No, it wasn't. The first practical steam engine was built in 1692, and the first commercially successful one in 1712. The first practical electric motor was made in 1828, and the first one for turning machinery in 1837. If you want to be more specific as to engine type, the first practical in-cyclinder multi-cycle ICE suitable for vehicle use was built in 1856, while the first variable frequency synchronous motors suitable for vehicle use weren't practical until the 1990s. Want to talk power source? The lithium ion battery was developed starting in the 1970s and released in 1991. Gasoline was first isolated from oil commercially some time in the early 1800s. The first battery was invented in 1792 (notwithstanding some sketchy claims of earlier ones). Humans have been burning fuels, even specifically hydrocarbon fuels, since they lived in caves and hunted ancient megafauna.
No matter how you cut it, thermally-driven engines are much older tech and have had far longer to mature than electrically-driven ones.
And how about you factor the carbon footprint/environmental impact of battery production into your analysis?
Sorry, but this is a total myth. First, as if batteries have some sort of grossly disproportional amount of carbon involved in their production in comparison to, say, the steel in your internal combustion engine. Second, as if they're not recycled/reused at end-of-life. And third, as if the energy and carbon that goes into a vehicle manufacture is even close to the energy/carbon impact from operating the vehicle over its lifespan. All of these are false.
I'm not going to own two cars just to accommodate the need for longer trips with quick refuel times as that would be exceptionally wasteful.
News for you: Most American families *do* own multiple cars. Also, most people only go on long road trips rarely. In which case, it can simply make more sense to rent for those rare occasions. I don't drive around in a panel van for those rare occasions a couple times per year that my sedan isn't big enough. I just rent. Why shouldn't the same logic apply to range?
It's the first volume (not really mass production) li-ion EV. If you want to contrast to earlier EV chemistries, then you need to contrast gasoline cars to steam engines.
Simply not true. The main factor that affects your acceleration time is your power to mass ratio. Air resistance is a very small proportion of it. Air resistance is the primary method of energy consumption when *maintaining* speed.
California's gas prices are above average in the US, but their electricity prices are way over average, so it;s a bad comparison. The average residential power price in the US is 10-11 cents per kWh. Commercial rates are more like 9 cents, and industrial, more like 6 cents.
Don't guess on the energy comparison between EVs and gasoline: Use studies.
Yes (although overplayed)... but, note, when used without temperature regulation, poor charge balancing, tougher charge/discharge curves, and deeper depth of discharge.
These sort of factors can make order-of-magnitude lifespan differences, both in terms of cycle life and calendar life. Temperature is a huge factor (and when you use a laptop, you're baking your cells). With charge balancing, even if you don't use the laptop battery, when you finally do, your cells can be out of balance and dramatically limit your capacity; plus, a failure can take out the whole pack (not true with the Roadster). Lastly, the faster charges and discharges in laptops amplify any age-related degradation when used, and the greater average depth of discharge significantly amplifies it.
There's another factor worth noting here as well. Laptops are very voltage-sensitive. Electric motors are not. A change in your laptop battery's voltage discharge curve can total your usable life in a laptop. Not the same in an EV.
Anyway, Tesla's pretty much the only one out there (well, them and the companies they contract for) who uses the approach of using laptop cells. Pretty much everyone else is using more stable li-ion chemistries.
Well, the Volt's pack is going to be *warrantied* for ten years, soo.... Plus, A) EV battery packs can often have parts of them replaced individually, and B) evne a reduced-capacity pack still has value (say, on grid load balancing)
Battery life is always going to be limited by *design*. You can have any sort of lifespan you want out of a battery, from nanoseconds to tens of thousands of years. It's all about tradeoffs. The better the chemistry, the better the temperature regulation. the gentler the charge/discharge curve, the better the charge management, and the lower the depth of discharge range, the longer the lifespan, by orders of magnitude. As for Tesla's design approach:
* Chemistry: nothing special -- same as in laptops
* Temperature regulation: top notch -- a far cry from an unregulated battery pack sitting right next to your CPU.
* Charge management: very good -- detailed computer monitoring and balancing of hundreds of individual subcomponents.
* Charge curve: The most common case (~3.5 hours per full charge) is a little gentler than an average laptop charge. The mild case (a 120V socket) is exceedingly gentle. The rare case (fast charging on a long trip, ~1 hour) is worse than for most laptops.
