A central power plant can/does have far better air scrubbing technology than your ICE. It can also run more efficiently, putting out less pollution for the same amount of power.
While that is all true, it still puts out a bunch of pollution, a bunch of CO2, and doesn't really address the core problem, which is to stop burning dead dinos.
If I'm going to spend more money on transportation, deal with range issues, etc. then it needs to be on more than just moving from burning oil to burning coal. If my power was nuclear supplied, I'd be much more inclined to do it.
I would rather a nuclear plant was built 10 miles away from my home than a coal plant 100 miles away. Nuclear, run properly, is safe.
Of course, the words "run properly" are key there, that is another conversation to be had. That is why I'd want to talk about having the Navy run them, they have done very well over the past 50 years and don't have a "profit" incentive the way private companies do. Sometimes "max profit" and "nuclear reactor" shouldn't be in the same sentence.:)
If I was in the market for something like a Nissan Leaf, I would give it a serious look. After the tax credits and considering the deals on them, it might well be something to consider.
The irony is that standard cars today are just as nice, if not nicer, than many luxury cars of years gone by. But I'm spoiled (yea, I know that is what it is), so I wouldn't look at such a car.
The issue I'm having with the Tesla is that for what you pay, you're not getting a whole lot. It is missing a lot of things that I now consider "standard equipment" in the $70-80k price range.
Electrics perhaps just don't have the juice to provide everything yet, but I know it will come.
Range isn't the biggest concern, I'll have a gas vehicle for awhile to cover that, one of my two vehicles can be electric. The bigger issue is that none of the electrics really offers what I'm looking for.
I either need a full size truck, or perhaps an electric Corvette.:) I don't ever see myself buying a sedan ever again.
If that was true, then driver updates wouldn't speed up games and clean up bugs.
The turnover is so quick and new technology keeps coming out (think Eyefinity and Surround), that both companies are racing to keep up.
If you think the secret sauce is so simple, go checkout Eyefinity and Surround. Both work, but they do it in different ways and are compatible with games differently.
I've used both, they each have their upsides and downsides, but they do not work the same.
Tires will be the biggest single expense on my truck... A nice set of Michelin M/S tires will run about a thousand dollars for my truck, but will last 5 years. So that is about $200 a year, but that cost is there for any high end vehicle.
How old is your car that you're changing brake pads, headlight bulbs, etc? I guess if it is 10 years old, that stuff starts to add up, but you also haven't had a payment in awhile, so it is still cheap.:)
My truck costs me about a thousand dollars a month, so "free maintenance" is a bit silly when put into that context. There is nothing cheap about owning a nice vehicle, Tesla or otherwise.
Even if I keep my truck 10 years, the per month cost of owning it will be around $600 a month. At 7 years of ownership, it will be closer to $750 a month. If I leased it for 3 years instead, it would be about $1,100 a month.
So the truth is, debating the cost of oil changes and battery maintenance is silly when we're talking those kinds of numbers.
A fully optioned Tesla S costs how much to own per month again?:) (hint, it is a lot, and high enough that anyone considering doing so isn't worried about a $40 oil change)
BTW, I spend about $300 a month in fuel, while I don't like throwing away money, against the cost of the vehicle, frankly it isn't that big a deal. Insurance runs around $150 a month for very good coverage as well.
Also worth nothing is that if they couldn't sell faster, fully enabled hardware for higher prices, then they'd have to sell all their hardware for higher prices.
AMD isn't making billions like Intel is, they need the more expensive hardware to try and earn a profit. The low end is volume, not profit.:)
The other part is that many trade secrets lay within those binary blobs...
It isn't just you they don't want seeing all that, nVidia is on their radar as well...
Plus, keep in mind that some of their technology isn't theirs, cross licensing and patents protect many things in video graphics, some of it isn't theirs to release...
You my dear sir, get a cookie for a great answer.:)
Yea, that is it exactly... Still, one downside to leasing is that the penalties to break it can be expensive in the first year or two. Worse than for a loan. Yes, the value is the value, but they often can stick you for worse if you have to break it.
