As for why its handling is so good, in large part:
1) It's surprisingly light. The SR version, at 3549 lbs / 1610 kg, is lighter than average for its class, while the LR version, at 3814 lbs / 1730 kg, is still far from the heaviest in its class. Note that the reviewers above were driving the LR - the SR should handle even better.
2) The CG is low. This is standard for all "designed from the ground up" EVs, not just the Model 3, and minimizes body roll.
3) The polar moment of inertia is abnormally low. Diagram here. Unlike the Model S, Model X, and ICE vehicles, the Model 3 has an abnormally low polar moment of inertia. Its battery pack (the largest single chunk of its mass) is positioned between the wheels. A low polar moment of inertia means that it takes relatively little force to rotate the vehicle.
What’s blanching, though, is the car’s ride and handling. If anybody was expecting a typical boring electric sedan here, nope. The ride is Alfa Giulia (maybe even Quadrifoglio)–firm, and quickly, I’m carving Stunt Road like a Sochi Olympics giant slalomer, micrometering my swipes at the apexes. I glance at Franz—this OK? “Go for it,” he nods. The Model 3 is so unexpected scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives. The steering ratio is quick, the effort is light (for me), but there’s enough light tremble against your fingers to hear the cornering negotiations between Stunt Road and these 235/40R19 tires (Continental ProContact RX m+s’s). And to mention body roll is to have already said too much about it. Sure, that battery is low, way down under the floor. But unlike the aluminum Model S, the Tesla Model 3 is composed of steel, too, and this car’s glass ceiling can’t be helping the center of gravity’s height. Nearly-nil body roll? Magic, I’m telling you. Magic. And this is the single-motor, rear-wheel-drive starting point. The already boggled mind boggles further at the mention of Dual Motor and Ludicrous.
Gone are the Model S’s projecting doorhandles in favour of nicely crafted aluminium ones that project manually like those on an Aston when you poke one end. Open the door and slide in, and the interior is beautifully simple and uncluttered. The steering wheel features two buttons that adjust everything from the traditional (volume, radio frequency) to the more unique (door mirror adjustment and steering wheel positioning). *** The car we drove was a Long Range model with all the options list ticked, including the Premium Upgrade Package, featuring leather seats (base models come with fabric), a wooden dash inlay panel that spans the width of the cockpit and the aforementioned glass roof that infuses the interior with a huge feeling of light and space. It’s all simple, elegant, uncluttered and nicely crafted. Before we set off, I jumped in the back and with the driver seat positioned for my 6ft frame, there was still plenty of room in the back for three adults. *** Our short foray highlighted that the Model 3’s quoted 0–60mph time of 5.1 seconds in this Long Range spec might be underplaying its performance a bit: it’s rapid, and the acceleration is delivered with that lovely linearity and unwavering torque that EVs deliver. The overall feeling of peace and quiet is helped by the minimalist interior but by impressive sound deadening and insulation – the road noise is minimal.
I felt like I was driving in an Eames chair. That was my first impression as I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model 3 at the Fremont Factory on Friday afternoon. It took a moment to orient myself — no gauges, no speedometer, no airplane cockpit cues. Instead, one continuous smooth line between myself and the road ahead, offset by natural, unfinished wood. The premium model of the Model 3 caught me off guard. After hearing so much hype about this car, I was surprised that my first reaction was a profound sense of delight. It wasn’t bland, nor sterile, nor cheap feeling. Here was something different. Here was an exercise in min
1) Look at high-adoption-rate countries, like Norway. Public parking becomes EV charging on the large scale. This is done via a combination of retrofits of existing parking, and requirements on all new parking construction.
2) Superchargers. Indeed, the newest variety of Supercharger is designed specifically for apartment dwellers; they're positioning them at popular shopping areas, so that your car can charge while you shop. The same thing can apply to CHAdeMO and CCS, but it requires longer (or more frequent) shopping trips as they're not as high power.
3) Workplace charging. Again, the higher the EV adoption rate, the more often workplaces provide charging. It's a relatively cheap incentive that employees who drive EVs really appreciate.
