Oh, one more thing: expect to see things get more impressive with time. For example: a lot of people are expecting the handling to be poor on the Roadster because the battery pack will weigh slightly over a tonne (at current cell energy densities). Sure, Tesla will be going all out to make the rest of the car light, but still, that's a lot of weight underneath you, right?
But there's one thing people are forgetting: torque steering. The rear wheels are each driven by separate motors, each hooked up to wheels with very sticky tires. You can have one side going full thrust forward and the other side going full thrust in reverse if you wanted. You could make the car pirouette in place if you wanted. Computer controlled J turns, precise drift control, etc? They're only limited by their programming; there's a lot more potential here than you can achieve with just differential braking.
And we already know that Tesla is working heavily on torque steering; this isn't something that's going to come as a surprise to them. Torque steering is the principle behind the anti-jackknifing approach on Semi.
Meanwhile, spyshots and the VIN count on Model 3 show production greatly accelerating.
As for "exaggerating everything" - you mean like promising a battery within 100 days of signing a contract, and delivering it in 55? Promising the Model 3 with 215 mile range, then delivering it with 220, with an option for 310 - a number that's in turn downrated from EPA testing of 334 miles? What exaggerations about vehicle stats and pricing are you thinking of exactly?
NMC li-ion, likely 2170 form factor, 4x packs. Hard to estimate the number of bricks (because we don't know the voltage) and thus the number of cells per brick.
The charge times are perfectly normal for Tesla cells. 30 minutes to 80% is the standard for supercharging as well. It's just more cells and more power.
With a title like that, you know the article is going to be good for a laugh. Sort of like people who say "physics says..." who wouldn't even recognize the formulae that apply to the problem in question if you wrote them out in front of them.
1) Passengers in the Roadster noted how high its floor is. Aka: it's a double-high pack. Tesla already makes 100kWh packs for the S and X that are single-high. They may need to extend a bit further forward and back because the Roadster is a bit smaller of a footprint (on S and X they only slightly overlap the wheelbase, and on Model 3 they're inside the wheelbase entirely), but there's nothing at all implausible about 200kWh in such a form factor.
2) The megacharger charge port has been filmed by KMan. It has 8 giant pins in what appear to be a 2x4 arrangement, with ground and control pins likely clustered in a side slot on the right. These pins are much larger than those on the supercharger port, and there's a lot more of them. Also note the 2x4 arrangement: there appear to be four separate battery packs, and there 4 separate drive units. It appears that bloody everything on this vehicle is redundant (one assumes that there's at least a charge balancing system between the packs).
3) The means to provide the power to the megachargers is very, very simple: they're battery buffered. Tesla has always been clear on this; they're not drawing that power straight from the grid. More to the point, Semi uses the same battery chemistry as Tesla's grid-battery buffers (NMC). It's an extremely durable chemistry.
4) The article is very reasonable in its assessment of the battery capacity on the 500mi semi - they say 600-1000kWh (I've been working on the assumption of 900kWh, but it could be a bit less). Their estimate on the price, however, assumes that batteries cost $100-$170/kWh retail. Yet the raw material costs for said cells is only about $50/kWh - and that's currently at "spiked" prices which can be expected to drop as the mining industry readjusts to the new demand curve (historic prices would be more like $35/kWh). The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make li-ion batteries - finally - get closer to the cost of the raw materials that go into them. These numbers simply suggest that the Gigafactory has done exactly what it was designed to do.
5) Their estimate of the weight of the battery pack is probably correct (around 5 tonnes). However, in addition to the weight savings from using electric drive units vs. a big diesel / transmission / pollution controls / etc, Tesla always builds light. Don't expect the primary structure to be made of mild steel on this one; expect UHS steel, with 4-5 times the tensile strength, for example. Guillen stated in Europe that it has the same payload capacity as a diesel semi (aka, the tractor is no heavier), and that's probably correct.
Or, to put it another way: none of the "experts" expected the Model 3 SR to come in at almost exactly the same weight as the BMW 330i, with the same performance, more standard features, and a cheaper price. It did. And the LR isn't much heavier than a 330i, and well faster (can't wait to see the specs on the performance package!)
6) Charge rates of 7 cents per kWh: First off, their estimate that charging should cost 40 cents per kWh is just absurd. Pure nonsense. Even Tesla's current generation of superchargers is half that ($0,20/kWh), and they have to pay demand charges. That said, 7 cents per kWh comes across as extremely ambitious... until you start looking into it. And then you realize how much of a game changer it is that Tesla is doing here.
