It appears that this T3 is higher quality than Ford Fusion.
Two points:
1. When is the last time you actually sat in a nicely equipped Ford Fusion?
2. How many times have you been inside a production Model 3?
Frankly, you don't know if the Model 3 is nicer or not. Maybe it will be, maybe it won't, but it is a lot of guess work now.
I HAVE been in a recent Fusion, they are really nice these days, when nicely equipped.
And before you bring up reliability differences -- I expect T3 to similarly outlast FF because no leaking liquids involved.
I keep seeing that issue brought up, but you know what? In 2010 I traded in my 2001 Chevy Tahoe with more than 100k miles on it. You know what maintenance it required in 9 years? Almost nothing, trivial stuff.
Cars simply don't require a bunch of maintenance these days. The new ones are even better. My current truck doesn't need anything but oil changes until 100,000 miles. Then it is just a belt, spark plugs, and a few other minor things. Total cost is about $500, give or take. It'll drive for the next decade with almost nothing needing to be done to it mechanical. As for cosmetic stuff like power windows, Tesla will have those issues just like any car.
In any case, few people keep cars for 10 years, so really who cares? That is more of a cheer-leading argument than a real one. What is the 3 year and 5 year total cost of ownership, that is a more practical question. You may respond "gas vs. electricity", but you have to also include price, payments, resale, insurance, etc. For some people the Model 3 may well make sense, but I have a feeling that for most people, it won't.
Of course it isn't even for sale yet, lets see if Musk can hit that price point and deliver lots of them at a profit before we get all up over this.
The irony there is thick... since you're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about.
R&D and setting up factories is paid for over the full production years of a product.
They are capital investments, not expenses.
Your problem is that you don't know how financials work. Cash-flow and P&I are two very different things.
Tesla is bleeding both cash and income.
People like you, who don't actually know how money works, think that because Tesla is building a huge battery factory, that it explains why they are losing money. It doesn't.
It explains why they are losing CASH. But income and cash are not the same thing. Tesla doesn't use the cash system of accounting, they use the accrual method, which means that just because they spend a billion dollars doesn't mean they get to reduce their profit by a billion dollars this year. They may have to take 20 years to do it, so they get to write off $50 million a year.
Tesla is bleeding cash because it is building factories, but it is also bleeding income (or the lack of it) because it isn't making anything building cars either.
If Tesla built 100,000 Model S cars tomorrow, they would report a larger loss, not a smaller one. The loss is on the cars themselves, not on factories.
Each Tesla Model S costs about $15,000 more to build than they sell it for. They are accepting this right now for image and marketshare, hoping to get those costs down over time. However it is also possible that it will never make a dime, which is fine, but it does lead into the Model 3, which they will have to make a profit building.
Going from a $85k cost to build base Model S to a $35k selling price on the Model 3 is a massive jump. Can they do it? Maybe, but everything has to work right and some luck on top of it.
My reply to that would be that you're a fanboy who is blind to reality and money, believing that they have a destiny to never fail.
The difference is, I'm perfectly happy for Tesla to succeed, I just think it will be much harder than you do.
I also don't think the market for EVs is nearly as large as you do, there are many issues to widespead adoption, most of which you sweep under the rug quite easily.
They do? I haven't seen any yet. At least no financial success and little sales success.
The closest you could come to success would be the Toyota Prius... nothing else EV could be called a success...
Not even the Model S, which has managed to lose billions of dollars.
Now, it may yet make a profit in the long run, only time will tell on that one. If it does, then good for Tesla. But there seems to be an assumption that Tesla is somehow owed massive success and profits.
1. Tesla has to deliver the Model 3, on time and on budget.
2. Tesla has to actually turn a profit on those cars.
3. Tesla has to be able to build enough of them, fast enough, to keep Ford/GM/etc. from running away with the market, assuming the above two become possible.
The above is not impossible, but it isn't easy and a given either.