* Discharge curve: Unless the vehicle is being put through track duty, gentler than a laptop.
* Depth of discharge: It's hard to generalize between laptops. Telsa does not charge to 100%, nor allow down to 0%, and the most common discharge case usually only uses a few tens of percents charge before recharging. So in general, well gentler than for a laptop.
Different vehicles vary. The Leaf uses a better chemistry, but poorer temperature regulation. The Volt uses both a better chemistry and good temperature regulation.
How far do you think a Veyron would go at all-out track duty? Seriously, you drive a vehicle with the pedal to the floor, expect your range to suck, no matter what your powertrain.
It doesn't take nearly as long as Top Gear pretended it does, and they knew that. On the standard Tesla charger, a *full* charge (not a daily commute charge, but a "I just drove 200 miles" charge) takes 3 1/2 hours.
Top Gear also pretended the vehicle overheated (it didn't), that they were without a working vehicle at one point (they weren't), that the vehicle ran out of charge (it didn't), and that it would run of charge abnormally earlier than comparable gasoline vehicles (it wouldn't; all-out with a Roadster on the track may only get you ~40 miles, but all-out with a Veyron will only get you ~60).
Top Gear is an entertainment show that doesn't care much for the truth.
As for your "transferring carbon production", the DOE has already extensively studied this (as have many, many other groups). In every case, the conclusion is that even on our current grid, EVs are notably cleaner than gasoline cars. Meanwhile, oil keeps getting dirtier (tar sands, deepwater, etc), while the grid gets cleaner (new power infrastructure in the US is primarily NG and wind).
The Model T was introduced in late 1908. You're talking about where Tesla would be in nearly 2030.
Back in 1908, the Model T cost $850, or over $20k today. But remember that the part count in such a vehicle was many orders of magnitude lower than that in a modern car. Here's what a 1908 Model T looked like under the hood. Not much there! Also remember that the Model T was hardly the first gasoline car produced in America.
Actually, in 32 MPH stop-and-go traffic, you'd probably get more like 400+ miles range. Li-ion EVs excel in those conditions. The optimum steady-state speed for the Tesla Roadster is 15-20 mph. Stop and start causes loss of efficiency, but not nearly as much as highway-speed travel. The Roadster's nominal range would be met at approximately a steady-state of 55mph, if I remember the numbers correctly. Since most people drive faster than that on the highway, most people reported lower achievable ranges.
Good to see they're offering an aero wheel mod. Go Tesla!:)
to peer-reviewed scientific papers? Seriously, what's next -- complaining about an eight-year-old's drawing of Santa at the north pole showing a doubling in the thickness of sea ice?
And yes, I flew over southeast Greenland twice this July, and I can assure you, it's still very much icy;)
The greatest period of economic boomtime in our nation's history -- from the end of WWII to the 1970s -- had a top income tax rate generally in the 75-90% range. Now, one can certainly argue that that wasn't *because* of such a tax structure; there were all sorts of other factors at play. But at the same time, it's pretty hard to argue that it *hindered* our nation's economic growth.
That said, I completely disagree with Obama's approach on this. The focus is entirely misdirected. This is going to hit most of the top several percentiles hard, but the top 1% -- the super-wealthy, who control nearly 40% of the nation's wealth -- only weakly. The wealthiest Americans earn most of their money through capital gains. But naturally, nobody is going to touch the capital gains rate.:P
Furthermore, I'm tired of the standard approach to problems being, "eliminate deductions". A graduated income tax is a way to approximate a tax on luxury spending, without all of the complications such a luxury-spending tax would entail. That is, the poor *can't* spend most of their money on luxuries; they need it for necessities. The wealthy *can't*, except in one type of circumstance, spend their money on necessities; there's just not that much "necessities" a person needs to live, so the rest is going to go toward luxury. The "one type of circumstance" is charitable giving -- helping others with necessities. Hence, those sort of things should be deductible. A high minimum tax which ignores charity not only discourages charity, but it's also unfair, in that you're making it no longer a tax on luxury spending, but simply a tax on success.
"Quite inactive"? The average number of named storms is *above average*, and that's quite inactive to you?
Here's the data for the past decade. Above average is in bold. Over double average is in bold-italics. Over 3x average with stars around it. For less than half of normal, I'll put dashes around it.
Now, seriously, are you going to tell me that you can't tell that we're way above average recently? As I stated in an earlier post, we're in a high cycle of hurricane activity. This is not a controversial fact. Oh, and as for this year: the season is barely half over but we're already at 14-2-2. Extrapolating would yield 28-4-4.
Actually, your analogy is more telling than you realized, because Galileo's big problem, and what he got in trouble for, was that he tried to reinterpret scripture. Aka, he stopped simply doing scientific work and interjected himself into what was then the equivalent of today's political realm. Copernicus, for example, didn't have any of the problems Galileo had. Your bringing up Galileo would be an apt comparison perhaps when talking about a few scientists who willingly take to the public limelight, like Hansen, but not the overwhelming majority of them.
And FYI, the "Summary for Policymakers" was specifically requested of the IPCC. It's just a plain-english version of the technical summary (I challenge you to find anywhere that you think the technical summary is misrepresented). The IPCC doesn't get any more "political" than they were told to. To criticise them for writing the Summary for Policymakers would be like a teacher telling a bunch of students, "Write me a report about abortion", and then criticizing them for discussing abortion in school when they hand in their papers.
Nevermind that CO2 production is inversely correlated with poverty and starvation
One could have made that same argument about water wheels for many centuries of human development. Does that mean that water wheels are and will forever be associated with reducing poverty and starvation? You could have make that same sort of claim for centuries about all sorts of things, from oxcart droppings in your city (aka, how much goods are being hauled around) to the per-capita number of galea helmets in your city (how under the thumb of the Roman empire you were).
Times change. Tech changes. CO2 is just a chemical. It's not the end product.
Right. So when people study the climate, they're doing so because they have a secret agenda, but when they study planets, they're doing it because they love science. Am I following your line of thought correctly?
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, then people will just invent a better fool. ;)
That would look bloody awesome. ;)
No, it wasn't. The first practical steam engine was built in 1692, and the first commercially successful one in 1712. The first practical electric motor was made in 1828, and the first one for turning machinery in 1837. If you want to be more specific as to engine type, the first practical in-cyclinder multi-cycle ICE suitable for vehicle use was built in 1856, while the first variable frequency synchronous motors suitable for vehicle use weren't practical until the 1990s. Want to talk power source? The lithium ion battery was developed starting in the 1970s and released in 1991. Gasoline was first isolated from oil commercially some time in the early 1800s. The first battery was invented in 1792 (notwithstanding some sketchy claims of earlier ones). Humans have been burning fuels, even specifically hydrocarbon fuels, since they lived in caves and hunted ancient megafauna.
No matter how you cut it, thermally-driven engines are much older tech and have had far longer to mature than electrically-driven ones.
It's the one with the laws of physics. You're welcome to join it at any time.
And how about you factor the carbon footprint/environmental impact of battery production into your analysis?
Sorry, but this is a total myth. First, as if batteries have some sort of grossly disproportional amount of carbon involved in their production in comparison to, say, the steel in your internal combustion engine. Second, as if they're not recycled/reused at end-of-life. And third, as if the energy and carbon that goes into a vehicle manufacture is even close to the energy/carbon impact from operating the vehicle over its lifespan. All of these are false.
I'm not going to own two cars just to accommodate the need for longer trips with quick refuel times as that would be exceptionally wasteful.
News for you: Most American families *do* own multiple cars.
Also, most people only go on long road trips rarely. In which case, it can simply make more sense to rent for those rare occasions. I don't drive around in a panel van for those rare occasions a couple times per year that my sedan isn't big enough. I just rent. Why shouldn't the same logic apply to range?
Here you go: Link.
It's the first volume (not really mass production) li-ion EV. If you want to contrast to earlier EV chemistries, then you need to contrast gasoline cars to steam engines.
Simply not true. The main factor that affects your acceleration time is your power to mass ratio. Air resistance is a very small proportion of it. Air resistance is the primary method of energy consumption when *maintaining* speed.
California's gas prices are above average in the US, but their electricity prices are way over average, so it;s a bad comparison. The average residential power price in the US is 10-11 cents per kWh. Commercial rates are more like 9 cents, and industrial, more like 6 cents.
Don't guess on the energy comparison between EVs and gasoline: Use studies.
Yes (although overplayed)... but, note, when used without temperature regulation, poor charge balancing, tougher charge/discharge curves, and deeper depth of discharge.
These sort of factors can make order-of-magnitude lifespan differences, both in terms of cycle life and calendar life. Temperature is a huge factor (and when you use a laptop, you're baking your cells). With charge balancing, even if you don't use the laptop battery, when you finally do, your cells can be out of balance and dramatically limit your capacity; plus, a failure can take out the whole pack (not true with the Roadster). Lastly, the faster charges and discharges in laptops amplify any age-related degradation when used, and the greater average depth of discharge significantly amplifies it.
There's another factor worth noting here as well. Laptops are very voltage-sensitive. Electric motors are not. A change in your laptop battery's voltage discharge curve can total your usable life in a laptop. Not the same in an EV.
Anyway, Tesla's pretty much the only one out there (well, them and the companies they contract for) who uses the approach of using laptop cells. Pretty much everyone else is using more stable li-ion chemistries.
Well, the Volt's pack is going to be *warrantied* for ten years, soo.... Plus, A) EV battery packs can often have parts of them replaced individually, and B) evne a reduced-capacity pack still has value (say, on grid load balancing)
Battery life is always going to be limited by *design*. You can have any sort of lifespan you want out of a battery, from nanoseconds to tens of thousands of years. It's all about tradeoffs. The better the chemistry, the better the temperature regulation. the gentler the charge/discharge curve, the better the charge management, and the lower the depth of discharge range, the longer the lifespan, by orders of magnitude. As for Tesla's design approach:
* Chemistry: nothing special -- same as in laptops
* Temperature regulation: top notch -- a far cry from an unregulated battery pack sitting right next to your CPU.
* Charge management: very good -- detailed computer monitoring and balancing of hundreds of individual subcomponents.
* Charge curve: The most common case (~3.5 hours per full charge) is a little gentler than an average laptop charge. The mild case (a 120V socket) is exceedingly gentle. The rare case (fast charging on a long trip, ~1 hour) is worse than for most laptops.
* Discharge curve: Unless the vehicle is being put through track duty, gentler than a laptop.
* Depth of discharge: It's hard to generalize between laptops. Telsa does not charge to 100%, nor allow down to 0%, and the most common discharge case usually only uses a few tens of percents charge before recharging. So in general, well gentler than for a laptop.
Different vehicles vary. The Leaf uses a better chemistry, but poorer temperature regulation. The Volt uses both a better chemistry and good temperature regulation.
How far do you think a Veyron would go at all-out track duty? Seriously, you drive a vehicle with the pedal to the floor, expect your range to suck, no matter what your powertrain.
It doesn't take nearly as long as Top Gear pretended it does, and they knew that. On the standard Tesla charger, a *full* charge (not a daily commute charge, but a "I just drove 200 miles" charge) takes 3 1/2 hours.
Top Gear also pretended the vehicle overheated (it didn't), that they were without a working vehicle at one point (they weren't), that the vehicle ran out of charge (it didn't), and that it would run of charge abnormally earlier than comparable gasoline vehicles (it wouldn't; all-out with a Roadster on the track may only get you ~40 miles, but all-out with a Veyron will only get you ~60).
Top Gear is an entertainment show that doesn't care much for the truth.
As for your "transferring carbon production", the DOE has already extensively studied this (as have many, many other groups). In every case, the conclusion is that even on our current grid, EVs are notably cleaner than gasoline cars. Meanwhile, oil keeps getting dirtier (tar sands, deepwater, etc), while the grid gets cleaner (new power infrastructure in the US is primarily NG and wind).
Air resistance plays a relatively small role on acceleration times. The faster you accelerate, the smaller the role.
The Model T was introduced in late 1908. You're talking about where Tesla would be in nearly 2030.
Back in 1908, the Model T cost $850, or over $20k today. But remember that the part count in such a vehicle was many orders of magnitude lower than that in a modern car. Here's what a 1908 Model T looked like under the hood. Not much there! Also remember that the Model T was hardly the first gasoline car produced in America.
Actually, in 32 MPH stop-and-go traffic, you'd probably get more like 400+ miles range. Li-ion EVs excel in those conditions. The optimum steady-state speed for the Tesla Roadster is 15-20 mph. Stop and start causes loss of efficiency, but not nearly as much as highway-speed travel. The Roadster's nominal range would be met at approximately a steady-state of 55mph, if I remember the numbers correctly. Since most people drive faster than that on the highway, most people reported lower achievable ranges.
Good to see they're offering an aero wheel mod. Go Tesla! :)
They forgot to blow into the instruction cartridge before they reinserted it back into the system.
to peer-reviewed scientific papers? Seriously, what's next -- complaining about an eight-year-old's drawing of Santa at the north pole showing a doubling in the thickness of sea ice?
And yes, I flew over southeast Greenland twice this July, and I can assure you, it's still very much icy ;)
The greatest period of economic boomtime in our nation's history -- from the end of WWII to the 1970s -- had a top income tax rate generally in the 75-90% range. Now, one can certainly argue that that wasn't *because* of such a tax structure; there were all sorts of other factors at play. But at the same time, it's pretty hard to argue that it *hindered* our nation's economic growth.
That said, I completely disagree with Obama's approach on this. The focus is entirely misdirected. This is going to hit most of the top several percentiles hard, but the top 1% -- the super-wealthy, who control nearly 40% of the nation's wealth -- only weakly. The wealthiest Americans earn most of their money through capital gains. But naturally, nobody is going to touch the capital gains rate. :P
Furthermore, I'm tired of the standard approach to problems being, "eliminate deductions". A graduated income tax is a way to approximate a tax on luxury spending, without all of the complications such a luxury-spending tax would entail. That is, the poor *can't* spend most of their money on luxuries; they need it for necessities. The wealthy *can't*, except in one type of circumstance, spend their money on necessities; there's just not that much "necessities" a person needs to live, so the rest is going to go toward luxury. The "one type of circumstance" is charitable giving -- helping others with necessities. Hence, those sort of things should be deductible. A high minimum tax which ignores charity not only discourages charity, but it's also unfair, in that you're making it no longer a tax on luxury spending, but simply a tax on success.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors...
Please read my earlier comment about hurricanes.
"Quite inactive"? The average number of named storms is *above average*, and that's quite inactive to you?
Here's the data for the past decade. Above average is in bold. Over double average is in bold-italics. Over 3x average with stars around it. For less than half of normal, I'll put dashes around it.
2001 15 9 4 106
2002 12 4 2 66
2003 16 7 3 175
2004 15 9 6 224
2005 28 *15* *7* 248
2006 10 5 2 78
2007 15 6 2 72
2008 16 8 5 144
2009 9 -3- 2 51
2010 19 12 5 165
Average 11.5 6.2 2.4 94.2
Now, seriously, are you going to tell me that you can't tell that we're way above average recently? As I stated in an earlier post, we're in a high cycle of hurricane activity. This is not a controversial fact. Oh, and as for this year: the season is barely half over but we're already at 14-2-2. Extrapolating would yield 28-4-4.
Actually, your analogy is more telling than you realized, because Galileo's big problem, and what he got in trouble for, was that he tried to reinterpret scripture. Aka, he stopped simply doing scientific work and interjected himself into what was then the equivalent of today's political realm. Copernicus, for example, didn't have any of the problems Galileo had. Your bringing up Galileo would be an apt comparison perhaps when talking about a few scientists who willingly take to the public limelight, like Hansen, but not the overwhelming majority of them.
And FYI, the "Summary for Policymakers" was specifically requested of the IPCC. It's just a plain-english version of the technical summary (I challenge you to find anywhere that you think the technical summary is misrepresented). The IPCC doesn't get any more "political" than they were told to. To criticise them for writing the Summary for Policymakers would be like a teacher telling a bunch of students, "Write me a report about abortion", and then criticizing them for discussing abortion in school when they hand in their papers.
Nevermind that CO2 production is inversely correlated with poverty and starvation
One could have made that same argument about water wheels for many centuries of human development. Does that mean that water wheels are and will forever be associated with reducing poverty and starvation? You could have make that same sort of claim for centuries about all sorts of things, from oxcart droppings in your city (aka, how much goods are being hauled around) to the per-capita number of galea helmets in your city (how under the thumb of the Roman empire you were).
Times change. Tech changes. CO2 is just a chemical. It's not the end product.
Right. So when people study the climate, they're doing so because they have a secret agenda, but when they study planets, they're doing it because they love science. Am I following your line of thought correctly?