While Tesla uses the 18650 form factor the cells ARE NOT the same as laptop cells. Laptop cells typically contain protection circuits for each cell. Tesla maintains protection circuits for each group of cells. Also, Tesla's cells are a slightly different chemistry designed to be more reliable for automotive use. Right now Tesla uses Panasonic to manufacture their custom cells. Each model S and future model X uses up to 7000 cells each.
In the last earnings call, Elon has stated that they are working on getting more battery production lines online in order to meet their demand. Given that it is a couple of years away, that gives time for the production lines to be built. Tesla is very aware of the problem and has been actively working on it.
Elon estimated that by the time they come out with their lower cost model (Model E) that they will be using more 18650 cells than all the laptop batteries combined.
People ask why they use the 18650 form factor as opposed to a larger rectangular form factor and the response is that the 18650 form factor is a lot cheaper and that by using a lot of small cells, the failure of any single cell does not cause any problems (for example, the fires that Boeing had with their 787).
I believe in this case the fire was started by lightning. Back when the natives lived here they used to intentionally start fires to burn the underbrush.
Years ago I worked on a broadband remote access server and one requirement we got was to support lawful traffic interception. Basically all law enforcement wanted was a copy of all of the packets. Packets are not slowed down or stopped by this process.
In my case the hardware was just not capable of doing what was needed but there was plenty of off the shelf hardware that could be installed in the network to provide the filtering and packet mirroring needed.
It is possible that one of the VPN's upstream providers is running into congestion. One of the best ways I have found is to use traceroute. At one time I was getting unusable Internet connectivity through AT&T after they acquired my local cable modem network from @Home. It took them many months to discover that throttling all aggregate upstream traffic to 128Kbps is a bad idea. As much as people bitch and moan about Comcast, it is lightyears better than anything I got through AT&T. In this case, traceroute clearly showed where packets were getting delayed and dropped, which was one of the routers inside AT&T.
Unfortunately, for a VPN this is much more difficult since the Internet hops are hidden via the tunnel.
There are many different ways to tunnel traffic. If the tunnel is Microsoft's PPTP protocol then it's not very secure. If on the other hand it is using IPSec then it should be a lot more secure. There are also other tunneling protocols that do not specify any encryption, i.e. MPLS.
I know a lot of local people would like to see it go up if it meant that our roads were better maintained. I read a report indicating that San Jose lead the country in terms of yearly damage caused to vehicles due to the poor condition of the roads.
I consider myself an environmentalist, but sadly I think many environmentalists are wrong on many things due to being scientifically illiterate.
For example, I strongly favor developing new nuclear power plants and replacing the aging ones we already have with newer technologies assuming we can get the costs down with large scale production. Nuclear power is great for supplying the base load where solar and wind cannot provide reliable alternatives (i.e. at night). Many environmentalists are against nuclear after Fukushima or due to nuclear waste. They don't consider the fact that there are new reactor designs that can minimize wastes that are also a lot safer than the poorly designed and maintained Fukushima plant that's 40 years old. Another problem is that each nuclear plant in the US is basically custom made.
I also am for GMO crops. GMO offers a lot of things to help improve the environment, such as drought resistant strains or strains that need less fertilizer. Some even add normally missing essential vitamins (i.e. golden rice). Even the Roundup-Ready GMO crops are good since as far as herbacides go glyphosphate is one of the safest ones out there, my biggest problem is the way Monsanto deals with farmers and cross contamination. Many environmentalists claim that GMO crops are dangerous or unhealty while there has been little to no evidence to support their claims. I like the idea of organic crops, but not the whole "no GMO crops" thing, mainly due to the fact that pesticide isn't used and the fertilizer is likely better for the land in the long run. I also realize it can't replace current crops due to the lower yields though. I don't think organic crops are healthier and in fact scientific evidence shows that is generally not the case.
I frown when environmentalists fight to block things that should be in their best interest, such as the large solar farm in Socal (which is finally going ahead) or more wind turbines. The problem I think is too many "environmentalists" avoid the science part. Many seem to fall into the trap of the solution isn't perfect therefore it's no solution at all.
You're lucky if you can even get a bus where you need to go. In my case it would be take a bus from the local BART station (walking distance for me) to a light rail station in San Jose then transfer to a light rail that goes where I need to go.
Time to drive: 24 minutes Time to take public transit: 1 hour, 3 minutes according to Google Maps. That's to go 18 miles. Sadly in this day and age there is no good public transportation option to get between Alameda County and Santa Clara County. Maybe someday BART will make it to San Jose but it's being built at a glacial pace after decades of discussion.
Also of note, I would not look forward to walking to the BART station when it's pouring down rain.
I have a friend who lives in Oakland who is an artist. He wants to get the hell out after a neighbor was shot and killed sittingin her car. Oakland's crime rate is out of control and city officials seem powerless to stop it.