I think that setting schools up into 1000-student-ish campuses encompassing ages 5-18 is the way to go. Make it a goal to get out of there as soon as possible: once a student gets to "AP" courses, they really need to be in more of a college setting. At that point, move to a secondary education campus or the technical education campus. Set up all of the language arts at the same time so that students can smoothly move between classes by ability. It's OK to have a 10 and a 14 year old in the same reading class. Get rid of the concept of "classes" and just move kids up by subject. Recruit kids who are ahead to help kids who are behind. Get rid of arbitrary cut-offs for public funding - if a special ed kid needs an extra few years to finish up, let him. If a kid finishes everything by 16, pay for community college courses rather than cramming too much AP-type stuff into primary education.
I love this plan... I'm sure there are issued to be worked out, but I really like this idea...
Based on the Model X as well as the massive changes that they made to the factory for it, I suspect that 3 will start in less than 1 year, and will scale up very quickly.
It is currently April 2016. Musk himself said that it would be the end of 2017 before the Model 3 was sold.
I'm not sure which specs I missed, but range alone puts Tesla way outside the competitions league.
I'm not convinced range is the problem, rather recharge time is.
You can make the range 50, 100, 200, or 500 miles, the primary concern people have, in my opinion, is how long does it take to fill up.
The fear, or "range anxiety", is not solved by giving it 200 miles of range, because people worry "I'll forget to plug it in", or "I want to take a road trip", or "I want to move to another city, how do I get there?"
Are there solutions to that? Sure, people suggest "get a rental car for road trips", or "ship the car and fly there", or "your phone will remind you to plug it in". But you know what the EASIEST solution is? Buy a gas powered car.
Let me put this another way. The early adopters who have bought EVs so far have less trouble with this because they tend to be fanatical about the technology. But tens of millions of Soccer Moms and Dads don't care nearly as much and won't pay as close attention. The first time they have to take the kids somewhere and the car has no power, that'll be the end of that.
A 15 min recharge time to at least 70% capacity is the solution, not more range. Even 15 min is long, I'm trying to be nice about that. 5 min would be better.
I do think there's another compelling reason, the whole virus boondoogle. But it probably doesn't occur to your wife that the solution to that is another OS.
What virus boondoogle? Or are you referring to Windows 10 telemetry?
If that, then she doesn't care, and frankly neither do I. I click Express settings and I'm happy enough with that.
I even used to use Norton Anti-Virus, but again, Windows Defender is good enough so we leave it at that.
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If it isn't that and the concern is Windows Viruses in general, then the solution to that is to simply not download and run programs you don't know, don't click on everything, run an ad-blocker, etc.
My wife runs a non-admin account, she has adblock installed, and she knows enough to not click everything on the screen.
When the price plummets, and buyers are demanding EVs
If... you should replace the word "when" with the word "if"...
There are so many people here stuck in the groupthink that it must be a given that EVs will become super cheap.
Maybe they will, but there is no assurance of that.
The majority of gas stations won't close until people stop buying gas. If EVs do become more common, then gas cars will become cheaper, at least on the used market, and gas will get cheaper still.
There will be a market of people who drive them nearly forever on crazy cheap gas and the cars won't be worth selling.
I think technical and arts education is currently neglected.
Yes, the arts... those two...
Reading and math are important, but so are a lot of other things.
Music is important, science is important, etc.
That is one of the problem with "standardized tests", you end up teaching to them and they don't test the above things well.
I think studies are bearing this out - technology is not enhancing elementary education. The best you can say is that it isn't hurting it. I don't know if this is because it inherently has no value or if the teachers have no idea what to do with it, but you seem to be right.
One of the things that technology can offer is individual instruction to the level of the child, but schools are not setup to do that, nor are the education programs on computer that I see in my school.
We currently lump kids together based on age rather than ability, and we teach them all at the same speed with the same material.
But that isn't how human beings work. Ok, some stuff can have that done, everyone needs to know the basics, but pretty quickly you have kids a grade ahead, some on grade, and some behind. The social structure of school will be very hard to change.
Example: My daughter is in 2nd grade, she excels in reading and writing, she can read the stuff the 4th graders are going (my 10 year old son is in 4th grade), but she is having a really hard time with math, she still works below her grade level in that. But the class marches on, boring her with reading and writing that she already can do, while not going slowly enough for her with math. It is the worst of both worlds.
The question is, what do you do about that, how do you change it, and how do you get millions of people onboard with said changes?