One huge mistake that people make with leases is that they focus on the payment, not the other numbers. The purchase price does affect payment, but so much can be done to mess around with the deal and arrive at a monthly number that you can live with, and leave the dealer with a lot of profit.
Me? I am right to the point... I buy new for several reasons, one of which is that I can always say, "you know, this exact same vehicle is sold by 10 other dealers in 30 minutes of driving, it doesn't take much of a price break to make 30 minutes of driving worthwhile".
:) I worked for awhile in the Gulf of Mexico as a helicopter pilot... There is tons and tons of oil yet to be extracted from there, including from fields they once thought were done.
10 years ago companies like Apache and Baker were buying up "old spent" fields from the big boys and employing new technology to get more out of them.
One platform I flew to was built in the 70s, it still produces about a million dollars a day in oil, long after the "experts" predicted it would run dry.
Colorado is swimming on top of oil, so is Canada... So is the arctic... There are trillions and trillions of barrels of oil to be found...
Of course, that is another question, do we want to pull it ALL out and burn it all?
No, I don't want to, and I'm NOT a greenie. I do drive a 3 ton SUV after all!:)
But I get it, even if CO2 isn't an issue, burning all that oil isn't clean, it does polute...
So I'm all for better technology. Lets start with our power plants... If I buy a Tesla, my primary concern beyond cost is that I get my power from the wall from a coal power plant.
Yea, maybe it is "cleaner" somehow than a small ICE engine in my truck, but it feels a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
Why don't we build more nuclear? Lets have the Navy run them, they have a very good record with their reactors and aren't limited in the type they can build, so they could run breeder reactors.
The same issue exists of course with any low production item... Try it with a Ferrari for example, some models are made in the hundreds of copies only...
Tesla will have control, until they start building hundreds of thousands of cars a year, then they'll lose it.
All auto leases have option for you to buy the car at the end of the lease. This puts the leaseholder in the proverbial driver's seat. I have seen people execute the option, buy out the car, then turn around and sell the car for a higher price.
My local GMC dealership is even easier to work with...
If the truck is worth more than the lease end value, they don't make you bother with buying the car and trading it in, they'll buy it and credit you the difference in value and apply it to the next truck, or write you a check.
Saves a transaction and having to have the cash to pay for the buyout value. One of the services they offer.
Keep in mind that for FAR less than the cost of the Tesla plan, my new Yukon is covered for 7 years or 84,000 miles, whichever comes first.
All I have to do is oil changes and tires, everything else is covered.
So were I in your shoes, I'd have paid about $2K total for all that coverage and not paid a dime in repairs, plus had free loaner cars, free roadside assistance (included in the warranty), and paid a LOT less than Tesla charges for 8 years of coverage.
"Close to 594 million which is 48 percent of population in India practices open defecation. That's half the population dumping over 65 million kilos of poo out there every day. If this poo continues to be let loose on us, there will be no escaping the stench of life threatening infections, diseases and epidemics."
You're comparing the cost of repairs on an older car out of warranty with a brand new car, hardly comparable...
To get Tesla's coverage for that long, you have to pay for it from day one and for every year.
Most new cars also come with roadside coverage, my current truck has it for 5 years from date of purchase.
While it is true that the yearly running costs of an electric car are lower than for a ICE car, that battery will be expensive to replace. All the oil changes in the world don't compete with that.
My 2015 Yukon XL Denali requires semi-synthetic oil...
I have to change the oil at most twice a year...
The cost at the GMC dealership? $40 a change, and they wash it for me... Better yet, they offer no-charge valet service, they'll come drop off a loaner truck, pickup mine, then return it a few hours later clean and done...
Beyond that, it'll require tires every few years, but so will a Tesla... The transmission fluid and all other fluids are good for 100,000 miles, so frankly I'll probably never change them.
This myth of a ICE vehicle costing so much to drive is just nuts.
Fuel is the single biggest expense, and I'll grant you that I pay a lot to keep my truck filled up. That being said, I use the space and can't buy an electric version of it... yet.:) Give it 5 years, maybe then...
I have not found the Tesla S to be all that interesting due to price. For what you pay, it is expensive, in my opinion.
That being said, if they do a lease on a 3 year old copy for half the price of a new one, the monthly payment might get into an area that I'd be interested in.
I would expect a 3 year old Tesla S to be in better shape than your average 3 year old car, the early buyers are going to likely have taken good care of it and if it comes with another 3 year warranty, then no worries.
I actually wouldn't mind owning an electric, price is the primary issue right now.
The grid is no different than public roads, we don't allow private companies (well, we do, but we shouldn't) to control roads, we shouldn't do it with our power grid...
Generation and power delivery need to be separate, so you pay to have grid tie and pay for power delivery. You can also sell your power back at some rate that the market will bear. At some point, they'll pay you so little that installing batteries makes more sense than grid tie and selling it back.:)
Maybe... I'd question if that is a good design... but putting that aside, the fact that you can have your stuff taken away, be acquitted, and not get it back, is wrong and immoral.
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No, you're not just moving the pollution.
A central power plant can/does have far better air scrubbing technology than your ICE. It can also run more efficiently, putting out less pollution for the same amount of power.
While that is all true, it still puts out a bunch of pollution, a bunch of CO2, and doesn't really address the core problem, which is to stop burning dead dinos.
If I'm going to spend more money on transportation, deal with range issues, etc. then it needs to be on more than just moving from burning oil to burning coal. If my power was nuclear supplied, I'd be much more inclined to do it.
I would rather a nuclear plant was built 10 miles away from my home than a coal plant 100 miles away. Nuclear, run properly, is safe.
Of course, the words "run properly" are key there, that is another conversation to be had. That is why I'd want to talk about having the Navy run them, they have done very well over the past 50 years and don't have a "profit" incentive the way private companies do. Sometimes "max profit" and "nuclear reactor" shouldn't be in the same sentence. :)
IMHO...
If I was in the market for something like a Nissan Leaf, I would give it a serious look. After the tax credits and considering the deals on them, it might well be something to consider.
The irony is that standard cars today are just as nice, if not nicer, than many luxury cars of years gone by. But I'm spoiled (yea, I know that is what it is), so I wouldn't look at such a car.
The issue I'm having with the Tesla is that for what you pay, you're not getting a whole lot. It is missing a lot of things that I now consider "standard equipment" in the $70-80k price range.
Electrics perhaps just don't have the juice to provide everything yet, but I know it will come.
Range isn't the biggest concern, I'll have a gas vehicle for awhile to cover that, one of my two vehicles can be electric. The bigger issue is that none of the electrics really offers what I'm looking for.
I either need a full size truck, or perhaps an electric Corvette. :) I don't ever see myself buying a sedan ever again.
When are they going to start figuring out how to license those things in a way that is compatible with open source?
What benefit does AMD or nVidia get from doing that?
Considering the desktop market of Linux is about 1%, give or take... Frankly I think you should be happy they do ANYTHING at all...
Poke at them enough and they might decide to not bother.
Of course smog is an issue, there really isn't anything "good" that comes out of the back of a ICE engine...
The problem is, getting an electric truck doesn't help much when the power from the wall is produced from a coal fired power plant...
You're just moving the pollution from one place to another, not removing it...
If that was true, then driver updates wouldn't speed up games and clean up bugs.
The turnover is so quick and new technology keeps coming out (think Eyefinity and Surround), that both companies are racing to keep up.
If you think the secret sauce is so simple, go checkout Eyefinity and Surround. Both work, but they do it in different ways and are compatible with games differently.
I've used both, they each have their upsides and downsides, but they do not work the same.
The hardware has nothing to do with anything here...
This is about software, not hardware...
Physically having access to the hardware, inspecting the chip itself, that isn't new, it has been done for a long time...
What the software does with that hardware however, is a trade secret...
Tires will be the biggest single expense on my truck... A nice set of Michelin M/S tires will run about a thousand dollars for my truck, but will last 5 years. So that is about $200 a year, but that cost is there for any high end vehicle.
How old is your car that you're changing brake pads, headlight bulbs, etc? I guess if it is 10 years old, that stuff starts to add up, but you also haven't had a payment in awhile, so it is still cheap. :)
My truck costs me about a thousand dollars a month, so "free maintenance" is a bit silly when put into that context. There is nothing cheap about owning a nice vehicle, Tesla or otherwise.
Even if I keep my truck 10 years, the per month cost of owning it will be around $600 a month. At 7 years of ownership, it will be closer to $750 a month. If I leased it for 3 years instead, it would be about $1,100 a month.
So the truth is, debating the cost of oil changes and battery maintenance is silly when we're talking those kinds of numbers.
A fully optioned Tesla S costs how much to own per month again? :) (hint, it is a lot, and high enough that anyone considering doing so isn't worried about a $40 oil change)
BTW, I spend about $300 a month in fuel, while I don't like throwing away money, against the cost of the vehicle, frankly it isn't that big a deal. Insurance runs around $150 a month for very good coverage as well.
It is expensive to have fancy. :)
Also worth nothing is that if they couldn't sell faster, fully enabled hardware for higher prices, then they'd have to sell all their hardware for higher prices.
AMD isn't making billions like Intel is, they need the more expensive hardware to try and earn a profit. The low end is volume, not profit. :)
That is part of it, to be sure...
The other part is that many trade secrets lay within those binary blobs...
It isn't just you they don't want seeing all that, nVidia is on their radar as well...
Plus, keep in mind that some of their technology isn't theirs, cross licensing and patents protect many things in video graphics, some of it isn't theirs to release...
----------------
It is at least a step in the right direction.
You my dear sir, get a cookie for a great answer. :)
Yea, that is it exactly... Still, one downside to leasing is that the penalties to break it can be expensive in the first year or two. Worse than for a loan. Yes, the value is the value, but they often can stick you for worse if you have to break it.
One huge mistake that people make with leases is that they focus on the payment, not the other numbers. The purchase price does affect payment, but so much can be done to mess around with the deal and arrive at a monthly number that you can live with, and leave the dealer with a lot of profit.
Me? I am right to the point... I buy new for several reasons, one of which is that I can always say, "you know, this exact same vehicle is sold by 10 other dealers in 30 minutes of driving, it doesn't take much of a price break to make 30 minutes of driving worthwhile".
Help me out, cause that wooshed over my head...
:) I worked for awhile in the Gulf of Mexico as a helicopter pilot... There is tons and tons of oil yet to be extracted from there, including from fields they once thought were done.
10 years ago companies like Apache and Baker were buying up "old spent" fields from the big boys and employing new technology to get more out of them.
One platform I flew to was built in the 70s, it still produces about a million dollars a day in oil, long after the "experts" predicted it would run dry.
Colorado is swimming on top of oil, so is Canada... So is the arctic... There are trillions and trillions of barrels of oil to be found...
Of course, that is another question, do we want to pull it ALL out and burn it all?
No, I don't want to, and I'm NOT a greenie. I do drive a 3 ton SUV after all! :)
But I get it, even if CO2 isn't an issue, burning all that oil isn't clean, it does polute...
So I'm all for better technology. Lets start with our power plants... If I buy a Tesla, my primary concern beyond cost is that I get my power from the wall from a coal power plant.
Yea, maybe it is "cleaner" somehow than a small ICE engine in my truck, but it feels a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
Why don't we build more nuclear? Lets have the Navy run them, they have a very good record with their reactors and aren't limited in the type they can build, so they could run breeder reactors.
I see your point, and it is a fair one...
The same issue exists of course with any low production item... Try it with a Ferrari for example, some models are made in the hundreds of copies only...
Tesla will have control, until they start building hundreds of thousands of cars a year, then they'll lose it.
All auto leases have option for you to buy the car at the end of the lease. This puts the leaseholder in the proverbial driver's seat. I have seen people execute the option, buy out the car, then turn around and sell the car for a higher price.