1) All cars have greatly increased in safety over time, not just smaller cars. How anyone could interpret this as a bad thing is beyond me. And vehicle sizes vary alongside the cost to purchase and operate them, which should surprise nobody; no conspiracy or "value judgement" is required.
2) Since when has anyone seen natural gas vehicles as "bad"? They've never been popular, but that's not the same as "bad".
3) Corn ethanol has never been popular among environmentalists; they've been someone of the most adamant opponents. Some support other biofuels, such as algal biodiesel or switchgrass ethanol, but others don't support any biofuels at all. As for corn ethanol, it's popular among farmers (and consequently, their representatives in congress).
4) No, EV batteries don't contain heavy metals (like your gasoline vehicle's battery does). The worst things that they contain (and which aren't a fundamental requirement) are nickel and cobalt (like you find in stainless steel alloys - minus the much more problematic chromium). Nickel has contact sensitivity, but you're not going to be wearing EV cathodes as earrings. Both have health effects as dusts or soluble salts (not at abnormally low concentrations, mind you) - but neither are in the form of dusts or soluble salts, they're in the form of inert oxides (less prone to leaching than even stainless steel). Minor leaching from battery packs would actually be a good thing, mind you, because large chunks of the world's grasslands are cobalt deficient, which hinders B12 production (cobalamin). Not that you'd actually leave them just sitting around, because nickel and cobalt are valuable ($10 and $50/kg, respectively), and the cathodes are surprisingly similar to rich nickel-cobalt ores already.
5) Yes, there always will be something better because that's what the advancement in technology leads to. If you don't like that, go Amish.
You could get a gassifier (like this, although this model is currently out of stock) and feed that to your car. A skilled mechanic shouldn't have too much trouble with it. If you wanted to show off that you were burning coal, you could have a window installed on the stainless hopper.
Do be careful, though - a large portion of the mass of coal gas is carbon monoxide; that's one of the key things that's combusting when you burn it. The combustion plus your cat shouldn't make the exhaust unusually problematic, but because of the risk of leaks, do install a detector.
Now, if you don't want to run on coal gas, but rather coal directly, that's a much bigger project. You'd need an external combustion engine, like a steam engine. But coal gas should be a relatively straightforward retrofit for a pickup truck.
I'm quite nervous though about the time it takes current EVs to recharge.
Give us numbers. What is "across town", for example? Let's say you meant 15 miles on the highway (non-highway driving goes further for a given amount of energy). And let's say you're driving a Tesla Model 3. Adding 15 miles at home on 32A charger (the minimum AC charger) takes only half an hour. By contrast, adding 15 miles of range at a supercharger takes only 3,5 minutes on the SR (2,6 minutes on the LR).
* Tesla wants other manufacturers to use its superchargers, even though only ones with power systems designed by Tesla can use them at present. Namely because the vast majority have low utilization, and Tesla would make a profit off of each usage. So far, none have accepted, but they keep trying.
* Neither CHAdeMO nor CCS are "proprietary" - but again, if the vehicle doesn't support one or the other (either innately or with an adaptor), it can't use them. Also, unlike Superchargers, CHAdeMO and CCS stations are run by a diverse network of companies, each with their own payment systems / restrictions, so it's not as convenient.
I think there's more hope for the future, now that most entities seem to be on board with phasing out CHAdeMO, and Tesla is in CharIN, which will make the next CCS standard. Hopefully they'll listen to Tesla when it comes to connector engineering; they're the only ones that don't make needlessly large frankenconnectors...
Environmentalists have hated corn ethanol from the beginning (they've been more mixed on biodiesel, but most are not fans). Corn ethanol has the support of midwest farmers and their senators / reps, not environmentalists. Direct your complaints to farmers and their reps.
