Boone Pickens is probably best known as a prominent peak oil nut that the doomers like to cite -- he's probably mentioned more than anyone else except for Matthew "Fuzzy Logic" Simmons. Perhaps his best claim to fame is repeatedly predicting wrong dates for peak oil and then shifting them back when they pass by without notice. Of course, his support of the Swift Boat Vets has to rank a close second.
As an aside, the farm that's currently being built is going to be starting out at 1GW. So is the London Array, whose largest investor is Shell. Ultimately, this one will get bigger, though.
It wouldn't be covered by Fair Use at all - you've no legal right to use the music.
The four tests (which you don't have to pass all of them to qualify), are:
1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (whether it achieves the goal of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public or whether it seeks to merely supersede the original for personal profit) 2) The nature of the copyrighted work (for example, Time, despite buying the Zapruder film, wasn't able to enforce its copyright because it was deemed in the public interest) 3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. 4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (This is regarded as the single most important element of fair use.)
1) Passes. 2) Fails. 3) Fails. 4) Passes (half a dozen people actually inquired as to what song it was; it generated interest).
As stated, it is my view upon receiving the notice that it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use. Which is why I didn't contest it. That doesn't mean that it inherently *isn't* fair use; that would take a court determination.
Grr, just noticed what I typed: Oahu! Oahu, not Maui:P Specifically, he flies across the islets on the east coast (the easiest to recognize is Mokolii -- "Chinaman's Hat"), climbs up on the China Walls back on the southeast side, then the next scenes are from Kualoa Ranch, and then he "camps" out most of the time on Kawela Bay, a few hundred feet from a highway and less than a mile from the Turtle Bay Resort.
Well, sometimes it's about making videos that are not about the music. For example, I once made a vid to poke fun of Man vs. Wild, the "Desert Island" episode (back when they were still pretending the show was legit), where I mixed clips of the show with clips of videos found on YouTube that people shot from the same locations on Maui that he pretended were "deserted" (the low res of YouTube makes the comparison not as good, unfortunately; on the hires you can see that every rock and tree matches down to the last pixel). Naturally, the song I set it to was "Loser" by Beck.;)
Just a couple weeks ago, I got a notice from YouTube stating that the label had made a copyright claim on the audio to my vids. YouTube said that they would remain up, but that the copyright holder would have the right to advertise on my vid pages. I didn't contest it because while the video aspects were clearly within my rights (parody and criticism), I wasn't parodying or criticizing the music, so it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use.
While composites make a great skin, you wouldn't want them for crumple zones. They absorb a lot of energy, but they shatter. One break, and you've lost *all* your protection. Not to mention, no crumpling going on there.
I left out aluminum because magnesium is a more extreme example of the same thing -- lighter weight, weaker metals.
The whole point of "having a lot of metal around you" *is* crumple zones and safety cells. You could make a "safety cell" out of aluminum wire and have it weigh only a pound, but it wouldn't do a darn thing for you in an accident. A good safety cell takes weight -- things like titanium and superalloys allowing for lower weight compromise, but not some incredible amount, and they come with a huge price tag.
The N600 and the old Minis were very unsafe, so you're reinforcing my point. Remember, the Mini was withdrawn from sale in the US in 1968 because it couldn't meet US crash standards. *1968* US crash standards. Oh, and these cars didn't have weight and drag from extra things like wings and props, nor need nearly as much power.
Except that superfluid CO2 is more misceable in oil than water, and thus able to get more out of the crevases in the reservoir rock. It also essentially separates itself from the oil on the recovery well, so only takes a compressor and some pipe to feed it back into the injection well.
Many people have this strange notion that oil recovery technology is static and has been so ever since the turn of the century. It's amazing how much recovery techniques have advanced. Which is why, while "recoverable oil" is an important stat to look at on a field, for the long term, "original oil in place" can be more important. What is recoverable changes with time. I'd bet you money that in 10-15 years, if Pemex would let more modern oil companies in instead of trying to incompetently do it themselves, recoverable oil in Chicontepec would increase several times over with modern reservoir enhancement techniques, horizontal drilling, and so on.
