True, but it will need a lot less maintenance. The number of moving parts is significantly less. There's no transmission, belts, O2 sensors, spark plugs or fuel pump to replace. Even the brakes need far less maintenance since they are used a lot less. Generally I only need my brakes for slowing below 4 MPH or to assist in rapid deceleration (which is not that common). In all the cars I've owned I have never had an issue with a wheel bearing. There really is no comparison. The bearings for the induction motor are lubricated for 12 years according to a tech I spoke with at the Tesla factory. About the only things in common with an ICE car are the suspension, tires and the 12v battery maintenance wise, though the tires tend to wear out a lot faster due to addictive acceleration.
Headaches like regular oil changes, having to regularly stop at the gas station to fill up, periodic emissions testing, etc? My biggest headaches are that I have to wash and vacuum my car.
I own a model S. I haven't had any headaches with it in the 3 1/2 months I've owned it. It's silent when driving, has insane instant acceleration and good handling. When I come home at night I spend 5 seconds pressing a button to open the charge port and plug in and in the morning just unplug and go with the equivalent a full tank of gas (a full fill-up costs under $10 with the insane electricity prices where I live). A few weeks back I drove up to Lake Tahoe with a stop at the Folsom Supercharger. While my car was recharging for free I got a nice lunch at one of the many nearby restaurants spending less money than I would have spent on gas. I didn't take it easy while driving either, all the way up to my 7200' destination where I had over 100 miles of range left. At night I plugged in there and had the equivalent of a mostly full tank (I didn't charge all the way since going downhill adds more range). I drove like a bat out of hell in Nevada and coming back via Kingsbury Grade (grade? What grade?) was a lot of fun as well. I love being able to do things like turn off the "creep" feature common with most automatic transmissions and using the default regen braking mode whenever I lift my foot off of the accelerator pedal. It's basically one pedal driving where I only use the brake pedal for rapid deceleration and stopping at low ( 5MPH) speeds.
The instant response and torque are incredible. Yesterday I looked into what it would take to drive to LA. I figure if I stop for a few minutes in Gilroy to top off I only need to do one battery swap on my way to LA so a trip from the Bay Area to LA would cost roughly $70 in "fuel" assuming I start with an empty "tank" before charging the night before ($10) and one battery swap ($60). Not bad when the other cars in its class take premium fuel and are lucky to get 20MPG. Of course I could also schedule to where I stop at Harris Ranch to charge and get a great steak lunch or dinner while charging for free.
There are very few headaches with this car though I'll admit more supercharger stations will help a lot as will the eventual availability of Chademo charging support.
The only maintenance the car needs is minor stuff, like rotating tires, filling the windshield washer fluid and replacing wiper blades. The brakes should last basically forever since I use them so infrequently with this car due to regen. There's really a lot less to go wrong. The electric motor is lubricated for 12 years. There's no transmission and far fewer mechanical parts in the drivetrain. No spark plugs, fuel pumps, O2 sensors, alternators, belts, etc to wear out except for the 12V battery.
Tesla service has been great too. I end up with a virtually new top-of-the-line loaner car which I can keep if I want to pay the difference in value.
The only downside is that I may go through tires fairly quickly and need more frequent tire rotations... rapid silent acceleration is addictive.
My employer switched from outlook.com to Microsoft Office 365. Office 365's IMAP support is broken. Often authentication fails when using IMAP. I've even had authentication fail logging in through their web site. It's been a known problem since January and MS seems unable to diagnose or fix the problem (even after showing the problem using Microsoft's own diagnostic web page). I had other problems with outlook.com but it wasn't as bad as Office365. Using Outlook is not an option for our group since we all run Linux. Maybe they needed better authentication support in order to support the NSA with outlook.com?
I know numerous older SV engineers that have no problem finding work. For example, my father is now 70 years old. He was hired by Amazon in his 60s to design the hardware for the first Kindle and still works there to this day designing new products. I'm over 40 and am contstantly contacted by recruiters and various companies. It all depends. As long as you learn new skills and keep up with technology there is demand for experienced engineers.