It's sad really. Oakland is actually a great location and has some of the best weather in the Bay Area but it's been overrun by gangs and poverty. There are still some areas of Oakland that are OK such as up in the hills, but that area is insanely expensive, well out of reach for artists.
There are some nice things still in Oakland, such as around Lake Merritt and the Paramont theater but crime is killing the city, literally.
As others have said, they have an incompetent mayor who nobody likes.
You are correct. In my case I bought a house in Silicon Valley before the dot com boom at a relatively high interest rate of 7 1/8 for a 30 year fixed. As time progressed my salary rose so my mortgage became less and less of an issue. Even if I kept my original mortgage I could not rent a house for anywhere near what my mortgage payment was. By paying down the principal I paid off my house completely. Even at its lowest point in 2008/2009 my house was still worth quite a bit more than what I paid for it.
It is because of this that I am able to afford my Model S without sacrificing anything. I have never had to touch my 401K nor have I had issues saving for retirement. I also make well under 200K/year. I put 40% down on a car loan and used some of the money saved by getting a loan to invest, some of which buying Tesla stock at $35 (I wish I bought a lot more). Most of my investments earn well over the 2% interest I pay on the loan. It's not that hard to do.
Part of being able to afford something like the Tesla is being smart with how you manage your money. In my case, it's my mid-life crisis car. If I were renting all this time there's no way I would consider buying a Tesla, but the fact that I paid off my house means I have a lot more spending money.
I make far less than you and live in the SF Bay Area and had no problem affording my Model S. In my case I bought a house before the dot com boom and paid it off, making it relatively easy to buy. Then again, middle class for the SF Bay Area would be a fortune for someone living in, say, Kansas.
I actually broke one of the roof clips on my car requiring that the entire roof panel be replaced. If that was on my Prius that would be at least $2-300 for the part and $300-400 labor to replace it. Tesla charged me $100 for the part (which had a clear coat on it) and $175 labor to replace it. Of course my Prius has no such equivalent part since it is the black panel between the door and the center glass roof.
Elon Musk has stated that his goal is for Tesla service to not make a profit. This is rather different than car dealerships.
The air suspension system is a closed loop, but it might need service as you said. The A/C should last a long time since the compressor is more like that of a home A/C rather than a car A/C. There is no shaft to leak or clutch to wear out. Also, since there nothing mounted to an engine it should be entirely rigid with no flexible hoses.
I rarely use my brakes for much. Usually only for slowing under 4MPH which is almost nothing for the massive brakes.
Everything is covered, including windshield wipers and brake pads. The only other thing you didn't mention is they might have to change the coolant at some point (which is used to cool the batteries, inverter and motor). The electric motor is lubricated for 12 years according to a tech I spoke with.
Oh, they probably have to change the cabin air filter. Service is requested (but not required for the warranty) every 12.5K miles.
Actually Tesla charges less for maintenance. Elon's goal is for Tesla service to not make a profit. Additionally service is required only every 12,500 miles. There are no oil changes and everything is covered under warranty except the wheels and tires. Even the wiper blades are covered. Brake pads should last significantly longer. Usually I only need the brakes to slow down from 4MPH to 0 since regenerative braking handles the rest. The only things that generally need to be done other than inspections are replacing the cabin air filter and the windshield wiper blades. According to one of the techs I spoke with the motors are lubricated for 12 years.
Of course they do some other things as well. For example, the early cars like mine sometimes have problems with their 1st generation door handles so they're starting to replace those. Other things like software updates are handled over the air.
My car also was unfortunate in that it got one of the defective 12V batteries used to start everything up. Tesla called me up when they detected it was failing in order to replace it. While working on it, they loaned me a top of the line Model S. If I wanted to, I could keep the loaner car and just pay the difference.
Also, Tesla's batteries are designed to be a lot more rugged than a cell phone battery. They're warrantied for 8 years/125K miles for the smaller one and unlimited miles on the larger one and will likely last considerably longer than 8 years. The Tesla batteries are also actively cooled and are made up of 7000 individual cells rather than one big cell.
FWIW the Tesla Model S stops from 60 to 0 in 108 feet. The Brembo brakes are massive. The other thing to consider is you start slowing down significantly just by lifting your foot off of the accelerator pedal for even faster response.
The batteries in the Tesla are warrantied for 8 years, 125K miles (for 65KWh battery) or unlimited miles for the 85KWh battery. From my research the cells are good for at least 3000 charge/discharge cycles. Given that a full charge/discharge cycle is over 200 miles that works out to something like 600,000 miles. Replacing the battery pack is easy (look at the battery swap video, it takes 90 seconds). I expect that the batteries will likely last a lot longer than 8 years since Tesla is probably being overly conservative since things don't usually die as soon as the warranty runs out.