Then it's going to turn out that manufacturing and remanufacturing batteries en masse is a dirty and expensive business,
It isn't. Do we really need to go into the endless number of peer-reviewed studies that have been conducted on lifecycle assessments of EVs? The short of it is that while low volume EVs may embody about twice the manufacturing pollution of a gasoline vehicle, a mass-manufactured EV embodies only slightly more (depending on the study and its assumptions, around 15%), and regardless, in both cases, pollution from operation vastly outweighs pollution from usage, and both end up recycled, with about 70% average recovery of embodied pollution on the EV. And all this ignores the fact that many manufacturers are working to have their EV production 100% solar driven.
that riding on a half ton of fuel and oxidizer packed closely together
Sorry, that's not how batteries work; you're thinking of rockets. There is no "fuel and oxidizer" reaction in an EV. Lithium-ion batteries work by the migration of lithium ions across a barrier, either intercalated into graphite and/or silicon on the anode side, or into a mixed metal oxide (such as nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide) or similar structure on the cathode side. Intercalated = they fill up the interstitial sites in their host compound.
Secondly, you betray a complete lack of understanding of chemistry with your statement. How "dangerous" a substance is is not linearly related to its energy density. Nitroglycerin has an energy density of 6,37 MJ/kg. A block of aluminum has an energy density of 31 MJ/kg. Which one is safer? The volumetric difference between the two is even greater, BTW.
Third, there's an implicit "all else being equal" in your argument. But all else is not equal. In a gasoline car, the fuel is just poured into a big open tank in your vehicle. In an EV, there's a huge array of safety measures - cell expansion space, individual cell rupture isolation, active cooling, passive quench, controlled venting, etc, etc. Rates of EV fires have been much lower than rates of gasoline fires; the packs are so difficult to burn that you can sometimes burn the rest of the car without igniting the pack. And when you do force the ignition of a pack, here's what happens (that's Powerwall, but the tech is the same as in Tesla's vehicles).
Everyone talks of every single fire incident in EVs, while ignoring that ~200k gasoline cars catch fire and burn every year in the US alone. The per mile rate for EVs is much lower.
when it's inside 100k rich-man's toys
While it's possible to buy an EV for 100k or more (just like it's possible to buy a $100k+ gasoline car), the overwhelming majority on the market are far cheaper than that.
lowest-bidder Chinese garbage
None of the popular EVs outside China are "Chinese garbage". The most popular are Tesla, GM, Nissan / Renault, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, and BMW. There are some additional brands that sell a lot inside China, but almost nothing outside of it.
Calling a 6-7 year-old car a "new car" is funny. You can get a 6-7 year-old Leaf with 40k on it in pristine condition for a lot cheaper than that. And then drive it for a lot cheaper. And pay less on maintenance. And because it's a cheaper car, pay less on insurance.
It depends what part of the market you're referring to. Econoboxes? Gasoline vehicles are cheaper. High performance vehicles? EVs are cheaper. The balance point between the two steadily moves down. A base Tesla Model 3 - without including subsidies or accounting for the operating cost price difference - comes with more standard features and space at the same price as a BMW 330i (and just to head anyone off, and whether you want to believe them or not, literally every reviewer who's been in it has raved over the interior quality)
However, concerning the article itself: Denmark is acting schizophrenic about this one. In one breath they say that they have this aggressive electrification programme, but on the other hand, they got rid of the discount on car taxes that they had for EVs, causing the price to shoot up. Everyone who was even considering an EV bought one before the expiration, and the market penetration dropped to less than 0,1% afterwards. They're talking about temporarily walking back their previous decision, but really, they don't sound particularly serious. By contrast, a third of all new vehicle sales in Norway are electric already; unless there's a radical change in policy, they probably will achieve their goal.
My country, Iceland, is #2 in the world, at over 16% market penetration. We also don't have to pay VAT on electric cars (and obviously the CO2 fee is zero); there's a lot of both public and government interest. Our biggest problem is charging infrastructure. CHAdeMO/CCS chargers only extend halfway around the country, and Tesla (aka, actual fast charging) isn't here at all.
The pine cone industry is the backbone of this country, a pillar to its communities and a staunch defender of what makes this country great. We here at Loblolly Technicorp just donated a park bench last week and today made a meaningful contribution to a local youth sports team. We do this not because we must, but because we believe that children our our future, and all of us need to be proper stewards of our environment. Don't fear Big Pine Cone; we're just like you.
Where's the pressure for pine cone eating research Where is the "we choose to eat this bag of pine cones not because it is east, but because it is hard" spirit?