And with something like this, I'd expect it all the more. If you want it to both drive and fly, it's going to have to be poor at one, the other, or most likely, both, and the more you try and make it not be bad at both, the more it's going to cost. For example, the passenger safety cell. To be safe, you need to get a lot of metal around you. Sure, you could use titanium to have it just as strong as steel but 60% of the weight, but that'd really raise costs, and honestly, 60% of the weight isn't enough of a cut. You could built it out of magnesium, also raising the costs and dramacally reducing the weight, but then you'd have a safety cell that's not very safe at all.
This applies to almost all elements of the car's design. Those wings are raising your weight and CdA in normal driving. So does the prop. The wings also will catch crosswinds badly. Car safety features like traction control and enhanced stability control are worthless in flight. Your suspension, tire, and transmission needs are quite different in each. And so on.
Anyone who actually thinks about what radioactivity means will see the fallacy here:
Yes, transmutation occurs. No, transmutation is not some fundamental problem. If it was, nuclear power itself wouldn't work. The fact is that the waste takes up a miniscule amount of space, in the whole scheme of things, and isn't going to just walk off without someone taking it there.
A quantity of nuclear waste is an active retort whose future qualities are not predictable.
I strongly disagree. The results of nuclear decay chains are quite predictable.
My main problem with nuclear power is the price. If they can take care of that, power to them. Or from them, or whatever.
Carbonated water is nontoxic unless highly concentrated. It is easily neutralized. And yes, it forms limestone caverns; not sure I'd call that a "bad thing".:)
My point is that CO2 can have some chemical activity and I don't know what research has been done on the effects of putting a hundred thousand tons of CO2 into groundwater and leaving it indefinitely.
Which is, of course, not what I suggested. I said it won't *contaminate* groundwater, not that we should inject it all straight into groundwater.
Nuclear waste just sits there in a small space, becoming slowly less harmful as time goes on. If we reprocessed it, we could get rid of most of it anyways, plus get ourselves more fuel. And, while nuclear accidents are far more common than most of the Slashdot proponents like to pretend -- even serious or potentially serious ones -- containment structures have saved our collective arses many times over. So long as we don't start lining up behind containment-structure-free reactors, such as PBMRs, there's not really a problem.
The problem is economic. Nuclear power is currently very expensive, even with subsidy. The companies seeking to profit off of a "nuclear rennaisance" claim to be cost competitive this time around. We'll have to see if they can pull it off.
Meanwhile, wind and solar thermal are making steady progress toward coal parity. Photovoltaics looks to be on the verge of blowing coal away with its Moore's Law-style advancement. The problem is that these aren't baseload. And while you can use various types of pumped storage, there's another problem: long-term reductions in input. For example, take solar. Twice in the 1800s there were volcanic events that led to "years without a summer". In history, some of these events have been so powerful that they led to worldwide crop failures and the sun as just a dim glow. Imagine a world reliant on solar power in such an event. Not good. These things should simply be to supplement baseload, not to provide it -- even with pumped or battery storage (unless someone has a way to store about half all of our power needs for a couple years...).
No, what I'm really hopeful for -- and again, we'll have to see how the economics plays out, because you never know on things like this -- is enhanced geothermal. Depending on where you are, it involves drilling several wells between one and half a dozen miles down. You use pressure, water, solvents, etc to open up fractures at the base, like when working with a difficult oil reservoir. Then, you just inject water into one well and get hot, pressurized steam out of the others. Baseload power, and there's literally tens of thousands of times more geothermal electricity potential in the US than all of the electricity we currently consume.
But we need to see if it can be done affordably. Just like next-gen nuclear.
CO2 doesn't contaminate groundwater. Nuclear waste doesn't allow for huge amounts of enhanced oil recovery or coalbed methane recovery.
The capital costs are very high, but if used for a purpose, CO2 injection can pay for itself. CO2 injection in the US alone has the potential to recover ~100-400B barrels (restoring old, "used up" fields like the East Texas Field, plus injection into all of the large fields we're currently tapping and the ones we haven't started tapping yet). That's 10-40 trillion dollars at $100/barrel -- a couple times the size of the US GDP. There's not as much money in coalbed methane recovery, but it's still substantial.
$15k? Your glasses aren't just rose-tinted; they're made of literal roses.