With the Roadster Tesla found that battery degradation is significantly lower than they expected, and it's an older chemistry.
In terms of green, its power can be offset with solar (and many owners do so). There are no oil changes. There are no tailpipe emissions. If it were a gasoline car it gets the equivalent of 89MPG resulting in far less CO2 being produced than an ICE car.
At least in my state, most of the power comes from burning natural gas, the rest comes from renewable and nuclear and burning natural gas is very clean. Even if the source is coal the result is still less CO2 and smog emitted than from an ICE car.
Now being affordable, that's a different matter. They're planning a more affordable car in the 2016-2017 timeframe in the $30-40K range yet still having at least a 200 mile range.
While the pictures may not show it, I saw a Model X in person at the Tesla factory. It is nearly the size of an Expedition so I think it will fill the role nicely as either since it can comfortably seat 7 adults with extra storage under the frunk.
Tesla has a lot of cross bracing in the front that normally would not be possible in a front engine car. There's a massive pillar that goes between the top of the front suspension. Since the battery pack is under the entire passenger compartment and has steel plates it helps further strengthen the passenger compartment.
The front bumper is connected to two hexagonal extruded aluminum bars designed to absorb the impact.
I have seen some pictures of Teslas that have been in some very bad accidents. In one, a BMW M5 ran a stop sign at 60MPH and hit the front quarter panel of the Tesla. All occupants were OK though.
Considering that they are only just starting to sell to Europe and haven't started in Asia yet I don't think they're going to have any problems. Asia is by far the largest luxury car market. According to their last quarterly earnings report they are still working on changes for Asia since there the focus needs to be on the rear seat since usually there is a hired driver.
Tesla is having no problems selling the Model S. They are outselling all of the other luxury cars in its class by a fair margin.
Tesla has nothing to worry about from the Leaf.
1. The Leaf only has a range of around 73 miles vs over 200 for Tesla (goal for low cost car). 2. The Leafs battery management sucks. Currently batteries are dying in places like Arizona within two years. Using Chademo is hard on the Leaf battery and reduces its life. Nissan only warranties the battery for 5 years. Tesla claims there are no problems with their supercharging with respect to battery life. According to Consumer Reports, in cold weather (10F) the Leaf reports a fully charged range of 20 miles and it lost significant power after just 13 miles and by the end it was limited to walking speed! Tesla has much less of a problem in cold or hot weather than the Leaf. 3. The Leaf is a rather ugly car IMO. 4. Tesla has far superior battery technology compared to the Leaf, with much higher energy density and likely much lower cost. 5. The Leaf has a small trunk and not a lot of storage room compared to Tesla's design.
I have a friend with a Leaf. He'd dump it in a heartbeat if Tesla had a car in that price range. It seems he spends all of his time recharging since it has so little range.
Nissan is years behind Tesla in terms of their battery technology. Most EV manufacturers use a very safe battery chemistry which is expensive and does not have very high capacity. Tesla's chemistry is cheaper and much higher energy density, basically a ruggedized laptop battery. Tesla is designed so that when a few cells fail it will have little impact on the overall battery pack. Nissan doesn't currently have active battery cooling, only heating and uses a much fewer number of large cells. In places with high temperatures like Arizona the Leaf batteries are losing 40% of their capacity in 2 years. Most other EV manufacturers have active battery cooling, and some, like Toyota and Mercedes, use batteries made by Tesla.
Even the new BMW i3 is not going to be any serious competition. All one has to do is look at the car and it becomes clear that BMW hopes nobody will buy it. Most of the EVs are basically being made for carbon credits. They meet the minimum requirements and that's it. None of the other cars have over 100 miles of range and typically have a lot of other shortcomings as well.
The other car companies really have no interest in building electric vehicles. They're only making them because they have to.
Tesla started from the ground up to design the best car that just happens to be electric without sacrificing performance or range. Having 200+ miles of range and access to the supercharger network is a big incentive. I can get 150 miles of range in 20 minutes. Soon Tesla will be installing battery swap stations as well, so if I don't want to wait I can have my battery swapped with a fully charged one in 90 seconds. They not only thought about the car, but the entire system that is years ahead of anyone else.
Tesla has also done a significant amount of work reducing the size of their drivetrain. The 416HP induction motor in my car is the size of a watermelon. The inverter is about the same size as well. An induction motor should be significantly cheaper than the synchronous motors Nissan and the other manufacturers are using. There are no rare-earth magnets in an induction motor. Also, manufacturing them is a lot easier since you don't have to deal with insane magnetic fields.
There are a number of reasons why they haven't done so yet.