1) Tesla has no materials shortages. But hey, go ahead and make up whatever you want. 2) Model 3 is about 3 months behind schedule. Oooh, stop the presses. Meanwhile, the production rate has really shot up in the past couple weeks.
Most Tesla owners supercharge. It does not kill the batteries.
* With the old NCAs, there are no limits at all
* With the new NCAs (silicon in the anodes), they limit current after several dozen supercharges (although it's not that big of a slowdown)
* Semi uses NMCs, which are used in Tesla's grid products and by their very nature designed to surge charge / discharge.
This is not correct. Tesla was very clear during the unveiling that semi uses NMC. It's not clear whether Model 3 is NMC or NCA. Model S and X are NCA. Who knows about Roadster.
Realistically, an electric RV needs a couple weeks to solar charge. But a couple days on 50A would do the job as well. Add in the option of 30 minute megacharges..
There's an interesting thing to consider about the megachargers. I think a lot of people considered Musk's line about the stations being solar powered to be a throwaway remark, along the lines of "they'll have solar awnings, so "a little" of the power provided is solar". Furthermore, I think a lot of people see the announced price ($0,07/kW) to be just a loss leader. But after going over the numbers.... I think they've hit on something huge. Much bigger than just Semi.
Semi uses NMC cells, same as Tesla's grid products. And when you compare the price on the 500 mile vs. the 300 mile Semis, you come up with a price per kWh of something like $80-85/kWh... *after* profit. Tesla usually uses a 25% margin, so you're looking at under $70/kWh. Now, while impressive, and a huge leap forward in battery prices, it's certainly possible. The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make battery prices approach raw material costs, and raw materials for them are something like $50/kWh (and that's with currently elevated raw material costs).
Traditional superchargers draw straight from the grid, but they're increasingly starting to use Powerpack battery buffers, and Megacharger will certainly require them in bulk. The battery buffers reduce demand charges from the grid by evening out load and simplify the charging process (cheaper chargers), but you have to pay for them, and they're expensive.
Now let's diverge for a moment and look at solar power. Solar power is getting *cheap*. Around $1,10/W installed in the US nowadays, and falling. The problem with solar (which increases its costs) is, you need either peaking or a battery buffer to handle nighttime and cloudy days. There's also wind power, which is also now very cheap, but also suffers from the same intermittency problem (only more random). And battery buffers are very expensive.
Or, at least, they were. Because the prices on these NMCs are crazy cheap, and they're the same batteries that are used in Tesla's grid products. But wait, it gets even better. Megachargers need a battery buffer to be able to surge charge vehicles. Solar and wind power need a battery buffer to handle intermittency. The key is, you don't need two separate buffers - only the one. The very battery buffer that lets you run a megacharger will also buffer solar and wind. And the price on said buffer should now be far cheaper than it used to be.
I've run some numbers over on the Tesla Motors Club forum, but the short of it is... if Tesla's batteries really are this cheap, then they really should be able to run the stations for solar and wind at $0,07/kWh and turn a profit. Not mere "solar awnings", of course; it means grid-scale solar plants (and/or wind farms), connected to the megacharger. But it's a paradigm shift. And the drop in storage prices is a paradigm shift everywhere, not just for chargers.
Caveat: some assumptions had to be made:
* The size of the battery packs on the Semi models (but that should be pretty accurate)
* That Tesla isn't deliberately undervaluing the cost of the larger battery vs. the smaller one (lower margin, etc). Although it's not clear why they would want to do that; it seems just as likely that they would do the opposite, and either way, the cost of the vehicles as a whole argues for cheap batteries.
* That the trucks in general aren't some sort of big loss leaders (but there's no way Tesla could afford that - at least not for any significant length of time)
* That the prices Tesla thinks the batteries will cost are correct
Honestly though... I think that it's simply what it appears to be: that through manufacturing scale and advancing research, li-ion batteries are (finally!) starting to approach their raw materials costs. And that's a game changer.
Oh shit! You better hurry and tell Tesla that a standard EV charge point isn't going to work!!! You swear that Tesla is run by a bunch of idiots who haven't the foggiest clue about electricity!