Until people can learn to get over the sticker shock and consider the price savings, this is going to be a big problem for EVs, because they're not going to hit anything like $15k any time soon. The penny-or-two per mile energy costs and low maintenance (assuming they use a good battery pack) are the selling point. $30k is more reasonable for what you want right now. $25k, perhaps even $20k without subsidy in 5-10 years (probably closer to 10).
Why are you reinforcing my points about EVs being lower drag than conventional cars? That's a huge difference. Oh, and in terms of CdA, EVs tend to be even lower.
Anemic performance? You're kidding, right? Some of the fastest vehicles in the world right now in terms of 0-60 acceleration are EVs; there are several 0-60 in ~3 second electric cars and a couple 0-60 in 1 second motorcycles. Even of these "low end" EVs that I listed, 0-60 times are between 7 and 10 seconds -- certainly not "anemic".
As for why you'd buy one, when it saves you a couple thousand a year in terms of energy costs *and* has lower maintenance, I'd think the question should be why *wouldn't* you. Especially since that sort of range is enough for ~95% of the average person's driving. And if you're really obsessed with the "every vehicle must be able to do every task, present-day" concept, get a PHEV.
Sure am.:) I'm doing my purchase through a trusted California relative. When Aptera gets to my number, I'll give my relative the money for the purchase, they'll buy the car, and then sign it over to me. I plan to ship it back to me via a car moving service (costs about $1k).
I'm not concerned about maintenance because, apart from car accidents, what is there to break that a normal mechanic can't take care of? The ordinary drivebelt? The ordinary Potenza tires? The ordinary brake pads and rotors? I mean, all of the stuff that has any remote chance of needing replacement before Aptera expands nationwide is commodity.
Humans are poor converters of chemical energy to mechanical energy (~15%), and food is an extremely poor conversion of sunlight energy (and oil, from farming equipment and delivery trucks) into chemical energy (usually 2 or 3% for most crops; meat is a small fraction of even that) (A sun-tracking solar power plant will give you 20-30% of the energy that strikes it). And the human body is a high drag shape; the Aptera, as big as it is, actually has less CdA (coefficient of drag times cross sectional area) than a person riding a 10-speed bike.
Easy answer: drag coefficients. The Prius, already one of the most aerodynamic on the road, has a drag coefficient of 0.26. The Aptera's is a mere 0.11. To make up for deficiencies in battery energy density, EV makers make their cars extremely aerodynamic to get more range out of the same-sized pack. If you don't like extremely aerodynamic shapes, that's your problem; I personally find them beautiful.
5-10 years down the road, battery tech will be to the point where you can get some of your higher drag, more conventional shapes. I find them not nearly as attractive, but there are plenty of people who will take your side.
You want to put a wager on that?;) I may not be getting mine until the end of 2009, but others are going to be getting theirs very shortly.
And they've been saying that for how long?:)
In all seriousness, I do expect Tesla to get the kinks out of drivetrain 1.5 and get the line rolling again soon enough. But the criticism that Aptera is somehow way behind Tesla isn't serious, at least at this point.
The i-EV has rear seats; it's a 4-seater, too. 100 mile range all-electric only; no plug-in version like the Aptera Typ-1h, the VentureOne, or the Volt.
I'd love to live in the universe where some damaged body panels is "no different" than a bent axle.
That's an unfair comparison. If the impact force is only enough to bend body panels, then the casing of the wheel pod is all that would be damaged. If the force is enough to bend an axle, then an equivalent collision elsewhere on a car would do more than just "damage body panels".
I've talked with Prowler owners before, by the way, and not one has had any damage to their outrigger wheels. They've all said it takes some getting used to where the wheels are, but once you do, it's no different.
Anyways, we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully there will be an affordable EV or PHEV coming out that you do like. What are your opinions on the i-EV (formerly i-MiEV) and the Volt?
Second, the roadster is expected to last about 100K miles before needing to have the batteries replaced.
Perhaps... assuming you drive it 200 miles a day. Laptop cells suffer serious time degradation. They *also* have cycle life limit problems, but that's the smaller of the two issues.
Third, while the current generations of LiIon have a limited set of charges, the research is extending this out all the time. A number of the other types which Tesla will no doubt buy patents rights for, will charge many more times than a 1000.
Yes -- phosphates, titanates, spinels, etc -- which I've been mentioning. And no, they won't buy the rights; there's no way they could afford them (except perhaps on titanates, since AltairNano is struggling... not sure it'd be a wise buy). And in some cases , such as the phosphates, who owns the rights is confusing enough. Almost everyone making reasonable-priced EVs right now is using phosphates, titanates, or spinels. Tesla is *behind* on this. I don't fault them; they need the better energy density, their customers can afford it, and when they started, these techs were less mature. But that doesn't change the fact that they're using something that's inferior tech for automotive applications.
I haven't yet run into a person who is neutral about the Aptera's styling; I find about a fifty-fifty split of "Uck! That thing is hideous!" and "Wow, that is the neatest looking car I've ever seen!"
As with all cars, if you damage a part of the car, you pay to get it repaired. No different with an Aptera. You damage a wheel pod, you pay to get it fixed. Aptera is hardly the first car to have exposed wheels. As for three wheelers, there's a big difference between delta and tadpole configurations.
ZAP is a hype company. The ZAP-X simply will never exist. They do these CG renderings talking about what they're going to do every time they need to drive prices up before splitting their stock. Then the hype-car magically disappears down the memory hole. All ZAP sells, and all they probably will ever sell, are underpowered, crummy-quality Chinese golf cars sold as cars and marked up 400%.
Phoenix has some good vehicles, but they're just too expensive for most people. If they can get their prices down, they'd definitely have a significant market. The problem is that they hitched themselves to AltairNano, who has been having problems getting the prices on their titanate cells down. $2/Wh is simply unacceptable.
I could list other cars I excluded. The WhiteStar, even if Tesla can bring it to market, is also targetted out of the price range of most customers. Subaru's R1e is priced well, but I find 60 miles range and a ~60mph top speed insufficient (now, if they were to release the G4e...). The Th1nk City is way too expensive for what you get once you factor in the battery rental fee; its stats are unimpressive to begin with. Nissan Renault hasn't been open enough about their offerings. I could keep going if you like.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
Boone Pickens is probably best known as a prominent peak oil nut that the doomers like to cite -- he's probably mentioned more than anyone else except for Matthew "Fuzzy Logic" Simmons. Perhaps his best claim to fame is repeatedly predicting wrong dates for peak oil and then shifting them back when they pass by without notice. Of course, his support of the Swift Boat Vets has to rank a close second.
As an aside, the farm that's currently being built is going to be starting out at 1GW. So is the London Array, whose largest investor is Shell. Ultimately, this one will get bigger, though.
It wouldn't be covered by Fair Use at all - you've no legal right to use the music.
The four tests (which you don't have to pass all of them to qualify), are:
1) The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (whether it achieves the goal of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public or whether it seeks to merely supersede the original for personal profit)
2) The nature of the copyrighted work (for example, Time, despite buying the Zapruder film, wasn't able to enforce its copyright because it was deemed in the public interest)
3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (This is regarded as the single most important element of fair use.)
1) Passes. 2) Fails. 3) Fails. 4) Passes (half a dozen people actually inquired as to what song it was; it generated interest).
As stated, it is my view upon receiving the notice that it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use. Which is why I didn't contest it. That doesn't mean that it inherently *isn't* fair use; that would take a court determination.
Grr, just noticed what I typed: Oahu! Oahu, not Maui :P Specifically, he flies across the islets on the east coast (the easiest to recognize is Mokolii -- "Chinaman's Hat"), climbs up on the China Walls back on the southeast side, then the next scenes are from Kualoa Ranch, and then he "camps" out most of the time on Kawela Bay, a few hundred feet from a highway and less than a mile from the Turtle Bay Resort.
Well, sometimes it's about making videos that are not about the music. For example, I once made a vid to poke fun of Man vs. Wild, the "Desert Island" episode (back when they were still pretending the show was legit), where I mixed clips of the show with clips of videos found on YouTube that people shot from the same locations on Maui that he pretended were "deserted" (the low res of YouTube makes the comparison not as good, unfortunately; on the hires you can see that every rock and tree matches down to the last pixel). Naturally, the song I set it to was "Loser" by Beck. ;)
Just a couple weeks ago, I got a notice from YouTube stating that the label had made a copyright claim on the audio to my vids. YouTube said that they would remain up, but that the copyright holder would have the right to advertise on my vid pages. I didn't contest it because while the video aspects were clearly within my rights (parody and criticism), I wasn't parodying or criticizing the music, so it wouldn't be as likely to be covered by Fair Use.
While composites make a great skin, you wouldn't want them for crumple zones. They absorb a lot of energy, but they shatter. One break, and you've lost *all* your protection. Not to mention, no crumpling going on there.
I left out aluminum because magnesium is a more extreme example of the same thing -- lighter weight, weaker metals.
The whole point of "having a lot of metal around you" *is* crumple zones and safety cells. You could make a "safety cell" out of aluminum wire and have it weigh only a pound, but it wouldn't do a darn thing for you in an accident. A good safety cell takes weight -- things like titanium and superalloys allowing for lower weight compromise, but not some incredible amount, and they come with a huge price tag.
The N600 and the old Minis were very unsafe, so you're reinforcing my point. Remember, the Mini was withdrawn from sale in the US in 1968 because it couldn't meet US crash standards. *1968* US crash standards. Oh, and these cars didn't have weight and drag from extra things like wings and props, nor need nearly as much power.
Except that superfluid CO2 is more misceable in oil than water, and thus able to get more out of the crevases in the reservoir rock. It also essentially separates itself from the oil on the recovery well, so only takes a compressor and some pipe to feed it back into the injection well.
Many people have this strange notion that oil recovery technology is static and has been so ever since the turn of the century. It's amazing how much recovery techniques have advanced. Which is why, while "recoverable oil" is an important stat to look at on a field, for the long term, "original oil in place" can be more important. What is recoverable changes with time. I'd bet you money that in 10-15 years, if Pemex would let more modern oil companies in instead of trying to incompetently do it themselves, recoverable oil in Chicontepec would increase several times over with modern reservoir enhancement techniques, horizontal drilling, and so on.
And with something like this, I'd expect it all the more. If you want it to both drive and fly, it's going to have to be poor at one, the other, or most likely, both, and the more you try and make it not be bad at both, the more it's going to cost. For example, the passenger safety cell. To be safe, you need to get a lot of metal around you. Sure, you could use titanium to have it just as strong as steel but 60% of the weight, but that'd really raise costs, and honestly, 60% of the weight isn't enough of a cut. You could built it out of magnesium, also raising the costs and dramacally reducing the weight, but then you'd have a safety cell that's not very safe at all.
This applies to almost all elements of the car's design. Those wings are raising your weight and CdA in normal driving. So does the prop. The wings also will catch crosswinds badly. Car safety features like traction control and enhanced stability control are worthless in flight. Your suspension, tire, and transmission needs are quite different in each. And so on.
Anyone who actually thinks about what radioactivity means will see the fallacy here:
Yes, transmutation occurs. No, transmutation is not some fundamental problem. If it was, nuclear power itself wouldn't work. The fact is that the waste takes up a miniscule amount of space, in the whole scheme of things, and isn't going to just walk off without someone taking it there.
A quantity of nuclear waste is an active retort whose future qualities are not predictable.
I strongly disagree. The results of nuclear decay chains are quite predictable.
My main problem with nuclear power is the price. If they can take care of that, power to them. Or from them, or whatever.
Carbonated water is nontoxic unless highly concentrated. It is easily neutralized. And yes, it forms limestone caverns; not sure I'd call that a "bad thing". :)
My point is that CO2 can have some chemical activity and I don't know what research has been done on the effects of putting a hundred thousand tons of CO2 into groundwater and leaving it indefinitely.
Which is, of course, not what I suggested. I said it won't *contaminate* groundwater, not that we should inject it all straight into groundwater.
Nuclear waste just sits there in a small space, becoming slowly less harmful as time goes on. If we reprocessed it, we could get rid of most of it anyways, plus get ourselves more fuel. And, while nuclear accidents are far more common than most of the Slashdot proponents like to pretend -- even serious or potentially serious ones -- containment structures have saved our collective arses many times over. So long as we don't start lining up behind containment-structure-free reactors, such as PBMRs, there's not really a problem.
The problem is economic. Nuclear power is currently very expensive, even with subsidy. The companies seeking to profit off of a "nuclear rennaisance" claim to be cost competitive this time around. We'll have to see if they can pull it off.
Meanwhile, wind and solar thermal are making steady progress toward coal parity. Photovoltaics looks to be on the verge of blowing coal away with its Moore's Law-style advancement. The problem is that these aren't baseload. And while you can use various types of pumped storage, there's another problem: long-term reductions in input. For example, take solar. Twice in the 1800s there were volcanic events that led to "years without a summer". In history, some of these events have been so powerful that they led to worldwide crop failures and the sun as just a dim glow. Imagine a world reliant on solar power in such an event. Not good. These things should simply be to supplement baseload, not to provide it -- even with pumped or battery storage (unless someone has a way to store about half all of our power needs for a couple years...).
No, what I'm really hopeful for -- and again, we'll have to see how the economics plays out, because you never know on things like this -- is enhanced geothermal. Depending on where you are, it involves drilling several wells between one and half a dozen miles down. You use pressure, water, solvents, etc to open up fractures at the base, like when working with a difficult oil reservoir. Then, you just inject water into one well and get hot, pressurized steam out of the others. Baseload power, and there's literally tens of thousands of times more geothermal electricity potential in the US than all of the electricity we currently consume.
But we need to see if it can be done affordably. Just like next-gen nuclear.
CO2 doesn't contaminate groundwater.
Nuclear waste doesn't allow for huge amounts of enhanced oil recovery or coalbed methane recovery.
The capital costs are very high, but if used for a purpose, CO2 injection can pay for itself. CO2 injection in the US alone has the potential to recover ~100-400B barrels (restoring old, "used up" fields like the East Texas Field, plus injection into all of the large fields we're currently tapping and the ones we haven't started tapping yet). That's 10-40 trillion dollars at $100/barrel -- a couple times the size of the US GDP. There's not as much money in coalbed methane recovery, but it's still substantial.
$15k? Your glasses aren't just rose-tinted; they're made of literal roses.
Until people can learn to get over the sticker shock and consider the price savings, this is going to be a big problem for EVs, because they're not going to hit anything like $15k any time soon. The penny-or-two per mile energy costs and low maintenance (assuming they use a good battery pack) are the selling point. $30k is more reasonable for what you want right now. $25k, perhaps even $20k without subsidy in 5-10 years (probably closer to 10).
Why are you reinforcing my points about EVs being lower drag than conventional cars? That's a huge difference. Oh, and in terms of CdA, EVs tend to be even lower.
Anemic performance? You're kidding, right? Some of the fastest vehicles in the world right now in terms of 0-60 acceleration are EVs; there are several 0-60 in ~3 second electric cars and a couple 0-60 in 1 second motorcycles. Even of these "low end" EVs that I listed, 0-60 times are between 7 and 10 seconds -- certainly not "anemic".
As for why you'd buy one, when it saves you a couple thousand a year in terms of energy costs *and* has lower maintenance, I'd think the question should be why *wouldn't* you. Especially since that sort of range is enough for ~95% of the average person's driving. And if you're really obsessed with the "every vehicle must be able to do every task, present-day" concept, get a PHEV.
Sure am. :) I'm doing my purchase through a trusted California relative. When Aptera gets to my number, I'll give my relative the money for the purchase, they'll buy the car, and then sign it over to me. I plan to ship it back to me via a car moving service (costs about $1k).
I'm not concerned about maintenance because, apart from car accidents, what is there to break that a normal mechanic can't take care of? The ordinary drivebelt? The ordinary Potenza tires? The ordinary brake pads and rotors? I mean, all of the stuff that has any remote chance of needing replacement before Aptera expands nationwide is commodity.
Humans are poor converters of chemical energy to mechanical energy (~15%), and food is an extremely poor conversion of sunlight energy (and oil, from farming equipment and delivery trucks) into chemical energy (usually 2 or 3% for most crops; meat is a small fraction of even that) (A sun-tracking solar power plant will give you 20-30% of the energy that strikes it). And the human body is a high drag shape; the Aptera, as big as it is, actually has less CdA (coefficient of drag times cross sectional area) than a person riding a 10-speed bike.