Ok genius, so we bugger up the climate and are metaphorially all bobbing around in the ocean slowly dying. Do tell us where in your analogy where the rescue ship comes from?
It sounds like your schools have an overabundance:)
I am fortunate to live in a nice city.
the newer schools are being designed without computer labs.
That is a shame. There is value in teaching basic computer skills, the whole world doesn't run on Chromebooks.
Frankly, I'd like to see the schools have a Tech shop similar to the old auto shops. Where they can fix, repair, rebuild, etc. PCs and see how they all work.
Not everyone has to know how to do it, but everyone should have a taste of it to know what is inside all the tech that is around us. It is the same reason you teach a little of everything to kids, to broaden their awareness and open them up to what else is possible.
They do not currently have a laptop (or tablet) per child, but rather these Chromebook carts.
I'm not at all convinced you need a laptop or tablet per child. I've seen the computer education programs, our school uses some of them, and frankly a lot of them are kinda crappy. Yea, maybe I'm old, but pencil and paper have their place and value.
The problem is that people who love liberty are mostly nonviolent people.
Yes, that is true...
Look at the American Revolution, there were many years of harsh and unjust treatment of the American Colonies leading up to the Declaration of Independence.
If you read it (and everyone should, it is a beautiful document), it lays out very plainly the reasons for taking up arms to remove the Crown by force from America. It wasn't a decision taken lightly, but there does come a point where people get pushed too far.
Are we there today? No, of course not. But I don't think we're as far away as many think and it could go either way.
It is impressive, though. You not liking Tesla has no bearing on that.
It is a shame that you can't see beyond that... double shame that you think I don't like Tesla...
I don't like or dislike them, I'm rather indifferent to them.
I do know that they haven't yet done all the things people want to rush and give them credit for. I do know that it isn't nearly as easy as you'd think, but it is possible.
If Tesla pulls it off, good for them. If they don't, so be it. But we are years away from that either way, don't put the cart before the horse.
We'll still have to deal with phasing out fossil fuels when they run out, so why not start earlier ? The cost will be less.
Of course, I have no problems with starting now.
The question is, how hard do we push for it?
To keep CO2 below 500 PPM would require massive and dramatic changes, that would likely crush the world economy and put us into recession. It is possible that we couldn't avoid 500 PPM no matter what we do, because of the existing CO2 and existing emissions, but if we could, it would require that we more or less turn off all our coal plants tomorrow, half our cars, half our natural gas, etc.
Since we aren't going to do that, we're going to pass 500 PPM.
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Let me put it this way. We can slowly move towards a fossil free world, with perhaps a 100 year plan to get there. But we also have to accept that a 100 year plan takes too long to stop the CO2 rise from going through the roof.
In other words, the ship is going to sink, she's made of iron, fill her with water and she'll drop to the bottom of the ocean. Are we going to ignore that fact, or start ripping up the decks to build lifeboats?
It all sounds very scary when you read stuff like that sight. Clearly they are a propaganda site, but I accept that they also might be right, or right enough.
But what they DON'T do is explain what it would take, what it would ACTUALLY take, to get CO2 back down to 350 PPM. Why? Because if they did, everyone would promptly ignore them.
That is 7 years old, but it is even more true today than when it was published.
"Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storageâ"Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predictâ"lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves."
This is an example of what happens when someone attempts to put it into an actual plan for action. First, there are a ton of flaws with that plan and some outright errors. #8 for example assumes that 67% of power is lost in transmission. No it isn't, the real number is about 7%.
It just isn't going to happen, it is the sort of list you come up with when someone is daydreaming about "if I could magically just change the world, what would I do?"
Self driving cars make it less economic to own a car yourself, as 95% of the time, any private car sits idling in some garage or parking lot. So in general it makes no sense to own a car, if there was a way to reuse a car simply and without to many waiting and transferring times. With self driving cars, this will be easy. Whenever you need one, you phone/text/web-order your car provider, and it comes to you like a cab, but without any driver. And whenever you don't need it anymore, you just leave it, and it will drive automaticly to the next parking lot or the next customer.
I've seen many people suggest that, including that guy on Shark Tank who invested in Uber.
There will, of course, be some of that... but I don't think it'll be nearly as common as you suspect it will be. People like to own stuff, people like things that are theirs.
There is value in having a vehicle where you left it, in the condition you left it, with your stuff in it, that no one else as farted in, eaten in, or done anything else in.
Yes, our vehicles sit 95% of the time, but they don't doing nothing during that time. They are waiting, for us, at our beck and call. In the next 30 seconds, I can be outside driving somewhere if I want to be. My seat will be where I left it. The radio is turned to what I left it. There is no food, trash, etc. in there. The inside smells nice, and it is in beautiful condition because it doesn't drive all day.
because electric cars require much less maintenance due to less mechanics
They require less mechanical maintenance, but you're ignoring cosmetic maintenance. Look at police cars and taxi cabs. They only get a few years before they are completely trashed. Any vehicle driven all day doesn't last long from that point of view. This is why car rental companies turn their vehicles over so often, they would get quite trashed otherwise.
They may have trouble keeping up. They hope to be able to satisfy 500,000 orders a year by 2020. They will need to fast track that considerably, but even at that rate Bloomberg says that EVs will displace over 2,000,000 barrels of oil a day by 2023. That would be enough to cause a crash in the oil market
Oh goodie! That means cheap gas for years to come for my big 6.2L V8 engine!:)
This of course completely undercuts the whole "most cars will go EV due to rising gas prices".
No, gas prices will go lower, not higher, if even 10% of cars sold become EV, thus putting a cap on EV sales due to gas being so cheap.
Pent-up interest in transitioning away from fossil fuels?
If there was, there exist options at this price point already.
The incredible price point?
I continue to be amused at what people consider to be a good price point. The $35k is the base model, much like $70K is the base price of the Model S, but almost no Model S go for anywhere near that, $100k is closer to the average.
I expect most Model 3 to be closer to $50K than $35K.
Tesla's good safety and reliability record?
They don't have enough of a record to call it that. People buying $100K cars aren't the normal public and they aren't driven the same way.
So, rather that collect 0.25% in a savings account, place a $1000 deposit, with low risk, but lots of potential upside. Why do people think that's crazy?
It isn't, you are likely correct.
That, and I don't expect more than half of the deposits to turn into orders.
There is a decent chance the $35K price doesn't hold either, or it will be really bare bones and the ASP (average selling price) will be closer to $45K.
Inability to completely solve the problem means we should not even attempt to reduce the scale of the problem? That's your argument? Really?
Yes, quite possibly, yes...
We only have so much money and so many resources. Would they best be put to use reducing the scale of the problem, or planning for and mitigating the problem as it arrives?
It is possible that all the efforts to reduce the core problem will leave us unable to actually deal with it when it arrives.
Imagine that you're on the Titanic. Sure, bailing out water and trying to stop the flooding are all noble goals, but is that the best way to use the time you have left? Had the Captain accepted the loss of the ship more quickly, once you are ok with the idea that the ship is not going to survive, then the question becomes, how do we mitigate the damage?
They had hours before the ship sank? Why wasn't it all hands on deck, ripping up the decks to form makeshift lifeboats? Why not ram the ship into the iceburg and try and put people onto it? Crazy, but better than death.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, I post all that and still you don't get it.
Or don't care, but that's ok, the majority of the people in the world either don't care or don't want to care.
That you think they are losing money in the cars themselves is why YOU are an imbecile.
I don't think it, I know it, I've read the financial statements Tesla has released. As publicly traded company, this information is not secret.
It appears that this T3 is higher quality than Ford Fusion.
Two points:
1. When is the last time you actually sat in a nicely equipped Ford Fusion?
2. How many times have you been inside a production Model 3?
Frankly, you don't know if the Model 3 is nicer or not. Maybe it will be, maybe it won't, but it is a lot of guess work now.
I HAVE been in a recent Fusion, they are really nice these days, when nicely equipped.
And before you bring up reliability differences -- I expect T3 to similarly outlast FF because no leaking liquids involved.
I keep seeing that issue brought up, but you know what? In 2010 I traded in my 2001 Chevy Tahoe with more than 100k miles on it. You know what maintenance it required in 9 years? Almost nothing, trivial stuff.