The other funny one you see a lot is the concept that Tesla hasn't the foggiest clue about semis. Never mind that the head of Tesla's Semi programme, Jerome Guillen, headed the Cascadia program at Daimler, and that the Semi unit is packed full of truck people, and the truck was engineered in close cooperation with major fleet operators (which is why they had orders already lined up at the launch event).
* A 14 hour window containing...
* 11 hours of driving, with...
* A 30 minute break no more than...
* 8 hours since the last rest period
30 minutes break at a megacharger adds 400 miles to a Semi (900 total). At the rated 60mph, that's 15 hours - far more than the maximum drivers are allowed to drive.
Of course, those mileage figures are for 60mph. Speed doesn't affect freight vehicles as much as passenger vehicles (freight vehicles have a lower ratio of aero drag to rolling drag), but it's still significant. Likewise, at higher driving speeds, you burn through miles faster regardless. 70mph with a 30 minute charging stop should be nearly 11 hours driving exactly. For 80mph, you need two 30 minute charge periods to fill up the full 11 hours (but that still comes well under the 14 hour driving window).
Truck speed limits in the US vary greatly. In higher speed limit states, trucks tend to significantly vary in speed, with more time-sensitive goods going faster, while goods where keeping fuel costs down matters more move slower. With electric, since the "fuel" is so much cheaper, you can expect faster driving to be the more economically optimal case (since it doesn't push drivers out of their legal driving windows).
In Europe it's way too easy. It's just simply: 45 minutes break every 4 1/2 hours or less
Typical degradation for Tesla batteries is about 4% in the first year, then 1/2 to 1% in each subsequent year. See the raw data and charts here. And that's for Model S, which uses NCA packs. Semi using NMC cells, which are even more durable.
The darkness is all there is. Our civilization is just a thin crust on an unending void. No heaven, no hell, nothing waiting for us but the sweet embrace of death and nothingness.
The "safe drinking level" for perchlorate in water on Earth for a 70kg human is 32 parts per billion. The average level of perchlorates in Martian regolith is half a percent, and the hypothetical perchlorate brines were "perchlorate salts containing only the minimum amount of water to make them flow". Even bacteria do not survive in such perchlorate concentrations (only the hardiest of species can handle the half a percent found in average regolith, let alone concentrated brines). Heck, Martian regolith is so salty to begin with that you'd be outright killing non-halophile bacteria by desiccation (even if the atmosphere wasn't so tenuous), regardless of perchlorate concentration.
Lastly, the very fact that there is so much perchlorate on Mars is clear evidence that there are no bacteria consuming it. It forms very slowly.
Wow, surely even you have to see how dishonest your cherry picking of that paper was - grabbing from the "Positive Correlation" section, while omitting the "Negative / No Correlation" section in its entirity, and completely lying about what the summary says. It does not say that it's "moderately effective"; it says that studies have been inconsistent, few attempts to reproduce results, and that even where positive, the researchers have admitted that their results may well be psychological.
So we want to get into the history of Occam's razor rather than it's actual definition as used in modern English? Because Ockam never actually posited "Occam's Razor", and even the quote you cite appears to have only pertained to the subject of miracles and God's power. Rather, Ockam was frequently known to have used Occam's Razor as a debating technique, rejecting complex ideas in favour of simpler ones.
Furthermore, you need to be clear on what is meant when discussing plurality. Are you honestly suggesting that if I saw an anthill that a "a huge number of ants made it" would be a less logical answer than "a single invisible unicorn coughed it into existence out of fairy dust"?
Right. Totally the same thing. So if I was walking in the woods and three rocks just happened to be in a row, "They just happened to be that way" makes totally as much sense as "There's an invisible troll living in the woods who arranged these rocks at night."
(If you want my personal viewpoint: it's a combination of "all basic sets of rules exist in different universes" combined with the weak anthropic principle)
That's not true; Mars's perchlorates are believed to be due to the same process that forms perchlorates in places like the Atacama, just on a much larger scale: UV-driven gas-phase oxidation of volatile chlorine species (such as HCl) and/or chlorine-bearing aerosols in cold, exceedingly dry environments.
The fact that Mars was once wet has nothing to do with its present perchlorate inventory.
Slashdot Mirror
One port per truck. The battery pack couldn't handle more power anyway.
Oh, one more thing: expect to see things get more impressive with time. For example: a lot of people are expecting the handling to be poor on the Roadster because the battery pack will weigh slightly over a tonne (at current cell energy densities). Sure, Tesla will be going all out to make the rest of the car light, but still, that's a lot of weight underneath you, right?