1. It takes a lot more to ramp up a factory to produce 100-500K cars per year than 21K cars/year. 2. They need to get the supply chain in order to build that many cars. Right now their supply chain is their limiting factor. Higher volumes reduce the cost. 3. There is no way anyone can make the volume of batteries they need for a lower cost car at this time. 4. The price of batteries is continually dropping and has for many years. 5. The capacity of batteries is improving and has for many years. 6. No supplier would ever commit to the volumes Tesla would need without a track record. When Tesla first started manufacturing the MS many suppliers didn't believe their lower volume and it took many months for them to ramp up to meet demand.
I imagine that they will come out with a car in that price range, it just takes time. You can't just have a new car company suddenly make 100K+ vehicles a year, especially when almost all of the components for the car are custom. Their main battery supplier is already ramping up, but you can't just build new factories overnight. That's why Tesla said it won't be until 2016-2017 until their lower cost car comes out.
It's a lot easier to start out with a lower volume luxury vehicle than a high volume low cost vehicle. It's a lot easier to work out all the kinks and manufacturing when you're dealing with a smaller volume. Also, it would be damned near impossible for them to immediately start high volume sales of a low cost vehicle since none of the suppliers would be in place. It would be impossible to get the suppliers to ramp up production for some new car company nobody has ever heard of. Even as it is, Tesla had a lot of problems through this year with their suppliers unable to meet the demands, and this is for 21K cars/year.
As the volume of cars increases their costs decrease. Also if you listen to their last quarterly earnings report they have stated that one of their biggest problems is their suppliers.
As it is, they already manufacture more of their own parts than just about any other car manufacturer and increase that further when suppliers can't meet the demand. Even so, they can't just suddenly scale production up by a factor of 10.
As time goes by, their manufacturing costs drop as has been shown by their improving margins. According to a friend of mine who works at Tesla they significantly overengineered the car, making it more expensive than it needs to be. With more experience they should be able to significantly reduce costs.
I make a bit over $100K and live in Silicon Valley yet I had no problem affording this car, in part due to careful money management and paying off my house early and not living beyond my means. I have met a number of other owners, and not all of them are super wealthy. One of my coworkers bought one as well. For years I poured every extra cent into paying down my mortgage since it started at over 7%. Of course it also helps that I bought before the dot com boom. I financed a majority of the car, but less than many people in order to keep investing my money.
By financing I took some of the money that I didn't spend on the loan and bought some Tesla stock when it was at $35. It's the best investment I've made. I just wish I bought more stock when I did.
I met many people at the Teslive convention a month ago. Many of the Tesla owners are not what I would consider super wealthy. Many are retired. In fact, a breakdown of what people drove before the Model S was rather interesting. Many did not drive luxury cars. My previous car was a 2006 Prius which is sitting in my driveway and hasn't been driven in two months. I'll probably sell it.
Yes, the Tesla is an expensive car. In my case, it's my midlife crisis car.
Tesla has repeatedly said that they plan to come out with a car in the $30-40K range. Their biggest problem is batteries. During the last earnings report they stated that there is simply no way to get the volume of batteries they need. They need to ramp up the production facilities and their suppliers before they can hope to meet the demand. In order to meet the demand for the lower priced car they would need to manufacture more 18650 lithium batteries than are made for all laptops combined. While there is no shortage of lithium, they need to build up production.
As it is, right now Tesla is limited in the number of cars they can sell by their suppliers. They're supply limited, not demand limited.
I own a Tesla model S and I'm not terribly worried about the battery. From everything I have been able to learn, the battery should be good for at least 3000 charge/discharge cycles. Assuming 200 miles per charge (I typically get a lot more) that's 600,000 miles. They found that the batteries in their Roadsters are lasting longer than they expected by a fair bit too.
And with a car that costs $80-100K (for the large battery), $12K isn't all that much. Also, battery prices are falling fairly rapidly and their capacity is increasing.
Tesla has their own battery chemistry and very good battery management. Their batteries are handled much better than any laptop battery, with active temperature management and careful charge control, plus the chemistry is different.
I have interviewed a lot of Cisco software engineer employees when I worked for one of their competitors. I couldn't believe how little knowledge most of them had about basic networking. I would ask them to describe what happens when one computer on one subnet pings a computer on a different subnet. Most of them had no clue what happened. Or I'd ask them what the difference is between bridging and routing, again no clue.
Granted these were not high level positions, but if you're writing software for a networking company for network related products you should at least have a basic understanding of things like ARP, Ethernet, bridging and TCP/IP.
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While Tesla uses the 18650 form factor the cells ARE NOT the same as laptop cells. Laptop cells typically contain protection circuits for each cell. Tesla maintains protection circuits for each group of cells. Also, Tesla's cells are a slightly different chemistry designed to be more reliable for automotive use. Right now Tesla uses Panasonic to manufacture their custom cells. Each model S and future model X uses up to 7000 cells each.
In the last earnings call, Elon has stated that they are working on getting more battery production lines online in order to meet their demand. Given that it is a couple of years away, that gives time for the production lines to be built. Tesla is very aware of the problem and has been actively working on it.
Elon estimated that by the time they come out with their lower cost model (Model E) that they will be using more 18650 cells than all the laptop batteries combined.
People ask why they use the 18650 form factor as opposed to a larger rectangular form factor and the response is that the 18650 form factor is a lot cheaper and that by using a lot of small cells, the failure of any single cell does not cause any problems (for example, the fires that Boeing had with their 787).
There is a setting in the car where you can disable remote access. It's trivial to set.
I believe in this case the fire was started by lightning. Back when the natives lived here they used to intentionally start fires to burn the underbrush.
Years ago I worked on a broadband remote access server and one requirement we got was to support lawful traffic interception. Basically all law enforcement wanted was a copy of all of the packets. Packets are not slowed down or stopped by this process.
In my case the hardware was just not capable of doing what was needed but there was plenty of off the shelf hardware that could be installed in the network to provide the filtering and packet mirroring needed.
It is possible that one of the VPN's upstream providers is running into congestion. One of the best ways I have found is to use traceroute. At one time I was getting unusable Internet connectivity through AT&T after they acquired my local cable modem network from @Home. It took them many months to discover that throttling all aggregate upstream traffic to 128Kbps is a bad idea. As much as people bitch and moan about Comcast, it is lightyears better than anything I got through AT&T. In this case, traceroute clearly showed where packets were getting delayed and dropped, which was one of the routers inside AT&T.
Unfortunately, for a VPN this is much more difficult since the Internet hops are hidden via the tunnel.
There are many different ways to tunnel traffic. If the tunnel is Microsoft's PPTP protocol then it's not very secure. If on the other hand it is using IPSec then it should be a lot more secure. There are also other tunneling protocols that do not specify any encryption, i.e. MPLS.
I know a lot of local people would like to see it go up if it meant that our roads were better maintained. I read a report indicating that San Jose lead the country in terms of yearly damage caused to vehicles due to the poor condition of the roads.
I consider myself an environmentalist, but sadly I think many environmentalists are wrong on many things due to being scientifically illiterate.
For example, I strongly favor developing new nuclear power plants and replacing the aging ones we already have with newer technologies assuming we can get the costs down with large scale production. Nuclear power is great for supplying the base load where solar and wind cannot provide reliable alternatives (i.e. at night). Many environmentalists are against nuclear after Fukushima or due to nuclear waste. They don't consider the fact that there are new reactor designs that can minimize wastes that are also a lot safer than the poorly designed and maintained Fukushima plant that's 40 years old. Another problem is that each nuclear plant in the US is basically custom made.
I also am for GMO crops. GMO offers a lot of things to help improve the environment, such as drought resistant strains or strains that need less fertilizer. Some even add normally missing essential vitamins (i.e. golden rice). Even the Roundup-Ready GMO crops are good since as far as herbacides go glyphosphate is one of the safest ones out there, my biggest problem is the way Monsanto deals with farmers and cross contamination. Many environmentalists claim that GMO crops are dangerous or unhealty while there has been little to no evidence to support their claims. I like the idea of organic crops, but not the whole "no GMO crops" thing, mainly due to the fact that pesticide isn't used and the fertilizer is likely better for the land in the long run. I also realize it can't replace current crops due to the lower yields though. I don't think organic crops are healthier and in fact scientific evidence shows that is generally not the case.
I frown when environmentalists fight to block things that should be in their best interest, such as the large solar farm in Socal (which is finally going ahead) or more wind turbines. The problem I think is too many "environmentalists" avoid the science part. Many seem to fall into the trap of the solution isn't perfect therefore it's no solution at all.
You're lucky if you can even get a bus where you need to go. In my case it would be take a bus from the local BART station (walking distance for me) to a light rail station in San Jose then transfer to a light rail that goes where I need to go.
Time to drive: 24 minutes
Time to take public transit: 1 hour, 3 minutes according to Google Maps. That's to go 18 miles. Sadly in this day and age there is no good public transportation option to get between Alameda County and Santa Clara County. Maybe someday BART will make it to San Jose but it's being built at a glacial pace after decades of discussion.
Also of note, I would not look forward to walking to the BART station when it's pouring down rain.
I have a friend who lives in Oakland who is an artist. He wants to get the hell out after a neighbor was shot and killed sittingin her car. Oakland's crime rate is out of control and city officials seem powerless to stop it.
It's sad really. Oakland is actually a great location and has some of the best weather in the Bay Area but it's been overrun by gangs and poverty. There are still some areas of Oakland that are OK such as up in the hills, but that area is insanely expensive, well out of reach for artists.
There are some nice things still in Oakland, such as around Lake Merritt and the Paramont theater but crime is killing the city, literally.
As others have said, they have an incompetent mayor who nobody likes.
Good luck getting a charging spot. They're all taken up by Leafs (since they have no range) and Volts, even though technically they're not EVs.
You are correct. In my case I bought a house in Silicon Valley before the dot com boom at a relatively high interest rate of 7 1/8 for a 30 year fixed. As time progressed my salary rose so my mortgage became less and less of an issue. Even if I kept my original mortgage I could not rent a house for anywhere near what my mortgage payment was. By paying down the principal I paid off my house completely. Even at its lowest point in 2008/2009 my house was still worth quite a bit more than what I paid for it.
It is because of this that I am able to afford my Model S without sacrificing anything. I have never had to touch my 401K nor have I had issues saving for retirement. I also make well under 200K/year. I put 40% down on a car loan and used some of the money saved by getting a loan to invest, some of which buying Tesla stock at $35 (I wish I bought a lot more). Most of my investments earn well over the 2% interest I pay on the loan. It's not that hard to do.
Part of being able to afford something like the Tesla is being smart with how you manage your money. In my case, it's my mid-life crisis car. If I were renting all this time there's no way I would consider buying a Tesla, but the fact that I paid off my house means I have a lot more spending money.
I make far less than you and live in the SF Bay Area and had no problem affording my Model S. In my case I bought a house before the dot com boom and paid it off, making it relatively easy to buy. Then again, middle class for the SF Bay Area would be a fortune for someone living in, say, Kansas.
I actually broke one of the roof clips on my car requiring that the entire roof panel be replaced. If that was on my Prius that would be at least $2-300 for the part and $300-400 labor to replace it. Tesla charged me $100 for the part (which had a clear coat on it) and $175 labor to replace it. Of course my Prius has no such equivalent part since it is the black panel between the door and the center glass roof.
Elon Musk has stated that his goal is for Tesla service to not make a profit. This is rather different than car dealerships.
The air suspension system is a closed loop, but it might need service as you said. The A/C should last a long time since the compressor is more like that of a home A/C rather than a car A/C. There is no shaft to leak or clutch to wear out. Also, since there nothing mounted to an engine it should be entirely rigid with no flexible hoses.
I rarely use my brakes for much. Usually only for slowing under 4MPH which is almost nothing for the massive brakes.
Everything is covered, including windshield wipers and brake pads. The only other thing you didn't mention is they might have to change the coolant at some point (which is used to cool the batteries, inverter and motor). The electric motor is lubricated for 12 years according to a tech I spoke with.
Oh, they probably have to change the cabin air filter. Service is requested (but not required for the warranty) every 12.5K miles.
Actually Tesla charges less for maintenance. Elon's goal is for Tesla service to not make a profit. Additionally service is required only every 12,500 miles. There are no oil changes and everything is covered under warranty except the wheels and tires. Even the wiper blades are covered. Brake pads should last significantly longer. Usually I only need the brakes to slow down from 4MPH to 0 since regenerative braking handles the rest. The only things that generally need to be done other than inspections are replacing the cabin air filter and the windshield wiper blades. According to one of the techs I spoke with the motors are lubricated for 12 years.
Of course they do some other things as well. For example, the early cars like mine sometimes have problems with their 1st generation door handles so they're starting to replace those. Other things like software updates are handled over the air.
My car also was unfortunate in that it got one of the defective 12V batteries used to start everything up. Tesla called me up when they detected it was failing in order to replace it. While working on it, they loaned me a top of the line Model S. If I wanted to, I could keep the loaner car and just pay the difference.
Also, Tesla's batteries are designed to be a lot more rugged than a cell phone battery. They're warrantied for 8 years/125K miles for the smaller one and unlimited miles on the larger one and will likely last considerably longer than 8 years. The Tesla batteries are also actively cooled and are made up of 7000 individual cells rather than one big cell.
FWIW the Tesla Model S stops from 60 to 0 in 108 feet. The Brembo brakes are massive. The other thing to consider is you start slowing down significantly just by lifting your foot off of the accelerator pedal for even faster response.
The batteries in the Tesla are warrantied for 8 years, 125K miles (for 65KWh battery) or unlimited miles for the 85KWh battery. From my research the cells are good for at least 3000 charge/discharge cycles. Given that a full charge/discharge cycle is over 200 miles that works out to something like 600,000 miles. Replacing the battery pack is easy (look at the battery swap video, it takes 90 seconds). I expect that the batteries will likely last a lot longer than 8 years since Tesla is probably being overly conservative since things don't usually die as soon as the warranty runs out.
With the Roadster Tesla found that battery degradation is significantly lower than they expected, and it's an older chemistry.
In terms of green, its power can be offset with solar (and many owners do so). There are no oil changes. There are no tailpipe emissions. If it were a gasoline car it gets the equivalent of 89MPG resulting in far less CO2 being produced than an ICE car.
At least in my state, most of the power comes from burning natural gas, the rest comes from renewable and nuclear and burning natural gas is very clean. Even if the source is coal the result is still less CO2 and smog emitted than from an ICE car.
Now being affordable, that's a different matter. They're planning a more affordable car in the 2016-2017 timeframe in the $30-40K range yet still having at least a 200 mile range.
While the pictures may not show it, I saw a Model X in person at the Tesla factory. It is nearly the size of an Expedition so I think it will fill the role nicely as either since it can comfortably seat 7 adults with extra storage under the frunk.
Tesla has a lot of cross bracing in the front that normally would not be possible in a front engine car. There's a massive pillar that goes between the top of the front suspension. Since the battery pack is under the entire passenger compartment and has steel plates it helps further strengthen the passenger compartment.
The front bumper is connected to two hexagonal extruded aluminum bars designed to absorb the impact.
I have seen some pictures of Teslas that have been in some very bad accidents. In one, a BMW M5 ran a stop sign at 60MPH and hit the front quarter panel of the Tesla. All occupants were OK though.
Pictures: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/17190-Major-accident-for-me-tonight-(5-26)-(New-P85-arrives-7-8)?p=348987&viewfull=1#post348987
Tesla head-on with a Honda Accord: (sadly the accord occupants did not survive) http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-safe
Considering that they are only just starting to sell to Europe and haven't started in Asia yet I don't think they're going to have any problems. Asia is by far the largest luxury car market. According to their last quarterly earnings report they are still working on changes for Asia since there the focus needs to be on the rear seat since usually there is a hired driver.
Tesla is having no problems selling the Model S. They are outselling all of the other luxury cars in its class by a fair margin.
Tesla has nothing to worry about from the Leaf.
1. The Leaf only has a range of around 73 miles vs over 200 for Tesla (goal for low cost car).
2. The Leafs battery management sucks. Currently batteries are dying in places like Arizona within two years. Using Chademo is hard on the Leaf battery and reduces its life. Nissan only warranties the battery for 5 years. Tesla claims there are no problems with their supercharging with respect to battery life. According to Consumer Reports, in cold weather (10F) the Leaf reports a fully charged range of 20 miles and it lost significant power after just 13 miles and by the end it was limited to walking speed! Tesla has much less of a problem in cold or hot weather than the Leaf.
3. The Leaf is a rather ugly car IMO.
4. Tesla has far superior battery technology compared to the Leaf, with much higher energy density and likely much lower cost.
5. The Leaf has a small trunk and not a lot of storage room compared to Tesla's design.
I have a friend with a Leaf. He'd dump it in a heartbeat if Tesla had a car in that price range. It seems he spends all of his time recharging since it has so little range.
Nissan is years behind Tesla in terms of their battery technology. Most EV manufacturers use a very safe battery chemistry which is expensive and does not have very high capacity. Tesla's chemistry is cheaper and much higher energy density, basically a ruggedized laptop battery. Tesla is designed so that when a few cells fail it will have little impact on the overall battery pack. Nissan doesn't currently have active battery cooling, only heating and uses a much fewer number of large cells. In places with high temperatures like Arizona the Leaf batteries are losing 40% of their capacity in 2 years. Most other EV manufacturers have active battery cooling, and some, like Toyota and Mercedes, use batteries made by Tesla.
Even the new BMW i3 is not going to be any serious competition. All one has to do is look at the car and it becomes clear that BMW hopes nobody will buy it. Most of the EVs are basically being made for carbon credits. They meet the minimum requirements and that's it. None of the other cars have over 100 miles of range and typically have a lot of other shortcomings as well.
The other car companies really have no interest in building electric vehicles. They're only making them because they have to.
Tesla started from the ground up to design the best car that just happens to be electric without sacrificing performance or range. Having 200+ miles of range and access to the supercharger network is a big incentive. I can get 150 miles of range in 20 minutes. Soon Tesla will be installing battery swap stations as well, so if I don't want to wait I can have my battery swapped with a fully charged one in 90 seconds. They not only thought about the car, but the entire system that is years ahead of anyone else.
Tesla has also done a significant amount of work reducing the size of their drivetrain. The 416HP induction motor in my car is the size of a watermelon. The inverter is about the same size as well. An induction motor should be significantly cheaper than the synchronous motors Nissan and the other manufacturers are using. There are no rare-earth magnets in an induction motor. Also, manufacturing them is a lot easier since you don't have to deal with insane magnetic fields.
There are a number of reasons why they haven't done so yet.
1. It takes a lot more to ramp up a factory to produce 100-500K cars per year than 21K cars/year.
2. They need to get the supply chain in order to build that many cars. Right now their supply chain is their limiting factor. Higher volumes reduce the cost.
3. There is no way anyone can make the volume of batteries they need for a lower cost car at this time.
4. The price of batteries is continually dropping and has for many years.
5. The capacity of batteries is improving and has for many years.
6. No supplier would ever commit to the volumes Tesla would need without a track record. When Tesla first started manufacturing the MS many suppliers didn't believe their lower volume and it took many months for them to ramp up to meet demand.
I imagine that they will come out with a car in that price range, it just takes time. You can't just have a new car company suddenly make 100K+ vehicles a year, especially when almost all of the components for the car are custom. Their main battery supplier is already ramping up, but you can't just build new factories overnight. That's why Tesla said it won't be until 2016-2017 until their lower cost car comes out.
It's a lot easier to start out with a lower volume luxury vehicle than a high volume low cost vehicle. It's a lot easier to work out all the kinks and manufacturing when you're dealing with a smaller volume. Also, it would be damned near impossible for them to immediately start high volume sales of a low cost vehicle since none of the suppliers would be in place. It would be impossible to get the suppliers to ramp up production for some new car company nobody has ever heard of. Even as it is, Tesla had a lot of problems through this year with their suppliers unable to meet the demands, and this is for 21K cars/year.
As the volume of cars increases their costs decrease. Also if you listen to their last quarterly earnings report they have stated that one of their biggest problems is their suppliers.
As it is, they already manufacture more of their own parts than just about any other car manufacturer and increase that further when suppliers can't meet the demand. Even so, they can't just suddenly scale production up by a factor of 10.
As time goes by, their manufacturing costs drop as has been shown by their improving margins. According to a friend of mine who works at Tesla they significantly overengineered the car, making it more expensive than it needs to be. With more experience they should be able to significantly reduce costs.
I make a bit over $100K and live in Silicon Valley yet I had no problem affording this car, in part due to careful money management and paying off my house early and not living beyond my means. I have met a number of other owners, and not all of them are super wealthy. One of my coworkers bought one as well. For years I poured every extra cent into paying down my mortgage since it started at over 7%. Of course it also helps that I bought before the dot com boom. I financed a majority of the car, but less than many people in order to keep investing my money.
By financing I took some of the money that I didn't spend on the loan and bought some Tesla stock when it was at $35. It's the best investment I've made. I just wish I bought more stock when I did.
I met many people at the Teslive convention a month ago. Many of the Tesla owners are not what I would consider super wealthy. Many are retired. In fact, a breakdown of what people drove before the Model S was rather interesting. Many did not drive luxury cars. My previous car was a 2006 Prius which is sitting in my driveway and hasn't been driven in two months. I'll probably sell it.
Yes, the Tesla is an expensive car. In my case, it's my midlife crisis car.
Tesla has repeatedly said that they plan to come out with a car in the $30-40K range. Their biggest problem is batteries. During the last earnings report they stated that there is simply no way to get the volume of batteries they need. They need to ramp up the production facilities and their suppliers before they can hope to meet the demand. In order to meet the demand for the lower priced car they would need to manufacture more 18650 lithium batteries than are made for all laptops combined. While there is no shortage of lithium, they need to build up production.
As it is, right now Tesla is limited in the number of cars they can sell by their suppliers. They're supply limited, not demand limited.
I own a Tesla model S and I'm not terribly worried about the battery. From everything I have been able to learn, the battery should be good for at least 3000 charge/discharge cycles. Assuming 200 miles per charge (I typically get a lot more) that's 600,000 miles. They found that the batteries in their Roadsters are lasting longer than they expected by a fair bit too.
And with a car that costs $80-100K (for the large battery), $12K isn't all that much. Also, battery prices are falling fairly rapidly and their capacity is increasing.
Tesla has their own battery chemistry and very good battery management. Their batteries are handled much better than any laptop battery, with active temperature management and careful charge control, plus the chemistry is different.
It would be smart to cut more in China. The Chinese engineers are much more likely to jump ship and just give everything to Huawei.
I have interviewed a lot of Cisco software engineer employees when I worked for one of their competitors. I couldn't believe how little knowledge most of them had about basic networking. I would ask them to describe what happens when one computer on one subnet pings a computer on a different subnet. Most of them had no clue what happened. Or I'd ask them what the difference is between bridging and routing, again no clue.
Granted these were not high level positions, but if you're writing software for a networking company for network related products you should at least have a basic understanding of things like ARP, Ethernet, bridging and TCP/IP.
I just opened /usr/bin and /usr/share/doc in Dolphin. It opened up instantly (under a second) in KDE 4.10. Of course I'm also running XFS with a SSD.