Wow, a month delay on a greatly accelerated production target, on a vehicle where the original plan wasn't to start production until "some time" in 2017, after explicit statements that the deadline was moved up in order to be able to hold supplier's feet to the fire because some would inevitably miss it. My teapot can hardly handle this tempest!
Maybe when we start doing similar concern trolling about future SpaceX missions we can have a tempest in Russell's teapot.
SpaceX's solution is simple: go fast. They propose carrying smaller cargos at higher speeds rather than higher cargos at smaller speeds.
That said, Musk is a bit handwavy on issues related to gravity and radiation. He seems to genuinely believe it won't be a problem, but a lot of people in the field aren't so sure. At this point in time, we don't even know if a person can live on Mars for protracted periods of time without suffering problematic degeneration due to the reduced gravity. At least with Venus, gravity is close enough to Earth that we can say, "It's probably fine". With Mars it's more of a case of "We hope it's fine", while in the case of the moon it's "We're worried that it's not fine".
If gravity on Mars turns out to be too low for proper human health, then what? Genetically engineer / selectively breed humans for Mars conditions? Go through the expense of having all settlements be built into centrifuges? That sort of thing starts making you wonder why you'd even go to Mars in the first place rather than focusing on asteroids...
And even if it's fine to live there, there's very serious concerns about when people first arrive if they're not living in artificial gravity in transit. You launch a healthy young person into orbit, and when they come back a couple months later it's like they're an octogenarian. You can't expect these people to just "hit the ground running" on another planet. Again the shorter the trip, the better, but there's limits to how much you can shorten it with chemical rockets (and said limits are worse for Mars than Venus).
It's a tough issue. Any reasonable colonization plan calls for decreasing reliance on imports per capita over time as, one by one, they develop local production lines for various feedstocks and finished products. But at the same time, the population keeps growing. So the question is, how does the balance of these factors play out? As you rightly note, total independence will not happen any time remotely soon. But how quickly can the bulk be reduced relative to how quickly consumer demand on Mars grows?
The other aspect is questions of economic activity. There are a lot of potential avenues for revenue (VISA fees, tourism, exportation of rock for collector purposes (small market, but launch costs may be high), exportation of rock for the superpremium decorative stone market (large market, launch costs must be low), exportation of platinium-group metals (large market, launch costs must be low), exportation of gemstones (moderate to large market, launch costs may be high, but must find appropriate pegmatites), scientific research (studies of the planet, astrophysics research which requires physical separation of hardware elements over great distances, etc), telecommuting (can only pay for a small amount of imports, but if import needs are low enough it can be justifiable), exportation of premium agricultural goods marketed on their exotic nature (small to moderate market, launch costs must be low), and so forth. Venus has a few more avenues for profit than Mars due to its naturally enriched deuterium, energy resources, etc, plus lower overburden, more exotic surface conditions, ability to dredge, and easier mobility between locations - but offset by the hostile surface environment and the need to haul materials up to colony height (over 50km) each trip.
Whether the revenue at a given point in time on a given colony can pay for imports, that's a big question that requires detailed analysis.
The federal government lacks the authority to make such a commitment. And if you actually read the article you linked, and even the text you quoted, no commitment is to be found. But hey, let's leave that part out.
Right. It would have been much more responsible of Elon if he had continued his tweet with, oh, I don't know, something like "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Right?
He promised delivery of 'x' in September
He did not promise anything. You clearly did not watch the launch event and have clearly never payed attention to the earnings calls.
Um, no. The plan was to produce 1500 vehicles.
The target was 30-100-300-1500 (they're, as has been stated many times in this comments' section, one month behind) - all of those numbers vastly below the production design of tens of thousands per month. To repeat: "Gee we all thought that the line was fully ready to produce tens of thousands of vehicles per month, but the schedule was only to produce a couple hundred for giggles."
Yes, at least a year after the originally announced timeline, depending on when in 2019 they deliver (if they deliver at all in 2019). Where's all of the ranting articles about Porsche missing their announcement by at least a year?
And that's one example among countless supposed "Tesla Killers".