My local GMC dealership is even easier to work with...
If the truck is worth more than the lease end value, they don't make you bother with buying the car and trading it in, they'll buy it and credit you the difference in value and apply it to the next truck, or write you a check.
Saves a transaction and having to have the cash to pay for the buyout value. One of the services they offer.
Fair enough...
Keep in mind that for FAR less than the cost of the Tesla plan, my new Yukon is covered for 7 years or 84,000 miles, whichever comes first.
All I have to do is oil changes and tires, everything else is covered.
So were I in your shoes, I'd have paid about $2K total for all that coverage and not paid a dime in repairs, plus had free loaner cars, free roadside assistance (included in the warranty), and paid a LOT less than Tesla charges for 8 years of coverage.
I figured you MUST be making this up...
No, you were not:
http://www.poo2loo.com/
"Close to 594 million which is 48 percent of population in India practices open defecation. That's half the population dumping over 65 million kilos of poo out there every day. If this poo continues to be let loose on us, there will be no escaping the stench of life threatening infections, diseases and epidemics."
------------
Holy crap! Literately!
:) I rather think of my Denali as a luxury vehicle. It should be for a nearly $80k sticker price.
Considering all that is in it, it is actually nicer than many so-called "luxury brands".
Perhaps your state or country works differently...
I don't get the title to my truck until the last payment is made, then the finance company mails it to me...
You're comparing the cost of repairs on an older car out of warranty with a brand new car, hardly comparable...
To get Tesla's coverage for that long, you have to pay for it from day one and for every year.
Most new cars also come with roadside coverage, my current truck has it for 5 years from date of purchase.
While it is true that the yearly running costs of an electric car are lower than for a ICE car, that battery will be expensive to replace. All the oil changes in the world don't compete with that.
Meh... I don't own my truck until the last payment is made, the title is in the hands of the finance company. :)
Now a HOUSE you own, even with a mortgage, the deed is in your name...
But a car? Unless you pay cash for it, you don't own it...
That is why a car can be repossessed in 5 minutes, a house can take 60 days to a year to take away from you. (among other reasons)
My 2015 Yukon XL Denali requires semi-synthetic oil...
I have to change the oil at most twice a year...
The cost at the GMC dealership? $40 a change, and they wash it for me... Better yet, they offer no-charge valet service, they'll come drop off a loaner truck, pickup mine, then return it a few hours later clean and done...
Beyond that, it'll require tires every few years, but so will a Tesla... The transmission fluid and all other fluids are good for 100,000 miles, so frankly I'll probably never change them.
This myth of a ICE vehicle costing so much to drive is just nuts.
Fuel is the single biggest expense, and I'll grant you that I pay a lot to keep my truck filled up. That being said, I use the space and can't buy an electric version of it... yet. :) Give it 5 years, maybe then...
I have not found the Tesla S to be all that interesting due to price. For what you pay, it is expensive, in my opinion.
That being said, if they do a lease on a 3 year old copy for half the price of a new one, the monthly payment might get into an area that I'd be interested in.
I would expect a 3 year old Tesla S to be in better shape than your average 3 year old car, the early buyers are going to likely have taken good care of it and if it comes with another 3 year warranty, then no worries.
I actually wouldn't mind owning an electric, price is the primary issue right now.
Amen...
The grid is no different than public roads, we don't allow private companies (well, we do, but we shouldn't) to control roads, we shouldn't do it with our power grid...
Generation and power delivery need to be separate, so you pay to have grid tie and pay for power delivery. You can also sell your power back at some rate that the market will bear. At some point, they'll pay you so little that installing batteries makes more sense than grid tie and selling it back. :)
Maybe... I'd question if that is a good design... but putting that aside, the fact that you can have your stuff taken away, be acquitted, and not get it back, is wrong and immoral.
I just want to be put on the record saying: "That is completely insane."
Yes, it is... We have a rather broken legal system in the US because of this and many things like it...
Sadly, too many people are blind to it because it doesn't affect them in their day to day lives...