That is not my experience at all. I have transferred large sums between my brokerage and personal accounts numerous times in recent history in excess of 5K and there was never any delay as to when I could start purchasing stock.
It's the same on the west coast. There are some decent banks (usually local banks) but credit unions are the way to go out here too. The funny thing is that a bank that started out local in my town is now starting to expand all over the Bay Area and beyond, but then again they are known to be consumer friendly.
Having purchased a Tesla Model S the experience is the exact opposite of when I purchased a Toyota. Tesla's showrooms do not sell cars. They show them. When I went to the showroom I could ask questions without any pressure to buy the car. The only way to buy a Tesla is on their web site so there's no sales critters trying to get a commission. There are a myriad of options to choose from which allows you to get the exact car you want. I got the paint color, interior color and all the options I wanted. It went to the point where I chose the wheel colors and whether or not to have a rear carbon fiber spoiler (I chose not to). There's also no haggling over price. Tesla basically builds to order without having to deal with an inventory of cars. You order your car and they deliver exactly what you ordered, or in my case I picked mine up at the factory and took the tour.
At the Toyota dealership I didn't have much choice. I could choose any car as long as it was on their lot, plus there's the high pressure sales. The only thing worse than one of their car salesmen is a used car salesman (which they also sell there).
Dealerships don't really protect the consumer. As far as I'm concerned, they're leeches. A relative of mine bought a Fisker Karma and the dealerships are basically helpless since Fisker is more or less bankrupt in all but name. The warranty is basically worthless as is any pre-paid service and parts are unavailable. Since Fisker laid off their engineers even support is limited even if paid by the owner. The dealership my relative goes to is better than many. Many dealerships completely dropped any and all support for Fisker so the owners are completely SOL. There's nobody to even perform routine service on the vehicles.
I groan every time I have to have something fixed that's not under warranty at Toyota. They charge a premium for the service since they know that with a Prius you're unlikely to take it elsewhere.
Dealerships also wouldn't make nearly as much profit on service either. Tesla has vowed to not make a profit on service, but then again, service should be a lot simpler than a gasoline powered car. There's no transmission to service or wear out, only a simple gear reduction. There's no 5K mile oil changes, the motor is lubricated for 12 years. There's no fuel pumps or spark plugs to replace.
Since the number of cars sold is fairly low, a dealership would also be selling o
Tesla service consists of a 12,500 mile inspection, replacing the wiper blades and brake pads if needed (brake pads should last basically forever), rotate the tires, replace the cabin air filter and possibly flush the coolant. Service also may include hardware upgrades, software upgrades are distributed over 3G and can be applied by the owner whenever it's convenient.
Tesla has vowed to not make a profit on service. When I broke one of the clips on my roof they had to replace the entire panel next to the glass sunroof. If the panel were on my Prius, the dealership would probably charge $200-300 just for a replacement panel plus a fortune in labor. Tesla charged me $100 and $175 labor to replace it, which after explaining what they had to do to replace it was a bargain.
Things are quite different now than they were in the 1950.
In that case they'll ship the battery (presumably to the station you'll use on the return trip) and charge you for the shipping. They have not stated how expensive that will be.
If you're commuting then you're not going to use this service. You plug in at night when you get home and unplug in the morning. It takes about 10 seconds to do. The electricity used for my daily 18 mile commute costs around $40/month with my Tesla model S. It's cheaper to drive than my Prius. I also have the option to charge for free which takes 30 minutes for 80% charge. The only time I need to use supercharging or possibly a battery swap is if I do a road trip like I'm planning up to Lake Tahoe. The battery swapping will first be set up for people driving between LA and the Bay Area. As for batteries wearing out, the batteries are rated for 3000 full charge/discharge cycles which is the equivalent to around 750,000 miles when you assume 250 miles/charge (EPA rated 265).
Exactly. Since I got my Tesla the only time I drive my Prius is for some camping trips where there is no place to charge along the way. Hopefully that will change in the future since I've also taken my Tesla on one camping trip where charging was available along the way.
As it is, I'm considering selling my Prius since all it does is take up space in my driveway.
It should be fairly easy to defeat. All someone needs is several different copies of the book and do a comparison. It should be easy to spot what has changed and then undo them.
No, he's talking about SFP+ connectors. All of the 10Gbe equipment I work with has SFP+ cages to accept various modules for optical or fiber connections. They look just like GBIC transceivers.
I think the main reason is cost. I have been working with 10Gbe for several years writing drivers for PHYs and MACs. I've worked with a number of PHYs and 10Gbe is a lot more complex. For example, the SFP+ cables and modules each have a serial EEPROM that contains parameters needed to program the PHY. It's not just a simple RJ45 CAT5/CAT6 cable. As someone who has worked in 10Gbe drivers there's a lot more complexity. With some PHYs I have to query the serial EEPROM to make changes based on things such as cable length and whether or not it's active or passive or if it's copper or optical. Distances over copper are also usually limited to much shorter distances unless active cabling is used.
In terms of cost, a 1 meter copper cable is around $43 from www.cablesondemand.com. A 12 meter cable is $189. It's not like gigabit where you just plug in a CAT5 cable and go.
Handling peak is not a problem if you augment with a smaller battery designed to supply the peak power and/or use a supercapacitor. There is no reason that the entire battery system must be the same battery type. I know Tesla has patents covering mixing metal-air batteries with other technologies to supplament the power during peak usage and for regeneration.
Not necessarily. For example, my car (Tesla model S) has an always-on 3G Internet connection. It is used for streaming music, maps and Internet (it does not disable the browser while driving). There is talk of charging money for the Internet connection once the WIFI feature is enabled or else allow teathering with a cell phone to provide the connection. The Internet connection is also used to improve voice recognition and for other services. The Internet connection is not just used for browsing or chat/email.
Then there's also the case where a passenger might want to use the Internet on a laptop.
Actually this is possible. Most of the battery smarts are integrated into the battery pack itself and the car is designed so that the battery pack can be replaced in a few minutes. The fact that the battery pack itself is made up of one of the most standard battery sizes makes it much easier for Tesla to change batteries once they're qualified.
Of course there's more to batteries than just capacity. Tesla has to worry about longevity as well as how quickly it can charge and discharge as well as safety.
My father's Fisker Karma is a good example of this. The Karma is a true series hybrid with no mechanical linkage between the gasoline engine and the wheels. Unfortunately it gets terrible mileage, around 21MPG on gasoline. The train technology doesn't scale downward very well. Like a train it has good low-end torque but it suffers at higher speeds.
The nice thing is Tesla doesn't use any rare-earth magnets since they use an induction motor (which was invented by Nikola Tesla) as opposed to a synchronous motor which is what most electric and hybrid cars use. The only thing in the motor is some steel, aluminum and copper.
I have an '06 Prius. Speedy isn't what comes to mind for me either. It's OK for around town and whatnot, but it can be painful to take it up any long grade or going up a steep hill. Now my Tesla Model S P85, that's speedy. It doesn't care about grades except for reducing range (about 6-7 miles of range lost per 1000' gain in elevation and 3-4 mile gaine per 1000' drop). At low speeds the Prius isn't bad, but at highway speeds it starts to get rather gutless. All that torque is only really good at the low end. My model S has a much smoother torque curve. The electric motor in my Prius is rated at 295ft-lbs of torque but the car limits its output and the peak is at 0RPM. The Prius torque curve drops rapidly whereas the Tesla model S has a much flatter torque curve.
Harris Ranch did just that. It has proven to be one of the most popular Superchargers. Tesla had to expand it and add more chargers there. The Superchargers are typically installed at malls or other areas where there are restaraunts and other things nearby.
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True, but it will need a lot less maintenance. The number of moving parts is significantly less. There's no transmission, belts, O2 sensors, spark plugs or fuel pump to replace. Even the brakes need far less maintenance since they are used a lot less. Generally I only need my brakes for slowing below 4 MPH or to assist in rapid deceleration (which is not that common). In all the cars I've owned I have never had an issue with a wheel bearing. There really is no comparison. The bearings for the induction motor are lubricated for 12 years according to a tech I spoke with at the Tesla factory. About the only things in common with an ICE car are the suspension, tires and the 12v battery maintenance wise, though the tires tend to wear out a lot faster due to addictive acceleration.
Headaches like regular oil changes, having to regularly stop at the gas station to fill up, periodic emissions testing, etc? My biggest headaches are that I have to wash and vacuum my car.
I own a model S. I haven't had any headaches with it in the 3 1/2 months I've owned it. It's silent when driving, has insane instant acceleration and good handling. When I come home at night I spend 5 seconds pressing a button to open the charge port and plug in and in the morning just unplug and go with the equivalent a full tank of gas (a full fill-up costs under $10 with the insane electricity prices where I live). A few weeks back I drove up to Lake Tahoe with a stop at the Folsom Supercharger. While my car was recharging for free I got a nice lunch at one of the many nearby restaurants spending less money than I would have spent on gas. I didn't take it easy while driving either, all the way up to my 7200' destination where I had over 100 miles of range left. At night I plugged in there and had the equivalent of a mostly full tank (I didn't charge all the way since going downhill adds more range). I drove like a bat out of hell in Nevada and coming back via Kingsbury Grade (grade? What grade?) was a lot of fun as well. I love being able to do things like turn off the "creep" feature common with most automatic transmissions and using the default regen braking mode whenever I lift my foot off of the accelerator pedal. It's basically one pedal driving where I only use the brake pedal for rapid deceleration and stopping at low ( 5MPH) speeds.
The instant response and torque are incredible. Yesterday I looked into what it would take to drive to LA. I figure if I stop for a few minutes in Gilroy to top off I only need to do one battery swap on my way to LA so a trip from the Bay Area to LA would cost roughly $70 in "fuel" assuming I start with an empty "tank" before charging the night before ($10) and one battery swap ($60). Not bad when the other cars in its class take premium fuel and are lucky to get 20MPG. Of course I could also schedule to where I stop at Harris Ranch to charge and get a great steak lunch or dinner while charging for free.
There are very few headaches with this car though I'll admit more supercharger stations will help a lot as will the eventual availability of Chademo charging support.
The only maintenance the car needs is minor stuff, like rotating tires, filling the windshield washer fluid and replacing wiper blades. The brakes should last basically forever since I use them so infrequently with this car due to regen. There's really a lot less to go wrong. The electric motor is lubricated for 12 years. There's no transmission and far fewer mechanical parts in the drivetrain. No spark plugs, fuel pumps, O2 sensors, alternators, belts, etc to wear out except for the 12V battery.
Tesla service has been great too. I end up with a virtually new top-of-the-line loaner car which I can keep if I want to pay the difference in value.
The only downside is that I may go through tires fairly quickly and need more frequent tire rotations... rapid silent acceleration is addictive.
My employer switched from outlook.com to Microsoft Office 365. Office 365's IMAP support is broken. Often authentication fails when using IMAP. I've even had authentication fail logging in through their web site. It's been a known problem since January and MS seems unable to diagnose or fix the problem (even after showing the problem using Microsoft's own diagnostic web page). I had other problems with outlook.com but it wasn't as bad as Office365. Using Outlook is not an option for our group since we all run Linux. Maybe they needed better authentication support in order to support the NSA with outlook.com?
Also, most of those new jobs are low-wage jobs, often minimum wage. I wouldn't crow so much about creating lots of minimum wage jobs.
I know numerous older SV engineers that have no problem finding work. For example, my father is now 70 years old. He was hired by Amazon in his 60s to design the hardware for the first Kindle and still works there to this day designing new products. I'm over 40 and am contstantly contacted by recruiters and various companies. It all depends. As long as you learn new skills and keep up with technology there is demand for experienced engineers.
That is not my experience at all. I have transferred large sums between my brokerage and personal accounts numerous times in recent history in excess of 5K and there was never any delay as to when I could start purchasing stock.
It's the same on the west coast. There are some decent banks (usually local banks) but credit unions are the way to go out here too. The funny thing is that a bank that started out local in my town is now starting to expand all over the Bay Area and beyond, but then again they are known to be consumer friendly.
Having purchased a Tesla Model S the experience is the exact opposite of when I purchased a Toyota. Tesla's showrooms do not sell cars. They show them. When I went to the showroom I could ask questions without any pressure to buy the car. The only way to buy a Tesla is on their web site so there's no sales critters trying to get a commission. There are a myriad of options to choose from which allows you to get the exact car you want. I got the paint color, interior color and all the options I wanted. It went to the point where I chose the wheel colors and whether or not to have a rear carbon fiber spoiler (I chose not to). There's also no haggling over price. Tesla basically builds to order without having to deal with an inventory of cars. You order your car and they deliver exactly what you ordered, or in my case I picked mine up at the factory and took the tour.
At the Toyota dealership I didn't have much choice. I could choose any car as long as it was on their lot, plus there's the high pressure sales. The only thing worse than one of their car salesmen is a used car salesman (which they also sell there).
Dealerships don't really protect the consumer. As far as I'm concerned, they're leeches. A relative of mine bought a Fisker Karma and the dealerships are basically helpless since Fisker is more or less bankrupt in all but name. The warranty is basically worthless as is any pre-paid service and parts are unavailable. Since Fisker laid off their engineers even support is limited even if paid by the owner. The dealership my relative goes to is better than many. Many dealerships completely dropped any and all support for Fisker so the owners are completely SOL. There's nobody to even perform routine service on the vehicles.
I groan every time I have to have something fixed that's not under warranty at Toyota. They charge a premium for the service since they know that with a Prius you're unlikely to take it elsewhere.
Dealerships also wouldn't make nearly as much profit on service either. Tesla has vowed to not make a profit on service, but then again, service should be a lot simpler than a gasoline powered car. There's no transmission to service or wear out, only a simple gear reduction. There's no 5K mile oil changes, the motor is lubricated for 12 years. There's no fuel pumps or spark plugs to replace.
Since the number of cars sold is fairly low, a dealership would also be selling o
Tesla service consists of a 12,500 mile inspection, replacing the wiper blades and brake pads if needed (brake pads should last basically forever), rotate the tires, replace the cabin air filter and possibly flush the coolant. Service also may include hardware upgrades, software upgrades are distributed over 3G and can be applied by the owner whenever it's convenient.
Tesla has vowed to not make a profit on service. When I broke one of the clips on my roof they had to replace the entire panel next to the glass sunroof. If the panel were on my Prius, the dealership would probably charge $200-300 just for a replacement panel plus a fortune in labor. Tesla charged me $100 and $175 labor to replace it, which after explaining what they had to do to replace it was a bargain.
Things are quite different now than they were in the 1950.
In that case they'll ship the battery (presumably to the station you'll use on the return trip) and charge you for the shipping. They have not stated how expensive that will be.
If you're commuting then you're not going to use this service. You plug in at night when you get home and unplug in the morning. It takes about 10 seconds to do. The electricity used for my daily 18 mile commute costs around $40/month with my Tesla model S. It's cheaper to drive than my Prius. I also have the option to charge for free which takes 30 minutes for 80% charge. The only time I need to use supercharging or possibly a battery swap is if I do a road trip like I'm planning up to Lake Tahoe. The battery swapping will first be set up for people driving between LA and the Bay Area. As for batteries wearing out, the batteries are rated for 3000 full charge/discharge cycles which is the equivalent to around 750,000 miles when you assume 250 miles/charge (EPA rated 265).
Also consider that the cars Tesla is comparible to usually require the more expensive premium gasoline.
Exactly. Since I got my Tesla the only time I drive my Prius is for some camping trips where there is no place to charge along the way. Hopefully that will change in the future since I've also taken my Tesla on one camping trip where charging was available along the way.
As it is, I'm considering selling my Prius since all it does is take up space in my driveway.
It should be fairly easy to defeat. All someone needs is several different copies of the book and do a comparison. It should be easy to spot what has changed and then undo them.
They won't. They'll just dictate the interest rates that they charge and that they get a 30% cut of everything.
No, he's talking about SFP+ connectors. All of the 10Gbe equipment I work with has SFP+ cages to accept various modules for optical or fiber connections. They look just like GBIC transceivers.
I think the main reason is cost. I have been working with 10Gbe for several years writing drivers for PHYs and MACs. I've worked with a number of PHYs and 10Gbe is a lot more complex. For example, the SFP+ cables and modules each have a serial EEPROM that contains parameters needed to program the PHY. It's not just a simple RJ45 CAT5/CAT6 cable. As someone who has worked in 10Gbe drivers there's a lot more complexity. With some PHYs I have to query the serial EEPROM to make changes based on things such as cable length and whether or not it's active or passive or if it's copper or optical. Distances over copper are also usually limited to much shorter distances unless active cabling is used.
In terms of cost, a 1 meter copper cable is around $43 from www.cablesondemand.com. A 12 meter cable is $189. It's not like gigabit where you just plug in a CAT5 cable and go.
Handling peak is not a problem if you augment with a smaller battery designed to supply the peak power and/or use a supercapacitor. There is no reason that the entire battery system must be the same battery type. I know Tesla has patents covering mixing metal-air batteries with other technologies to supplament the power during peak usage and for regeneration.
While the system in my car does this, it also downloads satellite imagry and road conditions in real time from the Internet as I am driving.
Not necessarily. For example, my car (Tesla model S) has an always-on 3G Internet connection. It is used for streaming music, maps and Internet (it does not disable the browser while driving). There is talk of charging money for the Internet connection once the WIFI feature is enabled or else allow teathering with a cell phone to provide the connection. The Internet connection is also used to improve voice recognition and for other services. The Internet connection is not just used for browsing or chat/email.
Then there's also the case where a passenger might want to use the Internet on a laptop.
Actually this is possible. Most of the battery smarts are integrated into the battery pack itself and the car is designed so that the battery pack can be replaced in a few minutes. The fact that the battery pack itself is made up of one of the most standard battery sizes makes it much easier for Tesla to change batteries once they're qualified.
Of course there's more to batteries than just capacity. Tesla has to worry about longevity as well as how quickly it can charge and discharge as well as safety.
My father's Fisker Karma is a good example of this. The Karma is a true series hybrid with no mechanical linkage between the gasoline engine and the wheels. Unfortunately it gets terrible mileage, around 21MPG on gasoline. The train technology doesn't scale downward very well. Like a train it has good low-end torque but it suffers at higher speeds.
The nice thing is Tesla doesn't use any rare-earth magnets since they use an induction motor (which was invented by Nikola Tesla) as opposed to a synchronous motor which is what most electric and hybrid cars use. The only thing in the motor is some steel, aluminum and copper.
I have an '06 Prius. Speedy isn't what comes to mind for me either. It's OK for around town and whatnot, but it can be painful to take it up any long grade or going up a steep hill. Now my Tesla Model S P85, that's speedy. It doesn't care about grades except for reducing range (about 6-7 miles of range lost per 1000' gain in elevation and 3-4 mile gaine per 1000' drop). At low speeds the Prius isn't bad, but at highway speeds it starts to get rather gutless. All that torque is only really good at the low end. My model S has a much smoother torque curve. The electric motor in my Prius is rated at 295ft-lbs of torque but the car limits its output and the peak is at 0RPM. The Prius torque curve drops rapidly whereas the Tesla model S has a much flatter torque curve.
Harris Ranch did just that. It has proven to be one of the most popular Superchargers. Tesla had to expand it and add more chargers there. The Superchargers are typically installed at malls or other areas where there are restaraunts and other things nearby.
An easy solution is to just rent a car. Put all those miles and wear and tear on somebody else's car.