Right. So let me get this straight: we're supposed to be mad at Muskwhile they're moving the equipment in and installing it well within 100 days from the signing of the contract, it doesn't count, because we're supposed to judge Tesla not by the terms given (100 days from the signing of the contract), but instead a term that was never offered (100 days from the issuance of this tweet). Correct? And that there's something abnormal and unfair about a multi-million dollar power contract not being negotiated overnight?
Tesla promised to start deliveries by the end of 2017, and to move 500,000 units a year (including Model S and Model X sales) by 2020.
Musk, apparently feeling his company isn't under quite enough pressure, upped the ante during Wednesday's call, saying he'll deliver 100,000 cars by the end of 2017 and hit the half-million threshold in 2018.
I'll repeat: Tesla accelerated their own schedule. Their original schedule was "something, at some point, in 2017". They changed it to an extremely aggressive S curve starting in July. As for the latter part:
"I think it’s worth explaining sort of how manufacturing a complex object with several thousand unique components actually works. And what date’s relevant and – in order to achieve volume production of a new car with several thousand unique items, you actually have to set a target date internally and with suppliers that is quite aggressive.”
According to Musk, that target date in July 1 of 2017. That doesn’t mean that the Model 3 will enter production on July 1st, because as Musk explains:
“Now, will we actually be able to achieve volume production on July 1 next year? Of course, not. The reason is that even if 99% of the internally produced items and supplier items are available on July 1, we still cannot produce the car because you cannot produce a car that is missing 1% of its component.”
Musk says that actual production will be “some number of months later,” due to supply chain issues and internal production problems. This, according to Musk, is how the entire automotive industry works. In some ways then,start of production for the Model 3 is not entirely controlled by Tesla.
Musk concluded this part of the discussion with this statement:
“So in order for us to be confident of achieving volume production of Model 3 by late 2017, we actually have to set a date of mid-2017 and really hold people’s feet to the fire internally and externally to achieve an actual volume production date of late 2017.”
He then provided a production target, which is way beyond what we’d expected to hear:
“So as a rough guess, I would say we would aim to produce 100,000 to 200,000 Model 3s in the second half of next year. That’s my expectation right now.
Slashdot Mirror
As for why its handling is so good, in large part:
1) It's surprisingly light. The SR version, at 3549 lbs / 1610 kg, is lighter than average for its class, while the LR version, at 3814 lbs / 1730 kg, is still far from the heaviest in its class. Note that the reviewers above were driving the LR - the SR should handle even better.
2) The CG is low. This is standard for all "designed from the ground up" EVs, not just the Model 3, and minimizes body roll.
3) The polar moment of inertia is abnormally low. Diagram here. Unlike the Model S, Model X, and ICE vehicles, the Model 3 has an abnormally low polar moment of inertia. Its battery pack (the largest single chunk of its mass) is positioned between the wheels. A low polar moment of inertia means that it takes relatively little force to rotate the vehicle.
Start reading reviews. Here, I'll help - some excerpts and links. Let me know which of these are some sort of Tesla shills:
Motor Trend:
Top Gear:
The Verge:
1) Look at high-adoption-rate countries, like Norway. Public parking becomes EV charging on the large scale. This is done via a combination of retrofits of existing parking, and requirements on all new parking construction.
2) Superchargers. Indeed, the newest variety of Supercharger is designed specifically for apartment dwellers; they're positioning them at popular shopping areas, so that your car can charge while you shop. The same thing can apply to CHAdeMO and CCS, but it requires longer (or more frequent) shopping trips as they're not as high power.
3) Workplace charging. Again, the higher the EV adoption rate, the more often workplaces provide charging. It's a relatively cheap incentive that employees who drive EVs really appreciate.
What heavy metals are you referring to? The lead in your lead-acid battery, maybe?
1) All cars have greatly increased in safety over time, not just smaller cars. How anyone could interpret this as a bad thing is beyond me. And vehicle sizes vary alongside the cost to purchase and operate them, which should surprise nobody; no conspiracy or "value judgement" is required.
2) Since when has anyone seen natural gas vehicles as "bad"? They've never been popular, but that's not the same as "bad".
