacement, you lose about half of the original cost of the car at that very instant. Batteries can be damaged by full charge and by low charge, so we have to see how it plays out IRL. Traditional cars aren't going to need any such service after only 75K miles. After 150K - maybe. But then an EV would surely be on its second, if not third, battery pack.
With regard to noise, a lot of that insulation also dampens road noise - which is not going to be any lower, until you switch to antigravity. So you probably still need a lot of that foam and rubber.
Logic tells me that you are overpaying for the $24K... or the insurance company is willing to take a loss on your $45K car. That is if both your insurances are comprehensive. I, personally, have only liability insurance since the day I was done with the loan.
Most people don't buy a luxury car, neither for $30K nor for $80K. A regular new car for masses costs much less than $30K. A new Toyota Camry costs $20322. This will buy you a good car that will serve you for a decade or two.
The insurance costs will be higher just because if anything happens the insurance company has to buy you a new car. Unless you mean just the minimal liability insurance... yes, that one won't depend on the cost of the car. But most people cannot afford to not have a comprehensive insurance - they don't have spare money to just go out and buy another car.
There is also a large market of used gasoline cars, variably priced to match your wallet.
Was USSR just unlucky then? Their government was never able to pick a winner, even when they knew what to look for.
The same applies to the electric vehicle. It comes across as a big hit, when you don't notice the much larger leeching you've already suffered. But it's real.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the "big hit" also translates into higher insurance premiums - which may be larger than your gas costs. The model of free shavers and expensive blades has its place, and it does not rely upon mere stupidity of users.
The fear of your $30-40K investment being stolen, damaged, or just failing on its own is also a real thing. The range anxiety is much worse, though - I would be very much impacted by it, since it is in my nature to play safe and take few risks.
You need to get out of the whole concept of everyone having their own personal box on wheels and find more efficient means of moving people from A to B.
Most cars don't just move people, they move cargo. You cannot go to a grocery store, buy a weekly supply of food for a family, and then carry it all in your hands on three buses and walking half a mile to/from bus stops. Many people are doing shopping on their way from work.
By going to the store only once a week I save a lot of fuel, wear and tear, and several hours of my own personal time. But I cannot do that without having a personal vehicle that can be loaded up with groceries.
The one after that (Tesla Bluestar) is supposed to be a $30,000 compact car with a 200 mile range
It's still too expensive for the mass market. If I have free $30K I'd rather buy a real luxury car than a tin can with a luxury battery that can't keep me as cool or as warm as I want to. Anyone who wants to pay $30K for a car is not going to be too concerned about gas costs.
Insurance fees will be also sky high on a $30K vehicle. I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance premiums will be higher than the cost of gas for a gasoline car.
A gasoline-powered car isn't economical. You just don't notice the money flowing out of your wallet at the gas-station, or the doctor's office, or the tax receipt.
The "pay as you go" is a very valuable concept. Take a common man and offer him two choices:
The common man will pick the first option. Why?
To begin with, his WAF will not allow him to buy a car for $30K, regardless of how cheap it will be to run. He may simply not have the money. He may be able to take credit. But credits cost even more.
A car is an outdoor animal who moves at high rate of speed among other cars. It can become damaged and totaled. The chance of that, for most drivers, is not that great - but I know people who went through that. Probably we all do. Some may know it firsthand. Loss of an expensive car is final, and it does not allow you to recoup the premium that you paid up front.
Even if you have money, an expensive purchase locks up the money that you could have invested and obtained interest on. This money has to be counted against the value of the car. When you buy gasoline for your standard car you are "locking up" only $20-$50, and only for a week or two. That is OK. But if you lock up a $20K over even ten years, that's something you cannot dismiss.
A standard car uses a well understood technology. You know pretty well how long the engine will last, on average, or the transmission, or the brakes, or the battery. You can manage these expenses by allocating money for future expenses - perhaps by buying extended warranty, perhaps by just setting money aside. It is difficult to do with an EV because no statistics are available. Whatever statistics are available, they are not always favorable.
In that aspect a gasoline car is also far more predictable. You may not leave the town for ten years straight, but one day your dying aunt wants to see you one last time and include you into her will. You jump into the car and drive for 500 miles non-stop, except fuel, and arrive by the end of the day. An EV is not capable of this trick whatever you do. Rentals are awfully expensive.
Even if all of the above is not applicable to your case, you still have to pay up front for decades of driving. What if your income changes? What if you want to save on fuel? You can do that with a standard car by just driving less, and taking the bus more. You cannot do that with an EV because you *already* paid the gas fees when you bought the car. You cannot fine-tune your expenses to your changed circumstances.
So when you compare the two options you *naturally* choose one that costs less up front, does more, is more reliable and predictable. In return you will be paying more for gas, on a "pay as you go" basis. This is a familiar - and, apparently, comfortable - situation, because most personal cars in the USA are either bought with a loan, or leased. People are reluctant to pay a lot in one lump sum; they are much happier to pay smaller amounts in installments. (If that weren't true, nobody would need credit.)
I perfectly understand that Tesla has a [luxury] market. It is not the market for everyone, where a steel mill worker (assuming there is one left in the USA) could walk into the dealership (well, into a Tesla Store, I guess...) and order a Tesla car for his family use. I also understand that they are doing whatever they can. It's a harsh world, and Fisker's fiery demise is not making Tesla people too happy.
All I want to say is that Tesla will not get anywhere until they have a model for the mass market. They will remain a curiosity car maker for a few rich people, but they will not grow. Small market, especially the luxury market, is a dangerous place to be. It may take just one bad accident where the hardware is at fault to lose your reputation - and your sales.
It makes more sense to send the expensive gas guzzlers to the chop shop and buy something economical.
It would actually make more sense to send the expensive EVs to the chop shop and buy something economical instead - a gasoline-powered car.
At this point Tesla does not have a market, and it does not have a vehicle that would fit into the spending pattern of a common man. It is known that luxury companies do exist, and can exist - as long as they are acutely aware of their audience. Jewelers, for example, remain in business, even though the only use of a diamond I can think of is to cut glass with it. Tesla can supply into that market for a while, but that won't make them a player.
IMO, Tesla needs to produce an EV that costs under $20K new. A $15K would be even better. It should have range ... as good as it gets. Beggars can't be choosers. But probably 100 miles per charge would be OK for many. A $15K car that costs little to run would be an excellent reason to buy - and that would appeal to the mass market, to the people who have to count each dollar when they fuel up their current vehicles. The mass market will make Tesla. The luxury market - not so much; they'd be among Ferrari and Lamborghini, which is not a bad company per say, but eventually they would be overtaken by an EV company that comes up with a mass market EV that works good enough in every meaning of the word.
There is no technology, aside from an RFID chip that is implanted into your hand, that would be able to identify you as the owner. Fingerprints are not an option for the reasons that you listed; and they are not reliable either, even on our computers, in a clean environment, with guaranteed power, and when no one's life depends on it.
Besides, there are several videos on YouTube that show how a child can open a commercially produced gun safe in seconds, without a key. A child, having infinite time on his hands, will defeat the smart gun, just like they defeat nearly every measure that their parents come up with to constrain them.
A good test case may be GZ - he drew and fired while laying on the pavement and being beaten up. Any delay between drawing and firing (like "Authenticating... please sweep your finger three times on the sensor...") would only result in TM taking his gun away and using it as a heavy blunt object.