Cars simply don't require a bunch of maintenance these days. The new ones are even better. My current truck doesn't need anything but oil changes until 100,000 miles. Then it is just a belt, spark plugs, and a few other minor things. Total cost is about $500, give or take. It'll drive for the next decade with almost nothing needing to be done to it mechanical. As for cosmetic stuff like power windows, Tesla will have those issues just like any car.
In any case, few people keep cars for 10 years, so really who cares? That is more of a cheer-leading argument than a real one. What is the 3 year and 5 year total cost of ownership, that is a more practical question. You may respond "gas vs. electricity", but you have to also include price, payments, resale, insurance, etc. For some people the Model 3 may well make sense, but I have a feeling that for most people, it won't.
Of course it isn't even for sale yet, lets see if Musk can hit that price point and deliver lots of them at a profit before we get all up over this.
You're a fucking imbecile.
The irony there is thick... since you're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about.
R&D and setting up factories is paid for over the full production years of a product.
They are capital investments, not expenses.
Your problem is that you don't know how financials work. Cash-flow and P&I are two very different things.
Tesla is bleeding both cash and income.
People like you, who don't actually know how money works, think that because Tesla is building a huge battery factory, that it explains why they are losing money. It doesn't.
It explains why they are losing CASH. But income and cash are not the same thing. Tesla doesn't use the cash system of accounting, they use the accrual method, which means that just because they spend a billion dollars doesn't mean they get to reduce their profit by a billion dollars this year. They may have to take 20 years to do it, so they get to write off $50 million a year.
Tesla is bleeding cash because it is building factories, but it is also bleeding income (or the lack of it) because it isn't making anything building cars either.
If Tesla built 100,000 Model S cars tomorrow, they would report a larger loss, not a smaller one. The loss is on the cars themselves, not on factories.
Each Tesla Model S costs about $15,000 more to build than they sell it for. They are accepting this right now for image and marketshare, hoping to get those costs down over time. However it is also possible that it will never make a dime, which is fine, but it does lead into the Model 3, which they will have to make a profit building.
Going from a $85k cost to build base Model S to a $35k selling price on the Model 3 is a massive jump. Can they do it? Maybe, but everything has to work right and some luck on top of it.
My reply to that would be that you're a fanboy who is blind to reality and money, believing that they have a destiny to never fail.
The difference is, I'm perfectly happy for Tesla to succeed, I just think it will be much harder than you do.
I also don't think the market for EVs is nearly as large as you do, there are many issues to widespead adoption, most of which you sweep under the rug quite easily.
Even though the news stories show success.
They do? I haven't seen any yet. At least no financial success and little sales success.
The closest you could come to success would be the Toyota Prius... nothing else EV could be called a success...
Not even the Model S, which has managed to lose billions of dollars.
Now, it may yet make a profit in the long run, only time will tell on that one. If it does, then good for Tesla. But there seems to be an assumption that Tesla is somehow owed massive success and profits.
1. Tesla has to deliver the Model 3, on time and on budget.
2. Tesla has to actually turn a profit on those cars.
3. Tesla has to be able to build enough of them, fast enough, to keep Ford/GM/etc. from running away with the market, assuming the above two become possible.
The above is not impossible, but it isn't easy and a given either.
I think that setting schools up into 1000-student-ish campuses encompassing ages 5-18 is the way to go. Make it a goal to get out of there as soon as possible: once a student gets to "AP" courses, they really need to be in more of a college setting. At that point, move to a secondary education campus or the technical education campus. Set up all of the language arts at the same time so that students can smoothly move between classes by ability. It's OK to have a 10 and a 14 year old in the same reading class. Get rid of the concept of "classes" and just move kids up by subject. Recruit kids who are ahead to help kids who are behind. Get rid of arbitrary cut-offs for public funding - if a special ed kid needs an extra few years to finish up, let him. If a kid finishes everything by 16, pay for community college courses rather than cramming too much AP-type stuff into primary education.
I love this plan... I'm sure there are issued to be worked out, but I really like this idea...
You're hired! :)
Based on the Model X as well as the massive changes that they made to the factory for it, I suspect that 3 will start in less than 1 year, and will scale up very quickly.
It is currently April 2016. Musk himself said that it would be the end of 2017 before the Model 3 was sold.
That is closer to 2 years than 1.
I'm not sure which specs I missed, but range alone puts Tesla way outside the competitions league.
I'm not convinced range is the problem, rather recharge time is.
You can make the range 50, 100, 200, or 500 miles, the primary concern people have, in my opinion, is how long does it take to fill up.
The fear, or "range anxiety", is not solved by giving it 200 miles of range, because people worry "I'll forget to plug it in", or "I want to take a road trip", or "I want to move to another city, how do I get there?"
Are there solutions to that? Sure, people suggest "get a rental car for road trips", or "ship the car and fly there", or "your phone will remind you to plug it in". But you know what the EASIEST solution is? Buy a gas powered car.
Let me put this another way. The early adopters who have bought EVs so far have less trouble with this because they tend to be fanatical about the technology. But tens of millions of Soccer Moms and Dads don't care nearly as much and won't pay as close attention. The first time they have to take the kids somewhere and the car has no power, that'll be the end of that.
A 15 min recharge time to at least 70% capacity is the solution, not more range. Even 15 min is long, I'm trying to be nice about that. 5 min would be better.
I do think there's another compelling reason, the whole virus boondoogle. But it probably doesn't occur to your wife that the solution to that is another OS.
What virus boondoogle? Or are you referring to Windows 10 telemetry?
If that, then she doesn't care, and frankly neither do I. I click Express settings and I'm happy enough with that.
I even used to use Norton Anti-Virus, but again, Windows Defender is good enough so we leave it at that.
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If it isn't that and the concern is Windows Viruses in general, then the solution to that is to simply not download and run programs you don't know, don't click on everything, run an ad-blocker, etc.
My wife runs a non-admin account, she has adblock installed, and she knows enough to not click everything on the screen.
When the price plummets, and buyers are demanding EVs
If... you should replace the word "when" with the word "if"...
There are so many people here stuck in the groupthink that it must be a given that EVs will become super cheap.
Maybe they will, but there is no assurance of that.
The majority of gas stations won't close until people stop buying gas. If EVs do become more common, then gas cars will become cheaper, at least on the used market, and gas will get cheaper still.
There will be a market of people who drive them nearly forever on crazy cheap gas and the cars won't be worth selling.
I think technical and arts education is currently neglected.
Yes, the arts... those two...
Reading and math are important, but so are a lot of other things.
Music is important, science is important, etc.
That is one of the problem with "standardized tests", you end up teaching to them and they don't test the above things well.
I think studies are bearing this out - technology is not enhancing elementary education. The best you can say is that it isn't hurting it. I don't know if this is because it inherently has no value or if the teachers have no idea what to do with it, but you seem to be right.
One of the things that technology can offer is individual instruction to the level of the child, but schools are not setup to do that, nor are the education programs on computer that I see in my school.
We currently lump kids together based on age rather than ability, and we teach them all at the same speed with the same material.
But that isn't how human beings work. Ok, some stuff can have that done, everyone needs to know the basics, but pretty quickly you have kids a grade ahead, some on grade, and some behind. The social structure of school will be very hard to change.
Example: My daughter is in 2nd grade, she excels in reading and writing, she can read the stuff the 4th graders are going (my 10 year old son is in 4th grade), but she is having a really hard time with math, she still works below her grade level in that. But the class marches on, boring her with reading and writing that she already can do, while not going slowly enough for her with math. It is the worst of both worlds.
The question is, what do you do about that, how do you change it, and how do you get millions of people onboard with said changes?
Ok genius, so we bugger up the climate and are metaphorially all bobbing around in the ocean slowly dying. Do tell us where in your analogy where the rescue ship comes from?
Moving 25 miles inland and 100 miles north.
Don't be too sure. There are a lot of people out there who want a cheaper version of Model S.
Then why don't they buy one? They already exist, yet aren't selling all that many.
Everything from the Leaf to the Volt to the Fusion Energi are options, yet their sales are less than impressive.
How about the BMW i3 or Merc B-Class?
http://www.plugincars.com/cars
It seems like a lot of people think Tesla is the only company doing this, but Tesla plans to sell more Model 3s than almost that entire list combined.
In 2015, 540,000 plug in EVs (including hybrids) were sold in the whole world. Among ALL those vehicles.
Tesla wants to double that number with just one model.
Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? It sure seems like a very steep curve. But anything is possible.
It sounds like your schools have an overabundance :)
I am fortunate to live in a nice city.
the newer schools are being designed without computer labs.
That is a shame. There is value in teaching basic computer skills, the whole world doesn't run on Chromebooks.
Frankly, I'd like to see the schools have a Tech shop similar to the old auto shops. Where they can fix, repair, rebuild, etc. PCs and see how they all work.
Not everyone has to know how to do it, but everyone should have a taste of it to know what is inside all the tech that is around us. It is the same reason you teach a little of everything to kids, to broaden their awareness and open them up to what else is possible.
They do not currently have a laptop (or tablet) per child, but rather these Chromebook carts.
I'm not at all convinced you need a laptop or tablet per child. I've seen the computer education programs, our school uses some of them, and frankly a lot of them are kinda crappy. Yea, maybe I'm old, but pencil and paper have their place and value.
The problem is that people who love liberty are mostly nonviolent people.
Yes, that is true...
Look at the American Revolution, there were many years of harsh and unjust treatment of the American Colonies leading up to the Declaration of Independence.
If you read it (and everyone should, it is a beautiful document), it lays out very plainly the reasons for taking up arms to remove the Crown by force from America. It wasn't a decision taken lightly, but there does come a point where people get pushed too far.
Are we there today? No, of course not. But I don't think we're as far away as many think and it could go either way.
Yeah, but no one will be buying them. Why buy a gas car when you can get an electric at that time with 3 times the range for cheaper?
There is no assurance that will happen.
You also assume we will continue to have cheap electricity.
It is impressive, though. You not liking Tesla has no bearing on that.
It is a shame that you can't see beyond that... double shame that you think I don't like Tesla...
I don't like or dislike them, I'm rather indifferent to them.
I do know that they haven't yet done all the things people want to rush and give them credit for. I do know that it isn't nearly as easy as you'd think, but it is possible.
If Tesla pulls it off, good for them. If they don't, so be it. But we are years away from that either way, don't put the cart before the horse.
We'll still have to deal with phasing out fossil fuels when they run out, so why not start earlier ? The cost will be less.
Of course, I have no problems with starting now.
The question is, how hard do we push for it?
To keep CO2 below 500 PPM would require massive and dramatic changes, that would likely crush the world economy and put us into recession. It is possible that we couldn't avoid 500 PPM no matter what we do, because of the existing CO2 and existing emissions, but if we could, it would require that we more or less turn off all our coal plants tomorrow, half our cars, half our natural gas, etc.
Since we aren't going to do that, we're going to pass 500 PPM.
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Let me put it this way. We can slowly move towards a fossil free world, with perhaps a 100 year plan to get there. But we also have to accept that a 100 year plan takes too long to stop the CO2 rise from going through the roof.
In other words, the ship is going to sink, she's made of iron, fill her with water and she'll drop to the bottom of the ocean. Are we going to ignore that fact, or start ripping up the decks to build lifeboats?
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http://400.350.org/
It all sounds very scary when you read stuff like that sight. Clearly they are a propaganda site, but I accept that they also might be right, or right enough.
But what they DON'T do is explain what it would take, what it would ACTUALLY take, to get CO2 back down to 350 PPM. Why? Because if they did, everyone would promptly ignore them.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2...
That is 7 years old, but it is even more true today than when it was published.
"Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storageâ"Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predictâ"lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves."
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http://sustainabilityadvantage...
This is an example of what happens when someone attempts to put it into an actual plan for action. First, there are a ton of flaws with that plan and some outright errors. #8 for example assumes that 67% of power is lost in transmission. No it isn't, the real number is about 7%.
It just isn't going to happen, it is the sort of list you come up with when someone is daydreaming about "if I could magically just change the world, what would I do?"
Do you really think your life would get better if you overthrew the US Government?
In the short term? No.
In the long term? Yes.
That being said, I don't yet think that overthrowing them is required. It may come to that, but I'd much prefer a peaceful solution.