3) Corn ethanol has never been popular among environmentalists; they've been someone of the most adamant opponents. Some support other biofuels, such as algal biodiesel or switchgrass ethanol, but others don't support any biofuels at all. As for corn ethanol, it's popular among farmers (and consequently, their representatives in congress).
4) No, EV batteries don't contain heavy metals (like your gasoline vehicle's battery does). The worst things that they contain (and which aren't a fundamental requirement) are nickel and cobalt (like you find in stainless steel alloys - minus the much more problematic chromium). Nickel has contact sensitivity, but you're not going to be wearing EV cathodes as earrings. Both have health effects as dusts or soluble salts (not at abnormally low concentrations, mind you) - but neither are in the form of dusts or soluble salts, they're in the form of inert oxides (less prone to leaching than even stainless steel). Minor leaching from battery packs would actually be a good thing, mind you, because large chunks of the world's grasslands are cobalt deficient, which hinders B12 production (cobalamin). Not that you'd actually leave them just sitting around, because nickel and cobalt are valuable ($10 and $50/kg, respectively), and the cathodes are surprisingly similar to rich nickel-cobalt ores already.
5) Yes, there always will be something better because that's what the advancement in technology leads to. If you don't like that, go Amish.
You could get a gassifier (like this, although this model is currently out of stock) and feed that to your car. A skilled mechanic shouldn't have too much trouble with it. If you wanted to show off that you were burning coal, you could have a window installed on the stainless hopper.
Do be careful, though - a large portion of the mass of coal gas is carbon monoxide; that's one of the key things that's combusting when you burn it. The combustion plus your cat shouldn't make the exhaust unusually problematic, but because of the risk of leaks, do install a detector.
Now, if you don't want to run on coal gas, but rather coal directly, that's a much bigger project. You'd need an external combustion engine, like a steam engine. But coal gas should be a relatively straightforward retrofit for a pickup truck.
Give us numbers. What is "across town", for example? Let's say you meant 15 miles on the highway (non-highway driving goes further for a given amount of energy). And let's say you're driving a Tesla Model 3. Adding 15 miles at home on 32A charger (the minimum AC charger) takes only half an hour. By contrast, adding 15 miles of range at a supercharger takes only 3,5 minutes on the SR (2,6 minutes on the LR).
It depends on what you mean.
* Tesla wants other manufacturers to use its superchargers, even though only ones with power systems designed by Tesla can use them at present. Namely because the vast majority have low utilization, and Tesla would make a profit off of each usage. So far, none have accepted, but they keep trying.
* Neither CHAdeMO nor CCS are "proprietary" - but again, if the vehicle doesn't support one or the other (either innately or with an adaptor), it can't use them. Also, unlike Superchargers, CHAdeMO and CCS stations are run by a diverse network of companies, each with their own payment systems / restrictions, so it's not as convenient.
I think there's more hope for the future, now that most entities seem to be on board with phasing out CHAdeMO, and Tesla is in CharIN, which will make the next CCS standard. Hopefully they'll listen to Tesla when it comes to connector engineering; they're the only ones that don't make needlessly large frankenconnectors...
Don't make fun of it. It may not be as nice as their border with Iceland, but they're improving it.
Meanwhile, here's what living through natural disasters is actually like with EVs.
Environmentalists have hated corn ethanol from the beginning (they've been more mixed on biodiesel, but most are not fans). Corn ethanol has the support of midwest farmers and their senators / reps, not environmentalists. Direct your complaints to farmers and their reps.
It isn't. Do we really need to go into the endless number of peer-reviewed studies that have been conducted on lifecycle assessments of EVs? The short of it is that while low volume EVs may embody about twice the manufacturing pollution of a gasoline vehicle, a mass-manufactured EV embodies only slightly more (depending on the study and its assumptions, around 15%), and regardless, in both cases, pollution from operation vastly outweighs pollution from usage, and both end up recycled, with about 70% average recovery of embodied pollution on the EV. And all this ignores the fact that many manufacturers are working to have their EV production 100% solar driven.