But there's one thing people are forgetting: torque steering. The rear wheels are each driven by separate motors, each hooked up to wheels with very sticky tires. You can have one side going full thrust forward and the other side going full thrust in reverse if you wanted. You could make the car pirouette in place if you wanted. Computer controlled J turns, precise drift control, etc? They're only limited by their programming; there's a lot more potential here than you can achieve with just differential braking.
And we already know that Tesla is working heavily on torque steering; this isn't something that's going to come as a surprise to them. Torque steering is the principle behind the anti-jackknifing approach on Semi.
Meanwhile, spyshots and the VIN count on Model 3 show production greatly accelerating.
As for "exaggerating everything" - you mean like promising a battery within 100 days of signing a contract, and delivering it in 55? Promising the Model 3 with 215 mile range, then delivering it with 220, with an option for 310 - a number that's in turn downrated from EPA testing of 334 miles? What exaggerations about vehicle stats and pricing are you thinking of exactly?
NMC li-ion, likely 2170 form factor, 4x packs. Hard to estimate the number of bricks (because we don't know the voltage) and thus the number of cells per brick.
The charge times are perfectly normal for Tesla cells. 30 minutes to 80% is the standard for supercharging as well. It's just more cells and more power.
With a title like that, you know the article is going to be good for a laugh. Sort of like people who say "physics says..." who wouldn't even recognize the formulae that apply to the problem in question if you wrote them out in front of them.
1) Passengers in the Roadster noted how high its floor is. Aka: it's a double-high pack. Tesla already makes 100kWh packs for the S and X that are single-high. They may need to extend a bit further forward and back because the Roadster is a bit smaller of a footprint (on S and X they only slightly overlap the wheelbase, and on Model 3 they're inside the wheelbase entirely), but there's nothing at all implausible about 200kWh in such a form factor.
2) The megacharger charge port has been filmed by KMan. It has 8 giant pins in what appear to be a 2x4 arrangement, with ground and control pins likely clustered in a side slot on the right. These pins are much larger than those on the supercharger port, and there's a lot more of them. Also note the 2x4 arrangement: there appear to be four separate battery packs, and there 4 separate drive units. It appears that bloody everything on this vehicle is redundant (one assumes that there's at least a charge balancing system between the packs).
3) The means to provide the power to the megachargers is very, very simple: they're battery buffered. Tesla has always been clear on this; they're not drawing that power straight from the grid. More to the point, Semi uses the same battery chemistry as Tesla's grid-battery buffers (NMC). It's an extremely durable chemistry.
4) The article is very reasonable in its assessment of the battery capacity on the 500mi semi - they say 600-1000kWh (I've been working on the assumption of 900kWh, but it could be a bit less). Their estimate on the price, however, assumes that batteries cost $100-$170/kWh retail. Yet the raw material costs for said cells is only about $50/kWh - and that's currently at "spiked" prices which can be expected to drop as the mining industry readjusts to the new demand curve (historic prices would be more like $35/kWh). The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make li-ion batteries - finally - get closer to the cost of the raw materials that go into them. These numbers simply suggest that the Gigafactory has done exactly what it was designed to do.
5) Their estimate of the weight of the battery pack is probably correct (around 5 tonnes). However, in addition to the weight savings from using electric drive units vs. a big diesel / transmission / pollution controls / etc, Tesla always builds light. Don't expect the primary structure to be made of mild steel on this one; expect UHS steel, with 4-5 times the tensile strength, for example. Guillen stated in Europe that it has the same payload capacity as a diesel semi (aka, the tractor is no heavier), and that's probably correct.
Or, to put it another way: none of the "experts" expected the Model 3 SR to come in at almost exactly the same weight as the BMW 330i, with the same performance, more standard features, and a cheaper price. It did. And the LR isn't much heavier than a 330i, and well faster (can't wait to see the specs on the performance package!)
6) Charge rates of 7 cents per kWh: First off, their estimate that charging should cost 40 cents per kWh is just absurd. Pure nonsense. Even Tesla's current generation of superchargers is half that ($0,20/kWh), and they have to pay demand charges. That said, 7 cents per kWh comes across as extremely ambitious... until you start looking into it. And then you realize how much of a game changer it is that Tesla is doing here.