Self driving cars make it less economic to own a car yourself, as 95% of the time, any private car sits idling in some garage or parking lot. So in general it makes no sense to own a car, if there was a way to reuse a car simply and without to many waiting and transferring times. With self driving cars, this will be easy. Whenever you need one, you phone/text/web-order your car provider, and it comes to you like a cab, but without any driver. And whenever you don't need it anymore, you just leave it, and it will drive automaticly to the next parking lot or the next customer.
I've seen many people suggest that, including that guy on Shark Tank who invested in Uber.
There will, of course, be some of that... but I don't think it'll be nearly as common as you suspect it will be. People like to own stuff, people like things that are theirs.
There is value in having a vehicle where you left it, in the condition you left it, with your stuff in it, that no one else as farted in, eaten in, or done anything else in.
Yes, our vehicles sit 95% of the time, but they don't doing nothing during that time. They are waiting, for us, at our beck and call. In the next 30 seconds, I can be outside driving somewhere if I want to be. My seat will be where I left it. The radio is turned to what I left it. There is no food, trash, etc. in there. The inside smells nice, and it is in beautiful condition because it doesn't drive all day.
because electric cars require much less maintenance due to less mechanics
They require less mechanical maintenance, but you're ignoring cosmetic maintenance. Look at police cars and taxi cabs. They only get a few years before they are completely trashed. Any vehicle driven all day doesn't last long from that point of view. This is why car rental companies turn their vehicles over so often, they would get quite trashed otherwise.
there are only 15 million cars sold in the USA every year. figure the dozens of models out there and this was a great launch
Last year 17.5 million cars and light trucks were sold in the US.
But so what? Tesla's pre-orders are world-wide, not in the US.
World-wide, 75 million cars were sold last year.
And Tesla will take several years to deliver all these cars.
So maybe 150,000 cars the first year, vs 75 million world wide.
Nice, but nothing earth shattering, and even 150,000 cars is still triple what they are doing now.
They may have trouble keeping up. They hope to be able to satisfy 500,000 orders a year by 2020. They will need to fast track that considerably, but even at that rate Bloomberg says that EVs will displace over 2,000,000 barrels of oil a day by 2023. That would be enough to cause a crash in the oil market
Oh goodie! That means cheap gas for years to come for my big 6.2L V8 engine! :)
This of course completely undercuts the whole "most cars will go EV due to rising gas prices".
No, gas prices will go lower, not higher, if even 10% of cars sold become EV, thus putting a cap on EV sales due to gas being so cheap.
Gas cars will still be sold in the year 2100.
Pent-up interest in transitioning away from fossil fuels?
If there was, there exist options at this price point already.
The incredible price point?
I continue to be amused at what people consider to be a good price point. The $35k is the base model, much like $70K is the base price of the Model S, but almost no Model S go for anywhere near that, $100k is closer to the average.
I expect most Model 3 to be closer to $50K than $35K.
Tesla's good safety and reliability record?
They don't have enough of a record to call it that. People buying $100K cars aren't the normal public and they aren't driven the same way.
So, rather that collect 0.25% in a savings account, place a $1000 deposit, with low risk, but lots of potential upside. Why do people think that's crazy?
It isn't, you are likely correct.
That, and I don't expect more than half of the deposits to turn into orders.
There is a decent chance the $35K price doesn't hold either, or it will be really bare bones and the ASP (average selling price) will be closer to $45K.
Inability to completely solve the problem means we should not even attempt to reduce the scale of the problem? That's your argument? Really?
Yes, quite possibly, yes...
We only have so much money and so many resources. Would they best be put to use reducing the scale of the problem, or planning for and mitigating the problem as it arrives?
It is possible that all the efforts to reduce the core problem will leave us unable to actually deal with it when it arrives.
Imagine that you're on the Titanic. Sure, bailing out water and trying to stop the flooding are all noble goals, but is that the best way to use the time you have left? Had the Captain accepted the loss of the ship more quickly, once you are ok with the idea that the ship is not going to survive, then the question becomes, how do we mitigate the damage?
They had hours before the ship sank? Why wasn't it all hands on deck, ripping up the decks to form makeshift lifeboats? Why not ram the ship into the iceburg and try and put people onto it? Crazy, but better than death.