Sorry, that's not how batteries work; you're thinking of rockets. There is no "fuel and oxidizer" reaction in an EV. Lithium-ion batteries work by the migration of lithium ions across a barrier, either intercalated into graphite and/or silicon on the anode side, or into a mixed metal oxide (such as nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide) or similar structure on the cathode side. Intercalated = they fill up the interstitial sites in their host compound.
Secondly, you betray a complete lack of understanding of chemistry with your statement. How "dangerous" a substance is is not linearly related to its energy density. Nitroglycerin has an energy density of 6,37 MJ/kg. A block of aluminum has an energy density of 31 MJ/kg. Which one is safer? The volumetric difference between the two is even greater, BTW.
Third, there's an implicit "all else being equal" in your argument. But all else is not equal. In a gasoline car, the fuel is just poured into a big open tank in your vehicle. In an EV, there's a huge array of safety measures - cell expansion space, individual cell rupture isolation, active cooling, passive quench, controlled venting, etc, etc. Rates of EV fires have been much lower than rates of gasoline fires; the packs are so difficult to burn that you can sometimes burn the rest of the car without igniting the pack. And when you do force the ignition of a pack, here's what happens (that's Powerwall, but the tech is the same as in Tesla's vehicles).
Everyone talks of every single fire incident in EVs, while ignoring that ~200k gasoline cars catch fire and burn every year in the US alone. The per mile rate for EVs is much lower.
While it's possible to buy an EV for 100k or more (just like it's possible to buy a $100k+ gasoline car), the overwhelming majority on the market are far cheaper than that.
None of the popular EVs outside China are "Chinese garbage". The most popular are Tesla, GM, Nissan / Renault, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, and BMW. There are some additional brands that sell a lot inside China, but almost nothing outside of it.
Calling a 6-7 year-old car a "new car" is funny. You can get a 6-7 year-old Leaf with 40k on it in pristine condition for a lot cheaper than that. And then drive it for a lot cheaper. And pay less on maintenance. And because it's a cheaper car, pay less on insurance.
It depends what part of the market you're referring to. Econoboxes? Gasoline vehicles are cheaper. High performance vehicles? EVs are cheaper. The balance point between the two steadily moves down. A base Tesla Model 3 - without including subsidies or accounting for the operating cost price difference - comes with more standard features and space at the same price as a BMW 330i (and just to head anyone off, and whether you want to believe them or not, literally every reviewer who's been in it has raved over the interior quality)
However, concerning the article itself: Denmark is acting schizophrenic about this one. In one breath they say that they have this aggressive electrification programme, but on the other hand, they got rid of the discount on car taxes that they had for EVs, causing the price to shoot up. Everyone who was even considering an EV bought one before the expiration, and the market penetration dropped to less than 0,1% afterwards. They're talking about temporarily walking back their previous decision, but really, they don't sound particularly serious. By contrast, a third of all new vehicle sales in Norway are electric already; unless there's a radical change in policy, they probably will achieve their goal.
My country, Iceland, is #2 in the world, at over 16% market penetration. We also don't have to pay VAT on electric cars (and obviously the CO2 fee is zero); there's a lot of both public and government interest. Our biggest problem is charging infrastructure. CHAdeMO/CCS chargers only extend halfway around the country, and Tesla (aka, actual fast charging) isn't here at all.
The pine cone industry is the backbone of this country, a pillar to its communities and a staunch defender of what makes this country great. We here at Loblolly Technicorp just donated a park bench last week and today made a meaningful contribution to a local youth sports team. We do this not because we must, but because we believe that children our our future, and all of us need to be proper stewards of our environment. Don't fear Big Pine Cone; we're just like you.
And besides, we own your senator, so....
Where's the pressure for pine cone eating research Where is the "we choose to eat this bag of pine cones not because it is east, but because it is hard" spirit?
Wow, a month delay on a greatly accelerated production target, on a vehicle where the original plan wasn't to start production until "some time" in 2017, after explicit statements that the deadline was moved up in order to be able to hold supplier's feet to the fire because some would inevitably miss it. My teapot can hardly handle this tempest!
Maybe when we start doing similar concern trolling about future SpaceX missions we can have a tempest in Russell's teapot.
SpaceX's solution is simple: go fast. They propose carrying smaller cargos at higher speeds rather than higher cargos at smaller speeds.