Easy answer: drag coefficients. The Prius, already one of the most aerodynamic on the road, has a drag coefficient of 0.26. The Aptera's is a mere 0.11. To make up for deficiencies in battery energy density, EV makers make their cars extremely aerodynamic to get more range out of the same-sized pack. If you don't like extremely aerodynamic shapes, that's your problem; I personally find them beautiful.
5-10 years down the road, battery tech will be to the point where you can get some of your higher drag, more conventional shapes. I find them not nearly as attractive, but there are plenty of people who will take your side.
You want to put a wager on that? ;) I may not be getting mine until the end of 2009, but others are going to be getting theirs very shortly.
:)
And they've been saying that for how long?
In all seriousness, I do expect Tesla to get the kinks out of drivetrain 1.5 and get the line rolling again soon enough. But the criticism that Aptera is somehow way behind Tesla isn't serious, at least at this point.
The i-EV has rear seats; it's a 4-seater, too. 100 mile range all-electric only; no plug-in version like the Aptera Typ-1h, the VentureOne, or the Volt.
I'd love to live in the universe where some damaged body panels is "no different" than a bent axle.
That's an unfair comparison. If the impact force is only enough to bend body panels, then the casing of the wheel pod is all that would be damaged. If the force is enough to bend an axle, then an equivalent collision elsewhere on a car would do more than just "damage body panels".
I've talked with Prowler owners before, by the way, and not one has had any damage to their outrigger wheels. They've all said it takes some getting used to where the wheels are, but once you do, it's no different.
Anyways, we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully there will be an affordable EV or PHEV coming out that you do like. What are your opinions on the i-EV (formerly i-MiEV) and the Volt?
Second, the roadster is expected to last about 100K miles before needing to have the batteries replaced.
Perhaps... assuming you drive it 200 miles a day. Laptop cells suffer serious time degradation. They *also* have cycle life limit problems, but that's the smaller of the two issues.
Third, while the current generations of LiIon have a limited set of charges, the research is extending this out all the time. A number of the other types which Tesla will no doubt buy patents rights for, will charge many more times than a 1000.
Yes -- phosphates, titanates, spinels, etc -- which I've been mentioning. And no, they won't buy the rights; there's no way they could afford them (except perhaps on titanates, since AltairNano is struggling... not sure it'd be a wise buy). And in some cases , such as the phosphates, who owns the rights is confusing enough. Almost everyone making reasonable-priced EVs right now is using phosphates, titanates, or spinels. Tesla is *behind* on this. I don't fault them; they need the better energy density, their customers can afford it, and when they started, these techs were less mature. But that doesn't change the fact that they're using something that's inferior tech for automotive applications.
ZENN makes NEVs. Until that changes, they're not worth considering as a replacement for a normal car.
I haven't yet run into a person who is neutral about the Aptera's styling; I find about a fifty-fifty split of "Uck! That thing is hideous!" and "Wow, that is the neatest looking car I've ever seen!"
As with all cars, if you damage a part of the car, you pay to get it repaired. No different with an Aptera. You damage a wheel pod, you pay to get it fixed. Aptera is hardly the first car to have exposed wheels. As for three wheelers, there's a big difference between delta and tadpole configurations.
ZAP is a hype company. The ZAP-X simply will never exist. They do these CG renderings talking about what they're going to do every time they need to drive prices up before splitting their stock. Then the hype-car magically disappears down the memory hole. All ZAP sells, and all they probably will ever sell, are underpowered, crummy-quality Chinese golf cars sold as cars and marked up 400%.
Phoenix has some good vehicles, but they're just too expensive for most people. If they can get their prices down, they'd definitely have a significant market. The problem is that they hitched themselves to AltairNano, who has been having problems getting the prices on their titanate cells down. $2/Wh is simply unacceptable.
I could list other cars I excluded. The WhiteStar, even if Tesla can bring it to market, is also targetted out of the price range of most customers. Subaru's R1e is priced well, but I find 60 miles range and a ~60mph top speed insufficient (now, if they were to release the G4e...). The Th1nk City is way too expensive for what you get once you factor in the battery rental fee; its stats are unimpressive to begin with. Nissan Renault hasn't been open enough about their offerings. I could keep going if you like.