I don't know about the NYC area but in Silicon Valley I'm constantly being contacted by companies even when my Linked In profile clearly says I'm not looking to move. My employer is looking for more people with those skills since we make a lot of embedded processors targeted at networking and the data center. There are a lot of companies that make hardware in the area looking for good software people. Skills like being able to work on the Linux kernel and device drivers are in demand.
While I think many of the programmers in my group could do many of these things most are not young. Also most of the positions we open are for more senior people since we need people who can do things like write compilers, kernel developers, bootloader developers, etc. who understand the details of CPU architecture. When I talk with young people getting a CS degree I tell them that there is a huge demand for people with these skills. Few software people have a good grasp of hardware.
I agree with you there. I have a Mikrotik router and while routeros is very powerful there can be a steep learning curve. I have a lot of complex QoS rules which it seems to handle well so my online backup software does not impact any other traffic. I also use a lot of its other features such as DHCP relaying between various subnets and some complex port forwarding rules and traffic shaping. Most consumer oriented routers also can't do BGP and MPLS either.
Having seen plenty of code from Asia, I'll take code from the United States any day. The worst code I have ever dealt with all came from China and Taiwan. The worst code I saw came from this Chinese company: http://www.zdnet.com/hack-in-t...
I actually have a credit card through Citibank and another through Discover. I have maintained the Citibank card since around 1990 (I got it my first year in college and it was my first credit card) and the Discover card for over 15 years. The reason it's basically a free ride for me is because of the fees they collect from the sellers. The credit cards are paid off automatically through electronic fund transfer from my credit union checking account (again, no fees). I have never had a credit card canceled on me and I maintained a credit rating of around 800 with no loans and never an outstanding balance.
You need to research the different cards that are available.
By paying off a credit card every month I am not paying any fee to use my money. In this case the seller is paying the fee and I collect on the benefits. On one card I earn cash back and on the other I earn airline miles which I have used to fly all over the country with very little out of pocket for the tickets (mostly various airline fees and taxes). I don't pay one cent for the use of my credit card. I don't pay interest or fees. In my case, the sellers are paying the credit card fees, not me. I'm basically getting all of the benefits at no cost to me being paid by the companies I purchase from.
The scam is when you end up paying fees to use a credit card or when you don't pay it off and pay obscene interest rates. I could see someone doing that on a rare occasion like an emergency, but it should be paid off as soon as possible. Carrying debt for the sake of carrying debt on a credit card is stupid. I have never done this and always had a very high credit score.
All of my regular banking is through my credit union where I do not pay any fees to use my money. I don't pay ATM fees at any other credit union (and they'll reimburse me for any). The more I hear about banking through the big banks the more disgusted I am.
There is nothing wrong with using credit and loans as long as they are used responsibly. All of my cars up until my latest one were paid with cash. When I could get a 2% interest loan for my latest car it made a lot more sense to get a loan than to pay cash. If I can earn more than 2% on my savings then I am ahead. That's easy to do today. In the case of my house I did everything I could to pay of the principal as fast as I could. I also use my credit card for most things but I always pay it off in full every month. That way I get all of the benefits and protections it offers and none of the downsides. While I may have a car loan I certainly do not feel that I am in debt, especially when my savings exceeds my debt and is earning more than the debt is costing me in interest. I could pay off the loan any time I want to but it is in my best interest not to.
I find that there are more benefits to using a credit card and paying it off every month than just plain cash. For one thing, I earn bonuses and have flown for free all over the country using them. Second of all, if there is a dispute it gives me far more leverage. Third, in a number of cases it offers me a better warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with credit cards as long as they are used responsibly. I ALWAYS pay it off every month so I never pay any interest or fees to use it. It saves me from always hitting the ATM machine, many of which charge an obscene amount of money to use. I can get reimbursed for the fees through my credit union but it's always a pain to have to always enter in the amount of fees I pay for a transaction. I can also use my ATM card, but the protections on credit cards are far better than those of ATM cards. It's a lot easier to deal with someone getting my credit card number than if someone somehow steals my ATM card number and PIN, which has happened at a number of places in my area. One of the big grocery stores in my area had someone running a scam where they were stealing the ATM card numbers and PIN numbers and it's also happened at a number of gas stations and even ATM machines.
The few times I have had my credit card number stolen and used I never paid a cent in fees or anything else.
The credit score is based on credit. My score was quite high even though I never carried a balance and did not have any outstanding loans. Credit scores, sadly, do not look at savings. Years ago when I went to buy a house I had no problems getting a rather large loan at the time even though I had never had any other loan before in part due to my credit card usage because I always paid cash for my cars.
In time I eventually paid off my house. When I went to get my new car I ran the numbers and with the insanely low interest rates it was far more economical for me to get a loan for the car than to pay cash. Since the loan is at around 2% all I have to do is see if I can do better than 2% with my savings. If I can do that then I'm ahead and it makes more sense to get a loan.
Even though I have a lot of savings I use my credit card for most things. By paying it off every month I get all of the benefits without the downsides. Debt is not always bad. I could pay off my debt in an instant but it makes more economic sense not to as long as my savings is growing at a faster rate.
Usually the recharge times don't matter. I own a Tesla model S and sold my gas powered car. For most of my driving I just plug in at night and have the equivalent of a full tank every morning. It's only on long trips where the superchargers come in to play. I rarely bother with public charging stations since I don't need them. Now on long trips the superchargers come into the picture. In my last trip to Reno I stopped in Folsom to charge up. It took about 40 minutes during which time I got a nice lunch, took a bathroom break, etc while spending not a dime on fuel. Granted, more range is always better for long trips, but having to take a 30-40 minute break after several hours of driving is often a good thing.
The extra time spent waiting to charge during long trips is more than offset by the time not spent going to gas stations when most of my driving is under the range limits of the car. I typically spend 5 seconds plugging in at night and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning rather than several minutes at a gas station waiting in line and filling up.
There are plenty of car chargers out there like Chargepoint which basically use a RFID credit card. You wave the card in front of the charger to activate it and it bills your account for charging. They've had this for years.
Google for the Leaf issues in hot climates like Arizona and Texas where some owners lost 40% of their capacity in two years. There's a reason why most EV manufacturers have active battery cooling.
We're having the same problem. Trying to find an experienced embedded boot loader developer is next to impossible. I'm currently swamped and anytime we find someone who's decent we're one of many companies making offers. Certain skill sets are damned near impossible to find, like someone who is good at understanding both software and hardware, people who can work on the Linux kernel, or the GCC toolchain, U-Boot, UEFI, etc. I could care less about IT people, but good software developers who understand low-level stuff are hard to find. A vast majority of those I interview seem incompetent when pressed with some C programming problems or when asked about CPU archecture, stuff they should know from a decent CS or CE degree. I have to work on everything just about everything, from CPU related stuff to SATA, USB, high-speed networking, NAND flash, eMMC/SD, etc.
I don't see what the big deal is. I'm currently working with early silicon on a cache coherent 48-core 64-bit MIPS chip with NUMA support and built-in 40Gbps Ethernet support. The chip also has a lot of extended instructions for encryption and hashing plus a lot of hardware engines for things like zip compression, RAID calculations, regular expression engines and networking support among other things. It also has built-in support for content addressable memory.
It also has a network on-chip where each core or group of cores can have its own network interface to other cores. This is useful for things like virtualization or when you want to run multiple Linux kernels and other applications side by side since we also support running binaries on bare metal without an OS underneath.
The thing is that when you're doing research there will always be failures. If you don't have failures you're not trying very hard. That is why Silicon Valley is so successful. For every success story there are ten failures. The VCs know this. The loan guarantee program Solyndra was under was extremely successful, despite Solyndra and Fisker. Note that in many cases the loan processes started when there was an R in the Whitehouse. The problem is that there is a certain wing of the political spectrum that seems intent on keeping the status quo at all costs due to political donations from certain industries.
Solyndra made perfect sense when it was started. The cost of silicon was quite high and they had a method to reduce the amount needed for their panels. Then the Chinese started dumping solar and the price of silicon dropped to around 1/20 and there was no way Solyndra could compete.
The difference is that water vapor tends not to stay in the atmosphere very long and the amount is relatively constant due to precipitation. CO2, on the other hand, tends to accumulate in the atmosphere. The oceans absorb much of it but there's only so much that can be absorbed and the oceans are acidifying due to this. Water vapor also tends to form these white things called clouds which reflect a lot of sunlight back in to space.
In the case of Tesla they have showrooms. They give you a chance to see the car before you buy it and ask questions. The people who work there are not on commission. You can still test drive the car. When you're ready to actually buy the car you go on to their web site and order exactly what you want and they build to order. There's no incentive for the people working in the showroom to push features you don't want.
There is no added value by dealerships. My experience with them is they try and push you to buy a bunch of unnecessary crap.
My father bought a Fisker Karma. The dealership offered no protection from when the manufacturer went bankrupt. The warranty was suddenly null and void. Many Fisker dealerships just disappeared, leaving owners to completely fend for themselves for service and parts. For those that continued to support their customers, any pre-paid maintenance and warranty work now was out of pocket for the owner.
I own a Tesla model S. I have zero complaints about their service. It is better than anything I have seen from any dealership. They don't try and push any unneeded service. They include a loaner car and if a Tesla model S isn't available you can get a BMW, Mercedes or other luxury loaner car, all completely covered by Tesla. In fact, for the warranty they don't require that you have the yearly 12K service done.
When I got my car back from the yearly service, it was washed and vacuumed. They did not have any loaner cars available. I opted to just have them drop me off at work since it was just a few miles away. When they were finished they delivered my car right in front of where I work. My car is a fairly early VIN number.
Tesla also supports independent shops for a number of things. For example, if you need a tire fixed, they won't do it. You go to any tire shop to have that work done. Same thing for body work, though in this case you really want to go to a body shop that has been certified to have the appropriate training, especially since dealing with an aluminum body is different than sheet metal.
For general maintenance you really don't want to go to an independent mechanic for most stuff since they won't be trained. There are a lot of differences between a Tesla and a normal car. The drive train has nothing in common with other cars. Even if Tesla doesn't have a service center nearby, for $100 they will come to you, no matter where you are. If your car failed, they will usually even wave the $100 fee. Many things they can diagnose remotely over 3G or WI-FI so they know exactly what they need to do before they arrive.
For example, my car was one of the earlier VINs that received a defective 12V battery. Tesla contacted me about having it replaced before it failed from their remote monitoring They push out software updates and fixes over the air.
All of the problems I have had with my car were rattles and other issues that have all been addressed in manufacturing for newer cars, yet they will proactively go and upgrade my car to fix these problems or won't ask any questions and just make the changes if I bring it in. My car has a VIN in the low 5000s. Many of these issues require a lot of real-world experience to discover so I give them some leeway there. They have always come through and fixed every issue, no matter how minor it is. Also, they don't wait for mid-year or the next year to update their assembly line. They address the problems immediately. A common problem with the early cars was that the panoramic roof would creek during hot weather. They discovered a shim is required and immediately made the ECO change for manufacturing and went back and fixed all of the cars that experienced the problem. Even if customers don't experience the problem, when the car is brought in for service they proactively fix issues discovered in the early VINs.
No dealership that I'm aware of even comes close to this level of service. Dealerships are leaches left over from a bygone era. There is no reason why one shouldn't be able to just hop on a w
One big difference is that with Tesla you typically do not buy a car on the lot. You go to their web site and select exactly which features you want and they build it. If you don't want a certain option, you don't get it. You aren't limited to which choices are available on the lot.
If you don't want parking sensors and fog lights you wont' get them nor will you have to pay for them.
If you want a blue car with a black interior with the panoramic roof, that's exactly what you'll get.
They do a lot of stuff that a typical dealership won't do for that $600/year. You get a free loaner car and your car comes back washed and vacuumed (my Toyota dealership would only wash the car and there was no loaner). In my case I declined the loaner and they just dropped me off at work and when my car was ready they delivered it to where I work.
I have a Tesla model S so I know a thing or two about not dealing with dealerships.
As for safety recalls, the Tesla recall involved an over-the-air software update for one, and mailing out a new NEMA 14-50 adapter for the other. In neither case did I have to go to the Tesla service center. They later added a titanium shield to better protect the battery but there is no urgent need to bring the car in to have it installed and it can be installed in a matter of minutes.
As far as maintenance, there's also many things electric cars don't have. They are extremely simple mechanically, with vastly fewer moving parts. There are only about a dozen moving parts in the entire drivetrain, including the electric motor.Dealers will lose a lot of money on service because there are far fewer things to break or the parts are more reliable due to being fully electric.
While the tires and suspension are the same, most other things are not and service makes most of its money off of the big periodic service changes at 30, 60, 90 and 120K miles where things like timing belts are replaced and other big maintenance items. It should be far more reliable and there's far less maintenance to perform with an EV.
1. Brakes on electric cars will last far longer since most braking will be regenerative. On my Tesla I use the brake pedal far less than with any other car I've driven. 2. No oil changes or oil filters 3. No belts to change 4. No spark plugs 5. No complex transmission. No clutch, torque converter, transmission fluid, radiator, etc. No transmission fluid or filters to change. 6. No engine air filters 7. Much lower chance of an oil leak since there are far fewer components that need oil. 8. Air conditioning system is completely sealed, no compressor/clutch mounted to the engine block and required flexible hoses. Much lower risk of it leaking or the compressor failing. 9. No oxygen sensors, exhaust systems, catalytic converters or smog equipment 10. No valves, camshafts, piston rings, timing belts or chains 11. No spark plugs, distributors, ignition coils and associated hardware 12. No throttle body, mass airflow sensors, etc. 13. No fuel injectors, fuel pump or fuel filter, no fuel tank, charcoal canister. 14. No belt-driven alternator with brushes to wear out 15. No starter motor and solenoid to wear out 16. No hydraulic power steering pump or fluid (though many cars are now moving to electric power steering).
Instead, my Model S has:
1. water-cooled induction motor. The induction motor contains no permanent magnets or brushes, simplifying assembly/disassembly if it should ever have to be done. There are no friction points other than the bearings on each end of the shaft and those are sealed and lubricated for 12 years. The 416HP 443 ft-lb torque motor is the size of a watermelon, far smaller than any ICE engine of comparable power. An induction motor is stupidly simple in design and should last forever. 2. water-cooled inverter for driving the electric motor. Again, these tend to be extremely reliable with no moving parts. 3. water-cooled charging inverter(s) under the rear seats, easily accessible. Again, these should be extremely reliable. 4. water-cooled/heated battery pack, hot swappable and easily accessible. Again, this should last a long time. Warranty is for 8 years, unlimited miles for 85KWh battery. In the case of the Nissan Leaf they are having a lot of issues in hot climates because of the lack of proper battery cooling support, other car manufacturers are not having issues. Even at 50,000 miles people are finding the loss of range to be fairly minimal. 5. single speed 9.73:1 gear reduction transmission between the motor and differential consisting of only two gears internally. Part of the same module that holds the inverter and electric motor. This is as opposed to the many mechanical and hydraulic parts in a typical transmission. 6. heat pump system with a sealed compressor with sealed tubes, no flexible hoses carrying freon. T
As the owner of a Tesla I agree. The roads and freeways in my area are in terrible shape. The problem is that for most EV owners doing this would be difficult since there's no way to differentiate power drawn by the vehicle vs power drawn by the rest of the house. In my case I have two meters installed so I get a lower rate so this is possible.
I imagine that this would be difficult with most of the free public charging infrastructure as well unless the power usage was fully monitored. Also, for Tesla there's the supercharging stations which are free to use.
Most road wear and tear is due to the heavy trucks.
Sounds like the story a friend of mine told me. His company decided to manufacture a product in China. All of the prototypes and early production runs were great. Then they had the company do a big production run and all of the products were missing their electronics (and the Chinese company claimed that they fully passed their Q/A testing). The mistake they made was to pay up front. The company does most of its manufacturing in Mexico since it's easy to fly down there and make sure that things are being built properly.
A friend of mine who works on designing drivetrains at Tesla said that the problem with parts from China is consistency. Often the quality will vary from batch to batch and they'll make substitutions, not seeming to understand that it's not acceptible to do this. You can tell them all you want that you need a certain quality leve, it doesn't matter. Chinese steel is notorious for not being consistent. Once manufacturing is underway they'll make substitutions whether you want them to or not. Ofteh the first parts are great but then they'll start making changes and substitutions where quality suffers, often in order to cut cost, but also often due to their own suppliers trying to save a buck.
Another friend of mine works at a company that decided to manufacture a product in China. All of the early production runs were great and met all the requirements. Then they did a big production run and the products came back having passed the Chinese Q/A even though all of the electronics were missing. Their mistake was that they paid up front.
Unless you have very tight quality control over the Chinese manufacturer you will be screwed.
Tesla also manufacturers more of their own parts than just about any other car manufacturer. They do their own casting, injection molding, etc. The biggest component they don't make (yet) is the batteries which are made by Panasonic who makes the best batteries.
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Assuming that the car is plugged in to charge at night it will heat the battery to keep the temperature at an acceptable level.
I don't know about the NYC area but in Silicon Valley I'm constantly being contacted by companies even when my Linked In profile clearly says I'm not looking to move. My employer is looking for more people with those skills since we make a lot of embedded processors targeted at networking and the data center. There are a lot of companies that make hardware in the area looking for good software people. Skills like being able to work on the Linux kernel and device drivers are in demand.
While I think many of the programmers in my group could do many of these things most are not young. Also most of the positions we open are for more senior people since we need people who can do things like write compilers, kernel developers, bootloader developers, etc. who understand the details of CPU architecture. When I talk with young people getting a CS degree I tell them that there is a huge demand for people with these skills. Few software people have a good grasp of hardware.
I agree with you there. I have a Mikrotik router and while routeros is very powerful there can be a steep learning curve. I have a lot of complex QoS rules which it seems to handle well so my online backup software does not impact any other traffic. I also use a lot of its other features such as DHCP relaying between various subnets and some complex port forwarding rules and traffic shaping. Most consumer oriented routers also can't do BGP and MPLS either.
I had no problem adding a 5GHz card to mine, but the coverage wasn't very good.
Having seen plenty of code from Asia, I'll take code from the United States any day. The worst code I have ever dealt with all came from China and Taiwan. The worst code I saw came from this Chinese company: http://www.zdnet.com/hack-in-t...
I actually have a credit card through Citibank and another through Discover. I have maintained the Citibank card since around 1990 (I got it my first year in college and it was my first credit card) and the Discover card for over 15 years. The reason it's basically a free ride for me is because of the fees they collect from the sellers. The credit cards are paid off automatically through electronic fund transfer from my credit union checking account (again, no fees). I have never had a credit card canceled on me and I maintained a credit rating of around 800 with no loans and never an outstanding balance.
You need to research the different cards that are available.
By paying off a credit card every month I am not paying any fee to use my money. In this case the seller is paying the fee and I collect on the benefits. On one card I earn cash back and on the other I earn airline miles which I have used to fly all over the country with very little out of pocket for the tickets (mostly various airline fees and taxes). I don't pay one cent for the use of my credit card. I don't pay interest or fees. In my case, the sellers are paying the credit card fees, not me. I'm basically getting all of the benefits at no cost to me being paid by the companies I purchase from.
The scam is when you end up paying fees to use a credit card or when you don't pay it off and pay obscene interest rates. I could see someone doing that on a rare occasion like an emergency, but it should be paid off as soon as possible. Carrying debt for the sake of carrying debt on a credit card is stupid. I have never done this and always had a very high credit score.
All of my regular banking is through my credit union where I do not pay any fees to use my money. I don't pay ATM fees at any other credit union (and they'll reimburse me for any). The more I hear about banking through the big banks the more disgusted I am.
There is nothing wrong with using credit and loans as long as they are used responsibly. All of my cars up until my latest one were paid with cash. When I could get a 2% interest loan for my latest car it made a lot more sense to get a loan than to pay cash. If I can earn more than 2% on my savings then I am ahead. That's easy to do today. In the case of my house I did everything I could to pay of the principal as fast as I could. I also use my credit card for most things but I always pay it off in full every month. That way I get all of the benefits and protections it offers and none of the downsides. While I may have a car loan I certainly do not feel that I am in debt, especially when my savings exceeds my debt and is earning more than the debt is costing me in interest. I could pay off the loan any time I want to but it is in my best interest not to.
I find that there are more benefits to using a credit card and paying it off every month than just plain cash. For one thing, I earn bonuses and have flown for free all over the country using them. Second of all, if there is a dispute it gives me far more leverage. Third, in a number of cases it offers me a better warranty. There is nothing inherently wrong with credit cards as long as they are used responsibly. I ALWAYS pay it off every month so I never pay any interest or fees to use it. It saves me from always hitting the ATM machine, many of which charge an obscene amount of money to use. I can get reimbursed for the fees through my credit union but it's always a pain to have to always enter in the amount of fees I pay for a transaction. I can also use my ATM card, but the protections on credit cards are far better than those of ATM cards. It's a lot easier to deal with someone getting my credit card number than if someone somehow steals my ATM card number and PIN, which has happened at a number of places in my area. One of the big grocery stores in my area had someone running a scam where they were stealing the ATM card numbers and PIN numbers and it's also happened at a number of gas stations and even ATM machines.
The few times I have had my credit card number stolen and used I never paid a cent in fees or anything else.
The credit score is based on credit. My score was quite high even though I never carried a balance and did not have any outstanding loans. Credit scores, sadly, do not look at savings. Years ago when I went to buy a house I had no problems getting a rather large loan at the time even though I had never had any other loan before in part due to my credit card usage because I always paid cash for my cars.
In time I eventually paid off my house. When I went to get my new car I ran the numbers and with the insanely low interest rates it was far more economical for me to get a loan for the car than to pay cash. Since the loan is at around 2% all I have to do is see if I can do better than 2% with my savings. If I can do that then I'm ahead and it makes more sense to get a loan.
Even though I have a lot of savings I use my credit card for most things. By paying it off every month I get all of the benefits without the downsides. Debt is not always bad. I could pay off my debt in an instant but it makes more economic sense not to as long as my savings is growing at a faster rate.
Usually the recharge times don't matter. I own a Tesla model S and sold my gas powered car. For most of my driving I just plug in at night and have the equivalent of a full tank every morning. It's only on long trips where the superchargers come in to play. I rarely bother with public charging stations since I don't need them. Now on long trips the superchargers come into the picture. In my last trip to Reno I stopped in Folsom to charge up. It took about 40 minutes during which time I got a nice lunch, took a bathroom break, etc while spending not a dime on fuel. Granted, more range is always better for long trips, but having to take a 30-40 minute break after several hours of driving is often a good thing.
The extra time spent waiting to charge during long trips is more than offset by the time not spent going to gas stations when most of my driving is under the range limits of the car. I typically spend 5 seconds plugging in at night and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning rather than several minutes at a gas station waiting in line and filling up.
There are plenty of car chargers out there like Chargepoint which basically use a RFID credit card. You wave the card in front of the charger to activate it and it bills your account for charging. They've had this for years.
Google for the Leaf issues in hot climates like Arizona and Texas where some owners lost 40% of their capacity in two years. There's a reason why most EV manufacturers have active battery cooling.
We're having the same problem. Trying to find an experienced embedded boot loader developer is next to impossible. I'm currently swamped and anytime we find someone who's decent we're one of many companies making offers. Certain skill sets are damned near impossible to find, like someone who is good at understanding both software and hardware, people who can work on the Linux kernel, or the GCC toolchain, U-Boot, UEFI, etc. I could care less about IT people, but good software developers who understand low-level stuff are hard to find. A vast majority of those I interview seem incompetent when pressed with some C programming problems or when asked about CPU archecture, stuff they should know from a decent CS or CE degree. I have to work on everything just about everything, from CPU related stuff to SATA, USB, high-speed networking, NAND flash, eMMC/SD, etc.
I don't see what the big deal is. I'm currently working with early silicon on a cache coherent 48-core 64-bit MIPS chip with NUMA support and built-in 40Gbps Ethernet support. The chip also has a lot of extended instructions for encryption and hashing plus a lot of hardware engines for things like zip compression, RAID calculations, regular expression engines and networking support among other things. It also has built-in support for content addressable memory.
It also has a network on-chip where each core or group of cores can have its own network interface to other cores. This is useful for things like virtualization or when you want to run multiple Linux kernels and other applications side by side since we also support running binaries on bare metal without an OS underneath.
http://cavium.com/OCTEON-III_C...
The thing is that when you're doing research there will always be failures. If you don't have failures you're not trying very hard. That is why Silicon Valley is so successful. For every success story there are ten failures. The VCs know this. The loan guarantee program Solyndra was under was extremely successful, despite Solyndra and Fisker. Note that in many cases the loan processes started when there was an R in the Whitehouse. The problem is that there is a certain wing of the political spectrum that seems intent on keeping the status quo at all costs due to political donations from certain industries.
Solyndra made perfect sense when it was started. The cost of silicon was quite high and they had a method to reduce the amount needed for their panels. Then the Chinese started dumping solar and the price of silicon dropped to around 1/20 and there was no way Solyndra could compete.
The difference is that water vapor tends not to stay in the atmosphere very long and the amount is relatively constant due to precipitation. CO2, on the other hand, tends to accumulate in the atmosphere. The oceans absorb much of it but there's only so much that can be absorbed and the oceans are acidifying due to this. Water vapor also tends to form these white things called clouds which reflect a lot of sunlight back in to space.
In the case of Tesla they have showrooms. They give you a chance to see the car before you buy it and ask questions. The people who work there are not on commission. You can still test drive the car. When you're ready to actually buy the car you go on to their web site and order exactly what you want and they build to order. There's no incentive for the people working in the showroom to push features you don't want.
There is no added value by dealerships. My experience with them is they try and push you to buy a bunch of unnecessary crap.
My father bought a Fisker Karma. The dealership offered no protection from when the manufacturer went bankrupt. The warranty was suddenly null and void. Many Fisker dealerships just disappeared, leaving owners to completely fend for themselves for service and parts. For those that continued to support their customers, any pre-paid maintenance and warranty work now was out of pocket for the owner.
I own a Tesla model S. I have zero complaints about their service. It is better than anything I have seen from any dealership. They don't try and push any unneeded service. They include a loaner car and if a Tesla model S isn't available you can get a BMW, Mercedes or other luxury loaner car, all completely covered by Tesla. In fact, for the warranty they don't require that you have the yearly 12K service done.
When I got my car back from the yearly service, it was washed and vacuumed. They did not have any loaner cars available. I opted to just have them drop me off at work since it was just a few miles away. When they were finished they delivered my car right in front of where I work. My car is a fairly early VIN number.
Tesla also supports independent shops for a number of things. For example, if you need a tire fixed, they won't do it. You go to any tire shop to have that work done. Same thing for body work, though in this case you really want to go to a body shop that has been certified to have the appropriate training, especially since dealing with an aluminum body is different than sheet metal.
For general maintenance you really don't want to go to an independent mechanic for most stuff since they won't be trained. There are a lot of differences between a Tesla and a normal car. The drive train has nothing in common with other cars. Even if Tesla doesn't have a service center nearby, for $100 they will come to you, no matter where you are. If your car failed, they will usually even wave the $100 fee. Many things they can diagnose remotely over 3G or WI-FI so they know exactly what they need to do before they arrive.
For example, my car was one of the earlier VINs that received a defective 12V battery. Tesla contacted me about having it replaced before it failed from their remote monitoring They push out software updates and fixes over the air.
All of the problems I have had with my car were rattles and other issues that have all been addressed in manufacturing for newer cars, yet they will proactively go and upgrade my car to fix these problems or won't ask any questions and just make the changes if I bring it in. My car has a VIN in the low 5000s. Many of these issues require a lot of real-world experience to discover so I give them some leeway there. They have always come through and fixed every issue, no matter how minor it is. Also, they don't wait for mid-year or the next year to update their assembly line. They address the problems immediately. A common problem with the early cars was that the panoramic roof would creek during hot weather. They discovered a shim is required and immediately made the ECO change for manufacturing and went back and fixed all of the cars that experienced the problem. Even if customers don't experience the problem, when the car is brought in for service they proactively fix issues discovered in the early VINs.
No dealership that I'm aware of even comes close to this level of service. Dealerships are leaches left over from a bygone era. There is no reason why one shouldn't be able to just hop on a w
One big difference is that with Tesla you typically do not buy a car on the lot. You go to their web site and select exactly which features you want and they build it. If you don't want a certain option, you don't get it. You aren't limited to which choices are available on the lot.
If you don't want parking sensors and fog lights you wont' get them nor will you have to pay for them.
If you want a blue car with a black interior with the panoramic roof, that's exactly what you'll get.
They do a lot of stuff that a typical dealership won't do for that $600/year. You get a free loaner car and your car comes back washed and vacuumed (my Toyota dealership would only wash the car and there was no loaner). In my case I declined the loaner and they just dropped me off at work and when my car was ready they delivered it to where I work.
I have a Tesla model S so I know a thing or two about not dealing with dealerships.
As for safety recalls, the Tesla recall involved an over-the-air software update for one, and mailing out a new NEMA 14-50 adapter for the other. In neither case did I have to go to the Tesla service center. They later added a titanium shield to better protect the battery but there is no urgent need to bring the car in to have it installed and it can be installed in a matter of minutes.
As far as maintenance, there's also many things electric cars don't have. They are extremely simple mechanically, with vastly fewer moving parts. There are only about a dozen moving parts in the entire drivetrain, including the electric motor.Dealers will lose a lot of money on service because there are far fewer things to break or the parts are more reliable due to being fully electric.
While the tires and suspension are the same, most other things are not and service makes most of its money off of the big periodic service changes at 30, 60, 90 and 120K miles where things like timing belts are replaced and other big maintenance items. It should be far more reliable and there's far less maintenance to perform with an EV.
1. Brakes on electric cars will last far longer since most braking will be regenerative. On my Tesla I use the brake pedal far less than with any other car I've driven.
2. No oil changes or oil filters
3. No belts to change
4. No spark plugs
5. No complex transmission. No clutch, torque converter, transmission fluid, radiator, etc. No transmission fluid or filters to change.
6. No engine air filters
7. Much lower chance of an oil leak since there are far fewer components that need oil.
8. Air conditioning system is completely sealed, no compressor/clutch mounted to the engine block and required flexible hoses. Much lower risk of it leaking or the compressor failing.
9. No oxygen sensors, exhaust systems, catalytic converters or smog equipment
10. No valves, camshafts, piston rings, timing belts or chains
11. No spark plugs, distributors, ignition coils and associated hardware
12. No throttle body, mass airflow sensors, etc.
13. No fuel injectors, fuel pump or fuel filter, no fuel tank, charcoal canister.
14. No belt-driven alternator with brushes to wear out
15. No starter motor and solenoid to wear out
16. No hydraulic power steering pump or fluid (though many cars are now moving to electric power steering).
Instead, my Model S has:
1. water-cooled induction motor. The induction motor contains no permanent magnets or brushes, simplifying assembly/disassembly if it should ever have to be done. There are no friction points other than the bearings on each end of the shaft and those are sealed and lubricated for 12 years. The 416HP 443 ft-lb torque motor is the size of a watermelon, far smaller than any ICE engine of comparable power. An induction motor is stupidly simple in design and should last forever.
2. water-cooled inverter for driving the electric motor. Again, these tend to be extremely reliable with no moving parts.
3. water-cooled charging inverter(s) under the rear seats, easily accessible. Again, these should be extremely reliable.
4. water-cooled/heated battery pack, hot swappable and easily accessible. Again, this should last a long time. Warranty is for 8 years, unlimited miles for 85KWh battery. In the case of the Nissan Leaf they are having a lot of issues in hot climates because of the lack of proper battery cooling support, other car manufacturers are not having issues. Even at 50,000 miles people are finding the loss of range to be fairly minimal.
5. single speed 9.73:1 gear reduction transmission between the motor and differential consisting of only two gears internally. Part of the same module that holds the inverter and electric motor. This is as opposed to the many mechanical and hydraulic parts in a typical transmission.
6. heat pump system with a sealed compressor with sealed tubes, no flexible hoses carrying freon. T
As the owner of a Tesla I agree. The roads and freeways in my area are in terrible shape. The problem is that for most EV owners doing this would be difficult since there's no way to differentiate power drawn by the vehicle vs power drawn by the rest of the house. In my case I have two meters installed so I get a lower rate so this is possible.
I imagine that this would be difficult with most of the free public charging infrastructure as well unless the power usage was fully monitored. Also, for Tesla there's the supercharging stations which are free to use.
Most road wear and tear is due to the heavy trucks.
Sounds like the story a friend of mine told me. His company decided to manufacture a product in China. All of the prototypes and early production runs were great. Then they had the company do a big production run and all of the products were missing their electronics (and the Chinese company claimed that they fully passed their Q/A testing). The mistake they made was to pay up front. The company does most of its manufacturing in Mexico since it's easy to fly down there and make sure that things are being built properly.
A friend of mine who works on designing drivetrains at Tesla said that the problem with parts from China is consistency. Often the quality will vary from batch to batch and they'll make substitutions, not seeming to understand that it's not acceptible to do this. You can tell them all you want that you need a certain quality leve, it doesn't matter. Chinese steel is notorious for not being consistent. Once manufacturing is underway they'll make substitutions whether you want them to or not. Ofteh the first parts are great but then they'll start making changes and substitutions where quality suffers, often in order to cut cost, but also often due to their own suppliers trying to save a buck.
Another friend of mine works at a company that decided to manufacture a product in China. All of the early production runs were great and met all the requirements. Then they did a big production run and the products came back having passed the Chinese Q/A even though all of the electronics were missing. Their mistake was that they paid up front.
Unless you have very tight quality control over the Chinese manufacturer you will be screwed.
Tesla also manufacturers more of their own parts than just about any other car manufacturer. They do their own casting, injection molding, etc. The biggest component they don't make (yet) is the batteries which are made by Panasonic who makes the best batteries.