That said, Musk is a bit handwavy on issues related to gravity and radiation. He seems to genuinely believe it won't be a problem, but a lot of people in the field aren't so sure. At this point in time, we don't even know if a person can live on Mars for protracted periods of time without suffering problematic degeneration due to the reduced gravity. At least with Venus, gravity is close enough to Earth that we can say, "It's probably fine". With Mars it's more of a case of "We hope it's fine", while in the case of the moon it's "We're worried that it's not fine".
If gravity on Mars turns out to be too low for proper human health, then what? Genetically engineer / selectively breed humans for Mars conditions? Go through the expense of having all settlements be built into centrifuges? That sort of thing starts making you wonder why you'd even go to Mars in the first place rather than focusing on asteroids...
And even if it's fine to live there, there's very serious concerns about when people first arrive if they're not living in artificial gravity in transit. You launch a healthy young person into orbit, and when they come back a couple months later it's like they're an octogenarian. You can't expect these people to just "hit the ground running" on another planet. Again the shorter the trip, the better, but there's limits to how much you can shorten it with chemical rockets (and said limits are worse for Mars than Venus).
It's a tough issue. Any reasonable colonization plan calls for decreasing reliance on imports per capita over time as, one by one, they develop local production lines for various feedstocks and finished products. But at the same time, the population keeps growing. So the question is, how does the balance of these factors play out? As you rightly note, total independence will not happen any time remotely soon. But how quickly can the bulk be reduced relative to how quickly consumer demand on Mars grows?
The other aspect is questions of economic activity. There are a lot of potential avenues for revenue (VISA fees, tourism, exportation of rock for collector purposes (small market, but launch costs may be high), exportation of rock for the superpremium decorative stone market (large market, launch costs must be low), exportation of platinium-group metals (large market, launch costs must be low), exportation of gemstones (moderate to large market, launch costs may be high, but must find appropriate pegmatites), scientific research (studies of the planet, astrophysics research which requires physical separation of hardware elements over great distances, etc), telecommuting (can only pay for a small amount of imports, but if import needs are low enough it can be justifiable), exportation of premium agricultural goods marketed on their exotic nature (small to moderate market, launch costs must be low), and so forth. Venus has a few more avenues for profit than Mars due to its naturally enriched deuterium, energy resources, etc, plus lower overburden, more exotic surface conditions, ability to dredge, and easier mobility between locations - but offset by the hostile surface environment and the need to haul materials up to colony height (over 50km) each trip.
Whether the revenue at a given point in time on a given colony can pay for imports, that's a big question that requires detailed analysis.
Another link.
No, they announced 2018 in 2015.
Right. It would have been much more responsible of Elon if he had continued his tweet with, oh, I don't know, something like "Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly". Right?
He did not promise anything. You clearly did not watch the launch event and have clearly never payed attention to the earnings calls.
The target was 30-100-300-1500 (they're, as has been stated many times in this comments' section, one month behind) - all of those numbers vastly below the production design of tens of thousands per month. To repeat: "Gee we all thought that the line was fully ready to produce tens of thousands of vehicles per month, but the schedule was only to produce a couple hundred for giggles."
Yes, at least a year after the originally announced timeline, depending on when in 2019 they deliver (if they deliver at all in 2019). Where's all of the ranting articles about Porsche missing their announcement by at least a year?
And that's one example among countless supposed "Tesla Killers".
Right. So let me get this straight: we're supposed to be mad at Muskwhile they're moving the equipment in and installing it well within 100 days from the signing of the contract, it doesn't count, because we're supposed to judge Tesla not by the terms given (100 days from the signing of the contract), but instead a term that was never offered (100 days from the issuance of this tweet). Correct? And that there's something abnormal and unfair about a multi-million dollar power contract not being negotiated overnight?
A month behind a highly accelerated schedule. Ooh, shudder. My teapot can hardly handle this tempest.
15 may 2016:
I'll repeat: Tesla accelerated their own schedule. Their original schedule was "something, at some point, in 2017". They changed it to an extremely aggressive S curve starting in July. As for the latter part: