I get it! You made an irrelevant comment that could be easily misunderstood to be relevant, then you get to make fun of people for misunderstanding what you said! I have not seen such artful trolling for many months. Well done, sir!
(Since this discussion is about how ridiculous the size of the Windows tablet installation is, stating that Linux desktops include unwanted apps without making any sort of size comparison is completely irrelevant to the discussion.)
Not sure if the reporter missed this or if it's just a Slashdot obsession, but I'm sure I read before that these guys are trying to make technology accessible to third-world countries. Their goal is not (necessarily) to bootstrap a post-apocalyptic economy, but to bootstrap starving villages so that they can rapidly increase food output using all the tech we can bring to bear in a cheap, interchangeable manner.
You don't have to replace the battery every five years, or even every ten. The capacity degrades slowly, so if it's not enough then you just sell it at a depreciated value to someone who can use that size of pack. So far, batteries in actual use are matching the degradation predictions very well, and by the time it becomes an issue, you'll probably want a new car anyways. Every electric car battery will be recycled, and you always have to compare it to the alternative: Even if the production of an electric car has more environmental impact than the production of a gas car (and I'm not saying it does), can you imaging how much environmental damage operating a petroleum car for 20 years does? Compared to the virtually *zero* impact of the electric car, once it's built?
On the other hand, fuel cells have a serious chicken-and-egg problem. They still require a massive amount of R&D and investment before production units are reasonably priced. But no company is going to put in that kind of serious money unless the infrastructure is there to support wider sales. Looking at the Honda hydrogen car, it actually has less range than the Model S and for not that much less money--but with the added, probably deal-breaking hassle of having to find hydrogen fuel stations, instead of picking up emergency charging at any wall outlet. None of the fuel cell vehicles currently on the books are serious contenders--they are all "compliance cars" to fill out their fleet in California emissions standards. Until that changes, battery electrics are the only way to get off of oil.
Actually, you're right about that. I just wasn't sure if it would be enough, especially at slow speeds. At least you would never have the problem that the Leafs have in Arizona--not enough passive cooling. But there is also the very serious problem of the batteries freezing when left at rest in cold temperatures. From a certain temperature, they can thaw out again after a while, but might be a lower bound below which they are permanently damaged. You would have to be very careful where you parked it overnight.
Hey, what the heck. Get one yourself and tell us how it goes!
Electric cars are competitively priced if you are actually in their target market.
Rich people?
For this particular one, yes.
For the rest of us, look at these numbers: The Edmunds.com 5-year True Cost to Own(tm) comparing the base model Nissan Leaf to the base model Toyota Corolla, which is half the sticker price: $35,567 for the Leaf, versus $37,440 for the Corolla, in spite of the feature advantage the Leaf has.
It is true that the electric car will heat itself up in the morning using mains power, without discharging the battery. However, unlike gas cars, the electric car must continue to expend power to keep the battery warm while it is driving. If you get stuck in gridlock or a snowstorm, that will eat into your range even when you are standing still. You would still probably be able to use the car on a daily basis, if you have a good garage to store it in and are satisfied with 50-70 mile range instead of 70-100 miles (for the smallest battery pack).
Anyone who drives less than 30 miles to work every day (which is the majority of Americans) is a potential EV owner.
Don't you drive anywhere else?
Apparently not. In my almost perfect log of daily mileage starting in April, only once have I drive more than 100 miles in one day, and there was enough time in my schedule to charge enough to get home. I live 6 miles from work and 1 mile from school, so most days I drive less than 20 miles. My parents are 15 miles away, my friends are 30 miles away, and I usually carpool when going farther than that.
When you compare EVs to similarly-tricked-out gas cars, the prices are close
No, my VW Jetta TDI was considerably cheaper and is much less of a hassle.
and when you include fuel and maintenance savings the EV wins outright
No, how much gas and maintenance (are we including replacing the batteries here?) can you get for $50k?
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to compare. If you are comparing buying a new electric car to keeping your old gas one, that is a totally different question from what I intended. I also cannot comment on the economics of buying a $50,000 car, ever, and limit my discussions of economy to the Nissan Leaf. My statement is based off the Edmunds.com 5-year True Cost to Own(tm) comparing the base model Nissan Leaf to the base model Toyota Corolla: $35,567 for the Leaf, versus $37,440 for the Corolla, in spite of the feature advantage the Leaf has.
The batteries are holding up remarkably well for the majority of Leaf owners, and are warranted to maintain 80% of their original range after 8 years or 100,000 miles. It is difficult to estimate how much reduced range will lower the value of the car, but expectations are that they will still hold their value better than gas cars because they will still run just fine on cheap, clean electricity.
I don't know about you, but my personal driving habits don't include spontaneous trips of more than 100 miles without at least stopping to trade cars with a relative for the weekend.
Really? Do you live in the future, or perhaps a parallel universe?
No, but I live in an urban area with two large cities within 50 miles, both with adequate transit systems, which is quite possibly the same thing from your perspective.
The marginally-reduced flexibility is totally worth the savings, moral satisfaction, and pedal-flooring fun of driving a clean electric vehicle.
I'm glad you like it. I can't afford it, though. Plus, I don't want one.
If your lifestyle doesn't fit the EVs currently on the market, then I don't blame you. I respect that you will make the right decision for your particular needs. But not everyone is exactly like you, there are plenty of people who can save money and enjoy owning an EV, so bashing them is arbitrary and rude. After all, the most popular vehicle model in America is the F-150 pickup with a measly 2% of market share, proving that a car can be successful without having to satisfy everyone and their uncle.
Hydrogen: Available at a handful of gas stations around the country. Still not the same range as gas cars, still need to drive to a fueling station to fill up. Still has a battery in addition to the ridiculously expensive hydrogen fuel cells.
Electric: Available at thousands of public charging stations around the country, and millions of standard AC outlets, but you almost never need them because you plug in at home every night without ever having to detour to find fuel.
They both have electric motors and performance to match. They both have the potential to support renewable energy diversity. But both have problems with long range--even if you go 240 miles, is there a hydrogen station when you get there? Even if the hydrogen infrastructure gets built up, electric power is already there. I predict that fuel cell vehicles will find a niche of their own, and continue to improve, but they will never replace battery-electric vehicles.
This is simply false. Anyone who drives less than 30 miles to work every day (which is the majority of Americans) is a potential EV owner. When you compare EVs to similarly-tricked-out gas cars, the prices are close, and when you include fuel and maintenance savings the EV wins outright. I don't know about you, but my personal driving habits don't include spontaneous trips of more than 100 miles without at least stopping to trade cars with a relative for the weekend. The marginally-reduced flexibility is totally worth the savings, moral satisfaction, and pedal-flooring fun of driving a clean electric vehicle.
The home charging stations Tesla sells are 70kW, 10 times faster than most public 240-volt charging stations. At that rate, you can charge the full 265 mile battery pack in about 2 hours. But you'd have to find fellow Tesla owners across the country to charge from, since there are very few public Tesla stations. A normal 7kW charging station will take >12 hours. Tesla is working on a solar-powered Supercharger network, though, that is intended to let Model S drivers go across the country and up and down both coasts with strategically-placed 20-minute charges. Presently the network is operational on the California seaboard only.
Sorry, but you are outside the target market of electric vehicles at this time. Current battery technology does not perform well at extreme temperatures, either hot or cold. Maybe the huge battery pack would make up for that, but it will still be spending a significant amount of energy heating the battery itself, never mind the occupants. You'd only get about 50-75% of the advertised range depending on just how cold it got.
Wake me up when you're ready to compare apples to apples. There are plenty of luxury sedans and sports cars at that price range, and the Model S has more than enough features, style, and performance to match--or beat, as this award shows--every one of them. If you insist on comparing the Model S to a Toyota Camry, then I'm sorry but you're an idiot.
Musk has clearly articulated his strategy toward the electric vehicle market: Start at the high end, where the presently-high cost of batteries and the early-adopter tax can be easily absorbed. Make a car so sweet that it will fly off the lot at any price. Then once production is rolling, the technology is maturing, and costs are coming down, start removing trim features to bring the price down even further. But as long as the batteries and drive train remain expensive, it's better to sell a $60,000 luxury sedan than a $40,000 economy hatchback. Besides, he's essentially the only player in the luxury electric market. You don't expect 1-percenters to roll around in a lowly Nissan LEAF, do you?
But setting that aside, the Volt and the LEAF are not truly economy vehicles either. Both come with in-dash navigation, Bluetooth, and other advanced features as standard, and have great torque and handling, so can easily be compared to other cars in the $30-40k range. Electric cars are competitively priced if you are actually in their target market. Don't complain that you can't make your 150 mile commute on one charge, just don't buy one. The other 90% of Americans with commutes of less than 40 miles don't want you spoiling their fun.
The only reason there is any question in your example is that you are acting like the underlying algorithm/equations of the FM demodulator are what is being patented. That is simply wrong, and I think technically illegal. What is being patented is merely a physical manifestation of the algorithm, first in vacuum tubes, then in transistors, then in analog ASICs, then in digital ASICs, then in programmable digital signal processors, then in programmable logic, then in programmable microcomputers. Each implementation does not infringe upon the previous one simply because it manifests the same equations. There must be certain physical elements of the previously patented design that were reused in the new design, or else the patent is invalid. As soon as you transition to programmable hardware of any sort, the *only* thing being reused is the mathematical algorithm, so it should be impossible to infringe the patent based on the programming alone.
That is Stallman's point--that software is by definition nothing more than a mathematical algorithm, so on principle alone it is impossible to sit down at a computer and write "infringing" software. Yes, the line can be blurred if you take an algorithm from software, make a dedicated hardware implementation of it, and patent it; but the original software is still safely on the non-infringing side of that blur. I could make my own, different hardware implementation of the same algorithm, being careful so that your patent would not cover my version. If that were impossible, then your patent apparently covers the *problem* rather than the *solution*, and would defeat the largest pro-patent innovation argument (forcing creative solutions to avoid a patent).
Sorry, half of you are mssing what the original Anonymous Coward said: "Trade only in games / movies / music / books / etc that you can legally share with others." (emphasis mine). So the works he advocates sharing are, like open-source software, explicitly allowed by their creators for such purposes. Among other things, this includes the growing body of music released under the Creative Commons licenses.
Nadaka went apeshit because he was responding to a comment that seemed to suggest that even sharing music whose creator wants it to be shared is somehow wrong, which is a primary FUD tactic used by the MAFIAA to shut down ALL file sharing, not just illegal file sharing. That's basically the whole discussion encapsulated into three posts.
It's called a "magnetic circuit" (scroll down halfway for an actual diagram). They are used all the time in high-efficiency motors and solenoids. By putting the right type of iron in the right shape around a coil or a permanent magnet, the iron provides a "path of least resistance" for the magnetic field lines and the field that escapes from the iron is small or miniscule.
If you have ever taken apart a mechanical hard drive, you will have found the very strong neodymium magnets used in the head travel motor are attached to a piece of metal--probably an alloy called "mu metal" or similar--and the observable effect is that you can only magnetically stick things to the magnet side, not the mu-metal side. That is because of where the magnetic field lines go: instead of going out one side of the magnet, around in the air, and back in the other side, they go out into the air on ones side and then directly into the mu metal, then through the mu metal and into the magnet. This not only shields the magnetic data on the hard drive platters from the motor magnets, but also greatly increases the efficiency of the motor.
I assume they will do the same thing with this car. There will be a pretty significant "air gap" in the magnetic circuit, which increases leakage, but it is easy to provide iron on the top side of the in-car magnet so that all the field lines are directed downward and away from the interior of the car.
In fairness, TFA does not specify whether permanent or electromagnets are used in the device. I had assumed permanent magnets. But unless the car is actually using power to create an electromagnet that then spins to charge it (which I cannot imagine would make it 90% efficient), there will have to be a permanent magnet inside the car that will generate a constant magnetic field even when not charging / not at the charger.
Straw man. It's no harder to close the magnetic circuit of an inductive charging system (electromagnets) than it is a pair of permanent magnets like this, if you know what you're doing. The only difference is this system will produce a much lower frequency electromagnetic oscillation--in fact, it would be easier for the inductive system, since higher frequencies require smaller and less sophisticated materials to contain. What is the radiative effect when the two spinning magnets are not centered perfectly, as compared to a non-centered inductive system?
Also, permanent magnets are expensive, and annoying. Try not to drop your credit card on the garage floor, even when it's turned off--and what is going to stick to the bottom of your car as you drive?
The only remaining question is: if there really is a power efficiency gain, is it not wholly negated by the added weight of this ridiculous, possibly unreliable mechanical contraption, compared to a standard induction charger?
Further investigation will likely explain this better, but two possibilities are: Your microwave is slightly defective, or the interference is actually coming from the power cord, which the microwave is parasitically coupled to as an antenna. All sorts of electronics introduce noise on the power lines in your house, that's why they make fancy surge protectors with "filtered" outlets that reduce said noise from entering other devices.
The only competing explanation is semiconductor fatigue due to poor design, bad/missing antenna and/or overheating. If you have a good router (or got lucky with the batch), don't have the transmit power turned up to 110%, and keep it in a cool environment, then it doesn't surprise me that it still works fine.
My apologies for getting single-phase wrong. I'm an engineer--I should know better. Are you an EV owner? I am not, but I get most of my information from the crowd at the Washington DC Electric Vehicle Association (EVADC). We are a little bitter about fast-charging because there is virtually no fast-charging infrastructure on the mid-Atlantic coast, and we heard some dealers were going to install some *inside the show rooms*. What a waste.
On the new J1772 plug, what exactly are you complaining about? That you can't plug a DC charger into a car that doesn't have a DC charging port? Given their relative cost, there is no reason to occupy a DC charger when you are only using the AC charging function, so any logical DC charger will not even connect those pins. Any installation with a DC fast charger will also have several AC chargers, since they are order(s) of magnitude cheaper to install.
The two biggest hurdles to EV adoption are the perception of high initial cost and limited range. If you compare a Nissan LEAF or a Chevy Volt to a gas model with the same dashboard features and driving performance, you will find the price difference is much smaller than it first seems if you only compare them to base model gas cars. (Never mind that the 5 year TCO for a $35k LEAF is the same as an $18k Corolla, after fuel and maintenance savings.) As for range, precise numbers vary from source to source but the consensus is that approximately 75% of all American commuters drive less than 40 miles per day. Correlate that with the number of multi-car households who can use a different vehicle for long trips, and you have a large, untapped pool of potential EV owners who could make the most of today's technology without needing fast-charging at all.
DC fast-charging is only "practical and cost-effective" when there are a significant number of people needing to use it, and can easily be rendered useless by improper planning or standards wars. While I don't deny that there is a chicken-and-egg problem here, it doesn't make sense to get hung up on fast chargers for occasional trips while there remain so many holes in the basic, day-to-day infrastructure needed to make EVs practical. I certainly don't want to discourage any investment in the sector, but I have to assert that public money would be better spent promoting EVs for urban commuting *now* so that we can gain more experience to apply when building infrastructure down the road. Most important are incentives for apartment buildings to install charging stations in their garages, since today's EVs are so much better suited to urban living than suburban homes (which, ironically, are the only place drivers can install their own chargers).
So I don't deny your argument, I just want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves. While a robust fast-charging network would be awesome for those who need it, there are not enough players at the table yet for municipal governments to get it right and we are still far from the critical mass where such a system would be considered a good private investment. It is counterproductive to parrot the line that lack of infrastructure is holding back EV sales. EVs are practical now for a growing portion of the population, even if they don't meet your particular needs at the moment.
Your argument is nonsensical. Under no consumer-relevant circumstances does off-boarding the AC charger make any sense, either operationally or financially, at either the micro or macro level. Unless your market is the ~500 off-grid DC-power solar cabin owners in the country (and good luck selling them a car with less than 200 mile range), every single customer will need to charge from AC at some point--at their own house. Now everyone has paid for an AC-to-DC charger anyways even though you left it out of the car to "save cost", but they can only charge at their house so your vehicle is far less useful than your competitors with on-board charging. Good luck keeping that model in production for more than a year, or even staying in business.
Come back in 30 years and if, by some strange twist of fate, we all have 400-volt DC power in our homes, or if even "cheap" cars have 500 mile range and only charge once a week, you can laugh at our silly connector then.
The basic AC connector lets the car provide basic information like "ready to charge" and "charging error" to the charging station. I believe the new standard also allows for data-over-powerline communication, so the car can talk directly to the charger and the smart grid. Can't wait to see what the security holes are in that arrangement.
You say that, but in reality none of those previous revisions even attempted to provide a DC-fast-charging standard. That was the hole Chademo was trying to fill, and that's why it is kind of irritating that SAE even bothered to release the standard after waiting this long.
The on-board charger is two-phase AC because that is what most of the electrical outlets and systems in this country use, and it is sufficient for normal charging, so it is worth having all the time. The fast-charging mode is DC because it basically connects directly to the ~400 volt battery instead of going through power converters in the car. It would be impractical to put power converters that large in the car itself (considering that many units are the size of an entire car), so they put the (super-expensive) converters at fixed locations and just hook the DC lines to the battery to charge. The three-phase commercial power drop then feeds the stationary converter.
Not sure where you are looking to find the 6.6kW number, but it is approximately the power delivered by a 240VAC/40A service and will charge the LEAF's 24kW battery in under 5 hours (but only on the 2013 model, the '11 and '12 models are limited to 3.3kW). Tesla, I believe, takes advantage of the J1772 spec for 240VAC/80A in some of their vehicles, in addition to DC fast charging in others.
Slashdot Mirror
I get it! You made an irrelevant comment that could be easily misunderstood to be relevant, then you get to make fun of people for misunderstanding what you said! I have not seen such artful trolling for many months. Well done, sir!
(Since this discussion is about how ridiculous the size of the Windows tablet installation is, stating that Linux desktops include unwanted apps without making any sort of size comparison is completely irrelevant to the discussion.)
Not sure if the reporter missed this or if it's just a Slashdot obsession, but I'm sure I read before that these guys are trying to make technology accessible to third-world countries. Their goal is not (necessarily) to bootstrap a post-apocalyptic economy, but to bootstrap starving villages so that they can rapidly increase food output using all the tech we can bring to bear in a cheap, interchangeable manner.
You don't have to replace the battery every five years, or even every ten. The capacity degrades slowly, so if it's not enough then you just sell it at a depreciated value to someone who can use that size of pack. So far, batteries in actual use are matching the degradation predictions very well, and by the time it becomes an issue, you'll probably want a new car anyways. Every electric car battery will be recycled, and you always have to compare it to the alternative: Even if the production of an electric car has more environmental impact than the production of a gas car (and I'm not saying it does), can you imaging how much environmental damage operating a petroleum car for 20 years does? Compared to the virtually *zero* impact of the electric car, once it's built?
On the other hand, fuel cells have a serious chicken-and-egg problem. They still require a massive amount of R&D and investment before production units are reasonably priced. But no company is going to put in that kind of serious money unless the infrastructure is there to support wider sales. Looking at the Honda hydrogen car, it actually has less range than the Model S and for not that much less money--but with the added, probably deal-breaking hassle of having to find hydrogen fuel stations, instead of picking up emergency charging at any wall outlet. None of the fuel cell vehicles currently on the books are serious contenders--they are all "compliance cars" to fill out their fleet in California emissions standards. Until that changes, battery electrics are the only way to get off of oil.
Actually, you're right about that. I just wasn't sure if it would be enough, especially at slow speeds. At least you would never have the problem that the Leafs have in Arizona--not enough passive cooling. But there is also the very serious problem of the batteries freezing when left at rest in cold temperatures. From a certain temperature, they can thaw out again after a while, but might be a lower bound below which they are permanently damaged. You would have to be very careful where you parked it overnight.
Hey, what the heck. Get one yourself and tell us how it goes!
Electric cars are competitively priced if you are actually in their target market.
Rich people?
For this particular one, yes.
For the rest of us, look at these numbers: The Edmunds.com 5-year True Cost to Own(tm) comparing the base model Nissan Leaf to the base model Toyota Corolla, which is half the sticker price: $35,567 for the Leaf, versus $37,440 for the Corolla, in spite of the feature advantage the Leaf has.
It is true that the electric car will heat itself up in the morning using mains power, without discharging the battery. However, unlike gas cars, the electric car must continue to expend power to keep the battery warm while it is driving. If you get stuck in gridlock or a snowstorm, that will eat into your range even when you are standing still. You would still probably be able to use the car on a daily basis, if you have a good garage to store it in and are satisfied with 50-70 mile range instead of 70-100 miles (for the smallest battery pack).
Anyone who drives less than 30 miles to work every day (which is the majority of Americans) is a potential EV owner.
Don't you drive anywhere else?
Apparently not. In my almost perfect log of daily mileage starting in April, only once have I drive more than 100 miles in one day, and there was enough time in my schedule to charge enough to get home. I live 6 miles from work and 1 mile from school, so most days I drive less than 20 miles. My parents are 15 miles away, my friends are 30 miles away, and I usually carpool when going farther than that.
When you compare EVs to similarly-tricked-out gas cars, the prices are close
No, my VW Jetta TDI was considerably cheaper and is much less of a hassle.
and when you include fuel and maintenance savings the EV wins outright
No, how much gas and maintenance (are we including replacing the batteries here?) can you get for $50k?
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to compare. If you are comparing buying a new electric car to keeping your old gas one, that is a totally different question from what I intended. I also cannot comment on the economics of buying a $50,000 car, ever, and limit my discussions of economy to the Nissan Leaf. My statement is based off the Edmunds.com 5-year True Cost to Own(tm) comparing the base model Nissan Leaf to the base model Toyota Corolla: $35,567 for the Leaf, versus $37,440 for the Corolla, in spite of the feature advantage the Leaf has.
The batteries are holding up remarkably well for the majority of Leaf owners, and are warranted to maintain 80% of their original range after 8 years or 100,000 miles. It is difficult to estimate how much reduced range will lower the value of the car, but expectations are that they will still hold their value better than gas cars because they will still run just fine on cheap, clean electricity.
I don't know about you, but my personal driving habits don't include spontaneous trips of more than 100 miles without at least stopping to trade cars with a relative for the weekend.
Really? Do you live in the future, or perhaps a parallel universe?
No, but I live in an urban area with two large cities within 50 miles, both with adequate transit systems, which is quite possibly the same thing from your perspective.
The marginally-reduced flexibility is totally worth the savings, moral satisfaction, and pedal-flooring fun of driving a clean electric vehicle.
I'm glad you like it. I can't afford it, though. Plus, I don't want one.
If your lifestyle doesn't fit the EVs currently on the market, then I don't blame you. I respect that you will make the right decision for your particular needs. But not everyone is exactly like you, there are plenty of people who can save money and enjoy owning an EV, so bashing them is arbitrary and rude. After all, the most popular vehicle model in America is the F-150 pickup with a measly 2% of market share, proving that a car can be successful without having to satisfy everyone and their uncle.
Let's compare hydrogen and electric vehicles:
Hydrogen: Available at a handful of gas stations around the country. Still not the same range as gas cars, still need to drive to a fueling station to fill up. Still has a battery in addition to the ridiculously expensive hydrogen fuel cells.
Electric: Available at thousands of public charging stations around the country, and millions of standard AC outlets, but you almost never need them because you plug in at home every night without ever having to detour to find fuel.
They both have electric motors and performance to match. They both have the potential to support renewable energy diversity. But both have problems with long range--even if you go 240 miles, is there a hydrogen station when you get there? Even if the hydrogen infrastructure gets built up, electric power is already there. I predict that fuel cell vehicles will find a niche of their own, and continue to improve, but they will never replace battery-electric vehicles.
This is simply false. Anyone who drives less than 30 miles to work every day (which is the majority of Americans) is a potential EV owner. When you compare EVs to similarly-tricked-out gas cars, the prices are close, and when you include fuel and maintenance savings the EV wins outright. I don't know about you, but my personal driving habits don't include spontaneous trips of more than 100 miles without at least stopping to trade cars with a relative for the weekend. The marginally-reduced flexibility is totally worth the savings, moral satisfaction, and pedal-flooring fun of driving a clean electric vehicle.
The home charging stations Tesla sells are 70kW, 10 times faster than most public 240-volt charging stations. At that rate, you can charge the full 265 mile battery pack in about 2 hours. But you'd have to find fellow Tesla owners across the country to charge from, since there are very few public Tesla stations. A normal 7kW charging station will take >12 hours. Tesla is working on a solar-powered Supercharger network, though, that is intended to let Model S drivers go across the country and up and down both coasts with strategically-placed 20-minute charges. Presently the network is operational on the California seaboard only.
Sorry, but you are outside the target market of electric vehicles at this time. Current battery technology does not perform well at extreme temperatures, either hot or cold. Maybe the huge battery pack would make up for that, but it will still be spending a significant amount of energy heating the battery itself, never mind the occupants. You'd only get about 50-75% of the advertised range depending on just how cold it got.
Wake me up when you're ready to compare apples to apples. There are plenty of luxury sedans and sports cars at that price range, and the Model S has more than enough features, style, and performance to match--or beat, as this award shows--every one of them. If you insist on comparing the Model S to a Toyota Camry, then I'm sorry but you're an idiot.
Musk has clearly articulated his strategy toward the electric vehicle market: Start at the high end, where the presently-high cost of batteries and the early-adopter tax can be easily absorbed. Make a car so sweet that it will fly off the lot at any price. Then once production is rolling, the technology is maturing, and costs are coming down, start removing trim features to bring the price down even further. But as long as the batteries and drive train remain expensive, it's better to sell a $60,000 luxury sedan than a $40,000 economy hatchback. Besides, he's essentially the only player in the luxury electric market. You don't expect 1-percenters to roll around in a lowly Nissan LEAF, do you?
But setting that aside, the Volt and the LEAF are not truly economy vehicles either. Both come with in-dash navigation, Bluetooth, and other advanced features as standard, and have great torque and handling, so can easily be compared to other cars in the $30-40k range. Electric cars are competitively priced if you are actually in their target market. Don't complain that you can't make your 150 mile commute on one charge, just don't buy one. The other 90% of Americans with commutes of less than 40 miles don't want you spoiling their fun.
The only reason there is any question in your example is that you are acting like the underlying algorithm/equations of the FM demodulator are what is being patented. That is simply wrong, and I think technically illegal. What is being patented is merely a physical manifestation of the algorithm, first in vacuum tubes, then in transistors, then in analog ASICs, then in digital ASICs, then in programmable digital signal processors, then in programmable logic, then in programmable microcomputers. Each implementation does not infringe upon the previous one simply because it manifests the same equations. There must be certain physical elements of the previously patented design that were reused in the new design, or else the patent is invalid. As soon as you transition to programmable hardware of any sort, the *only* thing being reused is the mathematical algorithm, so it should be impossible to infringe the patent based on the programming alone.
That is Stallman's point--that software is by definition nothing more than a mathematical algorithm, so on principle alone it is impossible to sit down at a computer and write "infringing" software. Yes, the line can be blurred if you take an algorithm from software, make a dedicated hardware implementation of it, and patent it; but the original software is still safely on the non-infringing side of that blur. I could make my own, different hardware implementation of the same algorithm, being careful so that your patent would not cover my version. If that were impossible, then your patent apparently covers the *problem* rather than the *solution*, and would defeat the largest pro-patent innovation argument (forcing creative solutions to avoid a patent).
Sorry, half of you are mssing what the original Anonymous Coward said: "Trade only in games / movies / music / books / etc that you can legally share with others." (emphasis mine). So the works he advocates sharing are, like open-source software, explicitly allowed by their creators for such purposes. Among other things, this includes the growing body of music released under the Creative Commons licenses.
Nadaka went apeshit because he was responding to a comment that seemed to suggest that even sharing music whose creator wants it to be shared is somehow wrong, which is a primary FUD tactic used by the MAFIAA to shut down ALL file sharing, not just illegal file sharing. That's basically the whole discussion encapsulated into three posts.
Exactly! The lower the frequency, the larger the magnetic materials have to be to transmit the same energy. The whole project is a giant fail.
It's called a "magnetic circuit" (scroll down halfway for an actual diagram). They are used all the time in high-efficiency motors and solenoids. By putting the right type of iron in the right shape around a coil or a permanent magnet, the iron provides a "path of least resistance" for the magnetic field lines and the field that escapes from the iron is small or miniscule.
If you have ever taken apart a mechanical hard drive, you will have found the very strong neodymium magnets used in the head travel motor are attached to a piece of metal--probably an alloy called "mu metal" or similar--and the observable effect is that you can only magnetically stick things to the magnet side, not the mu-metal side. That is because of where the magnetic field lines go: instead of going out one side of the magnet, around in the air, and back in the other side, they go out into the air on ones side and then directly into the mu metal, then through the mu metal and into the magnet. This not only shields the magnetic data on the hard drive platters from the motor magnets, but also greatly increases the efficiency of the motor.
I assume they will do the same thing with this car. There will be a pretty significant "air gap" in the magnetic circuit, which increases leakage, but it is easy to provide iron on the top side of the in-car magnet so that all the field lines are directed downward and away from the interior of the car.
In fairness, TFA does not specify whether permanent or electromagnets are used in the device. I had assumed permanent magnets. But unless the car is actually using power to create an electromagnet that then spins to charge it (which I cannot imagine would make it 90% efficient), there will have to be a permanent magnet inside the car that will generate a constant magnetic field even when not charging / not at the charger.
Straw man. It's no harder to close the magnetic circuit of an inductive charging system (electromagnets) than it is a pair of permanent magnets like this, if you know what you're doing. The only difference is this system will produce a much lower frequency electromagnetic oscillation--in fact, it would be easier for the inductive system, since higher frequencies require smaller and less sophisticated materials to contain. What is the radiative effect when the two spinning magnets are not centered perfectly, as compared to a non-centered inductive system?
Also, permanent magnets are expensive, and annoying. Try not to drop your credit card on the garage floor, even when it's turned off--and what is going to stick to the bottom of your car as you drive?
The only remaining question is: if there really is a power efficiency gain, is it not wholly negated by the added weight of this ridiculous, possibly unreliable mechanical contraption, compared to a standard induction charger?
Further investigation will likely explain this better, but two possibilities are: Your microwave is slightly defective, or the interference is actually coming from the power cord, which the microwave is parasitically coupled to as an antenna. All sorts of electronics introduce noise on the power lines in your house, that's why they make fancy surge protectors with "filtered" outlets that reduce said noise from entering other devices.
The only competing explanation is semiconductor fatigue due to poor design, bad/missing antenna and/or overheating. If you have a good router (or got lucky with the batch), don't have the transmit power turned up to 110%, and keep it in a cool environment, then it doesn't surprise me that it still works fine.
My apologies for getting single-phase wrong. I'm an engineer--I should know better. Are you an EV owner? I am not, but I get most of my information from the crowd at the Washington DC Electric Vehicle Association (EVADC). We are a little bitter about fast-charging because there is virtually no fast-charging infrastructure on the mid-Atlantic coast, and we heard some dealers were going to install some *inside the show rooms*. What a waste.
On the new J1772 plug, what exactly are you complaining about? That you can't plug a DC charger into a car that doesn't have a DC charging port? Given their relative cost, there is no reason to occupy a DC charger when you are only using the AC charging function, so any logical DC charger will not even connect those pins. Any installation with a DC fast charger will also have several AC chargers, since they are order(s) of magnitude cheaper to install.
The two biggest hurdles to EV adoption are the perception of high initial cost and limited range. If you compare a Nissan LEAF or a Chevy Volt to a gas model with the same dashboard features and driving performance, you will find the price difference is much smaller than it first seems if you only compare them to base model gas cars. (Never mind that the 5 year TCO for a $35k LEAF is the same as an $18k Corolla, after fuel and maintenance savings.) As for range, precise numbers vary from source to source but the consensus is that approximately 75% of all American commuters drive less than 40 miles per day. Correlate that with the number of multi-car households who can use a different vehicle for long trips, and you have a large, untapped pool of potential EV owners who could make the most of today's technology without needing fast-charging at all.
DC fast-charging is only "practical and cost-effective" when there are a significant number of people needing to use it, and can easily be rendered useless by improper planning or standards wars. While I don't deny that there is a chicken-and-egg problem here, it doesn't make sense to get hung up on fast chargers for occasional trips while there remain so many holes in the basic, day-to-day infrastructure needed to make EVs practical. I certainly don't want to discourage any investment in the sector, but I have to assert that public money would be better spent promoting EVs for urban commuting *now* so that we can gain more experience to apply when building infrastructure down the road. Most important are incentives for apartment buildings to install charging stations in their garages, since today's EVs are so much better suited to urban living than suburban homes (which, ironically, are the only place drivers can install their own chargers).
So I don't deny your argument, I just want to make sure we don't get ahead of ourselves. While a robust fast-charging network would be awesome for those who need it, there are not enough players at the table yet for municipal governments to get it right and we are still far from the critical mass where such a system would be considered a good private investment. It is counterproductive to parrot the line that lack of infrastructure is holding back EV sales. EVs are practical now for a growing portion of the population, even if they don't meet your particular needs at the moment.
Your argument is nonsensical. Under no consumer-relevant circumstances does off-boarding the AC charger make any sense, either operationally or financially, at either the micro or macro level. Unless your market is the ~500 off-grid DC-power solar cabin owners in the country (and good luck selling them a car with less than 200 mile range), every single customer will need to charge from AC at some point--at their own house. Now everyone has paid for an AC-to-DC charger anyways even though you left it out of the car to "save cost", but they can only charge at their house so your vehicle is far less useful than your competitors with on-board charging. Good luck keeping that model in production for more than a year, or even staying in business.
Come back in 30 years and if, by some strange twist of fate, we all have 400-volt DC power in our homes, or if even "cheap" cars have 500 mile range and only charge once a week, you can laugh at our silly connector then.
The basic AC connector lets the car provide basic information like "ready to charge" and "charging error" to the charging station. I believe the new standard also allows for data-over-powerline communication, so the car can talk directly to the charger and the smart grid. Can't wait to see what the security holes are in that arrangement.
You say that, but in reality none of those previous revisions even attempted to provide a DC-fast-charging standard. That was the hole Chademo was trying to fill, and that's why it is kind of irritating that SAE even bothered to release the standard after waiting this long.
The on-board charger is two-phase AC because that is what most of the electrical outlets and systems in this country use, and it is sufficient for normal charging, so it is worth having all the time. The fast-charging mode is DC because it basically connects directly to the ~400 volt battery instead of going through power converters in the car. It would be impractical to put power converters that large in the car itself (considering that many units are the size of an entire car), so they put the (super-expensive) converters at fixed locations and just hook the DC lines to the battery to charge. The three-phase commercial power drop then feeds the stationary converter.
Not sure where you are looking to find the 6.6kW number, but it is approximately the power delivered by a 240VAC/40A service and will charge the LEAF's 24kW battery in under 5 hours (but only on the 2013 model, the '11 and '12 models are limited to 3.3kW). Tesla, I believe, takes advantage of the J1772 spec for 240VAC/80A in some of their vehicles, in addition to DC fast charging in others.