1) Tesla has no materials shortages. But hey, go ahead and make up whatever you want.
2) Model 3 is about 3 months behind schedule. Oooh, stop the presses. Meanwhile, the production rate has really shot up in the past couple weeks.
More to the point, if you do three 1/3 cycles, that's less degradation than doing 1 full cycle. Significantly.
Most Tesla owners supercharge. It does not kill the batteries.
* With the old NCAs, there are no limits at all
* With the new NCAs (silicon in the anodes), they limit current after several dozen supercharges (although it's not that big of a slowdown)
* Semi uses NMCs, which are used in Tesla's grid products and by their very nature designed to surge charge / discharge.
This is not correct. Tesla was very clear during the unveiling that semi uses NMC. It's not clear whether Model 3 is NMC or NCA. Model S and X are NCA. Who knows about Roadster.
Realistically, an electric RV needs a couple weeks to solar charge. But a couple days on 50A would do the job as well. Add in the option of 30 minute megacharges..
What do you mean "another"? You have to take it either way. What's wrong with charging during it (aka, extending the range to 900 miles)?
You're going to pay someone for sleeping in a truck?
If by "enormous" you mean around 5 tonnes or so, then yes.
4:30 now. Welcome to the weekend. :)
There's an interesting thing to consider about the megachargers. I think a lot of people considered Musk's line about the stations being solar powered to be a throwaway remark, along the lines of "they'll have solar awnings, so "a little" of the power provided is solar". Furthermore, I think a lot of people see the announced price ($0,07/kW) to be just a loss leader. But after going over the numbers.... I think they've hit on something huge. Much bigger than just Semi.
Semi uses NMC cells, same as Tesla's grid products. And when you compare the price on the 500 mile vs. the 300 mile Semis, you come up with a price per kWh of something like $80-85/kWh... *after* profit. Tesla usually uses a 25% margin, so you're looking at under $70/kWh. Now, while impressive, and a huge leap forward in battery prices, it's certainly possible. The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make battery prices approach raw material costs, and raw materials for them are something like $50/kWh (and that's with currently elevated raw material costs).
Traditional superchargers draw straight from the grid, but they're increasingly starting to use Powerpack battery buffers, and Megacharger will certainly require them in bulk. The battery buffers reduce demand charges from the grid by evening out load and simplify the charging process (cheaper chargers), but you have to pay for them, and they're expensive.
Now let's diverge for a moment and look at solar power. Solar power is getting *cheap*. Around $1,10/W installed in the US nowadays, and falling. The problem with solar (which increases its costs) is, you need either peaking or a battery buffer to handle nighttime and cloudy days. There's also wind power, which is also now very cheap, but also suffers from the same intermittency problem (only more random). And battery buffers are very expensive.
Or, at least, they were. Because the prices on these NMCs are crazy cheap, and they're the same batteries that are used in Tesla's grid products. But wait, it gets even better. Megachargers need a battery buffer to be able to surge charge vehicles. Solar and wind power need a battery buffer to handle intermittency. The key is, you don't need two separate buffers - only the one. The very battery buffer that lets you run a megacharger will also buffer solar and wind. And the price on said buffer should now be far cheaper than it used to be.
I've run some numbers over on the Tesla Motors Club forum, but the short of it is... if Tesla's batteries really are this cheap, then they really should be able to run the stations for solar and wind at $0,07/kWh and turn a profit. Not mere "solar awnings", of course; it means grid-scale solar plants (and/or wind farms), connected to the megacharger. But it's a paradigm shift. And the drop in storage prices is a paradigm shift everywhere, not just for chargers.
Caveat: some assumptions had to be made:
* The size of the battery packs on the Semi models (but that should be pretty accurate)
* That Tesla isn't deliberately undervaluing the cost of the larger battery vs. the smaller one (lower margin, etc). Although it's not clear why they would want to do that; it seems just as likely that they would do the opposite, and either way, the cost of the vehicles as a whole argues for cheap batteries.
* That the trucks in general aren't some sort of big loss leaders (but there's no way Tesla could afford that - at least not for any significant length of time)
* That the prices Tesla thinks the batteries will cost are correct
Honestly though... I think that it's simply what it appears to be: that through manufacturing scale and advancing research, li-ion batteries are (finally!) starting to approach their raw materials costs. And that's a game changer.
The other funny one you see a lot is the concept that Tesla hasn't the foggiest clue about semis. Never mind that the head of Tesla's Semi programme, Jerome Guillen, headed the Cascadia program at Daimler, and that the Semi unit is packed full of truck people, and the truck was engineered in close cooperation with major fleet operators (which is why they had orders already lined up at the launch event).
More to the point, US trucking regulations are:
* A 14 hour window containing...
* 11 hours of driving, with...
* A 30 minute break no more than...
* 8 hours since the last rest period
30 minutes break at a megacharger adds 400 miles to a Semi (900 total). At the rated 60mph, that's 15 hours - far more than the maximum drivers are allowed to drive.
Of course, those mileage figures are for 60mph. Speed doesn't affect freight vehicles as much as passenger vehicles (freight vehicles have a lower ratio of aero drag to rolling drag), but it's still significant. Likewise, at higher driving speeds, you burn through miles faster regardless. 70mph with a 30 minute charging stop should be nearly 11 hours driving exactly. For 80mph, you need two 30 minute charge periods to fill up the full 11 hours (but that still comes well under the 14 hour driving window).
Truck speed limits in the US vary greatly. In higher speed limit states, trucks tend to significantly vary in speed, with more time-sensitive goods going faster, while goods where keeping fuel costs down matters more move slower. With electric, since the "fuel" is so much cheaper, you can expect faster driving to be the more economically optimal case (since it doesn't push drivers out of their legal driving windows).
In Europe it's way too easy. It's just simply: 45 minutes break every 4 1/2 hours or less
Typical degradation for Tesla batteries is about 4% in the first year, then 1/2 to 1% in each subsequent year. See the raw data and charts here. And that's for Model S, which uses NCA packs. Semi using NMC cells, which are even more durable.
The darkness is all there is. Our civilization is just a thin crust on an unending void. No heaven, no hell, nothing waiting for us but the sweet embrace of death and nothingness.
Enjoy Arbys.
The "safe drinking level" for perchlorate in water on Earth for a 70kg human is 32 parts per billion. The average level of perchlorates in Martian regolith is half a percent, and the hypothetical perchlorate brines were "perchlorate salts containing only the minimum amount of water to make them flow". Even bacteria do not survive in such perchlorate concentrations (only the hardiest of species can handle the half a percent found in average regolith, let alone concentrated brines). Heck, Martian regolith is so salty to begin with that you'd be outright killing non-halophile bacteria by desiccation (even if the atmosphere wasn't so tenuous), regardless of perchlorate concentration.
Lastly, the very fact that there is so much perchlorate on Mars is clear evidence that there are no bacteria consuming it. It forms very slowly.
Wow, surely even you have to see how dishonest your cherry picking of that paper was - grabbing from the "Positive Correlation" section, while omitting the "Negative / No Correlation" section in its entirity, and completely lying about what the summary says. It does not say that it's "moderately effective"; it says that studies have been inconsistent, few attempts to reproduce results, and that even where positive, the researchers have admitted that their results may well be psychological.
Latency problems can make any internet access painful, regardless of how much bandwidth is being sought.
So we want to get into the history of Occam's razor rather than it's actual definition as used in modern English? Because Ockam never actually posited "Occam's Razor", and even the quote you cite appears to have only pertained to the subject of miracles and God's power. Rather, Ockam was frequently known to have used Occam's Razor as a debating technique, rejecting complex ideas in favour of simpler ones.
Furthermore, you need to be clear on what is meant when discussing plurality. Are you honestly suggesting that if I saw an anthill that a "a huge number of ants made it" would be a less logical answer than "a single invisible unicorn coughed it into existence out of fairy dust"?
Lastly, you absolutely can make statistical tests for the power of prayer. They just don't give you the answer that you're wanting.
Right. Totally the same thing. So if I was walking in the woods and three rocks just happened to be in a row, "They just happened to be that way" makes totally as much sense as "There's an invisible troll living in the woods who arranged these rocks at night."
(If you want my personal viewpoint: it's a combination of "all basic sets of rules exist in different universes" combined with the weak anthropic principle)
That's not true; Mars's perchlorates are believed to be due to the same process that forms perchlorates in places like the Atacama, just on a much larger scale: UV-driven gas-phase oxidation of volatile chlorine species (such as HCl) and/or chlorine-bearing aerosols in cold, exceedingly dry environments.
The fact that Mars was once wet has nothing to do with its present perchlorate inventory.